Out of ‘the wolf’s mouth’
After working for a decade at the state-run television that endlessly exalted Cuba’s Communist government, journalist Jorge Olivera decided to burn the bridges behind him. He quit his job, and in 1993 sent his first dispatch to Radio Marti, the Miami-based station known for its opposition to the Castro regime, knowing all too well that his life would never be the same. “I knew I was putting my head into the wolf’s mouth,” Olivera said in Spanish during an interview. “But I couldn’t live a double life anymore. I was sick of the abyss between the official truth and the reality.” Olivera reported for the next decade on what he calls “the other side of Cuba,” with stories that disparaged the regime’s tight grip on Cubans’ everyday life. In response, he suffered a long string of retaliatory government attacks that culminated in his arrest in a 2003 crackdown known as the “Black...