Cuba is going through a hard economic, health and social downturn that raises the social tension that drags the island from the spontaneous social outbreak of July 11. This ended in harsh repression, hundreds of detainees and a visible head of the movement against the State, Yunior García.
The well-known face of the opposition, playwright and founder of ‘Archipelago’, assures that they did not want to take him to jail, but to “annul me.” From the platform that he founded called a protest on November 15 that the Cuban government thwarted. He says that they had surrounded his house since five in the morning and he felt panic, which led him to flee to Madrid last Wednesday, from where, he says, he continues to do activism.
Consider that the most important thing now is “think about the people who are inside Cuba”. Massiel Rubio also believes it, who has been living in Madrid for more than five years and nine months sending medicines to Cuba, for the most vulnerable also against COVID-19, such as Alzheimer’s patients, those with Parkinson’s or asthmatics, who have been for years unable to get her medication.
He helps in what he can from a distance, but he admits that he is filled with a feeling of guilt for not being there. “I have friends who told me that they were either starving, or of illness, or being beaten at a demonstration, and they prefer to be beaten at a demonstration“.
Many of the Cubans who participated in the protests are still imprisoned, as Alina López Hernández, a Cuban historian, tells laSexta from the island, assures that “some have only been sentenced to extremely high jail terms” of more than 20 years.
Assures that the situation since 15N has calmed down, but emphasizes the seriousness of the crisis: “It is extraordinary, there are no expectations that it will change. It makes it clear that the message of the state will be repression. What forces more and more people, such as Yunior or Massiel, to find a life away from home.
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
