Author: Osmel Ramirez

The Fidelista concept of “revolution” is very well-known here as it has been widely spread. I especially like some aspects. However, it’s more of a poetic discourse rather than a concept in itself, which is fiction in Cuba’s case because it wasn’t applied, isn’t being applied and there are currently no signs that it will be applied in the future. In this article, I will only refer to one of its claims: “Revolution is never lying or violating ethical values…”

Earlier this month, in the first few days of October, there was an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) meeting in Colorado, USA. Cubans had a space within this session to report the most recent human rights violations in our country, which go by the name of “Criminalization of social activists and journalists.”

Repression is horrible, inhumane and makes us slaves. It inflicts fear and pain on its victims, but it also degrades the person who gives rise to it, in a direct or indirect way. I feel repressed; my wife, my family. I have colleagues, friends and acquaintances who feel repressed.

On Tuesday, I received the “response” to the complaint I filed because of arbitrary arrests, the confiscation of my working materials and restrictions on my right to move freely to being “monitored” or State Security banning me from traveling abroad.

Transport carrying visitors constantly arrive in these parts. You regularly see license plates from other provinces here. Tourists and the devout come from all over the country to see this place, to see the Virgin or to fulfil a vow. The Virgin of Charity of El Cobre is the Patron Saint of Cuba in Catholicism and in the “syncretic” religion too. (12 photos)

On August 3rd, my youngest daughter, Alisay, turned 3 years old. I had thought about buying a cake and a tub of ice cream to sing “happy birthday” at home with the family, but something better popped up, a group day excursion to Santiago de Cuba. (12 photos)

Now we know the new Constitution’s content, which is currently being discussed to later be approved in a popular vote. This might seem like a democratic process on the surface, but there is no plurality in the people who drafted the reforms nor in the analyses being drawn.

I have lived in the same place ever since I was born, in the Guayabo neighborhood in the Mayari valley of Holguin province. Seeing the horizon lined by mountains is something I have engraved in my mind. That’s why, whenever I travel to the capital and I pass through Camaguey’s vast plainlands, I find the landscape monotonous and overwhelming.

As many of you know, I work the land. My official profession is “farmer”, although that’s not the profession I identify with. I feel like a communicator more than anything else. Although I must be honest, what I really like is politics, but I refuse to take part in this if there isn’t a democracy.