In 2022, when the regime’s own political police told her and her partner that they were building a case to imprison them, she was forced to leave the island. But the challenge of being an immigrant in Spain does not keep her from her work.
Media such as Cubaliteraria, Havana Times, Diario de Cuba, El Tiempo en Colombia, Hypermedia Magazine, Programa Cuba, Connectas and Cubanet have featured his articles. He has published the books Apocalypse Havana (Americans are coming), Elizabeth still plays with dolls y Hermanos Castro Orchestra: the little school, about forgotten musical history.
She was recognized by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) as a Women Journal Heroes. Among her many endeavors, she maintains a column in the feminist magazine Alas Tensas and coordinates the Virtual Museum of Memory against Gender-Based Violence (Museo V).
LAS AMÉRICAS DAILY asked him seven questions.
At what point did you realise that the ‘revolution’ was a dictatorship? How did that certainty begin to take shape?
In high school, after one of those military maneuvers they used to do with bazookas on the roofs of houses, I remember telling my mother, “Don’t tell me anymore that the Americans are going to come, one day we are going to rise up and the country will be sold out.” She told me to keep quiet.
At first I tried to change from within, but with that attitude I only managed to be “the unreliable one”, “the conflictive one”. During my studies I was on the verge of being expelled several times because the university is for revolutionaries and I was very “judicial”. I didn’t go to any marches, any open forums. pullover Elián’s was my housecoat.
Later, when I started working as an editor, I realized that I would never stop being the outcast because I questioned everything. I stopped paying union and MTT fees. I questioned certain people who knew nothing about books but who sat in on the publishing house meetings as censors.
I was already working with Cubanet and Havana Times at that time. My plan was to leave the country, like almost everyone of my generation. One day, the presidency of the Cuban Book Institute sent me a message telling me that I was talking too much, and that was a major breaking point. Suddenly, I decided that I didn’t want to leave the country anymore, that they were the ones who had to leave. I asked to leave. I reconnected with a significant number of my friends who were already starting to make a fuss, and within a week I was working for Diario de Cuba. That was about 11 years ago.
When did you go into exile in Spain?
I like to say that I did not go into exile, I was thrown out of the country because otherwise I would still be at home in El Cerro, but the last two years (2020-2022) were a repressive hell, not only because of the harassment and arbitrary arrests that my partner, the activist Kirenia Yalit Núñez Pérez, and I suffered, but because one ends up suffering what the other suffers as well. It was two years with friends who were imprisoned, harassed, exiled; political prisoners and their families with whom we connected and accompanied as much as we could.
In those two years everything intensified: the material and human misery, and the complaints, both in Cuban courts, even if apparently useless, and before international organizations on social networks or through my journalism.
And that took its toll on us. We started getting sick too often. We already knew first-hand what it was like to go to a Cuban hospital with state security on our heels. We had the experience of other activists. Security let us know during an interrogation in early 2022 that they were building up a case to imprison us. In the group, according to them, we were the only ones still on the streets or in Cuba.
On August 27, we managed to leave for Argentina with the support of international organizations. There we had all the medical check-ups and eight months later we managed to get here, to Spain, where we do not have refugee status, but we cannot return to the island because they made us aware of this during the interrogation at the airport in Havana. Until the last minute they were trying to find a pretext to imprison us, although we know that they do not need much to decide who goes to jail and who does not.
What are the foundations that a new Cuba should have? What kind of Cuba do we Cubans deserve and what is needed to recover what was lost?
The basis of a new Cuba must be democracy and justice. The first step for me is the freedom of political prisoners and that is the only thing that is not negotiable for me.
Cuba must be rebuilt from scratch. We must guarantee a State of rights where the laws and people willing to enforce them govern. We must divide the powers. We must eliminate ipso facto the hegemony of the communist party and the military hegemony of companies, of public life. We must demilitarize the country, and that also implies modifying the language, leaving behind words like “deserter” or “deserters” that say so much about how we have been seen all our lives, and stop looking at everything from secrecy and militaristic intrigue. Abolishing the death penalty is another thorny issue, but it is essential for the Cuba that we owe ourselves.
Decentralize power and the economy. Allow civil society to gather according to its interests and promote public policies. Have access to information that is public to the rest of the world, except for regimes like ours.
But we must also create ways for people to grow economically, to have their own businesses and to never again wage war on human rights or private property, or on exile or art or life itself.
We Cubans deserve a 21st century Cuba where we can coexist even with what we don’t like, with different ideologies, where we learn to respect and engage in politics. When I look outside of Cuba, what I like most is how there is room for everything, people have not lost the ability to fight for what they want. And that is a question of rights, not personal preferences.
If we manage to create a prosperous country, there will be very little room for apathy and misery, and we will inevitably heal. We must ensure that Cuba stops being synonymous with sadness.
Do you think that young people will be the game changer for a democratic Cuba? Is there a lack of cohesion, purpose, and better ideas?
Young people are part of the change and for change to happen we just need to get these people out of power and make free elections a real possibility. It seems easy, but we already know that it is not.
Although I sometimes feel tormented because we have no experience with democracy, it seems to me that everyone in the opposition has ideas that can contribute to a democratic Cuba. I don’t think there are good or bad ideas, better or worse ones.
We achieve cohesion whenever we want. For example, on July 11, many people worked in the same direction, which in other circumstances we would never have dreamed of. I don’t like to talk about unity or unanimity because we’ve had too much of that. It makes me sick just thinking that a change in Cuba is going in the same direction.
Sometimes one wishes that change would happen tomorrow, and one wishes it were, but, even if we read in history books about this or that country achieving democracy on this day, the reality is that nothing happened overnight. All democracies have been the result of a process, almost always painful. And our process cannot be different because we are advocating for a profound change, not a transfer of power.
You are involved in various projects that seek a democratic Cuba. The time and passion you dedicate is admirable.
Don’t believe it, sometimes I feel like giving up, like everyone else, I suppose, but I always find some reason to continue and the Virtual Museum of Memory against Gender-Based Violence (Museo V) and the column in Alas Tensas are two good reasons that help me channel so many life stories of people who continue to survive the Cuban dictatorship without losing an ounce of tenderness or creativity, and who if I didn’t have a space to share them, would end up sick.
I am also a communications specialist at the Mesa de Diálogo de la Juventud Cubana (MDJC), which has allowed me to work on the #Exprésate campaign, which encourages urban artists to support the families of political prisoners through their art. It may seem like something light, but it is an almost titanic activity because the families of political prisoners are increasingly alone, fear in Cuban society is almost palpable, and artists sometimes feel that when they talk about politics they lose much more than they gain.
And there is more. We are also working in coalition with several Cuban civil society organizations such as the Museum of Dissidence, the Museum V, the MDJC, Justicia11J and Cubalex, with whom we always learn and work a lot. It is not a question of passion or even empathy. It is that I am never alone, I never work alone and that makes me powerful. In each space I join, I contribute what I know and the rest do their part. That is another way of healing ourselves, overcoming the mistrust that Castroism sowed in us, and going against the dictatorship.
A 5 Libertades (5L) I am united by a great desire to see a free and democratic Cuba. It has been a long time since I signed an initiative and with 5L I found the opportunity to connect with other generations of opponents with whom I share many points. As you will have seen, my idea of a future Cuba coincides in essence with the freedoms proposed in the Manifesto, but at the same time it is an opportunity for us to talk among ourselves about what we cannot lack in these proposals for a free and democratic Cuba.
It may seem like a cliché, but assuming our differences strengthens us. Starting to talk about Cuba in the future without ignoring the present repression gives us strength to move forward.
Not to mention that I am proud to share spaces with people whom the regime abhors because it reminds me that I am on the right path. And in 5L there are people from historical exile to whom we owe a lot and to whom we have thanked very little.
Right now, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and more than a thousand other political prisoners are behind bars for dissenting and demanding freedom. What can all these prisoners who have risked so much for Cuba teach us?
Every time I want to give up, for reasons of the universe, I receive a message from a mother or father of a political prisoner that fills me with strength. Working with the MDJC has allowed me to stay in touch with them, to meet others that I didn’t have the opportunity to when we founded Justicia11J.
My friend Luisma could have stayed at home because he had just come out of a hunger and thirst strike and a kidnapping in the Calixto Garcia (hospital), and he came out on July 11 because he has an enviable sense of responsibility for Cuba’s freedom, art and resistance. I know that this does not seem to be a reason for envy, but it is not for nothing that so many people are focused only on criticizing him even though he is in prison.
Another person I have a lot of admiration for is Maykel Osorbo. If there is someone who embodies the meaning of what it means to be resilient, it is him. I have seen him grow before my eyes. The rapper I met in 2015 has become a hero to me because he has been able to channel all the fury that an unhappy childhood of abandonment and poverty could have generated in him against the dictatorship. And very few people can do that, otherwise we would already be talking about a different Cuba.
And with the rest of the political prisoners, who I don’t know if I’ll ever meet, and I don’t know if they know I exist, something happens to me that I’ve never experienced before, and that is that I admire them without knowing them, I feel that I should have met them before and perhaps my life would have been richer than it is now.
They unwittingly contribute to the fact that I do not lose faith in either humanity or the freedom of Cuba.
