Interview with Cuban Journalist Carlos Cabrera Perez
By Javier Moreno Diaz
HAVANA TIMES – Carlos Cabrera Pérez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. He is a journalist and writer. Author of Cuba: Tardocastrismo Agoniza, available on Amazon. His articles appear in Cibercuba and Cubanos de España. He was the first Cuban mayor in Spain, in a region of Extremadura from 2015 to 2018. Although he was accused of embezzlement, he was exonerated for lack of evidence. The accusation was manipulated to tarnish his image. He has been in exile since 1991 and currently resides in Madrid.
What led you to practice barricade journalism?
I have never done barricade journalism; it does not attract me. I have narrated Cuba from a professional perspective, even counting on conflicting sources, as I did during the coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and the fire at the Supertanker Base in Matanzas.
In my Opinion articles I have followed the best tradition of Cuban journalism and created phrases so that the reader does not get bored, such as late Castroism, pan con na’ (bread with nothing), casta verde oliva (the olive green caste) and enguayaberada (using the loose guayabera shirts) and gusañeros (half worm, half comrade).
What is your impression of what happened on July 11, 2021?
It was the popular response to the neoliberal package known as Guidelines, which the late Castro regime was giving birth to for a decade. That July 11 demonstrated that no dictatorship – however totalitarian it may be – can impose what society does not accept or demand.
There was no plan from the CIA and the popular rebellion lacked political leadership, but even so it destroyed the remnants of the shipwrecked revolution because the military and Police fired on the people and incited others -grouped in the Maoist Response Brigades Quick- to attack the protesters.
The repression unleashed confirmed the fear suffered at the Palace of the Revolution and those occupying the Siboney and adjacent mansions.
How does an exile feel in Madrid?
Like a snail; always with home on one’s back. But exile enriches, especially in Spain, which is a stepmother to us with many charms and advantages.
What do you recommend to independent journalists on the island?
First I want to express my respect and admiration for all of them because they do their work inside the cage and with the lion inside.
I suggest that they adhere to the norm of good journalism, trying to verify each issue, even with official sources, although the response is almost always a loud slam and the logical call to State Security. That they tell -to the extent of their possibilities- the life of impoverished Cubans; Political denunciation has its role and mission, but the chronic shortage of food, drinking water, electricity and medicine, and even the geometry of a permanent pothole, portrays the oldest dictatorship in the West.
It is more effective to tell why communism is not even able to take the dogs out to piss, than to say that it is perverse and annihilating.
Anything else you want to add for our readers
That I feel reasonably proud of the majority of my colleagues, noble, educated, hard-working beings who, even in the terrible conditions in which they live, maintain a vanguard vocation and love freedom.
Our exile has been the most vilified in the world; even by European democratic parties, which continue to play the same old anti-imperialist song. However, when the years pass and the deed of our diaspora can be read serenely, part of the world and many countrymen will be amazed by the honesty, tenacity and permanent solidarity, which are the best antidotes against the good ole boy communism that plagues Cuba.