‘Flip Side of Democracy’ in Latin America

Whoever reads “The Flip Side of Democracy” by Jorge G. Castaneda (Editorial Pages, May 3) will get the impression that in order to appear completely independent from their northern neighbor the nations of Latin America must oppose any and all causes promoted by the United States.

The rejection of the Cuban case by most Latin American members at the U.N. Commission of Human Rights was an offense to all decent human beings. Despite Castaneda’s suggestion that the human rights violations in Cuba have been concocted by the U.S. Department of State, the abuses perpetrated on the Cuban people by the Castro regime are well documented.

It seems that Castaneda has not seen the documentary, “Improper Conduct,” (winner of the prestigious Human Rights Grand Prix at Strasbourg, France) or read Armando Valladares’ memoirs “Against All Hope,” written after having spent over two decades in Castro’s jails, or the book (published by Americas Watch) “Twenty Years and Forty Days/Life in a Cuban Prison” by Jorge Valls, a poet imprisoned on political charges and freed in 1984 after an intense international campaign. Castaneda obviously has never heard of Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, the leader of the Second Front of the Escambray against the cruel dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, recently released thanks to the intervention of the Spanish government.

While only tiny Costa Rica, the democratic colossus of Latin America, voted in favor of justice and the dignity of man, Castaneda does not mention that the Caracas government changed its position, but instructions to the Venezuelan delegation arrived too late (“15 minutes after the vote had been taken in Geneva”).

It is a shame that Argentina, after long years of suffering during the “Dirty War,” did not have the courage to vote for the right cause. And, it is a disgrace that Mexico, which through a shroud of democracy abuses the rights of millions of peasants to have a decent life, had the nerve to vote against the United States for the sole purpose of appearing independent. There is no forgiveness for what these countries did.

When it comes to human rights we cannot be selective. It is our duty to denounce not only the Hitlers, the Pinochets and the Marcoses, but also the Castros, the Ortegas and the Stalins of the world.

The vote in Geneva by those six Latin American countries is the knife that wounds and eventually will kill the same democracy and independence they pretend to protect. The true defender of human rights cannot remain timid or selective about what is truly right.

RAUL DE CARDENAS

Los Angeles