Lázaro Echemendía, Cuba Press
HAVANA, May - Two weeks after Elián González was taken from his relatives’ house in Miami and twenty four hours after protesters were dislodged from the island of Vieques, near Puerto Rico, Aida Trujillo was violently evicted from her house in the small Cuban town of
Ranchuelo. CNN and the Associated Press photographer weren’t there to record the scuffle with police that left her with a broken toe and black and blue all over. And if it weren’t for one of Cuba’s independent journalists, no one but a handful of neighbors would know a thing about
her.
She saw them coming well before eight, on the morning of Friday, May 5: the director of the local Housing Authority, the chief of police, three policemen, a lawyer, a doctor, and the two drivers of a municipal services truck.
"I have told you a thousand times," said Guillermo Castro, director of the local Housing Authority, "you know you have to leave. This house is not yours; the owner left the country."
Trujillo stubbornly stood her ground. "The owners are the father and the grandmother of my son. Who has a better right than he?" Her son was born in the house at 34 Armando Machado Street eight years ago. Since then, Trujillo and her husband Fernando separated, Fernando left town to go
to the United States, Trujillo went back to her family home in Cienfuegos and later back to the house on Armando Machado Street to live with Fernando’s mother, who missed her grandson. Recently, Fernando’s mother went to the United States to visit Fernando, and decided not to come back.
That’s when Trujillo’s life became complicated.
In Cuba, when someone applies to leave the country, the government inventories all his or her possesions. All of them. The home, its contents, any vehicles. Everything. When it comes time to leave, you turn over everything but your clothes and personal effects to the Housing official who comes
by, inventory in hand. If the car has a dent that wasn’t there before, you repair it. If someone stole its spare tire, you find a replacement. If there are two forks missing from the original inventory, you find two forks to replace them. Or you don’t leave.
Trujillo’s mother in law was listed as the official occupant of the house, and when it became evident that she wasn’t coming back, the local Housing Authority came by to claim the government’s property.
On May 5, the director of Housing, the chief of police, the three policemen, the doctor, the lawyer, and the truck drivers pushed Trujillo aside and went in. She grabbed the arm of a policeman carrying a table, he tried to immobilize her with a head lock, she managed to bite his arm. The others
helped to subdue her. The eight year old pounded with his fists on a policeman’s back, repeating "Let my mother go."
Out in the street, the commotion had attracted a crowd of onlookers. Trujillo screamed "A man, please, a man that will help me, damn it!" The crowd watched as they threw her into the police car, followed by her son; they watched when they loaded her belongings on the municipal services
truck, and when they damaged the refrigerator.
Late that night she came back, black and blue all over, dragging the foot with the cast on the broken toe. She had hidden a key they didn’t find. She says she’s not leaving.
Versión original en español
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