"As a Mexican, I wish for my country neither the dictates of Washington on foreign policy, nor the Cuban example of a suffocating dictatorship," he wrote in a letter published in Mexico City's Reforma newspaper. He wasn't alone. Saramago, a Portuguese writer who won the 1998 Nobel Prize for literature and considered himself a close friend of Castro, said Cuba "has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, cheated my dreams."
Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who lives part-time in Cuba, has been silent on the issue. But his magazine, Cambio, published an article saying "few other repressive waves have left a government so isolated and rejected." The government responded by publishing rebukes in the Communist Party daily Granma. In one letter published Saturday, a group of well-known Cuban intellectuals urged their colleagues to stop criticizing the island. ***
Wifes and mothers of jailed Cuban dissidents walk in silence in Havana April 27, 2003, after a mass in the church of Santa Rita to protest the emprisonment of their husbands and sons, recently sentenced to long prison terms in the harshest political repression in decades in Cuba. 'We are here to pray and protest the unfair jailing of our husbands and sons,' said Blanca Reyes (in the center of the picture), wife of poet and independent journalist Raul Rivero, sentenced to 20 years of jail. The jailing of the 75 dissidents, human rights activist and independent journalists, accused by Cuban government of conspiring with the United States to undermine Cuban revolution, brought an outpouring of international criticism. REUTERS/Rafael Perez