From eight years in Cuban prison to acclaimed dissident

Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Staff

WASHINGTON, DC - Cuban political dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, 45, talks with reporters at the Raben Group offices during a tour of the United States June 1, 2016 in Washington, DC. Arrested as part the Black Spring crackdown on Cuban dissidents and imprisoned from 2003-2011, Ferrer founded the pro-democracy and human rights group Union Patriotica de Cuba (UNPACU) upon his release. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By Lomi Kriel

José Daniel Ferrer spent eight years in a Cuban prison expecting his death sentence,clinging to his sanity in solitary confinement with literature and daily pushups and pull-ups.

He was the last of 75 political prisoners released by Havana in 2011 in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church that was drawn out because of the insistence of Ferrer and 11 other men to stay in Cuba upon their release. Most of the so-called Black Spring dissidents, named for the mass 2003 crackdown in which they were arrested, were exiled to Spain.

"I wasn't going to give up," Ferrer said. "Liberty is expensive and you have to fight for it or live without it."

Since then, Ferrer, 45, has been arrested several times and prevented from leaving the communist island. This spring, after President Barack Obama met with Cuban leader Raul Castro in a historic occasion - the first U.S. president to visit in 88 years - the government offered Ferrer a one-time chance to leave Cuba and return.

In meetings and speeches across the United States and Europe this month, one of the island's most famous dissidents and leader of the Cuban Patriotic Union party will press American and foreign leaders to keep pushing Havana for increased freedoms and not assume that lifting the embargo signals an end to Cuba's struggle.

"If they keep pursuing economic relations but forget the theme of human rights, this will be a bad relationship," Ferrer said in an interview this week at Cafe Piquet in Bellaire where dozens of Cuban immigrants gathered to meet a man many consider a hero.

Older Cubans in the United States, driven into exile by Fidel Castro, have for decades resisted talk of normalizing relations and largely opposed Obama's lifting of the embargo in December 2014. Younger Cubans and those born in the United States, however, overwhelmingly support it.

Critics argue Obama should have done more to pressure Havana into improving human rights and secure political freedoms in exchange for ending the embargo. Ferrer danced delicately around the topic, saying he hoped the next American president would continue to press for improvements.

"For us, (lifting the embargo) was an intelligent decision but only, like I've repeated, if we don't forget the theme of human rights," he said.

Having more international involvement in Cuba would help ease the country's isolation and better inform its people about life outside of the communist regime, he said.

"It's a question of vision," he said. "How do you think you can help more to make the dictatorship suffer, by fighting it from the outside or by fighting it from the inside? Obviously the second."

He specifically called on the U.S. government and American companies to help the island broaden its Internet access despite a reluctance of the Cuban government to do so. The Internet remains illegal in private homes although Havana has allowed a few dozen public wi-fi hotspots in the capital and runs state-operated cyber cafes. But it is highly regulated and outside the capital most residents lack access. To that end, Ferrer said he is meeting with Twitter and Facebook executives this month to discuss other possibilities.

He also planned to push government officials in Washington to end the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants near automatic entry to Cuban immigrants who make it to the U.S. and gives them green cards after a year, the only nationality in the world with such an expedited track to American citizenship.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have streamed across the Texas border in the past few years fearing that the opening of relations will cause Congress to repeal this benefit and remaining cynical that anything on the island will change while the Castros remain alive.

The Latin America route overtook the perilous currents of the Florida Straits as the forefront of Cuban migration at the turn of the century. Now most Cubans risk the harrowing journey from Ecuador to Colombia and up through the Panamanian jungle to the Texas border. From there, many make their way to Houston rather than Miami.

Since October alone, more than 26,450 Cubans crossed the Texas border, mostly at Laredo. Roughly 29,000 came in fiscal year 2015, 80 percent more than the year before and quadruple that of a decade ago.

The pace of these northbound migrants has overwhelmed not just resettlement agencies here but governments across Latin America. Nicaragua, Costa Rica and last month, Panama, shut their borders to Cubans, prompting a refugee crisis that shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile Cubans are piling up in Colombia, whose government has not yet said what it would do.

The rush was escalated by Cuba's lifting of travel restrictions for its citizens in 2013, allowing them to fly elsewhere if they obtain a visa for that country. Many nations are reluctant to grant Cubans visas because of the widely realized fear that they won't return to the island. Ecuador in 2008, however, eliminated visas for all tourists, causing the throng of Cubans at the Texas-Mexico border to skyrocket. Quito has since rescinded that benefit in an attempt to stem Cuban migration but thousands remain stranded there or in Venezuela, whose government is friendly with Havana.

In Miami, the U.S. Coast Guard is experiencing a similar influx, higher than seen in a decade. Under the 1995 wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cubans caught at sea are returned home. Coast Guard officials say the number of interdictions in particular jumped in January 2015 amid rumors the Cuban Adjustment Act would be repealed and has nearly tripled to almost 3,000 interdictions last year compared to about 1,000 in 2011.

In the past six months, Coast Guard officials say they have also noted increased desperation in Cuban migrants, who either refuse to stop their boats, evade capture, or brandish weapons.

"They don't stop the boat," said Lt. Commander Gabe Somma. "Or they refuse to take their life jackets in an attempt to get us to take them to shore."

Ferrer acknowledged the number of Cubans trying to leave the island has risen "substantially" and said it was an issue of deep concern.

"They're coming, fundamentally, because the misery and repression in Cuba hasn't ended but continues and because of the fear that tomorrow they won't be able to enter the free country," he said, referring to the United States.

Still, he said Washington should change the act to protect only Cubans who are fleeing for political reasons, even as he understood his countrymen's desperation to come here for a better life.

"We're going to keep fighting for this together," he said. "But if the act is not changed, it's going to keep being an invitation to leave Cuba completely empty and yes, it worries us. ... We're going to see 10,000 Cubans from the island at any moment here. Because the people are searching for freedom at any cost."

He said the act encourages Cubans to risk their lives on dangerous journeys and urged Latin American countries to help Cubans stuck within their borders while making it more difficult for others to cross.

"Congress needs to change the law, and Central American countries need to do their part to stop this Cuban flow," he said. "If not, this is going to keep going like a circle, and it's never going to stop."

He acknowledged that significant change in Cuba is difficult until Raul and Fidel Castro and about eight members of the core "Old Guard" communist regime die or change their ideology. But the prospect of a tumbling Venezuela, undergoing sustained political unrest and an economic meltdown, could help hasten changes in Havana if it no longer has guaranteed access to cheap oil.

"This could help the process of Cuba's change to accelerate," he said. "It would force the government to open more economically."

He predicted the communist government wouldn't last another five years.

"Change can come in three years or it could be in two, or it could be in six months," he said. "Remember, in 1988 few thought that the Berlin Wall would fall so quickly ... in Cuba, we are on the point of change."