Category: Yaiza Santos

I am very afraid that now, after Trump’s victory in the United States, the external constellation around Cuba is not going to be very favorable to the cause.

14ymedio: What can be done from outside to help Cuban democrats, as you said? Because when it comes to creating democracy in Cuba, it is often said that “it is the Cubans who must do it, no one can help them.” Was this the case in your country?

Michnik: The idea that it is the Cubans themselves who must bring democracy to themselves is fair and correct. This was also the case in Poland, because it was the Poles who brought democracy. It is true that in the case of Poland there was a constellation of international forces that was very favorable to that happening. I am very afraid that now, after Trump’s victory in the United States, the external constellation around Cuba is not going to be very favorable to the cause. But then, when the coup d’état was declared in Poland in 1982, the constellation was not very favorable either. We always repeated one thing to ourselves: no matter how long the night is, the day must come. And it will come to Cuba as well.

14ymedio: There is a whole generation that believed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Castroism would also fall, and that did not happen. Of course, at the end of the 1990s, Hugo Chavez took power in Venezuela and came to play the supporting role that the Soviet Union had played until 1989, but before that there was almost a decade in which the dictatorship did not fall. What happened or what should have happened and did not happen? Why was this?

Michnik: I think there is an important factor to take into account. In both Spain and Poland, one of the factors that helped the democratic transition was that within the forces of the dictatorial regime there were reformist sectors, which, although they did not understand democracy in the same way as we do, did help in some way. This happened with the late Franco regime and with the communists in Poland. In the case of Cuba, there was no such sector at any time.

14ymedio: It was also thought that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, “history was over,” as Fukuyama put it: there would be no more conflicts because liberal democracy had prevailed by the majority. This was blown to smithereens first by the Islamist attacks of 9/11, and then by Putin’s attitude of recovering the idea of ​​“Great Russia.” There is a tendency to view the world, with the war in Ukraine, with what is happening in Israel, with pessimism, and from what I read and hear from you, you are an optimist. How do you see it?

Michnik: I’ll start with Fukuyama. Fukuyama’s curse was the title [The End of History and the Last Man], but not the content, because the book is interesting. He’s a smart guy, but the title killed him. It was absolutely clear to me from the beginning that there was not going to be any end of history. Fukuyama’s central idea, that is, that nobody had invented anything better than a liberal democracy, human rights, a market economy and a pluralistic society, is true. Nobody has ever invented anything better. Everything that has been invented since then by Putin, the president of China, the president of Turkey, Erdogan, or Hamas, everything, is much worse.

The optimist has the fuel to keep thinking and above all behaving as if he were a free man even when he lives in a dictatorship.

And I’m going to my optimism. Where do I get the strength to be optimistic? In Poland, the easiest thing in the world is to be a pessimist, because it always happens, so pessimists are not interesting. When you are an optimist, you come and arouse curiosity, especially in women, and they look at you with different eyes: “It’s worth having a relationship with that guy.” The optimist has the fuel to keep thinking and above all to behave as if he were a free man even when he lives in a dictatorship. If someone wants to live like a slave, a pessimist, let him live, that’s his business, I’m not going to do it. The optimist’s idea is that even the thickest net has holes, and you have to put your finger, foot or head in them to open the mesh.

14ymedio: In Praise of Disobedience, in the interview with Maciej Stasiński, speaking of his “anti-Soviet Russophilia,” you have a phrase that seems very pertinent to me: “There are no peoples, nations or countries condemned by nature to live in slavery.” I don’t know if you can expand on that, because it is also a commonplace to say, for example, that the Russians get what they deserve, or the Cubans get what they deserve.

Michnik: Fine, then the Americans have Trump because they deserved it, the French had the Jacobin terror because they deserved it, and much later they had the Vichy Republic because they deserved it, is that right? The Italians had Mussolini and the Germans had Hitler. All peoples and nations have black pages in their history that they prefer to forget. We are here with the mission of reminding these peoples of the black chapters of their history. Russia is going through an absolutely dramatic moment today, but blaming an entire people for having a criminal as their ruler is a rather frivolous diagnosis. In 1989, everything that was happening in the Soviet Union was a hope for the whole world. We must remember that if it had not been for the transformations in the USSR and perestroika in Gorbachev’s time, the peaceful transition in Poland would not have been possible.

It is clear that Putin is a disgrace to the world and a curse to Russia. It is a sad and tragic moment in the history of Russia that we are living through, but there is no enthusiasm for this war in Russia. What there is, first of all, is fear and also pessimism, a collective resignation, and a great exile, of people who do not know what to do with this situation and leave Russia. This, of course, can last for some time yet, but it is clear to me that Putin is leading Russia to a debacle. I cannot predict what form this debacle will take, but my prophecy is that Putin will end up very badly. I do not rule out that they will hang him from a lamppost like Mussolini. This is not so clear right now: for him it is a good moment, because Trump has won.

What I could advise Cuban democrats is, despite these moments of demoralization or despair, not to waste time.

14ymedio: One of the most moving moments of the articles collected in Praise of Disobedience is undoubtedly the Letter from the Prisoner to the Jailer, which you wrote in 1983 to the Minister of the Interior, Czesław Kiszczak, refusing a golden exile in exchange for getting out of prison. It is the letter of a hero. Do you recognize yourself as a hero?

Michnik: I assure you that when people get to know me better, I lose a lot of my charm. The author of the letter to the minister was furious at the offer that had been made to him.

14ymedio: Did you, the opponents of the communist regime, see the light in the midst of despair? You could not read the future, you could not know that a few years later the dictatorship would fall. What did you think in the darkest moments?

Michnik: I can repeat a little of what I told Yoani Sánchez when she was in Warsaw receiving the award from our newspaper: you, Yoani, could repeat the same thing that Fidel Castro said before the Tribunal. Why? Because history will prove you right. In the midst of the pessimism that reigned, I had one thing very clear: that the truth, what was just, what was right was on our side.

14ymedio: The last moment of hope in Cuba was the demonstrations of 11 July 2021, to which the regime reacted with repression. More than 600 people are still in prison, some with long sentences. Later, in November of that year, there was another attempt, also repressed, and after that, there has only been exile and despair. And that is the saddest thing about Cuba, more than the misery and the blackouts: the demoralization. What words of encouragement would you give to Cubans?

Michnik: Things do not happen once and forever. At times when it seems that it is not possible to change the world, we must at least try to understand the world. When I was in prison – I was there many times – I used the time in my cell to read a lot, to try to understand and to write, because I could not go out into the street and try to change the world. What I could advise Cuban democrats to do, despite these moments of demoralization or despair, is to not waste time, and to start thinking about what they want the Cuba of the future to be like.

If the Round Table in Poland had been decided by the exile, it would never have taken place

14ymedio: One of the tools that the Cuban regime continues to use against dissidents is precisely that: exile or prison. Should dissidents be required to resist? Should the existence of heroes be required?

Michnik: It is not legitimate to demand that Cuban democrats stay and reject exile. That is something that each person must decide; this demand cannot be imposed on them. One cannot be a hero at someone else’s expense.

14ymedio: In the Cuban exile community in Miami, the majority position is not to give in on anything, not to make a pact with the regime. They even call a possible agreed-upon arrival of democracy a “fraudulent change.” They fear, of course, that in reality nothing will change, and that perhaps, as in Russia, the military will keep all the economic power. Both the cases of Poland and Spain show that pacts are necessary. How can this help reconciliation?

Michnik: If the Round Table in Poland had been decided by the exiles, it would never have taken place. The starting point for a compromise and a democratic transition has to come from the Cubans in Cuba, not from the exiles. That does not mean that everything that happens in Cuba has to repeat the model of Spain or Poland, but if we want to repeat that model of an agreed, peaceful, democratic transition, the Cubans cannot be subordinated to the dictates of the exiles. The exiles can help, but they cannot replace the Cubans on the Island. That was the case in Poland. In 1989, when we started the Round Table, the Polish democratic exiles supported the negotiation, but they could not replace it, and I think that should be more or less the case in Cuba.

Now, the fear of a “fraudulent transition,” that Cubans will be deceived by the regime, is perfectly natural. Such a transition is an undertaking that requires new, bold and often risky decisions. The paradoxes, traps and twists of a transition are masterfully reflected by Javier Cercas in The Anatomy of a Moment. On the other hand, shaking hands with the executioner, convincing someone to do it, is very difficult, and often impossible, because the victim refuses. For me, the lesson of Chile was very important, where the victims had to accept that they were going to have to live in the country with their jailers and their executioners. If one wants to establish a democracy for one’s country after a dictatorship, there is no other way. Human suffering cannot be an instrument to destroy solutions of agreement and coexistence.

The political police files are a repository of poison, they have done no good to the democratic cause

14ymedio: A very important point when democracy comes to countries is the opening of the political police files. What is done with this? Should we dig or not dig in these files, where one can find that a neighbor was turning one in or that one’s own brother was an informant? Any advice for Cubans in this regard, for the Cuba of the future?

Michnik: There are no easy answers to this. Although archives are an absolutely essential source of historical knowledge, it is knowledge that must be learned. Archives must be read well. If these archives are used as an instrument of political struggle against my adversaries, those who do not agree with me, they become an absolute disgrace. Because these files, ultimately, say much more about their authors, about those who were keeping them, than about the supposed or real informants recruited, or the victims who were being watched by the police. To this day I have not looked at my archive, I have not wanted to look at it.

14ymedio: Why?

Michnik: Because I am convinced that my knowledge of myself and of the communist dictatorship of which we were victims will not be expanded by reading it. It will not provide me with any valuable knowledge, for example, to know that a girl who was my lover or my girlfriend was later an informer or recruited as an informant. It does not provide me with any additional knowledge to read in the files that at some point I had been cowardly or brave. I know what I was like. Moreover, the authors of these archives, of these files, could not tell the truth, or even more: deliberately lie. What am I going to do with that? What is the use? What I do know is that in no country where the police files have been scrutinized – Stasi, in Germany, or any other – in none of them has it served to improve the atmosphere of coexistence and tolerance in society, and in no country has this scrutiny and its results represented an effective shield against threats to democracy. It has not served, I know that for a fact. In fact, the files of the political police are a repository of poison. It is like watching pornography. This matter has not done any good service to the democratic cause in any country. These files were drawn up not to establish the truth, but to oppress, to enslave people.

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But this is not, as it might seem, a memoir – and hence the subtitle – but rather an unclassifiable hybrid, as the author claims he likes to consider himself. “There is a memory gap in the world we live in,” he said at one point during the presentation. De la Nuez elaborated on the same idea, saying that “memory is often made of lies, and this is a book that seeks the truth.”

This is not, as it might seem, a memoir – and hence the subtitle – but rather an unclassifiable hybrid, as the author claims he likes to consider himself

For this purpose he undertook arduous research about his grandfather, his father and his own life in Moscow, where he arrived with his father as a teenager. It is in that part where he hit a wall, Iván de la Nuez emphasized: he wanted to get his file from the psychiatric hospital where his father forcibly confined him at the age of 16 for drug problems, but, in post-Soviet Russia he found that “that file is not open.” In that building, larger than the Kremlin, not only the mentally ill but also dissidents, like the poet Joseph Brodsky himself, were punished.

Both Cubans spoke about the term hypernormalization, from the Russian Alexei Yurchak, to refer to that moment in the USSR before its fall, and what it meant to live the socialist “experiment.” That “life without intimacy or seclusion” left room, however, for secrets, just like those that Ferrer tries to bring to light from his family.

Between Russia and Cuba is also, De la Nuez said, the book “by a translator” – as Ferrer is for authors such as Vasili Grossman, Svetlana Aleksievich, Iván Bunin or María Stepanova – “a book that translates the world for us” and aims for an impact. The experience of the Cuban in exile, like them, cannot be, in the opinion of the art critic, subordinated to the past. “If we spent all the time saying where we came from and denouncing it, we would have no way out.”

Faced with the idea of ​​Cuba that is usually held outside its borders, of a certain multiculturalism and folklore, De la Nuez indicates, in short, that Ferrer is right in finding the true uniqueness of the Island, “which no other country in the world has”: to be “the only Eastern country in the heart of the West.”

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Serene and calm, Amelia Calzadilla differed greatly in that video from that other one, in June 2022, from her home in the municipality of Cerro, a video ignited with indignation and the hope of a new citizen protest in Cuba. Almost a year had passed since the massive demonstrations of 11 July 2021, and unease had settled on the Island after the repression and the open mass exodus via Nicaragua as an escape valve. And there was this mother of three small children, raised in the middle of the Special Period — after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies to Cuba — a woman who graduated in the English Language, beside herself, giving the highest government officials a shout-out for not delivering for the people they had so promised to serve.

She immediately became a target of State Security, which tried to discredit her through the official press. “In the space of 72 hours, with all the discredit campaign they created in my name, I was forced to do a second direct to vindicate my image, because what was happening didn’t make any sense.”

After that, she was summoned to the municipal government of Cerro by the authorities. When leaving the meeting, at that time, she said that they simply promised to solve her problems with the gas supply. Now, in this exile that they did not seek but that they are grateful for, both Amelia Calzadilla and Antonio Díaz, sitting in the dining room of their house, tell what really happened that day. “There they talked about everything except gas,” Antonio begins. “It was, by the book, an intelligence interrogation. There was a representative from the Ministry of Energy and Mines and all the others were military dressed as civilians.”

“They were not careful to show me that they were there, because they needed to intimidate me,” continues Amelia, who, as the daughter of a soldier, attended high school at an Army academy and “recognized the pattern.”

“It was, by the book, an intelligence interrogation. There was a representative from the Ministry of Energy and Mines and all the others were military dressed as civilians”

Before reaching the municipal government building, where they were surprised by the number of foreign journalists stationed in front, they already noticed something strange. In the populous neighborhood where they live, there was not a soul that morning. “They had a police force, the streets were closed,” says Antonio, who also remembers “a truck of special troops and a chain of police officers on the avenue.”

That “conversation” was, Antonio asserts, “to do a psychological profile.” As Cubans who have been subjected to harassment and repression within the Island know, those first approaches pass calmly, and with those mentioned they play at being good police officers. “What you are is confused,” Amelia repeats about what they told her. “Your problem is an ideological confusion, but obviously you are not against the Revolution.” It was, she repeats, “by the book”: “There is never a recognition of the problems that the country has, because it would be succumbing to the idea that socialism does not solve the social problems of a nation.”

As clear as the outlook was, Amelia, however, confesses that she was not prepared for the role that, unintentionally, she already played. “They automatically considered me as an opponent and I didn’t see myself that way, but as a person dissatisfied with the economic and social reality that the country was experiencing,” she says. “Also because of a maturity problem in terms of politics. Nobody starts out like I started, like that, sitting in front of the phone, screaming.”

That intimidation, whatever it was, achieved its objective, and Amelia did not broadcast again for several months. The following October, she was at it again, claiming that authorities were trying to falsely frame her for stealing some neighbors’ electricity. That reason was just the last straw. In the time that she was “silent,” there were what she calls “unfortunate actions,” which were “nothing in particular” but which “could not be coincidences.”

During the time she was “silent,” there were what she calls “unfortunate actions,” which were “nothing in particular” but which “could not be coincidences”

After the interrogation in Cerro’s government, the entire family fell ill with Covid-19. The couple is convinced that among those who attended the meeting, there were people with the virus there on purpose. As a result, Amelia developed pneumonia. Later, in a neighborhood where there were no cases of dengue, she and two children suffered from it. Amelia, with the hemorrhagic variant, which left her with an inflamed liver for half a year. “Every time there was a government visit, we got sick,” says Antonio. “And the last thing was the contamination of the cistern water,” continues Amelia, who saw how the children came down with gastroenteritis. “While I was recovering from hepatitis, the electric company workers came to the house to accuse me of stealing some neighbors’ electricity and I said: this is enough.”

In that direct message in which she resumed the complaints, she also said that they were trying to hinder her from traveling to the Spanish city of Salamanca, to pursue a master’s degree in translation for which she had obtained a scholarship. “That was one of the unfortunate events that I think they had something to do with,” Amelia narrates. She had been examined for those studies before taking any direct action.

A week after publishing her first video, the results were published: she had been selected. As she presented all the documentation, the problems arose: “First, the Spanish Consulate did not send me credentials to be able to apply for the visa, it took about two months, and when I received the credentials to go to the visa appointment, with all the paperwork, family roots, the letter from the university, everything, they denied my visa. Very strange.”

Likewise, for both Antonio and her, job doors were closing. “I had the possibility of continuing to work with individuals, but neither of us were hired, both of us being professionals – he has a degree in Economics, I as a translator. No one wanted to give us work because they were very afraid of pointing themselves out to the Security of the State.” They said it explicitly, hse specifies: “We prefer to give you money directly than to give you work, because they already came to knock on our door and ask us why you come here so much, why you come here.”

At this point, Amelia becomes indignant again: “If they really did surveillance work, they would know that people are involved in nothing, that they are not associated with anything, that they are simply disenchanted, that they are disappointed, that they can’t take it anymore, that there comes a time when they say this is unsustainable and it must be changed, inevitably.”

  If they really did surveillance work, they would know that people are involved in nothing, that they are not associated with anything, that they are simply disenchanted, that they are disappointed, that they can’t take it anymore

At the same time, the young mother began to be strongly attacked by the most strident part of the exile in Miami, especially the influencer Alexander Otaola, she still does not know why. “Criticism is very affecting when it is unfair,” she says sincerely. “There were opponents who attacked me saying I had to take a position, saying either you are with me or you are against me,” which, in her opinion, “is a mistake.” However, it was not her intention to confront the activist. “It was unintentional. It wasn’t my intention to attack him, but well, it’s over. He had messed with me on other occasions. And look, if I wasn’t going to put up with Díaz-Canel’s nonsense, who could put me behind bars, am I going to put up with Otaola?”

She wasn’t willing to shut up. Direct to direct, her position “was already beginning to be a little clearer.” And she was losing her fear, until she published a video in which she expressed solidarity with Nelva Ortega, wife of José Daniel Ferrer, and asked for proof of life of the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, imprisoned since the 11J protests.

“I didn’t even know about the situation of political prisoners the day I made my first statement,” she confesses. “I began to learn about the human rights problems associated with ideology within Cuba later.”

And she explains: “The same social and economic climate prevents you from being able to connect with another type of mentality, from being able to analyze all the legal problems we have, the problems of human rights, freedoms, commercial freedom. You can’t think about it because you are all time thinking ’I have to buy chicken, I have to buy chicken, I have to buy chicken’. This is also a mechanism to entertain yourself. That absolute misery is a mechanism to keep you in control, because you are in the basics. You can’t think beyond it.”

  “That absolute misery is a mechanism to keep you in check, because you are in the basics. You can’t think beyond it”

Weren’t there people who approached Calzadilla after her first broadcasts to join some opposition cause? “There were people, yes, but in a personal capacity, not organizations,” she responds. “My private mailbox was jammed for a long time, with messages of all kinds. From people who wanted to help me, send me money. I immediately refused to let anyone give me a peso because I didn’t know where that money came from. Furthermore, I wasn’t asking for money. It was a message that I also tried to convey to the people of Cuba: the problem of our society is not related to the purchasing power.”

Before that video showing solidarity with Nelva Tamayo, she says, she was surprised that they never went looking for her: “I think it was a very intelligent game. On the one hand, to show the opponents that I could be playing at two ends and that it discredited me in front of the opposition. On the other hand, it had the objective of disproving the image that they attack those who oppose them.”

But Ferrer is a huge issue for the regime, which put an end to Amelia Calzadilla. They didn’t stop her at first, but they stopped Antonio on the street for an alleged irregularity with the car he was driving. While Major Luis was holding him in the fourth unit of Cerro, she, who had already warned online that she was going to look for her husband, was detained two blocks from her house. “They throw me into the boat like that, literally, a patrol car, an operation, wow, of Osama bin Laden.” Amelia takes it with humor, but her story does not hide the violence.

“When they detained me, my mother insisted on going with me. There were many stories of people who said that relatives disappeared and that terrified her. In fact, it was that in my case. Everyone knew that I was going to the fourth unit from Cerro, but my family called all the police stations, all of them, and in all of them they told them that they had no arrest report on me. They took me to a unit as far away as they could find. If they could have to take me to Matanzas, they would have taken me there. They spent the world’s fuel and more going around all over Havana.”

I wasn’t asking for money. It was a message that I also tried to convey to the people of Cuba: the problem of our society is not related to the purchasing power

After all this, her father showed up at the unit where Antonio was. The old soldier, “an 82-year-old oak,” as Amelia describes him, was told the truth, although only half: “She is detained. We had to move her from here because she thought of posting on social media that she was already coming over here.” Nothing to do with what had happened because she never arrived at the Cerro unit.

Where they were holding her, they locked her in a cell while they entertained her mother. “They didn’t tell me anything, neither the reason for which I was detained, nor if I was arrested. Of course, they couldn’t put me in jail because they didn’t have an arrest warrant against me. They put me in a very unpleasant cell, because it was a corridor that had cells with men. In my cell I was alone, but in front of me I had a man who was masturbating. You always have that thing that it can’t be coincidence.”

When it seemed like enough confinement, they took her to an office, where they began what they do not call a conversation or an interrogation, but rather an “intimidation process.”

She tried to maintain a phlegmatic attitude, but inside she was sick. “I told myself, my God, if I don’t get out of here today, what are they going to say to my children? If I end up in prison, I’m going to scar my children for life, because in Cuba the prisoner’s family is banned. “How to demand that they be good human beings and at the same time explain that because I am a good human being I am imprisoned. Those things go through one’s mind.”

 In my cell I was alone, but in front of me was a man who was masturbating. You always have that thing that cannot be coincidental

In the office, with all the detours and circumlocutions to which they are prone, they gave her to understand that with her public speech she was “calling on people for a national strike,” which could imply a crime of “inciting to commit a crime.” That is, if she continued with her broadcasts, she would end up in prison. Before leaving, they forced her to sign a document putting in her own handwriting what she agreed to.

“I didn’t want to be sarcastic, but that’s what language is for. I told them that I was committed to maintaining the same social behavior that I had had all my life. They are very frustrated by ambiguity. I know that it kills them, because it is the room that intelligence gives you to make fun of them, and that really upsets them.”

They let her out at six in the afternoon and took her home. “In a military car. I imagine that they also did it with the objective of sowing doubt in others about who I worked for. After that came a sequence of calls that supposedly had the objective of demonstrating that they were fully prepared to help me with any problem I had, but it was something very grotesque, because I knew it was a mechanism of control, of siege. And that’s how it was until I left.”

The arrest was the point of no return. “Somehow, you start to feel a little small and you start to feel a bit alone too. You get disappointed, because you feel like only you are putting yourself at risk.”

Antonio had just obtained Spanish nationality under the new Democratic Memory Law and the whole family began to pressure them to leave, especially for the children. “Before, with the issue that I couldn’t work, we had thought about it, but I didn’t want to leave Cuba. In fact, I have suffered a lot leaving Cuba, a lot. There are days when I get up, look at the ceiling and say “What am I doing here? It gives me back the certainty that I had to emigrate to see my daughters, who love this country, who are happy.”

At the door of the children’s new school, a large enclosure, with several doors and buildings, and music to encourage the children to leave, another Cuban father approaches to greet them. And if they came to this town, small and far from the center of the capital, surrounded by vineyards and olive trees, with a Renaissance church, it was because of a compatriot friend of Antonio’s, who had been living here for more than ten years. As usually happens with migratory movements, there is a large community of citizens of the Island in the place. “When I arrived here, to my surprise, the Cubans at school knew me from the networks,” Amelia says with a smile. “They saw me and immediately told me ’mija, but what are you doing here, we’re going to help you’, and they helped me with everything, to get settled.”

There are things about Spain that she is “perplexed” about, such as the school her children, almost 10, 7 and 4 years old, go to. “It is a public school where there is no blackmail for being public,” she explains, because in her country “there is a process of imposing ideology.” In this regard, she gives a beautiful example, the day that her first-born daughter, studying history, asked her: “But mami, who came to Cuba first, Christopher Columbus or Fidel Castro?”

Safety is another of the fundamental elements why she is glad to have left. She comments on it happily while a local agent walks in front of her: “The Police here are something else. Besides, for me they are selected in a modeling casting call.” And Christmas! “It’s so beautiful how people live it and decorate everything, regardless of whether they believe or not.”

“I think that they still cannot understand that this is for life, that it is not just a trip, because sometimes they say ’oh, mami, this is something to take with me to my room in Cuba’.”

After school, on the days that Antonio is free from work – he is a clerk at a tobacco and cigarette store in the center of Madrid – the five of them go to the park before eating. Amelia sees them frolicking: “I think they still can’t understand that this is for life, that it’s not just a trip, because sometimes they say ’oh, mommy, I’ll take this to my room in Cuba’.”

It is a beautiful day. “The day I arrived there was a sun like that, so beautiful, but at the same time it was cold,” and she repeats what she told her mother on the phone: “Mami, in Spain the sun is a yellow light bulb: it shines but warmth, it warms up, nothing.” When Amelia talks about her mother, her expression saddens. “I miss her a lot and she misses me too. I am an only child and my mother is a very devoted mother. It’s not that I don’t have the possibility of bringing her, it’s that at the moment I can’t, including because of the economic factor.”

I think on many occasions that despite any intellectual capacity I may have, I am going to end up cleaning floors and windows. They make you doubt your ability”

Amelia, in all seriousness, speaks of the psychological damage that a dictatorship causes, a damage that “few people talk about, which is even more cruel than any other type of damage that is done to you,” and which is responsible for an almost anthropological insecurity.

“It has affected me. I am a professional, in a non-English speaking country, where I have opportunities, because not many people speak English, and even so, it is difficult for me to believe that I can function in this society as a professional. I think on many occasions that despite any intellectual capacity I may have, I am going to end up cleaning floors and windows. They make you doubt your ability. And then they keep you ignorant in so many ways, that going out into the world is like walking for the first time, alone. That’s how I feel, like I’m learning to walk alone.”

Amelia, in all seriousness, speaks of the psychological damage that a dictatorship causes, a damage that “few people talk about, which is even more cruel than any other type of damage that is done to you”, and which is responsible for an almost anthropological insecurity. “It has affected me. I am a professional, in a non-English speaking country, where I have opportunities, because not many people speak English, and even so, it is difficult for me to believe that I can function in this society as a professional. I think on many occasions that despite any intellectual capacity I may have, I am going to end up cleaning floors and windows. They make you doubt your ability. And then they keep you ignorant in so many ways, that going out into the world is like walking alone for the first time. That’s how I feel, like I’m learning to walk alone.

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‘Bobby’, as Roberto insisted on being called, described Fulgencio Batista as an extraordinary father who breached the constitutional mandate and that mistake “took a heavy toll,” but even worse was releasing Fidel Castro from jail in 1955, acquitting him, months after the assault on the Moncada Barracks.

Born in New York, Roberto Batista returned to that same city at the age of 11, together with his younger brother Carlos Manuel, two days before los barbudos [the bearded ones] entered Havana, and he practiced there for many years as a lawyer.

In his book, he vividly describes the shock of exile and of having that surname. That experience was for him, he repeated insistently, “a wound that never healed and will remain there until I die.”

There will be a wake for him this Thursday from 7:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. in the funeral home of the San Isidro Cemetery in Madrid. He will be buried there, in the family pantheon, where the remains of his parents and his brother Carlos Manuel lie.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Yaiza Santos. One of the most remarkable things about the first volume, which coincides precisely with first year after the triumph of the Revolution, are those historical asides at the end of each chapter. Seeing them together is impressive: the restoration of the death penalty, the executions, the abolition of the separation of powers, the nationalizations… It was all very obvious from the beginning and yet many were enthralled with Cuban Revolution, a phenomenon that to some extent exists to this day. How do you explain this?

Jorge Luis Camacho. Frankly, I have no explanation for this. I think one of the things driving it, for example, is that some Europeans have a kind of love-hate relationship with the United States for reasons that I don’t quite understand but which are real. But I don’t think that explains the whole phenomenon. I like to say that communism, or the communist left, is a non-theistic religion. The left is waiting for a messiah and every time one comes along, they say, “Ah, this is the one.” First it was Lenin, then Stalin, followed by Mao, then Fidel came, then Chavez… then they all failed.

But the messianic left doesn’t care. They will love the next one just the same. I think it has something to do with Christianity. Even though very few communist leftists would believe me if I said they were religious, they are. Look at what just happened in Peru. It’s surprising that, just at the moment when Venezuela is a disaster, when Cuba is a disaster, people voted for a communist, who is open about it. And in six months we will see everything that he has destroyed.

Look at what just happened in Peru. It’s surprising that, just at the moment when Venezuela is a disaster, when Cuba is a disaster, people voted for communist.

Yaiza Santos. It seems metaphorical that you have a character in the book named Libertad [meaning liberty, or freedom], for Libertad Lamarque, who suffers from cancer.

Jorge Luis Camacho. Libertad’s cancer is the cancer of liberty in Cuba, with Batista and the rest. Even though Cuba had a constitution that outlawed capital punishment, it still had a lot of problems. Libertad’s illness worsens as liberty in Cuba gradually disappears.

Yaiza Santos. I was referring to a broader metaphor. Freedom is very fragile and contains within it a dark well capable of generating its own destruction. There is another character named Cohen, who says: “It is typical for autocracies to promise things that society has not achieved by itself, and only tyrannies can create the illusion of obtaining them.”

Jorge Luis Camacho. It’s not an accident that his name is Cohen. Getting back to Libertad and what she represents, if you notice in the first scene there is a crazy lady who throws herself in front of the car and says, “Liberty, liberty, don’t abandon me!” This could also be the response of uneducated people, who don’t have a compass and who throw themselves at anything, as has now happened now with the Peruvians.

Yaiza Santos. Part I manages to be suspenseful even though we know how it ends. What does the reader find in the other two volumes?

Jorge Luis Camacho. Part II takes place during the 1960s, after the new regime comes to power. That’s why it’s called Tempo Marziale. All three parts have Italian titles because they’re musical. And it’s called Cuban Symphony because it’s also a story about frustration.

Julio had wanted to be a musician but couldn’t because he’s the only one left in the family capable of getting its sugar refinery back. What’s beautiful in the end is that his son, who is a musician, wrote a short symphony when was 12 years old for his father and uncle when they were at Playa Girón, at the Bay of Pigs. [By the way] it’s not not called that because it has something to do with pigs; it’s because there are some very cute little tricolor fish that live in those waters. His son becomes a professional musician, expands the symphony and performs it on the day Julio is giving a speech at the family’s rebuilt factory, which obviously represents the country.

I don’t describe how freedom comes about but rather imply that it happens due to a social disaster that everyone could foresee. What’s curious is that the book was published in June and, less than a month later, the protests of July 11 occurred. The main character in my story is called Julio [July] and the chant that was repeated most often during those protests — “Libertad” — is the name of his mother. I feel like a magician [laughs].

If I made that joke, I’d end up prison for ten years. Now he’s saying this in front of me because we’re all together

Yaiza Santos. How did you leave Cuba for France? Had you already rejected the Revolution or did that come later?

Jorge Luis Camacho. I was always against the Revolution. I never had any appreciation for that system, despite the fact that I was raised by my older sister — my mother, like Julio’s, died of cancer when I was six years old — whose husband admired the Revolution and even became a party member. I had already been expelled from the Higher Institute of the Arts in Havana, allegedly for political reasons.

I was desperate to get off that island, which to me seemed like a disaster ruled by a demon. I didn’t believe anything he said. I have an anecdote about that. I was participating in a series sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When I got to the theater, I realized it was an event in honor of the army. The theater looked like a field of beans, everyone dressed in green, a horror.

Raul Castro was there and I heard him telling counterrevolutionary stories about how he explained to his mother what communism was. He told her, “Mama, we now own a banana orchard because this is socialism. When we no longer own a banana orchard, that will be communism.”

I thought, “These people must be kidding me. And taking my life away.” I thought that if I made a joke, I’d end up prison for ten years. Now he’s saying this in front of me because we’re all together, eating things that I had never seen in my life except in the movies. That confirmed my intuitions. I left Cuba with a lot of… I don’t like to use the word hate but, yes, I hated them.

I also left for love. I was hopelessly in love with a woman who was half French. She was the daughter of an impoverished baroness who had become a dancer at the Moulin Rouge and had married a Cuban dancer.

Yaiza Santos. How is your relationship with other Cubans living in Paris? Do you feel part of the Cuban exile community in France?

Jorge Luis Camacho. Yes and no. Because I lived and work as though I were French. I am clearly the only founder of the French screenwriter’s guild whose native language is not French. I knew Cubans in France but I was not actively involved in that world. I was also not very politically active at that time.

French governments, both of the left and the right, have a kind of admiration, no matter how ridiculous that might seem, for Fidel Castro.

Yaiza Santos. What attitudes have you found among the French towards Cuba?

Jorge Luis Camacho. Well, I’ve known some French people who were as anti-Castro as I, to the point that I thought that they were working for the French secret service. For the most part, French governments of both the left and the right have a kind of admiration, no matter how ridiculous that might seem, for Fidel Castro.

It’s surprising but right here in Paris, in the gay district, you see guys wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. Here was a homophobe, an absolute murderer, and yet there are people who believe he’s a symbol of freedom. France, both the people and the government, is not anti-Castro. Fidel Castro was welcomed with great fanfare by Mitterrand. Then Hollande welcomed the lesser but no less diabolical tyrant Raul, and many intellectuals attended the banquet that the president gave for the dictator.

Yaiza Santos. Would you go back to Cuba?

Today, for being lucky enough to have written this novel at this historic, consequential moment — because we’re all waiting to see liberty fully realized — I think so. I think I can play a role. I don’t know what but I will have a roll to play. Even though I have an eighteen-year-old son in France whom I don’t want to be away from, going to Cuba, acting on Cuban television or in Cuban movies… all these are things I dream about. Working for Cuba from France for a new Cuban government would also be something I’d like very much to do. Of course, all of us who live overseas think we have a role to play. I think it’s up to Cuba to decide whether to give us that role or not.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.