Cuba's Revolutionary Reporters   

Cuban journalist Lázaro Lazo leans over a metal table in a whitewashed Havana apartment and scribbles on a sheet of paper. He once filed dispatches from a Toshiba laptop, but police confiscated his computer last year.

Lazo and his fellow reporters at BPIC, the Independent Press Bureau of Cuba, ride to interviews on Chinese-made bicycles. They dictate stories from phones in rotating safe houses. And when they show up at government offices, they're shut out — or turned in.

"What class of reporter has to go to interviews on a bicycle?" asks Lazo, BPIC director. "We don't have liberty. We don't have access to information."

Across Cuba as many as 50 independent journalists are challenging Cuba's government — forming bureaus and reporting about prisons, dissidents' arrests and strict government policies.

For two years the underground movement has grown, drawing attention from foreign journalists who cover the fledgling "free" press in Cuba, where President Fidel Castro's communist government has controlled the news for nearly four decades. Now the renegade reporters and human rights activists are worried that recent laws will further curb the Cuban — and international — press.

This summer Cuba's government passed "Regulations for Foreign Media Work in Cuba," cautioning journalists to be "objective" and threatening sanctions. The warning targets visiting media, but it's also a swipe at the Cuban press.

"First they use one method, then they use another one. It's harassment," says Janisset Rivero, executive director of the Miami-based Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Directory, which supports Cuba's democratization.

In 1995, Castro, struggling to save the economy, wanted to lure tourists and foreign investment, so he loosened the reins and allowed more critical dialogue in the media. But in early 1996, more than 100 "dissidents," including some journalists, were arrested after pushing for meetings about democratic change. Castro's grip once again tightened.

"We are an impartial press," says Raúl Rivero, director of CubaPress, a Havana-based news agency. "The officials have their voice, and we are another voice. Now they are trying to silence our tongues."

Cuba retrenched after the U.S. Congress passed the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which irritated Castro's economic wounds by punishing foreign investors. In response, Castro made it illegal for Cubans to "collaborate with radio, television or other means of propaganda with the goal of facilitating the Helms-Burton law."

The wording is a warning to Cuba's independent journalists who put out the news via foreign radio, television, newspapers and computer modems. The message: Stop or suffer.

Unlike their counterparts in nations such as Algeria or Colombia, reporters in Cuba who cross the regime's invisible line aren't killed. But they may face interrogation, prison or exile. In fact, just before this article went to press, Lazo, sources say, was deported to the U.S.

And their families might be punished: Some relatives have lost positions at state-run universities, Cuba watchers and reporters say.

CubaPress journalist Ana Luisa Lopez works despite the pressure. The state won't let her daughter attend its college, Lopez says. "We are seen as enemies of the revolution," she adds.

Reporters also encounter practical problems. Materials are scarce — pens and typewriters, for example, are smuggled into Cuba, and paper is a highly valued commodity.

And getting the news out isn't easy: Since state-tapped phone service is often interrupted, reporters sometimes carry handwritten stories by train or bike to the news agencies, where they are edited and then dictated to contacts in the U.S. or Puerto Rico. Because of state bans on publication, Cubans cannot read the reports, so stories are often broadcast on Spanish-language radio in Miami and beamed back to the island. And now stories are posted on the Internet at sites like http://www.cubapress.com and read by Cuba watchers.

Sarah DeCosse, Cuba researcher for Human Rights Watch/Americas in Washington, D.C., expects increased troubles. This year, she says, dozens of journalists have been repeatedly arrested and detained.

"It is important that they can get out some news about what's going on in Cuba. But because of pressures, they haven't been able to establish a journalists' network," DeCosse says. "Many have 'chosen' exile after repeated threats of prison. And it looks like it's moving toward a closing of free expression."