Cuba has more than its fair share of dissidents who are determined
                    never to give up the fight despite the heavy odds against them. For
                    many, the battleground is at home. Flight to the nearby United
                    States is not an option in their struggle.

                    DOUG BANDOW

                    Cuba has enjoyed greater engagement with the world over the last decade, but
                    ``political repression has been increasing''.

                    Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, a leading dissident, said there recently have been mass
                    detentions after an invasion of the Mexican embassy grounds by students hoping to
                    get visas. Independent journalists and human rights activists have been beaten,
                    detained and jailed. ``This has been the highest level of repression in the last 10
                    years, maybe the last 20 years,'' Mr Sanchez complained.

                    Vicki Huddleston, head of the US Interest Section in Cuba, said: ``For me, the most
                    worrisome thing is that the situation will be shoved backwards.''

                    This brutality has not prevented many Cubans from risking their lives, freedom and
                    property to fight for liberty. Mr Sanchez is known as the dean of human rights
                    activists and heads the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National
                    Reconciliation.

                    Of medium stature and with grey, receding hair, the 59-year-old Sanchez doesn't look
                    like someone to strike fear in the Cuban government. But as Mr Sanchez noted, while
                    the regime took power in 1959 in a genuinely popular revolution against the corrupt
                    Batista dictatorship, ``the base of support of the government has been shrinking''
                    ever since.

                    That would make any dictatorship nervous. Thus, he has spent more than eight
                    years in prison, been detained around 24 times since breaking with the regime, and
                    seen his home assaulted by para-police thugs.

                    The policy of the Castro regime is simple, he explained: It violates ``all political,
                    economic and civil rights''. Although the government has devoted much of its limited
                    resources to education and health-care, it ``forms part of the official propaganda
                    system''.

                    There is some good news. During the 1990s, there were some 1,000 political
                    prisoners. Today there are ``only'' 220, but that is still the highest in the Western
                    hemisphere and ``one of the highest in the world in relative terms'', Mr Sanchez said.

                    While it was once ``very dangerous'' for human rights activists to meet with the
                    foreign press, he now does so regularly without obvious retaliation. I know the
                    regime ``would like us to be dead, but they know that the political cost would be too
                    high'', he said.

                    There has been some improvement in religious freedom, especially since the Pope's
                    visit in 1998. The government doesn't interfere in the internal affairs of the Church
                    but regulates any activity outside of worship.

                    Mr Sanchez started as a 16-year-old student activist and member of the socialist
                    youth organisation. He later taught at the University of Havana on philosophy. But
                    by 1967, for him and several friends ``it became very clear that it had become a
                    totalitarian government''. Thus, he began ``35 years of resisting the regime''.

                    Despite all that he has gone through, he remains hopeful. ``Change will happen in the
                    short or medium term.'' No one knows when, but the ``transition could start this very
                    night''.

                    Even Cuban officials admit that the 75-year-old Fidel Castro won't live forever, and
                    then, Mr Sanchez believes, there will be a ``power vacuum. And what happens next
                    will be uncontrollable.''

                    Some Cuba observers think the country may already have entered its transition,
                    which might give the nascent opposition an opportunity to lead.

                    ``These human rights activists and independent journalists, doctors and economists
                    are beginning to mean something,'' Vicki Huddleston said. They are ``beginning to
                    give voice to this enormous frustration of the Cuban people''.

                    Cuban officials dismiss the dissidents as being tools of America. Some of them have
                    a hard time imagining dissent.

                    Ismael Gonzalez, vice-minister of culture, said ``art is by its nature belligerent''. But
                    only ``theoretically speaking'', in his view, might that belligerence be expressed as
                    criticism of the government. ``Fortunately, we haven't seen that reality in many
                    years.''

                    Mr Sanchez looks outside his own country for support because only international
                    pressure keeps him and many of his colleagues out of jail. However, he favours
                    lifting America's embargo against Cuba.

                    Mr Sanchez's argument is simple: ``The sanction policy by the US government has
                    allowed the Cuban government to have a good alibi to justify the failure of the
                    totalitarian model in Cuba.'' Moreover, contact with foreigners is likely to breed
                    discontent.

                    What of his personal future? He has family in the US and when he travelled abroad in
                    1988 for the first time, ``the government said that it expected me not to come back''.
                    But he did.

                    ``This is my country. The solution is not that Cubans should just leave their country.
                    I think we should stay here and change things.''

                    In the end, Cuba's future will be determined by men and women like Mr Sanchez.
                    Americans can hope for reform in Cuba, but.only Cubans can make reform happen.

                    ``Decisions for Cubans have to be made by Cubans,'' Vicki Huddleston said. ``They
                    are putting their lives on the line.''

                    - Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC. He is a
                    former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the author and editor of
                    several books.