Comrades and Factors / Regina Coyula

I was convinced that my former G2 comrades wouldn’t trouble themselves with me. A little poking around in this blog is enough to convince them that I’m a hopeless case. But it wasn’t the blog that made the comrades who “serve me,” pay me a “prophylactic visit” yesterday morning. It was to advise and warn m  not to participate in the Estado de SATS program on December 10 and 11.

They were emphatic: they would not allow us to hold the event. Arguments that banning it would just give it more visibility were useless, with the consequences that would result from bringing the power of State Security down on a group of people who are holding meeting and who are not going to overthrow the government.

I reminded them of the truth expressed by Esteban Morales when he said that the cancer that would defeat the government would be corruption and not the dissidence. It was a civilized conversation because I believe in dialog and not confrontation; indeed, I made clear my interest as a citizen and activist in the ratification of the United Nations Covenants.

I don’t know if they believed me when I assured them I do it for free. On their part there was respect, but also a very clear message: If you go, we will arrest you.

That was interesting. What happened in the afternoon I don’t know how to describe. In the midst of a late lunch, five neighbors showed up at my house, four of them from right by my house and the fifth a stranger. The stranger spoke on behalf of the group which she presented as “the factors of the community.”

I was surprised. The visit of the factors seemed to me to be a neural short-circuit after the morning’s visit. For my neighbors I’ve been either with “the Human Rights People” or a Lady in White, but on this opportunity I had been promoted to a counterrevolutionary leader organizing an activity.

When the others spoke they talked about martyrs, about the revolution and the imperialist threat, and topped it all off with they couldn’t allow me to carry out this activity. They felt a little disconcerted when I told them they’d been lied to, that I wasn’t a member of any organization nor did I organize anything, but I was in favor of democracy, free expression, freedom of association and information, and that’s why I strongly believe in the need to ratify the UN Covenants.

I had the very strong impression that my neighbors didn’t know what I was talking about. They retired in silence, only the unknown neighbor repeated, “Know that we won’t allow it.”

I have lived in this neighborhood all my life, if one day we they organized a repudiation rally against us they would have to import the repudiators. Except for the unknown neighbor who lives in the next block and received the “orientation” to call together “the factors,” the rest were uncomfortable, and I even reassured one who apologized later for the position she had taken as a Party member.

To my visitors of the morning and the afternoon: we are on opposite sides, but let everyone think and act according to their conscience, I don’t engage in the fame of hatred and revenge that I detest from both sides. As said Nicolás Guillén said: the master should be ashamed.

6 December 2013