Category: Antonio Rodiles

Our Great Challenge / Antonio Rodiles #Cuba

The arbitrary arrest of the lawyer Yaremis Flores on November 7 was followed by two waves, one repressive, taken to the extreme by the regime against numerous activists of civil society, and the other, impressive and appreciated by us, of solidarity with the victims. Personally, what happened reaffirmed my vision of the fundamental challenge that we face as a country: the articulation of all of its parts in order to transition into a democracy in which the entire nation participates.

Visualizing and working in support of a transition towards democracy in the convoluted scenario in which we live is a process that implies, above all, political and intellectual maturity, honesty, and a high level of civic awareness. We need to understand that such dynamics would not involve just one axis, just one angle. It is impossible to imagine a transition that does not take into account Cubans in Cuba today who hold different points of view. And a transition without full participation of those Cubans outside the Island, who constitute an essential part of our nation, is also inconceivable. It is not possible to outline a transition without the workers, intellectuals, professionals and entrepreneurs both inside and outside the country.

To think that change in our country will happen magically, that in the blink of an eye we will generate a modern society, a state of rights, is too simple and deceitful a fantasy. We, the  totalitarian regime’s opposition, have the duty and responsibility to show all segments of society the nature of the plural and inclusive country we are advocating and what we expect of democracy.

The strategy of the regime has always been the same. It has systematically tried to prevent by all possible means the growth of a civil society. Intimidation, repression, imprisonment, bleeding the country, generating mistrust within the opposition, creating internal conflict to undermine our work, “distracting” us so as to leave us little time to effectively advocate in society, is a strategy that has always borne fruit and should be dismantled now. We have to fix our ethics, our suppositions, our rhythm.

To responsibly work on a transition implies a true knowledge of the scenario confronting us in which are manifested the particularities of groups and individuals from a global perspective. To guarantee this range of interests and visions it is necessary they every Cuban enjoy his or her fundamental rights, thus the importance of the campaign “For Another Cuba” and our request for support from all Cubans and international public opinion.

Facing this peaceful citizen initiative, the government has responded by intensifying the repression and  excessive use of violence, slamming the door on yet another civic proposal. Nevertheless, this violent scenario begins to profile factions in society; on the one hand there are those who, although inside the system, believe a prosperous nation is possible, one where political and ideological differences are part of everyday life, where respect and decency are paramount; on the other there is a rarefied segment, formed by mixed interests, cynicism, and low ethical morals, which tries, with its irresponsible and arrogant acts, to lead us down a bruised path at the hands of violence and brutality. It is time for Cubans to decide which side we are on, from which perspective we wish to advocate and act.

Translated by: Boston College CASA

December 5 2012

Campaign for Another Cuba: Video #Cuba

This video is less than 4 minutes long.

A Better Quality Shadow / Lilianne Ruiz

S
Antonio Rodiles, left center, Father Jose Conrado, right center

S

My blog is now 4 days behind, but I was fortunate enough to be present last Monday night for the presentation of the Tolerance Plus award to Father Jose Conrado at the home of Antonio Rodiles, within hours of his release.

The release of Rodiles was undoubtedly the most important event of the week and the most anticipated by his friends. Thinner and with a blackish crescent below his lower left eyelid from the bruise caused by the beating, Rodiles returns to his home like a big brother coming home from the war wearing a star on one of his pockets that announces the triumph of the light.

That night brought the scent of others gone by, songs of warriors from another dimension of time, when Father Conrado read the words he had prepared for the occasion. Martí settling like a nocturnal butterfly over the Monday night, opening the spirit of all those gathered there so as to receive the dew which, if it comes at night, is always the dew brought by the shadow of the Holy Spirit: that of infinite possibilities.

Father Conrado, in turn, presented to Ofelia Acevedo (widow of Osvaldo Payá) the award conferred by several organizations under the umbrella of Nuevo Pais (New Country Project). It was my second time seeing the widow and I approached her, always having to suppress the desire to cry for her loss and ours.

I admired each of the persons congregated there. It felt like I was witnessing a historic evening. Beyond the outcome of our actions, the punishment with which the regime attempts to intimidate and even annihilate,those who dare oppose it, the denial by means of violence of the respect we deserve and the attempt to brush us aside as if we were nothing. Beyond the success or failure, always fleeting in a Universe governed by change, a change that will come to them like a tsunami that will sweep them up and give each the just retribution for his actions, the feeling of being in the right place, being sure that God is with us, was confirmed within me, in a part of my being which makes me stop the fabric of time and feel that we are saved.


November 30 2012

Something in Common / Regina Coyula #Cuba #FreeRodiles

What has cost others in the political world millions and years of publicity, has been accomplished by Cuban State Security with an arbitrary arrest. Antonio Rodiles has become a household name.

Antonio Rodiles has also turned into a dangerous citizen. If the tactic of three weeks was to humiliate him with bland interrogations, the other reading is that the interrogators lacked arguments (or intelligence, or both), and these same interrogators-interrogations have confirmed for citizen Rodiles the need to maintain Estado de Sats (State of Sats) and to push forward with the Campaign for Another Cuba (Por otra Cuba) for the ratification of the UN Human Rights covenants.

If Rodiles’ case wasn’t enough for the near-sightedness of many with regards to the status of our rights and freedoms as citizens, I go to the other extreme, the case of the blog La Joven Cuba (Cuban Youth), created by young professors from the University of Matanzas.

Very quickly, thanks to the absence of censorship in the comments section and the occasional approach to controversial issues of our national reality, the blog enjoyed a notable growth and visibility within the Cuban blogosphere.

It was a surprise that on the crest of the wave, La Joven Cuba issued a warning that many of us, with good reason, interpreted as a farewell, and that many of us, with good reason, interpreted as the effect of pressure to close a space that “had moved on.”

Recently, not only were my suspicions confirmed that the pressures were great and from different sides, but that it got to point where some hothead accused them of “going too far,” but of “going over to the enemy.” Nor did the constant profession of faith that they made when they dared to address some thorny issue, free them from suspicions which they are now trying to clarify.

Unlike the opinions of others, the fate of the blog La Joven Cuba and its creators gives me no pleasure, consistent with something I’ve made clear here and as a commentator on the LJC blog: in the country I imagine, diverse and antagonistic ideological currents will coexist, rather than be enemies, and I will have family and friends who vote for different candidates than mine without it leading to a rupture in our relations.

Both cases: Rodiles and La Joven Cuba, confirm for me the lack of freedom that sickens Cuban society. You know I don’t usually engage in profound analysis, so the rest of the ruminations I leave to you.

November 28 2012

Open Letter to the President of Cuba by the Writer Angel Santiesteban-Prats / Angel Santiesteban

Mr. Raul Castro Ruz,

In recent days a horde of soldiers and officers from “State Security,” most in plainclothes, who are located in Section 21 (headquarters of “Counterintelligence”), attacked a peaceful group, of which I was a part and that was in front of the police station at Acosta and 10 de Octubre Streets, to support the elderly parents of Antonio Rodiles, whom they advised, in their turn, of the destination and “legal” case for which their son was being kept in the cells of that station.

One day earlier, this same horde of criminals, violators of justice and of the most elementary human rights, had assaulted a group of people who peacefully presented themselves at the aforementioned Section 21 together with the attorney Veizant Boloy to inquire about the whereabouts of his wife, the attorney Yaremis Flores, who had been kidnapped from their home by police.

Afterwards they took me to spend several days in the dungeons, where I remained without food and water, the only way I had to protest against the violence committed. They released me without charged thanks to the public outcry that resulted from the playing on the Internet of a video recording showing the brutal manner in which they arrested me.

Our only “crime” is to think immeasurably about the fate of our country, which for more than five decades has been in the throes of a ghostly and exhausting war, which has only served to devastate a nation and to keep you in power.

We have the unquestionable right to choose, to dissent, to gather together, to speak out, to decide what is most necessary for the Cuban nation and its future. We ar its legitimate children, with equal rights, so we demand respect and freedom for those who make up the opposition within the Civil Society in Cuba.

Right now, still arbitrarily detained under an alleged crime of “resistance,’’ is Antonio Rodiles, Director of the Independent Project of State of SA (Estado de Sats) and Coordinator of the Campaign For Another Cuba (Campaña Por Otra Cuba), a citizen initiative born in the deep social and economic crisis we are going through which demands the ratification of the UN Covenants, signed by your Foreign Minister on February 28, 2008 in New York City, and that we consider essential rights for the democratic transformation of the Cuban nation and its entry into the community of nations in the XXI century.

We therefore demand the immediate release, without manipulated charges, of Antonio González Rodiles, and I demand of you the earliest intervention in the ongoing violations in our country that are committed in your name.

Ángel Santistesteban-Prats
Cuban writer

Translator’s note: Between the time Angel released this letter and TranslatingCuba.com translated it, Antonio was released.

November 27 2012

Antonio Rodiles: Violence is The Enemy / Cafe Fuerte #FreeRodiles #Cuba #PorOtraCuba

Antonio Rodiles after being released on 26 November 2012

Translated from an interview by Ivette Leyva Martinez in Cafe Fuerte.

After 19 days of detention in a police station in Havana, Antonio G. Rodiles returned to freedom convinced that the best path to a better Cuba is through the rejection of violence.

Rodiles was released on Monday afternoon after authorities agreed to the request of his lawyer to withdraw the charges of “resistance.” His violent arrest sparked an intense campaign of international solidarity.

The activist was fined 800 Cuban pesos [approximately $30 U.S.]. He will not go to trial.

CF: What do you take away from this experience?

AR: I say to my friends and others with whom I have spoken, that my main experience is that at this moment in Cuba there are a great many people who understand that the country has to change, and that people thinking differently, that people having different views of things, political, ideological, is not a reason for people to hate them or to not respect them but, sadly, there is a group of people who up to now have demonstrated that they have carte blanche to use violence, who are committed to creating situations like this one and I think, what’s more, they are committed to creating even more critical situations.

I think it’s very important that all national and international public opinion support civil society activists because these people are not the preponderance of the people in this country.

Definitely what they did to me was a vulgar beating and it was planned by them ahead of time.

CF: Your followers and the people who have followed your case insisted that there had been violence especially against you. What precisely happened that day of your arrest?

The State Security agent who uses the alias Camilo

AR: An official who has become known for beating and abusing people, whose alias is “Camilo,” crossed Avenue 31 [in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre] with a group of people, crossed directly to beat me. He says “identificaiton” or “ID card,” something like that, but simply to mention it. No one in uniform came, they didn’t identify themselves, and they immediately pounced on me.

When I put out my hands so they wouldn’t grab me, they rained punches down on me. They grabbed me by the neck, and threw me to the ground, there was a group of between 10 and 15 people — people who were there said it was something like 12. And when they threw me on the ground they began to kick me, to punch me, and at that moment someone punched me in the left eye, thank God their knuckle didn’t go into my eyeball, only the edge, this gave me a strong contusion in the eye which even bled. After they picked me up, they took me to the cop car, and against the car they were still hitting me, in the chest, all my ribs, it was a total beating. Thank God I didn’t have any fractures but I certainly could have.

CF: In the dungeon, what else did they do and how did they treat you?

AR: When they took me to the detention center on Acosta Avenue, which is a center for ordinary crimes of the Police Technical Department of Investigations (DTI), on arriving there, there was still this individual Camilo with two other characters he goes around with, who were also trying to provoke me, manhandling me, trying to provoke an incident.

This individual Camilo recorded me with a video camera, everything that was going on, but there appeared a major from the police station itself and these things were stopped until they took me to the cell. And yes, the next day, the people who had charge of me in that place had a completely different attitude. It was one of total respect, both physically as well as my moral integrity. I had medical attention, the doctor was a very kind person, she checked me over completely, looked at my eye, healed the eye. And the officials there, of the police, they behaved with respect.

It’s also incredible how the prisoners identify with people who come there for political reasons and they always call you “political” and the people are in solidarity with you.

CF: Do you think the delay had to do with having you look better before they let you out?

AR: Yes, it’s possible that had some weight, evidently there was a lot of pressure from many different directions, I think. What they were trying, in my opinion, was a short detention, of a few months or something like that… but at first what they did was very rough, they made a circus out of it, including statements they made themselves that didn’t apply to the crime of “resistance” and then at the end they simply didn’t have much of a way to justify what was happening and well, they released me.

CF: The photo that was distributed showing you in the cell, is it real?

AR: As I have mentioned to several people I would have to look at it in detail, and since I got out the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. If it was taken, it was taken while I was sleeping. No one took any photo of me while I was awake, although they took a video on my arrival. But I can tell you, I have to see the photo calmly to be able to analyze it. I saw it from above, if it shows I was hit in the eye, and it was that area, I had a shirt like that, the color of the walls was similar and those things.

CF: What do you think the intentions are between the work of the police and the strategic tasks of the State Security?

AR: That’s hard to know being in a cell, is something that I can not fully distinguish, what I can tell you is that contrasting the treatment and attitude of the people of the State Security, who are clearly unscrupulous people, they strike without any restraint, and the treatment received at the DTI station, it was completely different.

CF: Will you continue Estado de Sats? What are your plans now?

AR: The project of course will continue and I would say even more forecefully. The idea of the project Estado de Sats, of the campaign “For Another Cuba,” has to do with respect for the rights of Cubans, with respect for the human being first and foremost, with the opportunity to debate, to openly discuss, and I think that with this beating this was the main thing they showed me: this way is the way for Cuba to change, and clearly violence is the enemy. Now more than ever I believe that the work requires total dedication.

I send a huge hug [to those who supported me], I’ve always said that in this type of situation those who most need support is the family and my elderly parents feel very very supported by everyone and this gave them tremendous strength.

26 November 2012

Antonio Rodiles Freed! / Yoani Sanchez, Angel Santiesteban #Cuba

9 minutes: Writer Angel Santiesteban reports that Antonio Rodiles has been released, after long days in jail and a fine of 800 Cuban pesos.
13 minutes: Antonio Rodiles was just released!

Translator’s note: 800 Cuban pesos is approximately $30.00 US

Amnesty International Calls for the Release of Antonio Rodiles — Letter Campaign, YOU CAN HELP RIGHT NOW

Antonio and his friends and family in support. His parents are seated in the chairs.

URGENT ACTION

CUBAN MAN TARGETED FOR GOVERNMENT CRITICISM

Government critic Antonio Rodiles has been charged with “resisting authority”. It is believed the charges may be used to punish and prevent his peaceful criticism of Cuban government policies.

A coordinator of a civil society initiative calling on the government to ratify international human rights treaties, Antonio Rodiles, has been charged with “resisting authority” (resistencia). He has been placed in pre-trial detention (prisión provisional), but no date has been set for his trial.

Shortly after the arrest of the independent lawyer and journalist Yaremis Flores on 7 November, Antonio Rodiles, his wife and several other government critics went to the Department of State Security headquarters, know as Section 21 (i) in the neighbourhood of Marianao in Havana, to enquire after her whereabouts. Before they could reach the building they were approached by 20 people, all plain-clothed, as two officials from the Ministry of the Interior looked on. Antonio Rodiles was reportedly knocked to the ground and pinned down by four men. Several of the other activists were also manhandled and were forced into a police vehicle and sent to various police stations around Havana. All were released by 11 November, except Antonio Rodiles.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office (fiscalía) informed Antonio Rodiles’ wife on 14 November that he was being charged with “resisting authority” but a formal charge document has yet to be issued.

Antonio Rodiles is one of the coordinators of Citizen Demand for Another Cuba (Demanda Ciudadana Por Otra Cuba), an initiative calling for Cuba to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the country signed in 2008. Amnesty International believes the charges against him may be being used to punish and prevent his peaceful activities as a government critic and is gathering further information on his case and treatment.

Please write immediately in Spanish or your own language:

  • Calling on the Cuban authorities to release Antonio Rodiles immediately and unconditionally if they are unable to substantiate the charges against him, and to investigate reports that he was ill-treated during his arrest;
  • Calling on them to immediately cease the harassment of all other citizens who peacefully exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association.Please write immediately in Spanish or your own language:
  • Calling on the Cuban authorities to release Antonio Rodiles immediately and unconditionally if they are unable to substantiate the charges against him, and to investigate reports that he was ill-treated during his arrest;
  • Calling on them to immediately cease the harassment of all other citizens who peacefully exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 27 DECEMBER 2012 TO:

Head of State and Government
Raúl Castro Ruz
Presidente de la República de Cuba
La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +41 22 758 9431 (Cuba office in
Geneva); +1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban
Mission to UN)
Email: cuba@un.int (c/o Cuban Mission
to UN)
Salutation: Your Excellency

Attorney General
Dr. Darío Delgado Cura
Fiscal General de la República,
Fiscalía General de la República,
Amistad 552, e/Monte y Estrella,
Centro Habana,
La Habana, Cuba
Salutation: Dear Attorney General

And copies to:
Interior Minister
General Abelardo Coloma Ibarra
Ministro del Interior y Prisiones
Ministerio del Interior,
Plaza de la Revolución,
La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban
Mission to UN)
Email: correominint@mn.mn.co.cu
Salutation: Your Excellency

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country
Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Journalist Yaremis Flores was held for 48 hours before being released without charge. During her detention she and was threatened with charges of “disseminating false information against international peace” (difusión de noticias falsas contra la paz internacional), which carries a prison sentence of one to four years, if she continued her work as a journalist.

Antonio Rodiles has been charged under Article 143 of the Cuban Criminal Code. This covers the offence of resistencia, which refers to resistance to public officials carrying out their duties and is often used to deal with alleged cases of resisting arrest.

Article 143 is broad enough to encompass non-violent forms of resistance; it is sometimes used in ways that unlawfully restrict freedom of expression.

On 20 June, Citizen Demand for Another Cuba handed in a petition with 500 signatures to the National Assembly of People’s Power (Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular) – Cuba’s legislative body located in Havana – calling on the government to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these covenants constitute the International Bill of Rights and are the key international human rights instruments. Since Cuba’s signing of both covenants in 2008, Amnesty International has called on the authorities to ratify them in order to bring them into force and begin their implementation.

Antonio Rodiles is also the coordinator of State of SATS (Estado de SATS), a forum which emerged in July 2010 to encourage debate on social, cultural and political issues.

Name: Antonio Rodiles
Gender : m
UA: 333/12 Index: AMR 25/026/2012 Issue Date: 15 November 2012

 

Who is Antonio Rodiles and What is “State of Sats”? / Yoani Sanchez

Hands clasped in front, deep breaths, the lights come up and the curtain begins to rise. The actor is not yet in front of his audience, but he’s already about to begin to speak, gesticulating in the voice and ways of his character.

He is in a state of “SATS,” a Scandinavian word that refers to that instant just before the theatrical action or the sports performance; the moment of greatest concentration that precedes the artistic explosion, the adrenaline rush of jumping, running. Those four letters, summarizing a turbulent journey from the depths of the self toward extroversion, have been adopted by a project of art and thought born in Havana.

State of SATS (Estado de SATS) was founded in 2010, taking off from an idea of Antonio Rodiles’ and two Cuban emigrants. It emerged as “an initiative of young artists, intellectuals and professionals in search of a better reality,” and quickly gained recognition and popularity. The best known work of SATS is centered on a program of reflection and debate–filmed in Rodiles’ own home–that circulates with great success on Cuba’s alternative information networks.

The most important social actors in Cuba today have passed in front of the SATS microphones, addressing essential issues, long postponed. Many of these guests remain silenced or stigmatized by the official press, while their analysis and points of view expressed in the SATS videos honestly delve into the most serious problems in our society, without discrimination against anyone. State of SATS has also brought the opportunity for other artistic, political and citizens’ projects, narrated in the first person.

But for more than a week now, the chair on that sober and democratic set usually occupied by Antonio Rodiles has remained vacant. He is under arrest by the Cuban political police. On November 8, this 40-year-old with a degree in Physics entered a dungeon from which he has not yet emerged.

Deliberate, analytical, and with a deep concern for everything that occurs in our country, the founder of State of SATS is now experiencing the most sordid side of repression in Cuba: a jail cell. And his main crime doesn’t seem to be the charge of “resisting arrest” alleged by the prosecutor, but rather the illegal act of thinking and opining on an Island where this “right” belongs only to the Party in power. Thus, to dream and debate about a more inclusive and plural country is an egregious crime here, as we all know.

Rodiles’ stay behind bars is the materialization of a premonition, of one of those painful predictions that many of us have while expressing our opinions and encouraging others to do the same. We see it as if one of those fireflies, attracted by the light of civic responsibility in which–sooner or later–Raul Castro’s totalitarianism will incinerate it.

His captors waited for the opportunity to trap him and this happened on a Wednesday afternoon when several activists demanded the release of Yaremis Flores, a lawyer and member of a free legal advice network who had been arrested near her home. Outside the feared Section 21 (the State Security department that monitors and controls regime opponents), a dozen people gathered. But instead of freeing the attorney, a group of agents in plain clothes violently rushed those making the demand and arrested them as well.

To the peaceful gesture they responded with blows, to the civic attitude they contrasted a repressive attitude. As if, with the arrest of Antonio Rodiles they wanted to teach a lesson to all of civil society. A dark autumn with dimensions much smaller than the Black Spring of 2003–but not, for that, any less frightening–it happened in a moment.

On balance, some thirty dissidents were temporarily detained, among them independent journalists, activists and alternative bloggers. I myself was held for about nine hours in a cramped room where three women and one man tried every verbal method to crush my self-esteem. But my mind was a thousand miles away, escaped to some beautiful place where they could not reach me.

I am almost sure that Rodiles is experiencing a similar situation, aggravated by his several days’ stay in the police station. I imagine they have said to him–as they did to me–that he should leave Cuba, get the hell out of here, because this Island “belongs to Fidel,” all the streets, the sidewalks, every tree and facade we know. Getting rid of their critics by pushing them into exile remains their most common strategy against nonconformists.

For sure they are mentioning to this Havanan who studied in Mexico City and taught in Florida the names of all his family members. A subtle method to let him see that they know everyone dear to him, they are aware of all their movements, that something might happen to them while they walk the streets.

If their strategy of interrogations is repeated, like the broken record of arrogance, then I envision how they end some of these questioning sessions. Perhaps they threaten him–as they have so many–with long years of incarceration in a filthy cell, stinking and violent. His police interrogators laugh through their teeth while making sexual, terrifying, allusions.

And it is in these moments when one sees the true face of Fantomas–that terrifying French serial killer–when one experiences first hand the absolute mediocrity under the skin of the executioner; when you reaffirm the idea of why you need to keep trying to change Cuba.

So that these censors of laughter and of freedom, these people who leap quickly from the penal code to the code of the neighborhood bully, cannot continue to lead this country. So that no one will fall–ever again–into the gap of legality where anything can happen.

I know that Antonio Rodiles will be strong, that he is, right now, like the actor who plunges within himself to explode into a freer state, into a state of SATS.

Here is a video from Tracey Eaton, reposted here so you can listen to Antonio describe his work in his own words.

OLPL Hosts ESTADO DE SATS for ANTONIO RODILES / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo


Translator’s note: The collaborators and supports of Antonio Rodiles and Estado de SATS have decided to hold an Estado de SATS every evening at 6:00 PM as long as Antonio is in jail, to demonstrate that the arrest of one man cannot shut down the project. Our apologies for not having a subtitled version — readers are encouraged to contribute to preparing one… the first step is to make a transcript in Spanish and email it to TranslatingCuba – at – gmail.com. THANK YOU! (Or feel free to translate it and subtitle it and send us a link to the subtitled video!)

November 16 2012

Chronicle of an (As Yet) Unannounced Libel / Regina Coyula

Antonio Rodiles, promoter of Estado de SATS and the citizen demand For Another Cuba, has been brought up on charges. The charges are not relevant, they could have been anything. As an emerging figure of civil society who, in a very short time, has managed to structure two outstanding citizen projects, Rodiles has become a very uncomfortable element for the government.

In the Taino (government) Studios they will be preparing a Special Program to air on the Roundtable program after the prime time news. Thanks to the magic of cutting and editing, we will meet a new Rodiles ready to board a transport to attend a meeting with U.S. politicians visiting the country. Thanks to this same technological wizardry, we will see him sitting next to an official from the United States Interests Section at an Estado de SATS even about Cuban-U.S. cultural relations. And thanks to the magic of controlling the media, and in particular the internet, they will present these images as THE proof that Rodiles follows a script written in Washington, and so, by the way, they will also implicate civil society activists.

My neighbor Tomas, my beloved uncle Gerardo, the sister of my friend Rebeca, and my close friend Josefa all belong to the group who will believe the message of this libel. But they underestimate a population whose educational level is around the 12th grade. There will be an abundance of people who will logically ask themselves why Rodiles is being judged for one of these offenses against authority, and not for espionage, collaboration with the enemy, or some other shadowy charge; and they will conclude as I do that it is because they would be too much, because the suggested conspiracy does not exist.

The aim of the documentary will be met with some of the viewers; but unlike other times, everyone has a relative, partner, or an acquaintance at the gym who has on their flashdrive, along with the latest Batman movie, the new season of Big Bang Theory or the final game of the World Series, the recordings of Estado de SATS and objectives of citizen demand for the signing of the UN Covenants.

I frequently remember the phrase of Lincoln (I quote from memory), that you can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

November 16 2012