Cuba has a dictatorship that controls all aspects of society: economic, political, social and cultural. They control everything. Life in Cuba is difficult.
Living conditions are quite [difficult]… I live in the countryside, where the conditions are more difficult. People live on a monthly salary of about 15 dollars. In Cuba you are paid monthly. You get a ration card for poorly stocked shops and grocery stores. You get about 5 pounds of rice per person and a few ounces of beans. Every three or four months you get a pound of oil. Coffee was monthly.
Mostly people lived off the land. Not everyone could work in the fields. A farmer would take his produce and whatever he couldn’t sell at a relatively low price to the government he would sell at more reasonable prices to the people.
In my area, most do not have electricity. It is not comparable to the city. When you went to [the city of] Pinar del Rio you saw another aspect of life that was nothing like the country. For example: I first saw a computer- touched its keys- when I came to Spain in 2010. I got my first cell phone in October 2010 when I came to Spain.
Freedom of movement … First, transport is scarce. Our towns have about 7,000 to 8,000 inhabitants. The settlements in my province and on the opposite end are that size. Many times, to go from Las Martinas, my town, to El Cayuco, where we had our organization’s base, it took me three to four hours to travel 8 kilometers. There is no [reliable] transportation. Freedom of movement is poor.
[Nowadays] all I know is what I learn from conversations with my family. I cannot go to Havana to see how things are. I have to go to my town [meaning his sources for information are based in his hometown]. My province has not seen changes with the measures of openness that Raúl [Castro] has instituted. [Raul Castro (1931 – ) is the younger brother of Fidel Castro. He assumed leadership of the Communist Party and the country in 2008. In recent years, the Cuban regime implemented a series of reforms highlighted by limited economic liberalization and the easing of a repressive travel policy allowing some high-profile opposition figures to travel on and off the island.]
In fact, in my town, in neighboring areas, there are virtually no roads or transport. Nothing. Everything has moved backward. Power outages, which had been eliminated, are back. All this [money and resources] that Venezuela brought to Cuba during Hugo Chávez’s time [in power], has begun to deteriorate because there are no spare parts for maintenance. [Hugo Chavez (1954-2013) served as the President of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chávez implemented authoritarian policies that increased his control over the country’s legislature, judiciary, business sectors and media outlets. While in power, Chávez used Venezuela’s oil revenue to spread his influence and political ideology in the region, including support of the Cuban regime with financial and material resources.]
Horacio Julio Piña Borrego, the son of an ardent communist, was born in Las Martinas, Cuba in 1966. Horacio first became active in the democratic opposition as a member of the Cuban Pro-Human Rights Party Affiliated with the Sakharov Foundation; in 1999, he became a provincial delegate for the organization in his hometown of Pinar del Rio. Through his activism, he also collected signatures for the Varela Project, an initiative that petitioned the regime to hold open elections and expand civil liberties.
In March 2003, Horacio was detained along with 74 other nonviolent dissidents in a massive government crackdown known as the Black Spring. He received a summary trial in which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Horacio was placed in solitary confinement until August 2004, and was subjected to physical and psychological torture throughout his time in prison. In October 2010, the Catholic Church and the Spanish government negotiated the release of the 75 and Horacio went into exile with his family. He lived in Spain as a political refugee until 2011, before settling in the United States.
Horacio is active in the fight for Cuban freedom and democracy; he serves as the Managing Director of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press in Florida.
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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