Espinosa Chepe, Cuban dissident economist, dies

Posted on Monday, 09.23.13

Espinosa Chepe, Cuban dissident economist, dies
BY ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS

HAVANA -- Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a high-level Cuban economist and
diplomat who broke with Fidel Castro's government in the 1990s and was
imprisoned for dissident activities, died in Spain Monday. He was 72 and
had been hospitalized for a liver ailment.

Espinosa died in Fuenfria Hospital in Cercedilla, just north of Madrid,
according to The Cuban Human Rights Observatory. The group said he had
been in Spain since March receiving treatment.

Espinosa was one of 75 writers and political activists locked up in 2003
during the Black Spring, a notorious crackdown on dissent that provoked
international criticism and EU sanctions lasting five years.

Little known at the time of his imprisonment, Espinosa was sentenced to
20 years but released after 19 months on medical humanitarian grounds,
on his 64th birthday.

By then his name was more familiar, in part thanks to the work of his
wife, fellow dissident Miriam Leiva, who helped found the Ladies in
White protest group to press for their husbands' release.

Espinosa said the government had made a mistake by locking him and the
others up, and vowed they would not be silenced. The Cuban government
frequently accuses island dissidents of accepting money from Washington
to undermine the government, but Espinosa frequently denied being a
"mercenary."

"We are non-violent people who have not committed any crime," he told
reporters in November 2004 at his and Leiva's tiny Havana apartment,
always overflowing with the books, papers and statistical reports they
used to write about Cuba's complex and troubled economy.

Espinosa had suffered from liver problems for years and in the early
2000s was diagnosed with cirrhosis. He was hospitalized with liver
troubles in August 2012.

"My health problems are from before I was imprisoned, but the conditions
of the prison contributed to making them worse," Espinosa told The
Associated Press shortly before he traveled to Spain for medical treatment.

Gray-haired and soft-spoken, "Chepe," as he was commonly called, was
known for fixing his gaze firmly on whomever he was talking to and
repeatedly adjusting his spectacles as he spoke.

He was born Nov. 29, 1940, in the central province of Cienfuegos, and
along with many of his generation was infused with revolutionary fervor
following Fidel Castro's 1959 Cuban Revolution.

He graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Havana in
1961 and began a long career of mid- and high-ranking posts in the
government, including as counselor to then-Prime Minister Castro in the
'60s and later as head of the powerful Office of Agrarian Reform.

Espinosa also was a member of the State Committee for Economic
Collaboration, specializing in a handful of Soviet bloc nations, and did
a stint as Cuba's economic attache in Yugoslavia.

He took up a position at the National Bank of Cuba upon his return in
the 1980s, but increasingly found himself at odds with government policy.

According to Espinosa's account, in the early 1990s, after voicing
disagreement with the country's economic policies, he was denounced by a
colleague, publicly sanctioned and ultimately fired.

From his later writings, it was clear that Espinosa believed the
Communist government wielded excessive control over the economy and he
was a strong critic of corruption and bureaucracy.

He reinvented himself as a writer about the Cuban economy, publishing
articles and books in the United States, Spain and elsewhere, and doing
some work for Radio Marti — U.S.-funded broadcasts aimed at Cuba that
Havana bitterly objects to as an intrusion on its sovereignty.

However Espinosa also vocally opposed the U.S. embargo and economic
sanctions against the island, saying it gave the Cuban government an
excuse for its shortcomings and the restrictions it placed on Cubans.

Espinosa's independent, critical voice touched a generation of Cuba
scholars around the world, one colleague said in a prologue to his book.

"Oscar's admirable labor in his numerous, documented and brave works on
the economy and social aspects in Cuba have inspired and influenced the
work of many Cuban economists in the exterior," the U.S.-based economist
Carmelo Mesa Lago wrote.

Espinosa's death is the third significant loss for Cuba's tiny community
of outspoken dissidents in as many years, following the passing of
Ladies in White co-founder Laura Pollan in 2011 and Varela Project
author Oswaldo Paya the following year in a car wreck.

---

Associated Press Writer Ciaran Giles contributed to this report from Madrid.

Follow Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: HYPERLINK
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Source: "HAVANA: Espinosa Chepe, Cuban dissident economist, dies -
Obituaries - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/23/3645116/espinosa-chepe-cuban-dissident.html#storylink=misearch