Antunez, Pick Up and Go / Jorge Luis García Pérez Antunez

The refrain was echoing throughout the afternoon in the Virginia neighborhood, and the afternoon of last May 16 and it came out of the mouths of a group of teenagers, from a high school, kids the political police took there to carry out one of those acts of public disorder euphemistically called “repudiation.”

Needless to say, the young men and women who shouted and danced with the chorus didn’t know me and what’s more it’s likely they never even heard of me, or of Idania Yanez to whom they shouted, “Idania get out already!”

The “Antunez pick up and go,” like the “Idania get out now,” represent the feelings and longing of repressive apparatus that is desperate and angry before my firm decision not to shut up nor to leave Cuba. So they want me to pick up and go, but they’re going to have to like it or lump it.

May 22 2012