Oscar Espinosa Chepe
Óscar Manuel Espinosa Chepe (November 29, 1940 – September 23, 2013) was a Cuban economist and dissident. He was one of approximately 75 dissidents arrested, tried and convicted in 2003 as part of a crackdown by the Cuban government nicknamed the "Black Spring". He was given a twenty-year sentence on a charge of "activities against the integrity and sovereignty of the State", causing Amnesty International to declare him as a prisoner of conscience. Background Espinosa was a graduate of the University of Havana, where he received a degree in economics. He served on Prime Minister Fidel Castro's Economic Advisory Group from 1965 to 1968 before spending fourteen years as the economic adviser at the Cuban embassy in Belgrade, overseeing Cuba's economic and technological cooperation with Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. In 1984, he returned to Cuba to work at the National Bank, where he was responsible for trade and tourism. However, throughout the 1980s, Espinosa increasingly disagreed with national economic policy. When he discussed his views with a colleague in 1992, he was demoted, and four years later was fired. Espinosa began to write critiques of Cuban economic policy which he published overseas. He also hosted a radio program titled Charlando