PUERTO PADRE, Cuba.- Looking at me, insistent, as if to say, “come on, it’s time for dinner,” on the evening of last Wednesday, September 18, I had to interrupt the dialogue with my young editor by saying: “I’m going to give eat Futo, my dogan English pointer,” to which she responded: “One day show me a photo.” Sending the photograph instantly, the young woman exclaimed: “How cute,” to which I responded: “Smart. Strong. Skilled. Friend. “My dog.”
Futo, yes, intelligent, strong, skillful, my dog, that one be sentient of which, despite being close to humanity, those of us who knew him and worked with him used to say “he only needs to talk” – and of course, my best friend for almost four years, since October 12, 2020 when we adopted him –, inexplicably , spent the night discouraged, sick.
My dog He died, suddenly, on the morning of this October 8, with the same symptoms that Arion and King died in September 2020, and it is worth saying that I have already lost now with Futo and in the same anomalous situation, three dogs in four years and The three healthy, vigorous, young people, who, having had an appetite like lions and my wife and I serving as cooks for them, being full of life, nevertheless, died suddenly.
And in reference to that segregationist phrase, yes, markedly criminal, criminal because it is discriminatory – since the Castro-communists say that in Cuba “the streets belong to the revolutionaries” –, on Monday, September 21, 2020 we published on this site “Arion and King, across the street”, article in which, quoting the eminent professor of Forensic Medicine Tardieu, we express: “Any disease whose beginning is abrupt, whose rapidly increasing symptoms persist with great violence, whose course is, or appears to be, unusual, whose determination is quickly fatal ; Any rapid or sudden death that occurs in ill-defined circumstances can frequently raise and awaken the idea of poisoning.
And as I said that time, today I affirm: I cannot prove, nor deny through an autopsy or other forensic examination, that Arion and King, and now Futurehave been poisoned or contaminated with parasites or lethal germs, but I do suspect that they were subject to fatal attacks because of me, because of my political ideas.
Presumably, these attacks would occur on emotional animals to cause pain, hurting feelings, in the same way that I have been attacked, harassed me in every possible way, including – what is the worst of all baseness – the attacks against my most loved ones, among them, two elderly people: my now deceased parents.
On the occasion of President Obama’s visit to Cuba, and to mask the search they were doing on me, they carried out continuous “public health” fumigations on our home and my mother, an 86-year-old bedridden woman, was poisoned.
For his part, my father, now close to 90 years old, was harassed by “Agricultural inspectors” with “warnings” that his land, his tractor and other agricultural assets would be expropriated.
My youngest son, then a teenager (Alberto, Albertico, Méndez Labrada), had his university studies cut short for collaborating with me by transferring my journalistic work to this site. He was persecuted, detained, harassed and had to go into exile more than five years ago, without returning to Cuba to this day.
In that same underhanded way, in the same deceitful way, our properties were attacked. And those were attacks on property, where they made false, fraudulent accusations. To restore the legality of our right over the land we had to turn to the Prosecutor’s Office itself and the president of the Institute of Physical Planning. And those are not my suspicions or presumptions. Those are illegal acts. There are legal documents.
So, if my hunting weapons have also been seized for political reasons, placing me outside the law if I took in my hands not an assault rifle, but an old shotgun manufactured at the dawn of the last century… How can I not suspect then that they kill to my dogs, genetically suitable for hunting?
Although it has been many years since I have gone hunting, it is beautiful to see the pointing dogs at work, something that causes as much pleasure as the hunt itself. And simply this, denying any good, hobby or taste to the political opponent, in Cuba is usually a priority for the gatekeepers of political power, then a cause of repression.
In that article, Arion and King…quoting Gandhi, I said: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way they treat their animals.”
Now I affirm that if we judge the progress of the Cuban nation understood as the “nation” as well as the “Cuban revolution”, then we would have to conceptualize apartheid, understood as a crime due to political segregation, the fact that thousands of Cuban men and women and their pets They are called to be like my dog Futo is now, on the other side of “the street of revolutionaries”, and it does not matter if they are hunting dogs, cats, parrots or a tocororo, which is the national bird.
