In my case, I was fortunate to have grown up in a family that had very diverse political preferences. Some of my grandparents were linked to Fulgencio Batista’s regime, and others were sympathizers of The Orthodoxy, the political group where Fidel Castro got his start, so they had identified themselves as belonging to the revolutionary process since its very beginnings. So at a certain point, between my exiled family and my family that had incorporated itself into the process, into the poorly named revolution, I gained a dual vision or a wider perspective of what life could be like.
This allowed me to arrive at my own conclusions at an early age, and I reacted like any teenager would, through rebellion. I then started to associate myself with people from the church, because in my neighborhood parish we had the privilege of having one of the heroes of the freedom cause in Cuba, Father Miguel Angel Loredo, who was imprisoned for ten years. Father Miguel Angel Loredo opened his doors to the youth group so as to grant us some sort of sanctuary, a concept a little outdated both in Cuba and worldwide, but it literally was a sanctuary because when we went to the parish, we could listen to some south Florida FM radio stations through a little radio that we had.
We could listen to the music that we liked without any fear of repression from the Regime, and it was all thanks to Father Miguel Angel Loredo and the other priests who continued his work once Loredo was forced into exile.// There came a time when as teenagers, amidst all our street clashes against a repressive police force who restricted our freedom to listen to the music of our choosing and who alienated us from society, amidst this environment and our visits to the parish, we suddenly realized that we could be interested not only in Jimmy Hendrix, Mick Jagger, or ZZ Top, but we were also starting to be impressed by what little information we could find on people like John Paul II, Lech Walesa, Václav Havel, or the Dalai Lama, and we told ourselves this is not all there is.
We have young people nearby, who are Catholics and Cubans just like us, who live just like us and who have a group in El Cerro where they’re talking about freedom, and it may be worthwhile going over there to listen to their proposals. Their message captivated us immediately because it was a message of freedom and reconciliation, a message for the future. It was a message of hope, and that was what we were wanting, that was what we as a generation needed to align ourselves with and commit ourselves to; the defense of our rights and the rights of all Cubans.
Regis Iglesias Ramirez is a Cuban political and civil society activist and a former prisoner of conscience. He was born in Havana in 1969.
He became a member of a dissident group, the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), in 1989. The MCL was founded by the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, who died under mysterious circumstances in a car accident in 2012. Regis Iglesias Ramirez became the MCL’s spokesman and a member of its Coordination Council in 1996. He was nominated as a candidate to the Cuban Parliament in 1997, but his candidacy, along with those of colleagues from the MCL, was rejected by the regime’s electoral authorities.
He is a member of the National Executive of the Citizens Committee of the Varela Project, a civil society initiative advocating for free elections and improved human rights in Cuba. The Varela Project gathered signatures from Cuban citizens in favor of a plebiscite, as permitted by the Cuban constitution. The communist government refused to call the plebiscite.
In 2003, Regis Iglesias Ramirez was among 75 nonviolent dissidents and activists arrested by the Cuban regime in what became known as the Black Spring. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for crimes against the state. In 2010, he was released in a deal brokered by the Roman Catholic Church and was sent into exile in Spain, where he remains as a political refugee.
Regis Iglesias Ramirez has published several books of poetry and contributed to various literary anthologies. His articles have appeared in various publications in Spain and elsewhere. Since the mid-1990s, he has been associated with the Independent Press Bureau of Cuba, the New Cuban Press Agency and the Manuel Marquez Sterling Society of Independent Journalists in Cuba.
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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