This article by Luis Felipe Rojas was originally published in ‘Diario de Cuba‘:
Luis Felipe Rojas, along with his 8 year old son, at the door of his home which was vandalized with paint recently at 3 AM.
There once was an excellent writer. A man who could make one fall in love with his words. Until the camera flashes and other lazy compromises left him blind and without a cure. During these days, the Casa de las Americas paid tribute to the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano. They awarded him for his life’s work. It’s not bad that the local censors gratify a person who, amid many praises has also told them a few truths in a sweet way, who without self-restrictions publicly criticized the regime in 2003 for having locked up 75 peaceful dissidents and later, in private, went to apologize.
In an interview published in the Juventud Rebelde (‘Rebel Youth’) newspaper on Sunday, January 22nd, Galeano claims to have written a book in Guatemala when the Squadrons of Death were implanting terror. They would ignite bombs and fire shots all the time, he tells us, adding that the groups placed by the military officials would use tar to paint a cross on the homes of targets, those who would not live to see dawn. “And I would survive”, says Galeano, “which I thought was miraculous…so much s that every time I would do more things, and I decided to write a book”.
The bad thing is that now the same author has forgotten to write another book. If, once upon a time, he was able to narrate the open veins of a continent, he now does not wish to see the open wounds of a country. As he chugged down a cocktail in some clean, luxurious, and tranquil place in Havana, paramilitary mobs were implanting terror with mob repudiation attacks from Pinar del Rio to Guantanamo.
On January 24th, a ‘pots and pans’ protest was carried out by the Resistance and there were sessions of hate in the capital, in Camaguey and in Holguin. Galeano, our homes are also painted with tar before they kill us in those different ways which include public insults, humiliation, beatings, arbitrary arrests, and the hanging of labels such as ‘sell-outs’ and ‘mercenaries’ over our heads! One time, the door of my house was stained with tar, just because I started putting some words together, trying to conciliate what I think with what I say.
At the end of this article, I leave you all with some photos which leave no doubts. They are the homes of dissidents Sara Marta Fonseca Quevedo in Havana; Yoandri Naoki Mir in Banes, Holguin; and the home of the brothers Jorge and Agustin Cervantes in Contramaestre, Santiago de Cuba.
If we truthfully talk in Cuba about a people who are spontaneously indignant against us, then why is the same modus operandi always followed? They attack at dawn and use the same tar, like the star hanging on the doors of Jews during the Holocaust.
With that said, Eduardo Galeano has a good topic for a book he owes us. His book of essays, ‘The Open Veins of Latin America‘, was once included among the top 10 books which every Latin-American Idiot should read. Along with “History will Absolve Me” by Fidel Castro, “The Guerrilla War” by Ernesto Guevara, and 7 others, they make up the Decalogue which every idiot should read without asking uncomfortable questions to leftist dictatorships. I don’t think Galeano knows it, but accommodating intellectual blindness is also a species of complicity which History reveals in due time.
Dissidents Sara Marta Fonseca (right) and Marta Diaz Rondon (left) outside the home of Fonseca in Havana
Gertrudis Ojeda Suarez, dissident and wife of Yoandri Mir, along with their children infront of their home.
The home of brothers Jorge and Agustin Cervantes in Contramaestre, Santiago de Cuba
Translated by Raul G.
