AXIS OF EVIL : POINT FOUR :

Blind Cuban presses fight for human rights : They've taken his cane and dark glasses but not his resolve (TRACEY EATON, 07/19/2002 , The Dallas Morning News)

His dark glasses and cane are gone. So is his Braille Bible.

Juan Carlos Gonz‡lez, a blind political activist jailed in March, doesn't have much left. Not even his health, he tells his wife in letters from his jail cell.

But, he writes her, he'd "rather be insane or dead" than give up his fight for human rights in Cuba.

Mr. Gonz‡lez, a 37-year-old lawyer, is among the scores of dissidents working to bring change to this country even after Cuban lawmakers in June voted to make socialism "irreversible." [...]

Mr. Gonz‡lez says he'll continue seeking reforms, even if it kills him.

"If I die, I will die content knowing that I was defending the cause of God," he wrote. "I do not fear death."

In the post-Socialist, post-Castro Cuba, may schoolchildren recall those words as we here in NH recall John Stark's : "Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst of Evils."
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 25, 2002 12:06 AM