Regina Coyula, Havana, 5 October 2018 — State Security has not only forbidden me to travel to Spain (where I should have been on the 25th of September), but “el compañero who attends me” (i.e. my own personal State Security minder) has been promising me since Tuesday the 25th that this prohibition would be lifted, a falsehood that discredits his institution still more, and at the very least calls into question his professionalism.
Contrary to my desire, I have postponed this trip I’d dreamed of. If this were a country of laws and rights, someone would have to compensate me, because I don’t have so much as a citation for stepping on the grass, much less is there a reason to limit my movements, but being a dissenter – and writing about it – makes me an enemy of the State.
All that’s left for me – because I didn’t do the thing they told me not to do – is to lodge a complaint with the Citizenship Service of the Ministry of the Interior and make it known among my friends.
Alcides already expressed it in an epigram: The pacts between bandits and knights do not work and the knight ends up in jail. The bandit will never become a knight but the knight ends up becoming a bandit.
