Versión Español
EspañolI arrived at the province of Camagüey from Havana, Cuba this Wednesday, January 10 at around three in the morning. I immediately went to the house of Marisol Peña Coba, a Cuban libertarian. I was surprised to find that she wasn’t at home, as we had agreed to me there. After an hour, her oldest daughter arrived, visibly upset and frightened.
Her mom had been imprisoned.
Marisol is the mother of two other daughters. The second lives in another province, far from the siege that the relatives suffer from the government and its sympathizers. Because the Communist Party is the only legal party in Cuba, opposing President Raúl Castro condemns you and your family to ostracism.
Her second daughter was born in prison. At that time, Marisol had been prosecuted for the “dangerous persons law” after protesting the fact that foreigners have more rights than Cubans, and that the tourism industry funds the regime’s military.
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Her youngest daughter, on the other hand, a little girl who is not yet three years old, often shouts “Cuban children want milk” or “we want meat, not picadillo” because the meat is so scarce in Cuba, few can afford it. Many residents depend on the government’s “sanitary book” that rations food, including a soy-based ground beef substitute known as picadillo.
Luckily, her eldest daughter happened to be visiting her, and could take care of the youngest in their mother’s absence. She was born when Marisol was just 15 years old and is now a married woman.
My intuition told me to go to the Monte Carlos police station, since I had been detained there on two occasions. This is the police station that the state security agents in the province of Camagüey have reserved for free Cubans.
There, they treat human beings like merchandise. They put them into arbitrarily reduced spaces. Free Cubans are not, as in other parts of the world, innocent until proven guilty but automatically guilty for daring to question the regime.
When asked the cause of their arrests they told me it was due to public disorder.
For Cuban dictators, public disorder means exercising the right to free speech.
For Cuban dictators, public disorder means denouncing the injustices that they commit every day.
For Cuban dictators, public disorder means not submitting to slavery.
For Cuban dictators, public disorder is simply to be — and want to remain — free.
The Cuban libertarians will not remain indifferent to this injustice.
Forward to freedom!
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