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Ana Leonor Díaz, Grupo Decoro
HAVANA, October (www.cubanet.org) - Carmen is short, still strong at 62, and
blind in one eye. All her life she’s scrubbed floors to maintain her family
by herself.
Recently she went missing from her usual haunts for a few days. She had been
hospitalized as a result of a beating she received from Alexis, her strong,
six-foot-tall, quarrelsome, unemployed only son.
Police didn’t question Alexis, dismissing the incident as a "family
quarrel."
Stories like Carmen’s are repeated by the thousands in Cuba, never
talked about, never mentioned in the government press. There are consequences
only when the beatings happen in public or when someone ends up dead. Otherwise,
they are classified as "family quarrels," said a source with the Woman
and Family Commission in Old Havana.
Interviews of about 200 women in their twenties in the San Isidro
neighborhood revealed that 69 were victims of domestic violence, who uniformly
had not reported it for fear of inciting more violence against themselves.
Faced with evidence of a domestic disturbance, neighbors may not call the
police, nor will the police come for this type of incident.
More than half of the women interviewed said violent incidents in the home
routinely happened in front of their children, providing a pattern for future
violence. Many of them said they hoped the men would change, and others blamed
alcohol, although apparently more than half of their aggressors were totally
sober at the time they beat them.
Carmen has since moved in with a daughter, in fear that her son would beat
her again.
Versión
original en español | 
