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Men in Peril

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I do not know about other places, but in Cuba, the needle and thread serve for some purposes that from the point of view of reason are difficult to acquiesce.

My deceased grandmother mastered these two tools with a great skill. In a jiffy, she could sew pieces that had nothing to envy to those made by my aunt on a Singer sewing machine produced in the United States. It was in the early 1970s and I was still living the innocent years of my existence. A child of eleven or twelve can still look at the world with rose-coloured glasses. I did not see the dark shades of life, and maybe at some point I even felt as if the world belonged to me. Our poverty was dispelled by my eager naivety and by the caring kindness of my mother, who is still with me in this world, and by my deceased grandparents, who continue alive in my best memories. Only when I turned forty-two did I learn that the use of a needle and thread was not restricted to sewing fallen buttons, to shorten trousers or to other tasks which seem simple but are essential in families where misery is a permanent guest. Sewing meat is something quite special. This practice might begin in restaurants or households when you are tailoring some unusual menu for a feast, and might end in Kilo 8, Guamajal, Boniato or in the Combinado Provincial de Guantánamo - to put it simply, in the prison universe of the Republic of Cuba. It was there that I could become acquainted with the grotesque use of the tools that in my grandmother` s hands seemed so noble, if not magical.

While I was in prison, seeing young men sewing their lips with a greasy thread and a rusty needle became one of the pictures that frequented the panorama of my eyes. All the men who underwent this horror trial are carved in my memory just as the grids and fierce arguments. It was one of the first experiences that I had as a prisoner of conscience. Deep in my soul I was astounded at every movement of those who were committing aggressions to their own body. I remember the drops of blood staining the polished floor, the steel spike slowly piercing their skin, the thread following its path of pain, and the agony reflected on their faces. And then there were tied lips and bleeding mouths paralyzed by eight sutures, and other prisoners with looks expressing a wide array of feelings, ranging from indifference to a concealed fright.

My reaction was the latter. Those were not images from a horror film or from a story by Edgar Allan Poe or Horacio Quiroga. Those were one, two or many men submerged in alienation and despair. In such a simple way they opted for a mute, wordless silence and deliberate hunger. In cold blood, they played with the searing pain of martyrdom.

These prisoners who willingly take on this form of protest against the glaring and systematic abuse by jailers have recently been joined by Juan Carlos Herrera Costa. His imprisonment was unjust. He only dared to ask for the establishment of rule of law, crossing the red line the full visibility of which is checked by the political police on a daily basis. He may have made a wrong decision, but the question is: Did he have another option? There is no space for doubts - it has be to admitted that in these places of horror, possibilities are scarce. I can support this with a great deal of evidence.

My fellows who are still helplessly drifting in those stormy waters are always on my mind. In a fatal conjuncture of unfavourable circumstances they literally can die.

Juan Carlos Herrera sewed his mouth in order to denounce all the violations and abuse that the prisoners are faced with. Iván Hernández Carrillo suffers threats from criminals, who want to kill him. They are all men in peril of their lives, innocent human beings enduring their existence on the periphery to where they have been swept. The fact that in Cuba there are 200 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience facing a similar destiny is worth of attention. Therefore, it is time to turn up the volume of all the alarms. Tomorrow it might be too late.

2010-09-08 / Will Weissert - AP

Report: Castro blasts Ahmadinejad as anti-Semitic

HAVANA — Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears of global nuclear war.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged on the magazine's website Tuesday that he was on vacation last month when the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington — which Cuba maintains there instead of an embassy — called to say Castro had read his recent article about Israel and Iran and wanted him to come to Cuba.

Goldberg asked Julia Sweig, a Cuba-U.S. policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, to accompany him, and the pair spent portions of three days talking with Castro.

Cuba's state-controlled media reported Aug. 31 that Goldberg and Sweig met with Castro and attended the dolphin show at Havana's aquarium, but the blog was the first to reveal details of what they discussed. ...more

2010-09-08 / Expatica News Service

Two more Cuban political prisoners arrive in Spain

Two more Cuban political prisoners arrived in Madrid Tuesday, bringing to 30 the number of dissidents who have reached Spain following their release under a deal between Havana and the Catholic Church.

The two men, Victor Arroyo and Claro Sanchez, traveled to the Spanish capital on two separate commercial flights accompanied by 16 close family members, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Arroyo was serving a 26-year prison term while Sanchez had been jailed for 15 years for dissident activities.

Cuba agreed on July 7 to release the remaining 52 of 75 dissidents who were arrested in a March 2003 crackdown who are still behind bars in a landmark deal that was brokered by Madrid.

The deal came after dissident hunger striker Guillermo Farinas nearly starved to death.

If all 52 dissidents are freed, it will be the largest release of Cuban prisoners since 1998 when 300 dissidents were spared jail time following a visit by then pope John Paul II.

2010-09-08 / Badge Greenslade (Guardian UK)

Cuban blogger is press freedom hero

Cuban blogger Yoani Maria Sánchez Cordero has been named by the International Press Institute as its 60th World Press Freedom Hero.

Sánchez's blog, Generation Y, is an acerbic critique of life in Cuba, and a telling reminder to the world of the restraints on free speech and expression on the island.

Launched in 2007, the site was rendered unavailable in April 2008 by the Cuban authorities. Since then, Sánchez has managed to keep the blog alive through a series of ingenious measures and is thought to have a regular readership of more than one million.

She has been refused permission to travel outside of Cuba at least six times in the past two years. In 2008, Time magazine named her one of the world's 100 most influential people, noting that "under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practised what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech." ...more

Cuba Blog

Men in Peril

Report: Castro blasts Ahmadinejad as anti-Semitic

Two more Cuban political prisoners arrive in Spain

Cuban blogger is press freedom hero