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FROM
CUBA
Vignettes
Rafael Ferro Sala, Abdala Press
PINAR DEL RÍO, Cuba - May (www.cubanet.org)
- A meeting. The group was assembled in
the doorway of the house. They had been
summoned there because it was considered
the safest place. Then one of them realized
they were being watched.
A man was standing on the corner. He was
located next to a white-colored car. The
sun was fully reflected in the car's front
windows. One of the group said:
"We must go inside the house now.
I think this is going to be filled with
police and people from State Security in
a few minutes."
The meeting had been agreed to in absolute
secrecy, but it was a shared secret. A shared
secret has all those risks; it stops being
a secret.
They slowly entered the house. The man
entered the vehicle and spoke by radio.
Now there was no doubt, soon the whole place
would be filled with cars and the detentions
would begin.
After the door to the house was closed,
the air was filled with uncertainty and
fears. It was a meeting day, and a routine
day began for the group of Cuban dissidents.
Police raid
The man and the woman walked slowly on
the sidewalk. He carried a black bag. Then
the girl touched his arm to signal him.
Near the end of the street something was
happening.
"They're searching the people,"
she said.
For a moment he thought of going back.
He realized that could be worse. They were
already halfway down the block. He squeezed
the bag hard and told the woman to keep
going. They would run the risk of passing
in front of the place where they were searching
people. Things would get really ugly if
they searched these two.
She squeezed his hand hard to feel herself
protected. She walked together with him
amidst fear and confidence. A policeman
searched a cardboard box that an old man
carried. The uniformed man asked the elderly
man for identification papers. They heard
when the policeman said to the old man:
"You have to come with me, you're not
authorized to sell these products in the
street."
The elderly man had a slight tremble in
his lips. When the man and woman passed
by the policeman, he looked at them. He
didn't say anything, and continued with
his business with the old man. The look
was enough to make them feel searched, too.
When they arrived home, he turned the bag
over to her. Then he breathed in relief
and, kissing her, said to her:
"If they'd found our papers, they'd
take them away. Now we'd be prisoners."
She answered him:
"I felt sorry for the old man."
He moved his head, annoyed, and began to
look over the papers. They were documents
of the party to which they belonged. They
had been in the ranks of the oppostion inside
Cuba for years, but they never got used
to the police raids.
In the park
There in the park the days all seemed the
same. It was almost a boring routine. The
same corner, the same policeman looking
at everyone and once in a while searching
those who passed by the place.
The two men arrived and sat down on the
bench nearest the street. It was a good
place to observe the comings and goings
of the people. One of them took out a newspaper
and read the headlines. The other lit a
cigarette.
The man with the cigarette looked at the
corner and saw that the policeman was coming
towards them. He casually touched the man
with the newspaper. The man who was reading
closed the paper and waited. The policeman
arrived and, without greeting them, said
to them in an ironic tone of voice:
"What? Are you thinking about having
a counterrevolutionary meeting in the park?
How many did you invite?"
Neither of the men responded. Then the
man in uniform let loose the threat:
"If you don't leave here in two minutes
I'll arrest you and take you away."
The man smoking threw away the cigarette
and said to him:
"What reasons are there for arresting
us?"
"There are reasons aplenty and you
know it. You're from the human rights group
and are counterrevolutionaries. You don't
work, either. I've already told you: two
minutes to leave from here."
He looked at them with hatred and went
away. The men got up from the bench and
walked in the opposite direction from which
the policeman had walked. The man with the
newspaper told his friend:
"He told us we're from the human rights
group. He doesn't know what he's talking
about."
"One day he'll know," his friend
said to him, and lit another cigarette.
Up above, the sun kept tracking another
routine day, similar perhaps to the rest
of the days to come.
Conversation
It seemd to him as if the people were speaking
with fear. That morning wasn't going to
be any different from the others. They were
already speaking in fear. To convince himself,
he approached the group. It was a heterogeneous
tumult, made up of men, women, elderly and
some children. The store was still closed.
There were just a few minutes to go before
it opened. He arrived without being seen.
A woman dressed in red was speaking with
the others in a low voice:
"They told me they searched everyone
at the train station yesterday. Is it true?"
Another woman answered:
"It's true. I was there. The police
have been searching everywhere for more
than four days. You almost can't walked
down the street."
"What are they looking for?"
asked an old man who had an unlit cigarette
in his hand.
"Man, they themselves don't even know.
They search for the sake of searching and
they arrest anyone. What matters to them
is having us in check, like in chess,"
a quiet voice of a boy dressed in a secondary
school uniform said.
Everyone talked in a low voice. The words
came out, but contained by fear. He realized
once again that he wasn't mistaken: fear
continued among the people. One could realize
it from the tone of the voices. Speaking
in a low voice is uncommon among Cubans.
Are we becoming accustomed to fear?
Versión
original en español
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