By: Ignacio Estrada
Havana, Cuba. There have not been many Cubans since the immigration reforms who have taken a plane to the democratic world, to fulfill the role of true doves or pigeons, messengers from a nation that through them sends a message to each person who is a lover of freedom.
The country is proud to see them sending the message of a nation that for years longed to describe it, and has been forced to do so through alternative media. The real-time Cuba is being told in these moment by those who did not hesitate for a moment to board the first aircraft to, go to fulfill a noble task which, rather than enrichment, we will see what consequences it brings them when they return to our island?
There are many who cackle and try with the old tricks of the past to distort this reality that is already being experienced by the protagonists, followed by countless citizens of this universe and collected in the few media that exist.
People who pose as doves or pigeons have names, and no matter how much time they spend burning the midnight oil like many say, confronting the Cuban regime. The important thing is not only are journalists, writers, administrators, bloggers and human rights activists, above all this. They are courageous Cubans who do not hesitate for a moment, to call things by their name.
Each one is an example of the wider thinking of Cuban civil society, from the intelligentsia to those who peacefully take to the streets to demand the release of their loved ones armed with the unique weapon of a gladiolus.
Berta Soler, Yoani Sanchez, Rosa Maria Paya, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo and Eleicer Avila belong to different generations and also have different thoughts and political currents. But only one truth unites them and that’s what matters, it is this which makes them the protagonists of what I now want to call a real Operation Truth.
The recognition was not enough to honor these who weren’t even for an instant those who cried, “I won’t travel!” “I’ll want to see what happens to the first ones who travel and who then return, and then I’ll travel!” Words that many repeated although looking at some of those boarding one of those steel birds, which for decades has been the dream of Cubans.
What each expresses during their journey, the way in which they do it, is as if they are fully entitled to exercise the right of freedom of expression. A right that is only paraphrased in the alternative media on the island.
I am also one of those who wish to travel, I am among those who want to narrate our daily lives not only as a communicator, nor as Cuban more than this, I would like to do it from my point of view as a person living with HIV/AIDS for 12 years. I have a passport, but I have no money now, I trust in God and friends I also, at the right time, will be able to leave and tell the truth of the community.
Whoever criticizes, criticize the history already written. We will only achieve part of it when with tears, sweat and blood we can also write our own page.
In my note I do not want to ask a vow of silence from anyone, on the contrary I want to urge them to write beyond any personal grudge or professional envy. We don’t all have to thing and say we have the right to be diverse.
We recognize that these Cubans are in these moments those who are fulfilling Pope John Paul’s words, Open the Doors of Cuba to the World. Making their way through the democratic world.
25 March 2013
