14ymedio, Havana, July 20, 2021 — Cuban chess player Leinier Domínguez is the latest figure to speak out against the repression unleashed as a result of the protests on July 11 in more than 40 cities in the country and has called for the release of all detainees.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, he refers in particular to his colleague Arián González, a native of Santa Clara and a resident of Orense, Spain, who arrived on the island at the beginning of July to take care of his mother, a diabetic, and who like so many thousands, joined the demonstrations.
Domínguez is forceful in his rejection of the accusations of the regime that calls the protesters “criminals”: “Those of us who’ve lived part or most of our lives in Cuba know that the reality is that people can no longer take it, and have begun to lose their fear,” he says.
About González, he says: “I know that in addition to being a brilliant and talented chess player, he is an excellent person. Far from being a criminal, he’s right at the other extreme, the good one, that of virtue and decency.”
And about the evangelical pastors he knows, he says: “Criminals? Opportunists? Not even remotely close. They are humble and very decent people, who live mostly serving others and preaching the Gospel. Right now they are in prison and have little children who cry for them, and run to the door al the time hoping that it will be their father returning home.
“I was convinced a long time ago that the Government of Cuba is a macabre thing,” the Grand Master says in his post, in which he recalls that he had never expressed himself politically in public.
“The famous Revolution and its leaders were given a status that is above human beings, almost divine, beyond all ordinary respect,” argues the Grand Master. “This ignores of course that human nature is not good and therefore every government of men will always have problems to a lesser or greater degree. But in any case, the logical consequence of that revolutionary ideology is that no one has the right to think otherwise, and they use the power to literally crush (in the name of the just and infallible revolutionary cause) everything that opposes it.”
For Domínguez, this is the root of the problem and “what has led to the destruction of the country from almost every imaginable point of view.”
The chess player, settled in the United States since 2018, confesses that he was always pessimistic about solutions. “I always thought that we Cubans simply do not protest (with some exceptions of people with great courage). Most either leave (among whom I obviously include myself) or remain silent in Cuba and try to survive. But that changed just a few days ago, when thousands of Cubans practically all over the island got tired of it and took to the streets to demand freedom.”
Translated by Tomás A.
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