In late September Lazo watched enviously as several of Bismarck's more established Cuban families left to spend the winter months in North Carolina. By early October both Lazo and his wife had found jobs as housekeepers at the Radisson Hotel in Bismarck. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, he goes to South-Central High School for English lessons and driving instruction. "There are so many different signs to learn," he complains. "There is a whole universe just for snow alone." The proper way to handle snow is a big topic of discussion in the class. "They say always drive with a cell phone because if there is a blizzard and you have to change a tire, you can die from exposure."
After a month of staying in the homes of different exile families in the Miami area, Nogueras and his wife received a tip on an apartment owned by a Cuban businessman who agreed to waive the security deposit. Their one-bedroom home in the gated Blue Riviera complex in Fontainebleau Park overlooks a golf course. The rooms are sparsely furnished, but the couple has a television, a bed, and a few paintings on loan from the different families with whom they stayed. Nogueras is upbeat about his situation. In his short time in the United States, he has racked up some important firsts. "For the first time in almost 30 years of existence, I have a telephone!" he announces proudly.
Recently he drove a car for the first time, and in late August he took an expense-paid trip to New York City to meet the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cuba. For the occasion, he wore his first suit, a gift from an exile family. Nogueras points out that he is the only Cuban independent journalist in exile to actually be employed in his profession. Two days a week, he labors as a copy editor at the Spanish-language weekly Exito. He hopes to use the paper as a forum to renew his reporting career. "I have to be much more agile," he says of the challenge of American-style journalism. "When one does investigative work in Cuba, there is no competition. But here it's the opposite. Here several mediums can be looking for the same information at the same time." Meanwhile he hopes to get a grant to take English classes at Miami-Dade Community College.
Back in Cuba, the loss of Nogueras and Lazo is acutely felt among the remaining independent journalists. "We are in a slight decline," admits Raul Rivero, who knew both men well and is president and founder of the well-respected news agency CubaPress. "There aren't that many of us, and the loss of those two is a professional defeat." It comes at a time when the movement is hobbled by repression and a lack of trained reporters. At least three independent journalists currently languish in Cuban jails. (The plight of Cuba's independent press has been chronicled in two previous New Times stories: "Notes from the Underground," November 28, 1996; and "Notes from the Underground, Part 2," March 13, 1997.)
"Lazo left out of exhaustion because he was a political prisoner. He came from the background of human rights and the humanities. He was never of the journalist breed. Olance was the most harassed journalist in the country. He was able and audacious, a man with the ability to both write and edit. There has yet to appear another journalist like Olance," Rivero says with real sadness. "With his investigative spirit and boldness, there is no substitute for him."
His is the type of journalism Yndamiro Restano hopes will exist in a future Cuba. "We don't know the profession of journalism," he says. "We want to ensure that the journalism of resistance turns into a journalism of emancipation."
Unfortunately, their best hope just got run out of town.
