In Cuba one does not live, one survives. In Cuba survival means constantly breaking the law. In Cuba, for example, there are two currencies. The regime pays you in one and sells you goods in the other. For example, a doctor, who in Cuba earns the best salary, earns around 15 to 20 dollars a month. However, the people’s purchasing power is difficult because the salaries do not correspond at all with personal needs.
[The Cuban convertible peso (CUC) is one of Cuba’s two official currencies; the other, which is more widely used by average citizens, is the Cuban peso (CUP). The CUC is pegged to the U.S. dollar and worth 25 times as much as the CUP.]
The stores look like museums where the common Cuban does not really have access to buy products. Concurrently, there is a dizzying growth in the abysmal difference between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” For example, while the average Cuban is denied the right to stay in [Cuba’s] hotels, swim at its beaches, and enjoy certain rights; only the ruling class and tourists have those rights.
I do not doubt Cuba has fine medicine, but not for the Cuban people. It is for tourists, for the leadership and their families and relatives. There are sophisticated clinics in Cuba that have the best equipment and technology, but they are not for the use of the people.
It is an absurdity, and an insult to the conscience and intelligence of the human being to proclaim that Cuba is a medical power when our doctors, who we desperately need, are exported to Venezuela and parts of the world. [Antúnez refers to the practice of Cuba sending health care professionals to work in Venezuela and other countries.]
It is similar with education. The slogan “University is for the revolutionaries” says a lot and signifies much regarding how many rights we, the youth, have in Cuba to be able to study. I have thought, Nelson Mandela was a lawyer. That means that in South Africa (of course, I am not defending that segregationist regime of apartheid), if Mandela attended university and studied to become a lawyer that means even his racist government allowed blacks an opportunity to study. It is not so in Cuba. [Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994-1999.]
In Cuba, those who don’t have the same skin color as the regime cannot attend universities nor can they work in any management position, let alone participate in the country’s politics. The most brutal discrimination and most brutal and cruel apartheid is that which prevails in Cuba.
In [1992], while I was in the Alambradas Prison in Manacas, I heard about a man named [Rodney] King who was brutally beaten by the Los Angeles police [during the 1992 riots]. Those responsible for the beating were criminally punished. In fact, King was compensated. However, in Cuba the blacks, mulattos, Chinese, whites, or any person who is beaten does not have the slightest possibility of being able to… first of all, for the press to cover it. It is impossible for any press in Cuba to highlight an event like these riots, but in the United States it is possible. [Rodney King (1965 – 2012) was an African-American man who became a victim of police brutality during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.]
It is revealing that the most cruel, most repressive, and greatest example of apartheid in our hemisphere is the Cuban system. There is no doubt about that.
Life in Cuba is true agony 24 hours a day. Those who do not know about Cuba can never calculate the true magnitude of the situation that Cuban families face. Imagine a mother who wakes up daily wondering what she will feed her children. Imagine a woman of any age working in the fields, under a brutal sun so she can feed her children. Imagine a family that sees a store supplied with everything, but has no means to purchase anything because prices are above their salary.
In Cuba hunger and shortage are constant. The worst is that in Cuba surviving means breaking the law. For example, there is a crime called “illicit hoarding” and a crime called “illicit economy” which refers to someone who has tried to prosper through private enterprise. In Cuba starting a business or trying to be what one wishes according to their abilities is a crime. That is the general state of Cuba.
Jorge Luis García Pérez (better known as “Antúnez”) was born in Placetas, Cuba in 1964. He is the leader of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Resistance Front. The Front is a Cuban civil society organization named for a political prisoner who died while on a hunger strike in 2010.
As an Afro-Cuban, Antúnez experienced the regime’s discrimination against minorities in restricting both educational and career opportunities. Such treatment, along with severe political repression, contributed to his disenchantment with the regime.
Antúnez, inspired by freedom movements in Eastern Europe, became active in the Cuban opposition. In March 1990, he was arrested for publically denouncing the Castro regime and sentenced to five years in prison. Despite his incarceration, Antúnez remained defiant by refusing to wear a prisoner’s uniform and rejecting the government’s re-education programs.
Antúnez also created the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners group in honor of the famous prisoner of conscience who died during a hunger strike in 1972. Through this organization, the prisoners drew inspiration and encouragement to continue their struggle. As a result, Antúnez was subject to solitary confinement, torture, and an extension of his five year sentence. He endured 17 years of prison before being released in 2007.
Antúnez continues advocating for freedom and democracy in Cuba with his wife, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, leader of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights. His work involves supporting Cuban political prisoners, and expanding political freedoms and civil liberties.
Twitter: @antunezcuba
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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