The Most Recent Example of Crushing Freedom in Cuba
HAVANA TIMES — Through social media I learned that the young people from the project “El4tico” (the little room) have been detained. Very recently I commented on their critical work and shared my opinion about one of their audiovisual pieces, which I came across after they had already produced many. Considering that they were working in Holguin, Cuba, my city, and that anywhere you do this kind of work in Cuba it is quickly punished with prison, and even worse, it is deeply troubling.
It truly hits hard to live in a country where sharing an opinion carries such risk, and one feels fear spread throughout the entire body — everywhere. In a century where so-called civic rights are supposedly conquered. Where democracy, rights, freedom, and so-called justice have planted their flags, and where people keep struggling to build societies of women and men with dignity. And yet the Cuban government still does not understand this. Instead, it behaves like in the early years of the 1959 revolution, when executions and summary trials were the order of the day.
Living under the shadow of minds that act this way is repulsive, bitter, and humiliating — even more so as we watch time pass, all of it, alongside our lives, in a constant state of misery, materially and inevitably spiritually (or vice versa). One feels terror — at least I do.
Work is being done in many countries toward inclusivity, where all of us have our place, including our little boys and girls. One of those efforts is teaching them to speak, to listen, to share their thoughts as human beings from the moment they are born. When this information reaches me, I cannot help but feel joy and pride in the culture and the era we are living through.
So how is it understood, then, that in Latin America, for example, discussions are taking place about how to educate children in this regard — about knowing how to express their views — while in Cuba young people, adults, anyone who dares to share an opinion that does not coincide with what the Communist Party of Cuba dictates is sentenced to prison?
What kind of people does the Cuban Government wish to create? Does this concern it? Or does it matter even less than the lives of the thousands of Cubans who throw themselves into the sea or flee across borders, preferring anything before continuing to live in the “Homeland of All” (if you ask me, it seems more like the exclusive homeland of the Castros, and we their hostages).
Of course we are, in some way, rebelling. After so much pain and frustration, it cannot be otherwise. What has happened to the young people of “El 4tico” has generated indignation in us — just as our political prisoners do, just as so much cowardice does, manifesting injustices everywhere in this State that calls itself communist before the world.
We are protesting on our social networks, informing our families. “Look at what’s happening now…” we say, and we discuss it, and we end up telling each other that this cannot continue like this. Even though we know it is not enough to speak, to post our feelings on our Facebook wall, or to talk about it on street corners. But conspiracy — collective plotting, quiet organizing — also has its importance in its moment. And the worst thing that could happen to us as a people would be to live in apathy, in total indifference toward another’s fate, and toward our own.
We trust that this situation will be resolved as soon as possible and in the best possible way. And now I am not speaking only about these young people. I mean that the Government should reconsider and recognize that there cannot be so many prisons within an island — and that pretending that this entire Caribbean island can be a prison forever is impossible. Or is it possible in the hands of people so indifferent and heartless toward so many defenseless citizens who do not know what to do? I must confess that many times I falter — but I want to choose to believe the former.