Raul Rivero. Posted on Thu, Nov. 07, 2002 in
The Miami Herald.
'An officer sat on my chest, wrapped my head in my sweater and asked me if I
knew him.
"I said No, and he immediately hit me on the forehead with a blunt
instrument, giving me a five-stitch wound.''
This is the story told -- against a background of creaking hinges -- by
blind lawyer Juan Carlos González Leiva in the operations unit of State
Security in Holguín, Cuba.
It's an unpleasant account, an episode that the American and European Left
covers up and avoids and that some media outlets put aside, using instead a
string of slogans from native functionaries or a hurried interview with an
official writer.
The truth is that that level of suffering -- and that González Leiva
and nine other members of a human-rights foundation from Ciego de Avila are
still in prison, awaiting trial after seven months -- do not advance the deal
that U.S. merchants propose to make with the administrators of this island
prison.
No matter. Cuba's trade comrades have the high duty to valiantly work to
achieve socialism's new victories, and they won't be deterred by the agony of a
few people kept locked up by the patriotic forces for God-knows-what grave
crimes.
For similar reasons -- comrades must have concluded -- there's no need to
mention the cases of 26 other Cuban dissidents, detained in Havana last
February, who just have ended a hunger strike that lasted more than 40 days. The
strikers demanded to be released because, "We have not committed any crime
and, during eight months of confinement, have been unable to talk to a lawyer;
and we have not been brought before any court of justice.''
These prisoners have no resources. They are ghosts behind bars that render
them even more invisible:
There lies journalist Bernardo Arévalo Padrón, ill and
surrounded by criminals, imprisoned since 1997 in Ariza, in Cuba's south-central
region.
Farther away, until his release last week, was Dr. Oscar Elías
Biscet, clinging to God and poetry, a guest under duress in an Holguín
dungeon.
Imprisoned in the far-eastern region is young Néstor Rodríguez
Lobaina, a student leader who has been assaulted and beaten in his cell.
Somewhere in mid-island is José Luis Pérez Antúnez,
who has appeared since 1992 on every list of Cuban political prisoners. Nothing
has eased his via crucis, and his case is so old that some might think it's part
of the letterhead used for the annual reports.
Suffering in Havana is Francisco Chaviano, a 15-year sentence on his
shoulders. He's another folk figure in the documents that demand freedom for
those men who, inside Cuba, claimed independence of thought.
Although all came from the most legitimate and modest areas of society, the
machinery of government and its henchmen converted them into enemies of the
people.
They have nothing material to offer, none of their treasures are tangible.
All they have are feelings, ideas, dreams -- elements with no value for dogmas
and intolerance, and mere mist in terms of money. Their pain should not resound
in echoes because they're neither powerful nor slaves of the powerful.
Lying in their filthy corners, longing for freedom, they suffer by
themselves, not seeing themselves as spokesmen for the working class. As
forgotten men, their torment might as well stay within their families. Because
the beaches, the land, the rivers and mountains of their country -- what little
is left -- are in the hands of their jailers, pragmatic and cheerful people who
are open to commerce and democracy.
Versión
original en español
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