Havana Cuba. – Whoever has not met Juan González Febles and finds him today and talks to him, will hardly be able to associate this old man with no memory, poorly dressed, delirious and refugee in a parallel world with the intelligent, educated and conceited man who until a few years ago years he ran the weekly digital spring and he was one of the most prominent and incisive Cuban independent journalists.
González Febles, who turned 71 in May, suffers from senile dementia that progresses by the day. In the past few months he has left home twice and wandered the streets for days, unable to remember what he did or where he was.
This dementia may have been caused by the general anesthesia that was used a few years ago when he had to undergo surgery for a strangulated hernia that could have affected his mind. But I am inclined to think that it is the consequence of so many years of poor nutrition and material deprivation of all kinds; of feeling watched and harassed by the political police, of being slandered and betrayed by some colleagues who he considered his friends, and of having to see how, due to lack of financing, he was shipwrecked, despite all his efforts, digital springthe project in which he invested all his energies for more than a decade, as if his life depended on it.
I know this story well. I have been a friend of González Febles ―El Johnny, as his relatives call him― for more than 30 years. I met him in 1991, when he was a librarian at the Casa de la Cultura in the Diez de Octubre municipality and we were both bursting with the desire to express our opposition to the regime. Then, in 1998, the two of us started out as independent journalists, together with Adela Soto and Omar Rodríguez Saludes, at the Nueva Prensa agency directed by Mercedes Moreno.
In 2007, González Febles, his wife, the photographer Ana Torricela, and I created the weekly digital spring with the support of the Swedish Christian Democratic Center.
In digital spring and the bimonthly print newspaper Cuban Spring Tania Díaz Castro, José Antonio Fornaris, Jorge Olivera, Rogelio Fabio Hurtado, Laritza Diversent, Víctor Manuel Domínguez, Leonardo Calvo, Julio Aleaga, Lucas Garve, Jorge Luis González, Rogelio Travieso, Ainí Martín, Adolfo Borrazá and dozens of other journalists collaborated.
Febles proposed that digital spring It was a space without censorship for absolutely everyone, and in that, he and I, who was the editor of the weekly for almost 10 years, got out of hand. The fact that anyone, be it a journalist or an activist, published whatever they wanted based on their right to freedom of expression but sometimes in an irresponsible way – as I have to admit that Johnny did on several occasions, moved by more or less apprehensions justified―, created clashes, disagreements and misunderstandings that in the long run caused, without there being a traumatic rupture, that I gave up continuing as deputy director and editor of digital spring.
By then (since mid-2014), the Christian Democratic Center had stopped funding digital spring, which was a severe blow to the project. Still, for more than seven years, Johnny, Ana Torricela, and a handful of collaborators carried on with their work, and there wasn’t a week that went by. digital spring. Only illness managed to stop Johnny.
There are many who criticized Johnny for his character, accusing him of being arrogant, authoritarian, stubborn, paranoid. What they will never be able to do is accuse him of having been dishonest with the handling of the newspaper’s funds. Many times he had to take his money to pay for the collaboration of a colleague. And neither will there be someone who can deny his ability to work and his courage, as was proven in 2003, when after the repressive wave He kept writing as if nothing happened.
I cannot avoid dealing with the case of González Febles. I know this story well and I don’t want his painful situation to be repeated with other colleagues from the independent press who are now entering old age with deteriorated health and no guarantees for their future. I’m thinking about Tania Diaz Castro, Victor Manuel Dominguez, Reinaldo Cosano, Jorge Luis Gonzalez Suarez…
Until now, despite the discrepancies of the past, only the Association for Freedom of the Press (APLP) and a group of colleagues with their collections have helped González Febles financially. He urges that exile organizations do everything in their power to help him.
OPINION ARTICLE
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