MIAMI, United States. — The American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora was the scene this Thursday of the premiere of the documentary Cuba Crucis: Faith and Individual Freedomsdirected by Cuban independent writer and journalist Yoe Suárez.
The audiovisual brings together testimonies of religious practitioners, as well as activists who have also been persecuted on the Island for their way of thinking.
Yoe Suárez, who arrived in Miami just three days ago, assured CubaNet that the recording of the documentary began in 2019 as a series of interviews with religious practitioners and leaders in Cuba and that it was recorded almost in clandestine conditions.
For its realization, Suárez relied on a group of friends who assisted him in the filming and editing of the audiovisual piece.
“We went from one place to another with the phone in airplane mode so that State Security would not track us,” said the young man, who has already spent several years witnessing the Cuban reality with his work as a reporter.
Suárez was accompanied in the presentation of the documentary by the activist Yoaxis Marcheco and the Santiago pastor Alain Toledano Valiente, who went into exile last July.
“In Cuba there are no freedoms of any kind, and even less religious ones,” Marcheco said during his speech.
The religious activist, in her persecuted condition in Cuba, went into exile with her husband, Pastor Mario Félix Leonard, who directs the Patmos Institute. Their families suffered harassment from the political police on several occasions, which resulted in multiple arbitrary arrests and constant violations of their freedom of expression, association and movement.
For its part, Alain Toledano He denounced the cruelty of the Cuban regime towards religious leaders who oppose communism.
“The dictatorship does not persecute people, it persecutes ideas,” said Toledano, who was also a victim of totalitarianism in Cuba.
The Cuban religious recounted how the island’s regime evicted his family on more than one occasion. The temples in which Toledano carried out his pastoral work were also demolished.
The presentation of the documentary was promoted by the non-governmental organizations Outreach Aid to the Americas (OAA), the Patmos Institute, and the Inspire America Foundation. The event also had the presence of well-known Cuban exile figures, such as Diego Suárez and Pastor Mario Félix Leonard himself, among others.
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