Claudia Cadelo is still waiting for a response from the Provincial Prosecutor to her complaint about the cultural apartheid at the last Young Filmmakers Exhibition. Agent Rodney never showed his face to confirm or deny the sad events of November 2009. And plainclothes police surround the home of Luis Felipe Rojas, without any court order to do so. My complaint to the court for the beating and false arrest I suffered last February has met only silence from the legal institutions… while Dagoberto Valdés is still waiting for an explanation of why they will not let him travel outside of Cuba. We are surrounded by a repression that does not sign papers, show its face, or place a stamp next to each act which violates its own law.
Punishments they do not want to leave any evidence of, detainees who do not appear on the inmate roll of any police station, threats from voices that leave no trace. A culture of intimidation without a written language, imposed by pseudonymous agents who use coercion to avoid leaving evidence. When we demand that they put in writing the phrases they scream at us, far from the cameras and microphones, they tighten their lips and boast about the power that allows them to remain anonymous. If we file a complaint, appealing to the law that they themselves have created, then thirty, sixty, ninety days pass, and nothing. No judge will hear a complaint against the olive-green institution that rules this country.
So vainglorious from the dais, they use words like “courage,” “sacrifice” and “fortitude,” to hide behind their own fear, to avoid putting their names, their faces, and their convictions next to the atrocities they commit.
November 25, 2010
