For Sirley Ávila, a bridge too far?

On these pages, I’ve written before about Sirley Avila ( HERE ),
a spunky Cuban peasant farmer and duly elected local volunteer who objected to a school closing and ended up paying with the loss of a hand and other permanent injuries. After six months of rehabilitation in Miami, she returned to Cuba, only to be harassed by State Security, threatened with death by the man who had attacked her before, and forced to leave once again. Now she is back in Miami, demanding that the Cuban government acknowledge its complicity in the attack against her and pay her damages. It’s a matter of simple justice, she argues, and if Cuban citizens don’t stand up to demand accountability from their government, they won’t ever get it.
^{← ← [Sirley Avila with the author in Homestead, FL, in Feb. 2017; thanks to Miami-based rehab services, Sirley is now able to walk short distances with a cane.]}
Her demands may be justified, but now her only son, still living in Cuba in their hometown of Las Tunas, a father of two and the caretaker of her elderly mother with Parkinson’s, has been threatened by a man he doesn’t know, a man warning him that his mother must to withdraw her demand “or else.” Sirley knows that the Cuban government would not be sorry to see her son dead and probably had a role in trying to kill her too, but she feels that if Cubans continue to back down out of fear, then progress against the dictatorship will never occur. Nothing will be achieved by standing still. Yet, she says she is worried sick about her son, unable to sleep at night, “he’s practically all I have,” but feels obligated to continue playing what appears to be a dangerous game of “chicken” with the Cuban regime. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission had already reviewed Sirley’s case and had found her to be in credible danger when she was living in Cuba. Her son, formerly a career military man, had lost his job soon after his mother became active in opposing the school closing. Now he is threatened with jail for not having a job. But the implied threat on his life is more ominous.

So, what to do now? Having lost my own older son after an accident and my Cuban foster son--an unaccompanied minor who arrived with the Mariel boatlift--to AIDS, I’ve advised Sirley to stop for a while, think things over, and not put her son in further jeopardy; the stakes are simply too high. It’s like getting a warning from the mafia—you need to pay attention. If her son should actually be killed, then it will be too late. She might end up having a martyr to help further her cause, which, however, would be cold comfort. I certainly don’t want to be in the position later of saying: “I told you so.” Believe me, I know from personal experience what a death like that entails. Losing your child is a pain that never leaves.

I also know and so does Sirley that the current Cuban government is not going to acknowledge any responsibility for her injuries or for any future harm to her son and will never pay a cent of compensation. Yet there is always a slim chance that the tide is now actually turning, that the Cuban government, fearing to appear too obvious by killing her son outright or allowing him to be killed (something it would not have hesitated doing not so very long ago—Sirley herself was attacked in 2015), might want to avoid any further international condemnation at a time when Venezuela is on the ropes and worldwide support for Cuba is waning and so might pull back from taking that drastic additional step. Nothing is forever after all and Sirley’s efforts just might help accelerate the dictatorship’s demise.

The current Cuban government won’t ever acknowledge responsibility for harm or threats in any case to either Sirley or her son. Of course, as with the attack on Sirley herself, if her son should actually be harmed or killed, the government will make it look like the crazed act of a lone individual, someone, however, as in her case, who will never suffer any consequences. Sirley was not even allowed into the hearing room to testify about the attack against her, a hearing after which her attacker was allowed to go free after accusing her of anti-government propaganda, that according to reports from witnesses present in the hearing room. And he later openly threatened to kill her, bragging about harming her and saying that he planned to “finish the job.” There, apparently, is a guy who would be more than willing to murder her son without any remorse or fear of consequences, perhaps even anticipating a reward from the powers that be. If a crime against someone the Cuban government disapproves of ends up looking like it was committed by a private individual, the government can always say, as it often does, that it cannot impede the spontaneous patriotic and sometimes violent acts of loyalists defending “the Revolution” and “socialism.”
So, dear readers, what should Sirley do? What would you do? As for myself, I would reluctantly vote to just let the matter go. But Sirley, the person actually doing the deciding, says she is now living in a free country and will continue to do what she considers right to advance her home country’s future and the future of her grandchildren by challenging the Cuban government on its bluff.