The Repression Obama Did Not See in Havana

The Repression Obama Did Not See in Havana / Iván García

Ivan Garcia, 22 March 2016 — Just when Air Force One landed at 2 pm at
the Andrew military base on the way to Havana, forty-six Damas de Blanco
(Ladies in White) walked in file along the central promenade of 5th
Avenue, with photos, placards with slogan against the autocracy, and
photos of political prisoners.

Starting eleven months ago, every Sunday, these women take part in a
march which always ends in blows, detentions and insults between Castro
supporters, and the opposition.

Nearly thirty foreign journalists, accredited to cover Obama's visit,
arrived at the Santa Rita church to see what would be the olive green
regime's strategy in relation to the resolute Ladies in White.

But, let's take a look back. After midday on Saturday 19th, Yamilé
Garro, a member of the group led by Berta Soler, was in the kitchen, in
he group´s base in the Lawton district, a half hour from central Havana
by car, two pans of white rice, hot dogs and peeling different things to
eat for lunch.

In the living room, spread around among three easy chairs, various women
were watching the television. In the hallway some others were playing
dominos or simply chatting. You wouldn´t notice the tension in the
group. They were hiding it.

When night fell, Victoria Macchi, an Argentinian journalist working for
the VOA (Voice of America News). and I decided to stay and spend the
night with the women in their redoubt in the south of Havana.

Ángel Moya, Berta Soler´s husband, has been an opponent of the Castro
regime for twenty years. He has visited prisons, more often than he
would have wanted to, In Oriundo de Jovellanos, an area in Matanzas
province east of Havana.

When, along with another seventy-four dissidents and independent
journalists, he was sentenced to many years in jail in the spring of
2003 by the autocrat Fidel Castro, his punishment laid the way for
women, who were housewives, professionals or workers, to create
the Ladies in White.

Apart from their differences of points of view, that group symbolises
resistance in a society which does not respect political freedom and
which confuses democracy with personal loyalties.

The original group now has splinter groups, and what is probably the
only flag-waver for present-day Cuban dissidence has been the recipient
of painful slights and insults.

Most of these women are not intellectuals and don´t feel comfortable in
front of a microphone. But when they speak of their daily lives and the
abuse they suffer from the political police, it is difficult to remain
indifferent.

Many of them live in dreadful concrete houses with tiled roofs or in
disgusting hostels. Perhaps it is difficult for them to find the exact
words to describe what is happening in the country. But when it comes to
courage, they are the equal of anybody.

Margarita Barberá, age 71, is the oldest of them. "And she has been
leaving for the last eight years," gossips a fat dark-skinned woman with
a low voice and a ready laugh. The youngest is a 17-year-old called
Roxana Moreno.

The march on Sunday, March 20th, will be their first. In the morning
another four foreign journals showed up. Together we headed to Santa
Rita Church.

Like it fell from the sky, a P-3 bus appeared, totally empty. "State
Security has prepared for us. Although sometimes they take us straight
to the dungeon," said Moya.

In Miramar, another "phantom" bus signed for the P-1 route parked,
without passengers. Berta Solar is somewhat surprised. "Are they not
going to repress this Sunday because of Obama's arrival?" she asks, but
the response is immediate.

"I doubt it, they won't go against their nature," she says. Already, in
Mahatma Gandhi Park on 5th Avenue and 22nd Street, there's a brawl right
in the street.

Three repressors from the special services are furiously beating the
independent journalist Lazaro Yuri Valle Roca. Two of them pick him up
and put him in a Russian-made Lada, while and with private plates.

The foreign reporters run with their cameras to film the scene. Later,
after the end of the Mass, the group files along the central promenade
of 5th Avenue, the only place in Cuba where the government allows
dissent, and heads down 22nd Street headed toward Third, the place of
the violence.

Around 250 people, between workers in the area and paramilitaries,
advised by State Security officials, beat them with impunity and
deployed a lamentable verbal lynching.

These are the famous "acts of repudiation." A sad achievement of Fidel
Castro's Revolution. An apparently popular method of canceling the will
of "the other." Of annulling it. Of intimidation.

When the populace tires of the brawling and shouting that the Ladies in
White are "mercenaries," the police pretends to intervene to prevent the
feast of violence from continuing.

A grey-haired man, stocky, who calls himself Romulo, tried to convince
two foreign journalists that "these opponents are invented by the United
States, they are criminals and mercenaries."

"And because of this can can't demand political rights?" I ask. "Since
the Triumph of the Revolutions we Cubans have had all the political
rights we need," he responds.

"And why do they arrest and beat them?" I inquire. "Well," he says
hesitantly," because they violate the laws with their public scandals,"

"And why don't they also arrest the other side who are also screaming
and beating?" I delve more deeply.

Lacking arguments he looks at me like I'm a freak, and says, "Which side
are you?" and walks away. A former official of the Ministry of the
Interior, who at least is present, says that because of "those lunatics
(the opponents), the State spends some hundred thousand pesos every
Sunday on fuel, blocking off streets, mobilizing the workers and
diverting buses from public service."

"Wouldn't it be simpler if these people didn't follow anyone, according
to the government, leaving them to fight their own battles?" The man
shut up without answering. The fourth bus, two ambulances and numerous
patrol cars took 46 Ladies in White and 13 men to the dungeons.

When Air Force One landed in Havana, perhaps Obama's advisors in Cuba
mentioned the incident. It raises several questions. Will the president
of the United States hold Raul Castro responsible for the repeated
violations of human rights? He probably will, but without offering details.

Obama has already said that the road to democracy will be long. The
Ladies in White know this better than anyone.

Translated by GH

Source: The Repression Obama Did Not See in Havana / Iván García –
Translating Cuba -
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