Cuban journalist Ivan Garcia is anxious.
"We are all afraid," he said in a phone interview from his Havana home. "We are waiting for that knock on the door, for the police to go through our apartments and to take us away."
Garcia is one of a handful of online journalists who was not arrested in a recent government raid of island dissidents, including writers who, like Garcia, work outside of the media controlled by Fidel Castro's socialist government. So far, 43 of the 80 people arrested -- including human rights activists, librarians and independent economists -- were sentenced this week to up to 27 years in prison. Among those sentenced was Garcia's boss, renowned poet and independent journalist, Raul Rivero, who received a prison term of 20 years.
But despite losing Rivero and other colleagues to lengthy jail sentences, Garcia said he is not deterred from his work at CubaPress, a group of reporters and editors in Havana who have their stories published in print and online publications abroad.
CubaPress is one of nine groups of reporters in Cuba who operate under a single umbrella organization in Miami called Nueva Prensa Cubana, or New Cuban Press.
The stories that are filed with Nueva Prensa, usually by fax or telephone call, appear on the organization's website and are syndicated in other publications, including Le Monde in Paris, La Vanguardia in Barcelona, and newspapers in Denmark, Germany and other European countries, said Nancy Perez-Crespo, director of Nueva Prensa. The Miami Herald and Miami's Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald had exclusive rights to some of Rivero's articles, she said.
Garcia said the group has always met one obstacle or another when faxing or calling in stories -- which cover various aspects of the lack of freedoms and the poverty in Cuba -- to Miami. There have been government raids, he said, in which police have confiscated pens and paper from members of the organization. But a poor phone connection is almost always responsible for difficulty with filing a story.
"Even then," he said, "we manage to do our jobs."
The recent government crackdown on journalists and others highlights a growing phenomenon in Cuba: the proliferation of dissident writing on the Web.
Although Rivero and the other condemned journalists -- Nueva Prensa lists their names on its website -- were tried in speedy court cases closed to the foreign press and diplomats, Nueva Prensa still managed to obtain audio interviews with those present at the trial and articles related to the case from its writers in Cuba.
"Many of the (reporters) continue to write," said Perez-Crespo from her home in Miami. "There are things that really move human beings into action. It could be the indignities of this world ... but (these journalists) are not deterred by the danger of doing this line of work."
Various press organizations, including Reporters Without Borders and human rights watchdog groups like Amnesty International, denounced the arrests in Cuba.
In a report by Nueva Prensa, Rivero's wife Blanca Reyes said her husband was accused of working on behalf of James Cason, who heads the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which is similar to an embassy.
While Rivero acknowledged meeting with Cason, he denied ever having received any form of payment from him. Rivero was also accused of writing for a "counter-revolutionary magazine" put out by what officials called a "subversive" group -- the Inter American Press Association, for which Rivero was a delegate.
Two government infiltrators who pretended to be journalists corroborated stories of Rivero's meetings with Cason. Rivero and the others were tried under a Cuban law that makes it illegal to support measures -- like the American trade embargo -- that could harm the island's economy and sovereignty, said Juan Hernandez, a spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.
"These people are working for the American government, which maintains an economic embargo against Cuba with the only goal of hurting the 11 million people on the island," Hernandez said. "Obviously, they are mercenaries for the U.S. government."
In a recent appearance at the University of Miami, Cason denied making any payments to dissidents on the island. But the fact that he has opened his Havana office to anyone there who wishes to thumb through foreign books and periodicals or use the Internet has raised eyebrows among Cuban government officials.
Garcia, for example, said he has gone to Cason's office to read Newsweek, Madrid's El Pais newspaper and books and to gain Internet access, which is heavily restricted in Cuba.
"Every country has an embassy," Garcia said. "I don't understand why it is a crime to visit it."
Cason defended his actions as "fully consistent with U.S. policy and with diplomatic protocol," pointing out that Cuban diplomats have just as much, if not more, access to the American people.
As for whether the United States funnels money to dissident groups on the island, Mike Anton, spokesman for the National Security Council, said it does as part of a "pro-democracy outreach in Cuba." Anton did not specify how much money has been donated to these groups, but Hernandez placed that number at around $20 million.
"Those $20 million were allotted to subvert the government in Cuba," Hernandez said. "Other countries may allow it, but not Cuba."
For their part, the journalists at Nueva Prensa vehemently deny that they received any of this money. Perez-Crespo said she uses her own money and that of independently wealthy Cubans in Miami to pay the writers in Cuba.
Garcia said it's important that Nueva Prensa pays writers because once journalists in Cuba decide to risk breaking the law to write for a publication outside of the system, they face the likelihood of losing their government-supported job. Hernandez said it is illegal to write a story that "defames" the Cuban government or its people in any way.
Not only that, but as Garcia once wrote in an article that appeared in Miami Guide magazine online, most necessities like clothing can be bought on the island with only U.S. dollars.
