Despite the repression in each of the places where there have been demonstrations in days ago, dozens of Cubans staged a new protest this Monday. On this occasion, it was in the town of El Cepem, of the Costa Norte People’s Council, Caimito, in Artemisa, after the police tried to prevent the departure of several irregular rafts. The place, which has taken its name from the acronym of a nearby military unit, has become an illegal settlement with precarious housing and heavily threatened by official eviction punishments.
“If they don’t want us, because we are an illegal community, if we don’t fit in this country because our salary is not enough to buy in stores in hard currency, if there is no oil for the thermoelectric plants to work,” let us decide for our lives, he tried reason with the agents one of the residents of the place, erected as a spokesman for the attacked residents.
In a video broadcast by the exiled Albert Fonse, the moment in which special troops violently burst into several homes is observed, provoking the indignation of the residents. The altercation ended in a confrontation that left several people injured and at least six arrested, according to what witnesses to the events reported.
“They are like parents who take care of the child and do not let him learn to go to the street, so when he goes to the street the child does not know how to express himself”
In the transmitted images, a man is seen who, on behalf of the residents, stood up to the officials, as was captured in another video. “Don’t take care of us like that,” the neighbor tells plainclothes officials. “They are like parents who take care of the child and do not let him learn to go to the street, so when he goes to the street the child does not know how to express himself.” And he sentences: “Allow us the opportunity to decide for our lives.”
The man, who describes himself as the father of an eight-month-old girl, assures that they are not stealing anything from anyone, and that when they find “one of those artifacts”, referring to homemade boats, they mean thousands of pesos raised by each family to be able to go “We don’t want to go against you, we don’t want those people to come and attack us and we have to have this response,” he reiterates.
This Cuban insisted on his request that they not attack us when they are “making a boat, that what they should do is give us a medal… What they should do is a monument to the rafters,” making it clear that the departure of the Cubans they represent remittances for the Island.
The flow of rafters responds to the worsening of the humanitarian and economic crisis that the island is experiencing, with a resurgence of repression and economic deterioration, which includes a rise in the cost of living, the devaluation of the Cuban peso and an increase in uncertainty about the future. In the last ten months, the US authorities have intercepted almost 178,000 Cubans, which exceeds the figures recorded in the Mariel crisis of 1980 and the Balseros of 1994.
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