The afternoon of March 19, 2003 is seared into the memory of Cuban economist and independent journalist Alfredo Felipe. That was the day government officials invaded his house in Artemisa, a town 60 kilometers west of Havana. “A horrible circus,” Felipe recalled, in a recent phone interview from his current home in Austin, Texas. “They took my books, all my books, an important number of books. They took my papers, a typewriter from the year 1929, a tape recorder — all those things that are useful to transmit ideas. Those were the weapons they were looking for.” Felipe was one of 75 opposition figures rounded up that...