Fidel Castro and freedom of the press

In 2001, Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro invited Ann Marie Lipinski, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and editor of The Chicago Tribune, to the presidential residence to mark the historic opening of the Tribune Company bureau in Havana. Six years later, the Tribune‘s correspondent, Gary Marx, would be expelled for his coverage of human rights and other issues.

Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas director for Amnesty International said Castro’s regime was characterized by “a ruthless suppression of freedom of expression,” including sometimes long prison terms for people who spoke out strongly against the Cuban government. “The question now is what human rights will look like in a future Cuba,” she said. “The lives of many depend on it.”

The 90-year-old Cuban leader who defied American capitalism for half a century died on Black Friday, the annual shopping frenzy that takes place the day after Thanksgiving. This photograph was shared by Ann Marie, a former Michigan Daily colleague, on her Facebook page, and is reprinted with her permission.

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven