Vanessa Bauza

HAVANA · Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo has spent a lifetime courting conflict.

The former rebel commander helped bring Fidel Castro to power, but later broke ranks and led a failed insurrection against el comandante.

Gutiérrez-Menoyo was locked away in a high security Cuban prison for 22 years, but when he emerged espousing a new doctrine of dialogue and reconciliation, his old allies labeled him a traitor.

In 2003, after 19 years in Miami, Gutiérrez-Menoyo stunned the exile community with another sudden switch. He declared he would move to Havana indefinitely to carve out a "legal space" for Cuba's beleaguered opposition movement.

No other exile leader had ever decided to move back to Cuba. Gutiérrez-Menoyo did not have the Cuban government's permission to remain on the island, and his move sparked ample speculation about how Castro would respond to the former revolutionary compatriot turned foe.

Would Gutiérrez-Menoyo be deported? Would he share the fate of 75 other dissidents who were sentenced to long jail terms?

Even the 69-year-old seasoned strategist did not predict it would be the U.S. government, not Castro, that would come after him.

In a letter made public by Gutiérrez-Menoyo last week, the U.S. Treasury Department warned he has run afoul of the embargo by remaining in Cuba. As a permanent U.S. resident, Gutiérrez-Menoyo could face criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison or $250,000 in fines or a civil fine of up to $65,000, according to the letter, handed to him by an official at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in November.

A frequent critic of the Bush administration's Cuba policy, Gutiérrez-Menoyo says he feels sandwiched between the Cuban government, which has not answered his requests for permanent residency, and the U.S. government, which wants to fine him despite his work for peaceful democratic change in Cuba.

"I am not on a bed of roses," he said on a recent afternoon at a friend's Havana home. "I am not a tourist. I am working hard for democratization here. How can the U.S. government call for the same thing I am calling for, the freedom of the political prisoners, and at the same time threaten [me] with 10 years in prison?"

A slender man with slicked-back gray hair, who is mostly blind behind his metal-frame glasses, Gutiérrez-Menoyo's characteristic defiance for a moment is replaced by compliance.

"I respect the American laws," he said. "If tomorrow they say I need to return, I have no fear."

As part of the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal travel to Cuba, administrative law judges last month began issuing the first fines against U.S. travelers who visited the island without a license. A Minnesota man who traveled to Cuba on a scuba-diving trip was fined $780 while a Michigan couple who said they distributed medicines as part of a religious mission will have to pay $5,250.

President Bush has tightened the U.S. travel ban while also focusing attention on Cuba's internal opposition movement.

Critics of the U.S. travel ban say Gutiérrez-Menoyo's trouble with the Treasury Department is evidence of an inconsistent policy that seeks a transition in Cuba but clamps down contacts that could facilitate that transition.

In a letter to the Treasury Department last week, U.S. Reps. William Delahunt, D-Mass., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., both frequent embargo critics, requested clarification on Gutiérrez-Menoyo's case, asking, "Is it now Administration policy to crack down on Castro's opponents?"

"Here's someone who has demonstrated through 22 years of incarceration his opposition to the Cuban government, and here he's being threatened by the American government for violating [U.S.] policy," Delahunt said in a phone conversation from Washington, D.C. "This law is stupid and this is the best evidence of it."

A U.S. diplomat in Havana said Gutiérrez-Menoyo is subject to U.S. law, regardless of whether his mission in Cuba coincides with the administration's aims.

"He can be sitting here like a bump on a log or waging opposition to Mr. Castro, but that's not the point," the diplomat said on the condition of anonymity. "The point is that, just like any U.S. citizen, he doesn't get special dispensation. We are a country of laws."

To be sure, Gutiérrez-Menoyo has little to show for the past year and a half in Cuba. The Cuban government has tolerated his presence, but has not responded to his requests for permanent residency or permission to buy a car much less his calls to legally establish his organization, Cambio Cubano, in Havana. He meets with diplomats here and travels to Cuba's provincial towns in a puttering 1960 Soviet-era Lada car to talk to reformers who advocate dialogue and reconciliation. But he is alienated from many other opposition leaders whom he criticizes for not being independent of the U.S. Interests Section.

"I am paying the price for an independent position," he said. "The right over there [in the United States] is threatening me. The left over here [in Havana] doesn't give me what I am demanding."

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com

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