My four years with Havana Times
By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – It was 2018. I was looking for something about Cuba, so I turned to Saint Google and found Havana Times. The name struck me, it was like a kind of tropical alter ego of U.S. newspaper The New York Times.
The article was written by Osmel Ramirez. The way he addressed the subject caught my attention and I went looking for other articles he’d written, and I learned that he was an independent journalist and that he was also working for Diario de Cuba.
I liked him from the start. We are contemporaries and we come from a boring generation that hasn’t left a mark, for better or worse on life in our country. The generation that didn’t succumb to their indoctrination and hid away in the struggle to survive with double standards and migration.
Osmel had farming roots, is the father of a family, a cultured and intelligent man, with principles, and strong democratic ideas. Later, I looked for him on social media and a beautiful virtual relationship began which we’ve kept up until now.
In the meantime, I never missed an article on Havana Times and really wanted to form part of this media platform. I didn’t know how until one afternoon Osmel suggested I write for the newspaper. My soul lit up.
Through him, I was able to contact the paper’s director Circles Robinson, a kind of Don Quixote for freedom of the press who loves our country and other countries in Latin America.
After being accepted, I saw myself become another writer for Havana Times in June 2019. Without any previous studies in journalism, I tried my best to show the harsh reality in Cuba just as I see it through my own eyes, with chronicles and articles.
Even though I thought from the very beginning that it would be a matter of weeks before I was identified and would face reprisals, I decided not to hide my name or face.
Luckily, I’ve not been harassed up until now and I’m able to celebrate four years of my collaboration with this inclusive, pluralist digital media platform, which serves as a spokesperson – via its domestic collaborators -, for Cubans who are surviving on this island in ruins under a totalitarian regime.
Moses Patterson, at no time have I celebrated not having been harassed by the regime. I only wrote of a fact. On the other hand, I write what I feel about the Cuban reality as an outlet, I do not pretend to be a martyr to meet the expectations of any reader, although I do assume the consequences that may derive from that. And as far as it seems strange that they have not bothered me, I answer that I do not have that answer, although I have my theory about the case. For the rest I don’t know what you are insinuating, in reality your comment seems insidious to me
I think the regime is now concentrating their efforts on social media, and the Cubans who showcase the devastating collapse of the Cuban economy.
I follow a lot of Cuban youtubers. A lot of them seem to follow a similar course: they show many stories of Cubans trying to survive on $20 a month, then suddenly, they have left Cuba, and are filming the wonders of supermarkets in their new country.
So did they jump, or were they pushed? I think it depends on the individual, and how much pressure was exerted, but I’m afraid they must be discrete in their videos, for fear of reprisals against friends and family back home.
It’s bittersweet to read that someone can celebrate the fact that they have not been harassed after writing for HT for 4 years. I know two former (by that I mean that I have not seen any new articles from them here on HT for quite some time) HT writers who were harassed frequently. Does this mean Pedro is perceived by the Castro dictatorship as no threat? I know a YouTuber who was recently forced to emigrate just for a handful of videos about Cuban inflation. Surely, Pedro has not gone unnoticed. Circles Robinson, was harassed just for providing the platform itself. Could this mean that the dictatorship has gone soft? I don’t think that is true either. I think it’s good that Pedro has been left alone (sweet part) but it’s weird at the same time (bitter part).
J’ai decouvert Havana Times en 2015 je crois, lors de mon deuxième voyage à Cuba.Une mine d’infos et une approche originale et objective
J’ai beaucoup regretté sa disparition.