Osmel Ramirez

Emigrating seems to be on everyone’s lips nowadays in Mayari, Holguin. It is the most recurring topic of discussion in homes, on the street, between passengers in a shared taxi, at work or at school. Almost everyone wants to leave and many of them are preparing their departure to follow in the footsteps of groups who have already embarked on this journey…

The country is experiencing a special moment. The “Revolution’s” system has failed, but our leaders aren’t accepting this. They continue to brandish the same slogans they did before, turning to a democratic facade and limiting the private sector, out of fear that it becomes too empowered…

As a democratic socialist, I want a democratic, fair and prosperous Homeland. I know that the country needs to change, but years have been passing us by and we still haven’t caught a glimpse of any path, a “road map” as people say nowadays.

This new Constitution has been designed to give an impression of “legality”, of progressiveness, and it is nothing but a more comprehensive version of the former, treating basic rights in an even more ambiguous way. It’s a way for them to legitimize the Cuban Communist Party’s absolute power in our society, which is clearly expressed in Article 5.

Over the past two years, I have written about corruption and the poor management of my cooperative called “Desembarco del Granma” in many articles. I have placed special emphasis on the powerlessness of farmers when they don’t have the ANAP’s support, who they legally depend on a great deal.

In Holguin recently, at the Vladimir I. Lenin Hospital, keeping tabs on my wife’s surgery to get her gallbladder stones removed, I spoke to lots of people. Patients and their partners ended up becoming very close and sharing lots of stories waiting long periods of time in appointments or outside the operations room.

On November 10th, it had been a whole year since the appalling experience I was forced to have, which not only attacked me directly but also freedom of speech in Cuba, adding one more page to an already ample file of violations against citizens.

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.