We Can Only Avoid a Blood Bath in Cuba if the World Stops Looking Away

Yunior García Aguilera at the press conference in Madrid this Thursday. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 18 November 2021 — “The Cuban problem is not called Yunior García, the Cuban problem is called dictatorship.” This is how forceful the playwright and opponent has been from Madrid, where he has held a press conference to relate the “terror” to which he has been subjected by the Cuban Government and which pushed him to leave the island.

“The revolution devoured their children and their grandchildren,” he denounced before recounting in a chronological way how he came to the opposition militancy.

García Aguilera has criticized the government from the left, calling it a “conservative caste” that exploits the workers and uses the wildest capitalism, building hotels in the harshest moments of the pandemic. “The regime became a Goliath that crushes the people, David,” he said at one point, turning on its head the image frequently used by the ruling party — David against Goliath — to refer to its relationship with the United States.

The creator of Archipiélago has compared the Cuban regime with the regime in Chile of Augusto Pinochet and has insisted that the leadership of power lives in a “bourgeois” way while he is a “true revolutionary.”

“It is a macho government that is cruel especially to women, like Carolina Barrero, and Yoani Sánchez, and has made life impossible for a long time,” he also pointed out, advancing a metaphor that he used minutes later: “The regime has become an abusive husband who beats his wife. “

“What exists in Cuba is fascism, what I have experienced in recent days cannot be called something else,” he stressed in reference to the threats and harassment of which he has been targeted. “How can anyone believe that this is on the left?”

The young man does not accept that they are trying to discredit him by calling him a “counterrevolutionary”: “I am a revolutionary because I want to change the dynamics of my country.”

The activist has recounted the harassment to which he was subjected in recent days, at which time, convinced that he would be arrested, he applied for a preemptive visa with which he tried to achieve some type of subsequent negotiation that would help him get out of prison. However, after November 15, when he had been isolated and incommunicado for hours, he was aware that the Government did not intend to arrest him.

“If they kill me they make me a symbol, if they take me to jail they make me a symbol,” he said. It was at that moment that he realized, he says, that the Government was planning to keep him away from society by keeping him locked up in his home, a situation that he could not bear. “They yelled insults at me and I felt like a Jew surrounded by Nazis.”

“If the only thing I have is my voice and they take it from me, then they have won,” said García, who stressed that a “living death” awaited him in Cuba. Illustratively, he has recounted the day he suffered an act of repudiation that included bird corpses on the fence of his house and has used the image as a metaphor. “If we stay in Cuba they will behead us like doves,” he said.

The opponent has repeatedly declared his intention to return after overcoming his anger at recent events. “I need to heal myself from that rage to start the fight again, and that will be when my life and that of my wife are not in danger.”

García Aguilera has repeated that he refuses to request asylum in Spain and has said that Cuba is his country and his mother and son are there, so it does not even cross his mind to stay in Madrid in the long term.

The playwright says: “I have a 90-day visa and during my stay I am going to connect with artists and focus on the movement of Cuban artists here.”

The founder of Archipiélago has revealed that on the 14th, despite having his phone cut off, he found a means of communication through which he got in touch with the cardinal of Havana, whom he asked to pray for him because he was afraid of having rage. “I needed to heal my anger to find my balance. I never wanted to stop being tolerant.”

In the same way, he has confessed to reading “painful things” about him once he was able to access the internet after landing in Spain, and apologizes to his colleagues from Achipiélago for not being able to bear more pressure. “I have to forgive myself for being human and apologize for not being made of stone or bronze,” he added.

García Aguilera has also rejected the US embargo, which he believes acts as an ally of the regime by providing it excuses, and has vindicated the use of dialogue with all political forces if the time comes.

The opponent, who has been moved by talking about his 10-year-old son, has begged the international press to look for the stories of anonymous Cubans who have not had the luck that he has had, being able to leave the island thanks to his visibility.

He has also referenced the names of José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, visible head of the San Isidro Movement, Félix Navarro, of the group of 75, and Maykel Castillo Osorbo.

García Aguilera took the opportunity to close the press conference with a message calling on the international community to help. Thus, he opined that “it is inadmissible for Cuba to have a chair on the UN Human Rights Commission.”

At the same time he rejected, for the umpteenth time, an armed intervention. “A Cuba for all cannot be achieved through violence, but through dialogue. They believe that this fight is won through blows.”

“Let us not get angry,” he asked. “This cannot become a bloodbath. It is the only way we have to get out of this, because we cannot continue to be slaves. But we cannot achieve freedom at that price either,” he said. “A bloodbath can only be avoided if the world stops looking the other way.”

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