Esteban Ajete Abascal, leader of the League of Independent Peasants of Cuba, attacked last Friday by an alleged State Security agent, denounces that there is “an escalation” against the activists from Pinar del Río.
In a telephone conversation with 14ymedio, narrates how the attack occurred, at the home of activists Irina León Valladares and Lisandra Orraca Guerra, where he had gone with his wife, Katia Hernández Torres. A citizen appeared at the door pretending to be a street vendor – and therefore illegal – of fish. When Irina replied that they were not interested, that they did not eat fish, the individual, whom no one had seen before in the neighborhood, blurted out: “Actually, my objective is not to sell fish, it is simply to tell you that you are counterrevolutionaries and some worms, and that you and all those who are there are worms”.
Hearing him utter insults against everyone present, Ajete Abascal confronted him: “Are you a seller or are you a sure? What you are is a safe”. When the peasant approached the alleged agent to throw him out of the place, he took out a blade “of those used to cut tobacco” and gave him a gash on the thumb of his left hand, which began to bleed profusely. “It seems that he thought that I was going to attack him,” he wields. At that moment, the guy ran out and disappeared.
Since the bleeding would not stop, they decided to seek medical attention. “Coincidentally, there was a state car parked on the side of the sidewalk with two mulattoes, company directors or something like that, who we asked for help,” he says. At first, they denied him help, but later they gave him “a cloth full of grease” to cover his finger and took him to the Pedro Borrás polyclinic.
Ajete warned: “Fleitas, we are live”, referring to the fact that they would be spying on them, to which the dissident replied: “No, what I want is for them to find out”
Already in the health center, Ajete found another setback: “Look, don’t waste time, go to the new hospital [Abel Santamaría] because here there are no resources to cure,” the health workers who received him told him. “The same car that took me there took me to the hospital and when I got there the driver said: ‘it’s 600 pesos,’ which is another violation, because a car that is providing assistance should not charge money”. At the hospital, they were able to bandage him miraculously: “You were happy because we are going to put the last gauze on you”.
The peasant received one point on the inside and five on the outside and, five days later, he is already recovering. However, he suggests that the aggression was seen coming. The day before, he had called him on the landline Eduardo Diaz Fleitas, former prisoner of the Black Spring and one of the few who decided to remain in Cuba after his release, to propose the creation of “a party among us where all the needs of the people are exposed.” Ajete warned: “Fleitas, we are in direct”, referring to the fact that they would be spying on them, to which the dissident replied: “No, what I want is for them to find out.”
Both the League of Independent Farmers and the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (Flamur) they have been suing for years the liberalization of the Cuban countryside and the end of the “political monopoly” of the PCC and the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP).
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