A lot of Cubans are said to be pro-Castro, but people sometimes say it because they see the images that it´s a regime that has, for years presenting an image… For example, if the government says on January 1st, I mean May 1st… On May 1st people go out on the parade, what does the government do? It mobilizes all of the population.
It´s a government, which is not interested in the economy, they move all the people over there, they take them to that demonstration. They tell people, “If you don´t go to that parade, you are going to get branded, you are going to lose your job, and they also use techniques such food products that are so scant. That day, they put a few in one square, in the place where they are going to march. That also motivates people. But people don´t go there because they believe in it. My brother is not different from the rest.
The Cuban people know and acknowledge men like my brother, Jorge Luis García Pérez Antunez, and men like [Oscar] Biscet. Men like thousands of men inside of Cuba who are not just Antunez or Biscet. Every block, every town knows Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina, Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, women such as Idania Yánez Contreras, Sara Marta Fonseca Quevedo, the Ladies in White. People know them.
People know and trust them. When the people are attacked by the government, for example an eviction, when they carry out an eviction, that person who is going to be evicted goes and looks for the opposition. Lately, they have been arresting. The government has been taking measures such as arresting dissidents from that area because they know they are going to give their support to that family which is going to be evicted.The people acknowledge them. The people cooperate with them. Even though it might not be openly, but that day will come.
The people are the ones who warn them, “They are following you”. The people are the ones who warn them. “The Police are coming,” the people warn them. The people are who scream when they beat them up in the streets. When they drag them. The people are who yell “assassin” when they hit women. The people do acknowledge them. The people know that where they can seek the truth, the support and advice is over there. Over there, where they are. Even, when they go looking for an aspirin, because they know there isn´t anywhere else. It´s over there where they go looking for the solidarity and the support. That´s where they go looking for the helping hand. And they support them from their place.
Bertha Antúnez Pernet was born in 1959 to a family of limited means. She began to become politically aware in 1990 when her brother, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (“Antúnez”), was unjustly charged with “enemy propaganda” for saying in a public square that Cuba should experience the same political changes that were taking place in Eastern Europe. He was incarcerated and then charged with additional political offenses during his confinement, which extended his sentence until 2007.
Antúnez Pernet became increasingly aware of the gravity of the human rights situation in Cuba through visiting her brother in prison and learning about the conditions to which he and other prisoners of conscience were subjected.
In 1997, Antúnez Pernet and other family members of political prisoners founded an organization called the National Movement of Civic Resistance Pedro Luis Boitel to fight ill-treatment in prison. By 1999, the movement had collected over 5,000 signatures for a general amnesty of political prisoners in Cuba. It has also carried out protests in front of various prisons throughout the island.
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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