Cuba / Cuban Affairs

I have been thinking about José Gabriel Barrenechea and his fellow political prisoners.

I don’t know if it’s because of his unpronounceable last name, or because of his serenely manly image, or because of the horror of not being allowed to accompany his mother at her death, or because of the inexcusable silence of the Cuban intellectual community… I don’t know if it’s because of one of these reasons or the convergence of them all, but the truth is that Barrenechea has become close to us, he has seeped into our souls, and even many of us who did not know him have begun to feel for him the deep sympathy that a people develop when faced with the dignified stance of a man confronting stark injustice, vulgar abuse, and political vengeance.

Encrucijada, November 7, 2024: more than 48 hours without power—more than two days without electricity! And the only thing people did was bang on pots and shout: “We want electric power!” Anywhere else in the world, at the very least they would have set fire to the government building.

But in Cuba things are different, in Cuba the principle of 90 over 10 always applies, which says that, when a reaction seems disproportionate, 10% corresponds to what actually happened, and 90% corresponds to what lies underneath, hidden, what is not said but is in reality what people feel , or what people are thinking so the government treats this protest with a disproportionate reaction.

Cuba is a politicized country, Cuba is a dictatorship where everything responds to a single principle: power cannot be questioned. The great unwritten decree that governs this country is the obligation to submit, to keep quiet, to endure, to endure. It doesn’t matter if there is no electricity, if your children go hungry, if you have no medicine. It doesn’t matter if, despite being as Cuban as anyone else, you don’t want to live under this system. It doesn’t matter if you want free elections, or multiparty politics, or simply the freedom to say in public what you think. No, you are not allowed, because that would question power, and that, in “Revolutionary” terms, is a grave sin.

That is why it doesn’t matter that the protest was peaceful, it doesn’t matter if it was apolitical, it doesn’t matter if it only consisted of banging pots and asking for electricity after enduring two days without having any … it doesn’t matter, because what you cannot do is protest, and the message being sent to the people is precisely this: “Don’t you dare raise your voice.”

And since this prohibition is absurd in itself, and goes against the Declaration of Human Rights that Cuba signed and officially supports, then crimes must be fabricated. That is why the accusation against José Gabriel and his companions is not “for having protested,” but for violence, public disorder, and assault against the country’s authorities.

But there is more, because our dear Barrenechea has sinned not only by protesting, but also by being an independent journalist—and this is unforgivable, because Truth is the great prisoner of dictatorial systems, and it is forbidden not only to set it free, but even to open the smallest crack for it.

It is astonishing how this government continues to underestimate this people, how it keeps believing that at some point we will submit and surrender, how it continues to expect us to break and stop fighting.

The Cuban judges may condemn Barrenechea, but what they will never be able to prevent is that, in many ways, we rise up to say: “I too am José Gabriel.”