HAVANA, Cuba.- The complaint still burns like wildfire. Possibly no telephone in Cuba was left without receiving it, since not only has the video been forwarded tens of thousands of times, as well as its publications shared on social networks, but also ETECSA – so effective in matters of repression and censorship, although not in the which should be the only provider of telecommunications services on the island— ran to cut off the internet to the complainant.
And it is that Amelia Calzadilla, Cuban and mother of three children, it just explodedtranslating into words and cries of desperation how much he had been silent up to that minute.
I believe that there is no one in Cuba yet to listen to her from start to finish, nor can there be anyone who can reproach her for something or accuse her of anything because that woman has said, more clearly than any of us — writers, journalists, influencers, activists and politicians from all tendencies and parties—everything that needed to be said so that people react, wake up and, at least for a few minutes, land those little birds that flutter in our heads, distracting us from the issues that are really vital to finish once and for all and for all of us with our nightmares as a kidnapped nation, silenced, even (without exaggerating one iota) on the way to extinction.
Amelia Calzadilla did not “go crazy”, as some stupid and cowardly people have commented, she simply stopped biting her tongue and did what we should all do in the face of any government whose concept of “governing” is reduced to shielding itself from power by suppressing general and individual freedoms, by dint of repression and blackmail, ridicule, criminalizing those who oppose or contradict him and —as an evil and counterproductive strategy of political control— frustrating any initiative of prosperity and entrepreneurship that, independently of him, threatens to become into a major economic force.
What Amelia Calzadilla said, without effects or images, without elaborations, with nothing more than her face, name and surname live from her own Facebook page, has had the spontaneous diffusion that it had because, without intending to, she has given voice to the characters of “silent tragedy” that we have become not only the men and women who live in Cuba, calling “prudence” what we know is pure fear or opportunism, but also those who have left but have managed to take the gag in pocket, “just in case.”
Because the reality that we are suffering today in Cuba has no similarity in the entire world, and if there were a culprit, we could find him, yes, among those of us who have remained here —either by will or by fate—, but also in the current power who submits us or who, based on unfulfilled promises, turned us into his slaves, or those who have decided to leave before standing up, or after standing up and verifying that the sacrifice was not enough.
But such inquiries, after so many years of doing them without the answer surprising us or leading us to any special place, do not solve the most immediate problem of us Cubans that we know about slavery, confinement, despair, weariness, disappointment, disenchantment, abandonment and so many other things that possibly make Cuba the most unbearable country on the planet.
We are all now more than aware, aware, of what the true origin of our ills is, as well as what are the ways and methods that do not serve to solve them but only to contribute to disguising them as “changes” or even to exacerbate them (as has happened after the demands for dialogue by some subjects of the so-called “new opposition”, to whom they have responded with greater repression).
So it is not enough to identify the culprits but also to denounce them, unmask them, expose them, ridicule them, summon them and do it directly, without intermediaries, with perseverance and, above all, making use of all those communication tools that, thank God, we have today hand and with which we did not count ten years ago, but also with those who do not take into account for their perverse plans those who seek “continuity” by virtue of silencing, censorship, criminalization, blackmail.
No one, neither in Cuba nor in the rest of the world, needs to travel to the European Parliament or the United Nations to denounce what they suffer. We are no longer obliged to write a letter or form, with all the formality, time and resources that it requires, so that a human rights organization does for us what we can do at this precise moment without too much protocol. We no longer depend on the courage of a risky journalist or a super media outlet to spread our reality effectively. And Amelia Calzadilla’s direct message on Facebook could be the best example of how, just by denouncing from the truth, from personal experience, a war that seems lost could be won.
Amelia Calzadilla’s direct message has had more views and more reactions of accompaniment, of solidarity, in all the pages that replicated it on the internet than any of the assemblies, meetings, events, tables of an international nature where Cuban issues on freedoms have been debated , democracy and human rights and, possibly, even achieve more concrete results insofar as it has served as a trigger for other men and women to tell the world those stories that we Cubans know but that it is not much use narrating them in the third person, from the tribune alien and from the “prudence” (personal or journalistic), the “diplomacy”, the “political tact”, which leave us with such a bad taste in the mouth.
Because they have instilled in us (and we have learned to the convenience of the culprits and accomplices) that it is more “politically correct” what we mutter, “ruminate”, we mutter in the media nullity of our homes, neighborhoods and groups of friends than to face the guilty . We have assumed with our heads bowed that the institutions of the Communist Party are the confessional where everything is resolved with an act of constriction, thus the pain, the discomfort, the denunciation must be expressed only “in the right place and time” when we know that there is no There is no better time and place than the one where the mule falls and is beaten right there.
With Amelia Calzadilla we all shout. She did what she had to do and that is the impact that she has had, and the one that she could have. She has done what few of us would have been able to do for her or for her children, which is not about moving those who we know are unmovable, nor to receive pats on the shoulder or a storm of likes on Facebook, nor to create a GoFundMe to raise money and pay the bills of this desperate mother, but simply exploded, “gave the watercress”, loudly denounced her own case and from her own personal space, without asking or the word nor the permission to those who do not have to grant it, because he spoke with all the right that assists us as human beings of the 21st century.
OPINION ARTICLE
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