A Cuban family from Holguín, desperate because of the precarious state of their home and the lack of any response from the authorities, went to see human rights activists to ask them to help and to provide a report on her case.
In the video of Liberal Creole Productions and the Peoples’ Defender of Independent Democratic Cuba (CID), a woman named Luisa tells a group of human rights activists that she is living with her three children, her mother, her father, and two brothers in a house which is in ruins, with holes in the walls and roofs, and canvas doors.
Luisa, who lives in the house where the President’s Office of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) for her block is located, explains that although her parents had dedicated their lives to the revolutionary project inspired by Fidel Castro, hadn’t received any assistance from the government to help them improve the miserable conditions in which they live.
Luisa asked for help from the opposition following suggestions from her own neighbours.
“I want them to help me, so they don’t come and threaten me, nor put me in prison, because I m always going to say the same thing. I haven’t told any lies, they are the ones who have lied.” says he woman and shows some documents in which, according to her, she applies for a better place to live.
Luisa explains that in that house lives her mother, who belonged to the Association of Young Rebels (predecessor to the Union of Young Communists, (UJC) and the national vanguard of the tourism sector; her brother was a veteran of the Angola war and her father a “fighter in the war against the bandits in Escambray and a socialist militant.”
“They now have absolutely nothing, only a cheque for 240 pesos”, which gets you nowhere.
For their part, the activists who came to interview her and document her living conditions told her that although they couldn’t offer her a home, nor materials to repair it, they promised to accompany her when she decides to make a claim “to the party, the government … wherever” and they promised her they would make the case public.
Source: Radio Marti
24 July 2013
Translated by GH
