Dissident Martha Beatriz Roque is honored at the White House. Cuba didn’t let her attend

Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, the long-standing Cuban dissident and former political prisoner who tried to organize an opposition movement to challenge Fidel Castro’s rule, was supposed to be attending a ceremony Monday to receive the International Women of Courage Award given by the U.S. State Department to those “who have demonstrated exceptional courage, strength, and leadership.”

Instead, she is in Havana, unable to travel abroad because the Cuban government does not want her voice to be heard, she said in a wide-ranging interview with the Miami Herald.

“We’re honoring a dozen women. There’s one who couldn’t join us today: Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, an unyielding defender of human rights in Cuba,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken during the award ceremony. “Cuban authorities have subjected Martha to a long campaign of detention and abuse, including prohibiting her from traveling abroad. Martha may not be able to be with us today in person, but we want her to know all of us are with her every single day.”

Roque, an economist and former university professor, was one of the authors of Homeland Belongs to Us, a 1997 scathing critique of communism on the island that called for political reforms. The document led to prison sentences for her and three other dissidents who wrote it— Vladimiro Roca, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano. She was released in 2002 only to return to prison as the only woman arrested during the so-called Black Spring crackdown in 2003, when Castro ordered the arrest of 75 prominent dissidents to squash efforts to unify the opposition movement.

She was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was released a year later due to her failing health.

At 78, she still suffers from the untreated effects of chronic diabetes. The government has refused to let her get treatment abroad.

In announcing the award, the State Department said Roque “is one of the longest-standing members of the historic opposition fighting for greater freedoms in Cuba,” recognizing her work leading several pro-democracy initiatives and advocating for human rights and religious freedoms for more than four decades.

The fact she received the award in 2024 also underscores how little Cuba’s situation has changed since she started advocating for human rights and democracy.

Roque worries about the fate of about 1,000 political prisoners still being held in Cuban jails and warns the current economic crisis will lead to more protests. Nevertheless, she says she feels satisfied with staying in Cuba, fighting for freedom.

This is a condensed version of the conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: You have been in prison several times for confronting the Cuban regime, and you decided to remain on the island, even when it is clear that the government is not going to legalize the opposition. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have chosen to leave the island. Why did you stay?

A: From the first moment, I have fought for democracy in Cuba. You have to fight here because you can’t solve anything outside; you have to do it from inside the island. And my purpose was always to make Cuba a democratic Cuba. As everyone knows, the dictatorship is totally clinging to power. For us dissidents, reaching the people to unify them with the idea of reestablishing freedom has become almost impossible.

I feel good in Cuba despite everything, despite the repression, despite the harassment, even though I have a camera in front of my house, that they listen to my phone, that they commit fraud with Facebook, with my Twitter account. People think it’s me, and it’s not, because they have hacked my accounts. They’re probably listening while we are talking.

Q: With so many dissidents in jail or forced to leave the island, what is the situation facing the opposition movement nowadays?

A: I disagree. No one has been forced to leave the country. The person who leaves the country because he wants to go is within his true right. But I have many examples of those of us who do not want to leave and cannot be forced to leave.

The opposition movement to which I belonged is totally disjointed. Then came another group that was made up of artists and others who did not face the intensity of the harassment our group faced. Some of those currently imprisoned belong to that group. Finally, some people briefly pass through the opposition movement just to leave the country.

The people who joined the opposition with me did it with the desire to see Cuba free, and we remained here in Cuba.

Q: Do you think that right now, even in the era of social media, there is less space for dissent in Cuba?

A: I think the space for dissent multiplied when more than a thousand people were imprisoned for [protesting on] July 11 [2021]. The relatives of those detained are now part of the opposition because they are constantly disclosing information about the situation of their relatives. Some are afraid, but the majority express themselves.

Q: What is the situation for political prisoners? Can you talk specifically about the women imprisoned?

A: I was talking to Sissy Abascal, who called me from a prison in Matanzas. She is there with Saily Navarro, the daughter of [veteran dissident] Félix Navarro. They were handed sentences of nine and six years in prison, respectively. And she told me they feed her with a meat paste that no one can eat. For breakfast, she says she was given guava juice without bread. She says that it is undoubtedly very difficult to live on prison food. Everything is lacking there, even feminine pads. They have nothing.

Q: What is behind this latest repressive wave?

A: They want to set an example so that people do not take to the streets to protest because prison awaits them. There are many people in jail with mental health issues that are schizophrenic or paranoid, and even cases of people who have never been able to leave the prison’s medical facility. It’s a cruel treatment.

We know the need for the prisoners to be released, but foreign governments also know it because they know the problems in Cuba. If there is no food for the population, imagine the situation for those in prison. Many [foreign government officials] try to talk [to the Cuban government], but nothing happens.

Q: How do you see Cuba’s economic and political situation today?

A: They have announced a higher gasoline price that will have a domino effect. For example, the doctor who goes to the hospital in his old car will no longer be able to do it because his salary is not enough to buy gas and support his family.

The government has tried to keep the economy afloat by putting on band-aids. At this moment, they are receiving help from the United Nations to feed the people of Cuba because they can no longer do so. There is a macroeconomic crisis, which does not allow them to buy food and meet the essential needs of the economy. Food and foreign currency prices rise daily. It is an unsustainable situation. The backward situation is going to increase until a moment when no one knows what will happen.

On July 11, the people took to the streets on their own. And there will come a time when they will do the same thing again because it is simply unsustainable to maintain a daily life here in Cuba.

Q: If the Cuban government had let you go to collect the award at the White House, you probably would have used that platform to talk about the situation in Cuba. What message would you like to send to the international community?

A: My chair will be empty, and that already indicates that I live in a totalitarian country, in a dictatorship that has not allowed me to leave Cuba. Notice that they prefer the damage of the image of an empty chair to let me give a speech.

If I were to give a message to the world, I would say: “Look at the empty chair. That says it all.”