A Young Cuban Mom that Can’t Keep Silent
HAVANA TIMES – Amelia Calzadilla is a young Cuban woman, mother, wife, daughter, and granddaughter, from this hard-working, suffering and seemingly happy-go-lucky people. However, everyone has their limits. She couldn’t stand it anymore and let go.
Some who read this humble opinion may have heard at least once the Facebook Live cry of anguish by the linguist Calzadilla.
Amelia made a second video yesterday to dispel all the slander that was poured on her, and to clarify who she is, what she studied, where she worked, the story of her father who became a militant of the Communist Party at the age of fourteen, the times that she went to formalize her complaints through official channels.
Above all, and perhaps for this reason, Amelia’s words take on much more value. She makes it clear to us that she is not a fighting person, a warrior soul, but only a mother. And in this sense, she informs us that, the day after her fuming and courageous proclamation appeared on Facebook, the Party published on their Cubadebate website an article accusing her, as they always do with those who criticize something, of being an agent of imperialism, an arsonist from Miami that was looking for a street rebellion.
Those of us who live abroad should not laugh at this, because that line of accusation is the one that precedes the preventive jails and subsequent sentences to decades in prison. The painful article in Cubadebate is signed by a certain Ernesto Estevez Rams. Amelia also denounces the media manipulation of her words and her life, by a government blogger whose pseudonym is Cuban Warrior. And yes, those two are proud mercenaries, not at the service of the CIA but of the propaganda and repressive machinery of the Cuban state.
In this second video, apart from ratifying being fed up, Amelia explains that some Party members in her area arrived at her house, whom she cordially attended, asking if she had suffered reprisals. Immediately afterwards, she received a summons for June 14 at 11 am from a government office in El Cerro, supposedly to deal with the issue of gas for cooking, which gave rise to her now famous video.
Of course, we all suspect that the summons has nothing to do with the gas, that they will most likely try to put pressure on her, instill fear. Or who knows, perhaps, if they have any intelligence left, they might solve the gas problem to silence her and show a condescending face.
Can anyone imagine that because someone makes a live video complaining that there is no chicken, that they earn in a currency other than that which buys the scarce groceries, that the children do not have milk, that in all directions the only thing you find are problems without any possibility of a solution, that a delegation from the only Party in the country visits you? Anyone in a normal society would be terrified when knowing the sentences that were applied to those who came out to protest on July 11, 2021.
From Cuba, a country where testosterone, apparently, plays such an important and prevailing role, it is noteworthy the number of brave and bold women that this era is giving birth to, from Laura Pollan, all the Ladies in White, Yoani, Paya, and now the respected Amelia.
Amelia says she does not want to be a heroine, much less a martyr, or represent anyone other than herself, or in any case the vast majority of Cuban mothers. However, Amelia, I am sorry to tell you, whether you like it or not, you are already a benchmark of courage and dignity.
Bravo that’s all to tell you
They can’t arrest you all !Do something en masse l
People in Cuba are fed up with this inefficient dictatorship that the only thing it offers to its citizens is intimidation, repression and long jail sentences. Enough!