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.
In Cuba, the word “counter-revolutionary” means the same thing as “heresy”. For nearly six decades now, people who haven’t supported or fought against the political system that the Fidelista revolution imposed have been labeled “counter-revolutionaries”. It means being a “worm”, “enemy of the people”, “mercenary serving Imperialism” or “stateless”.
At 3:30 in the afternoon of this Friday, June 22, I was released. I was imprisoned for three days in a cell at the Mayari police station. According to what they told me in front of my family and then alone, I would have no more peace. I will be detained every time I write an article.
Taking a look at the 1940 Constitution, I came across some very interesting things. The rights and democratic headway we lost in 1952 to be exact, which is what the Cuban people need today.
It took them seven months to decide to intervene and it’s clear that they’ve only done this because other complaints have been made, demanding them to act; recently, there was a petition signed by many farmers who said their credits had been stolen.
In Cuba, the pre-established calendar year doesn’t coincide with the farming year. There are two well-defined planting seasons, which aren’t determined by human whim but by Nature itself: spring and the cold season.
The title of this article chimes in with a campaign which has been repeated time and time again at Cuban health centers for many years now. Of course, I didn’t add the question mark at the end with the clear intention of changing its meaning.