Eliecer Avila appears

I’m glad I used a question mark yesterday. The report of the arrest of Eliecer Avila, one of the students who questioned Ricardo Alarcon in the now-famous video of the university meeting, may not be true after all.

But what actually happened may not be so clear either.

“First reports are always wrong,” they say in the military, and from the beginning there were reasons for skepticism in this case. One was that the son of Carlos Lage reportedly traveled to the student’s batey in Las Tunas – is that an eight-hour drive from Havana? – to make the arrest.

The author of the original report, human rights activist Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva (whom I described as an independent journalist yesterday), stuck to his story yesterday, according to those who contacted him. But he had related it second-hand, and those who tried to substantiate the “arrest” story yesterday got nowhere.

To add to the doubts, the story got no coverage on Cubanet yesterday (today Cubanet has a Spanish newspaper story referring to a “possible arrest”); the Radio Marti website ignored it, and so did El Nuevo Herald. Today’s Miami Herald recounts the story told by human rights activists in Cuba but says there’s “no independent confirmation.” From Madrid, Encuentro referred to the Gonzalez Leiva report but wrote that he had been “driven” from Las Tunas to Havana, avoiding the word “arrested.”

So what actually happened?

It seems that Avila did go home, and he did return to Havana. He appears in a video produced by the “CubaDebate” website, whose modest motto is “Against Media Terrorism.” (A very ample discussion is at Penultimos Dias; Encuentro also has a good summary of Avila’s statements in the video.)

There was no arrest, he says in the video, he simply went home for health reasons. When he learned that his questions to Alarcon were being twisted as part of an international “campaign,” he contacted “el companero Cesar” (Cesar Lage, son of Cuba’s vice president and a student leader) to arrange a ride back to Havana so he could set the record straight. The fact that students are taking a critical look at Cuba’s policies and questioning Alarcon, Avila says, is due to a desire “to build socialism better, not to destroy it.”

Avila didn’t disavow the strong opinions in his questions to Alarcon. But now the critic is seen in the Revolution’s embrace, rejecting the idea that he had ever stepped out of it.

So what actually happened?

If you’re still asking, I don’t blame you.