On Saturday, organized by the Critical Observatory, a small but determined group of people gathered in Karl Marx Park in Havana to support the movement of the outraged in Europe. A couple of minutes shy of two p.m. they hung a cloth (a sheet?) That read “Down With All Capitalisms,” and another with the slogan: “If you think like a bourgeois you will live like a slave.” At about five minutes after two they sang the Internationale, took a family photo, collected their cloths and left when the clock struck 2:15 in the afternoon. That night the National Television News broadcast scenes of the marches in Madrid, Paris, London and other cities, but said nothing of the modest expression of the solidarity in our own backyard.
The perimeter of the park was distinguished by the presence of a dozen uniformed police officers and an unknown number (some say 10, others 30) of State Security agents in plain clothes. The young man Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca was stopped on Belascoaín Street and forced into a police car that drove away. Blogger Miriam Celaya, who was coming down the Carlos III Street was also prevented from participating as a witness in the activity and together with Eugenio Leal, author of the blog Veritas, was put into a patrol car and taken to a corner of the Playa municipality.
When I got out of an almendrón — a private taxi — in front of the little park, I could already hear the second chorus of “So comrades, come rally…” making it’s way downtown and stopped in the distance so they could take a photo without contaminating the scene with my presence. I emerged unscathed, thanks perhaps to those who were there to stop the intruders, who were ranged along both flanks. I would like to say it was a previously arranged diversion operation, but I swear it was a coincidence.
I respect the right of the Critical Observatory to show solidarity with the Outraged Europeans, victims of police repression. I hope my right to express my solidarity with the repressed Cubans in the Karl Marx Park is respected.
14 May 2012
