Former president Jimmy Carter gave Paya a huge boost Tuesday night, using a nationally televised speech to the Cuban people
to praise the Varela Project, a democracy movement headed by Paya.

Paya said his friends and neighbors hugged him and cheered when Carter mentioned Varela -- a name previously forbidden on
state airwaves. But hours later, with spies lurking, Paya said that change comes slowly in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

"We struggled before we knew Carter was coming, and we must keep struggling now," Paya said. "It's a real possibility that the
government will stop us, but Cubans have never heard such a powerful voice talking about their rights. Carter has asked
everyone to think about the changes that we need in Cuba."

The day after Carter's historic speech, in which he urged Cubans to adopt democracy and called for an end to the
four-decade-old U.S. economic embargo, its effects were difficult to measure in a land where information is tightly controlled
and most people are leery of speaking with outsiders.

Castro has made no public comment about the speech. He was scheduled to host a final dinner tonight for Carter, who plans to
meet privately with religious and human rights leaders on Thursday before holding a news conference and departing on Friday.

In Washington, President Bush's spokesman rebuffed Carter's call for lifting the embargo, saying U.S. trade with Cuba would
"prop up an oppressive regime."

Paya and Victor Arroyo, a dissident independent journalist from the western city of Pinar del Rio, said Carter's speech would
surely move public opinion. They said millions of people saw it, and they said news of it would spread by word of mouth and as
videotapes were passed from friend to friend.

Vicki Huddleston, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, said her office might distribute videotapes of Carter's speech to the
network of activists it regularly assists with books, magazines and news articles. "It would be a great idea, because it underlies
our commitment to free speech," she said.

"The courage of the speech was formidable, and a good example for others," Huddleston said, noting that few U.S. officials
who visit Cuba directly criticize Castro's human rights record.

Huddleston said the Bush administration disagrees with Carter's call for an end to the economic embargo -- which Bush plans
to tighten next week. But she said that despite the differences on tactics, Bush and Carter share a desire to see democratic
reforms in Cuba.

"The real issue is the system in Cuba," she said. "Carter was immensely courageous, clear and eloquent about that."

But the message didn't get through to many Cubans. In random interviews with at least 40 people, the vast majority said they
didn't see the speech. Several said they missed it because they were on their way home from work. Others said they hadn't
known about it. Others said they simply weren't interested.

At one corner sandwich kiosk in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, at least seven people said they had not seen the
speech. Neither had two men working in a garage next door, a couple of women coming out of a store across the street and
five people sitting in the shade on the opposite corner.

Several who did see it complained that they couldn't hear much of it.

They apparently heard Carter's 20-minute address, which he delivered in Spanish. But in the lengthy question-and-answer
period that followed, many said they could hear only the questioners, who spoke in Spanish and who used their time mainly to
launch lengthy attacks on the Varela Project -- saying it was a plot by U.S.-based enemies of Castro.

When Carter responded, in English, state TV broadcast simultaneous interpretation in Spanish. But the interpreter's voice and
Carter's were broadcast at roughly the same volume, making it hard to understand either.

Several people said that although they could not make out what Carter was saying, they planned to read all about it in today's
Granma, the state newspaper.

But Granma, which ran several articles about the speech, never mentioned Carter's comments about democracy, the
centerpiece of his address. Human rights was mentioned only to note that Carter said the United States has had human rights
problems over the years. And the Varela Project was mentioned only in passing as something that one of the questioners had
criticized.

"It's a joke," Paya said, holding a copy of Granma in one hand and an inaudible tape of Carter's speech in the other.

Carter said Tuesday that Granma should publish the text of the Varela Project's petition, which was signed by 11,000 people
and demands new guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly, free elections and more free enterprise -- most of which is
theoretically guaranteed in Cuba's constitution but prohibited in practice, he said.

But few people heard him say that because of the audio problems. And many of those who did hear it said they could not
understand why Carter would criticize Cuba's record on democracy and human rights.

"We have democracy here," said Consuelo Ben Millan, 50, sitting in her living room in Vedado. "Every Cuban has the right to
give our opinions, and we have the right to vote. The people ourselves, we pick our leaders."

Asked about opposition political parties, which are banned here, she said, "Our country does not need another party."

In another house nearby, Norma Alonso del Gano, 64, echoed what nearly everyone said when asked about the first current or
former U.S. president to visit Cuba in 74 years: "I love Carter. He seems like a very simple man, very human. He came in a
small plane without a lot of bodyguards. He wasn't showing off. He wants the people of our two countries to be friends, and we
need that."