Rodiles, Targeted by the Regime

Rodiles, Targeted by the Regime / Luis Felipe Rojas
Antonio Rodiles, Luis Felipe Rojas, Translator: Raul G., Yoani Sanchez

Two opposite dynamics have had to change their actions in order to
prevail: government repression and the peaceful opposition. Everyday
Cubans have taken up arms with new technologies, they have supported
each other with the scarce glimmers left behind by the inefficient
Constitution of the Republic, while the oppressors have had to beat them
out on the street without consideration, leaving themselves to be
photographed by anonymous citizens and assimilating the political cost
before international public opinion.

The recent temporary detentions, beatings and interrogations against a
large number of Cuban dissidents have revealed two important aspects
between non-conformist citizens and guarantors of the old Stalinist
power. The victims protested in front of an important department of the
Ministry of the Interior in the Cuban capital. On one hand, it has been
proven that the intensity of the beatings against them is the same,
while the dissidents have combined the most useful of diffusion tools to
spread their message, and their membership has been increasing.

In the scuffle which State Security started this past 10th of November,
there was a well-known writer, various lawyers (three of whom were
detained and taken to dungeons), a scholar, a blogger known to the
entire world, five former political prisoners from the group of the 75
(The Black Spring of 2003), the 2010 Sakharov Award Recipient, various
human rights activists, and Antonio G. Rodiles, the director of the
independently produced TV show Estado de Sats, which was recently
nominated for an Emmy.

In other words, the group of detainees represented a large range of
social disagreement happening right now.

Rodiles…the new repressive wave.

At this point in time, many ask themselves why the aggressions against
Antonio Rodiles. What did the prudent political police officials find in
this restless intellectual? The Citizen Demand for a Another Cuba could
have gone by as just another initiative, but the restrictive claws of
the high ranks of the Military's Counter-Intelligence do not want to
take any more chances.

The Citizens' Demand for Another Cuba, which demands that the government
ratify the covenants it signed at the UN in 2008 and "immediately put
the legal and political guarantees in practice," in accordance with the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has gained the support of diverse
sectors of the dissidence in Cuba. In this manner, with each passing day
more Cubans in and out of the island are supporting it — a detail which
rapidly gains support.

Rodiles, a young intellectual, devised a way to report and shed light on
the most diverse of thoughts and anti-Castro activism through filmed
interviews in his home. The "televised programs" of Estado de Sats are
filmed and edited in a beautiful, yet simple, fashion, without any
technological gadgets and as soon as they are uploaded onto channels for
massive diffusion such as YouTube, they quickly receive much attention
throughout the entire national geography.

Yoani Sánchez… stepping it up to another level.

In the video of the arrest this past 7th of November, one can see
precious details of the brutal repression, and there are two aspects
which should not be forgotten if one wants to know the current Cuban
reality. The first is that, once again, an anonymous citizen filmed
high-ranking soldiers during an operation. The second factor is that the
repressive actions are being accompanied by a face, and in that sense,
the blogger Yoani Sanchez carries a fundamental weight.

Known for her brief writings in the most popular blog in the
Spanish-speaking world, Yoani has been the protagonist of courses and
workshops about the tools of the modern technological world, and of
citizen empowerment.

That brief video of an Immigration official, lacking arguments,
notifying her that she had no Exit Permit for leaving Cuba, went around
the world. Yoani was inaugurating the sessions of cyber-victims,
promoting (nearly online) her outrage. Without a doubt, the strategists
of the Cuban Intelligence fell in the trap of a haughtiness which they
did not need and with which they cast blame on themselves.

The husband of the dissident blogger, journalist Reinaldo Escobar, being
pushed by a mass of braggarts with lynching licenses was another episode
for which he and Yoani supplied the architecture. Escobar challenged a
notable operation and posted himself, like a neighborhood kid on a
central street of the capital, to await his 'opponent' and this time
turned the screw: the accredited media outlets in Havana filmed and
projected the images of these government sponsored repressive acts
against a defenseless citizen to the world. Once again, Yoani Sanchez
was pulling the strings, and moving the chess pieces.

When a well-known independent journalist revealed his ties to the
political police, Cuban television let loose its machinery of propaganda
and aired a series of documentaries titled "Cuba's Reasons," where they
exhibited photos, videos, and other testimonies about the Civic
Resistance. As a response, the author of Generation Y took it to another
level and created an improvised television studio in her house. She
started to publish interviews with members of civil society which she
put in the series known as "Citizen's Reasons," revealing the freshest
of faces and thoughts of those confronting the old military dictatorship.

They seem like small skirmishes, but with her actions Yoani Sanchez has
received the same amount of praise outside of Cuba as slanders published
by former president Fidel Castro, as well as an acceptance among the
important actors of the Cuban opposition, acknowledging that she has
opened a crack, a path paved by legitimate appropriations of civic tools
which have always been there but which the dictatorship has criminalized.

The act of a citizen publishing the face of repression in Cuba from
his/her cell phone arms the arguments against the regime's henchmen. It
is not an invention of the famed blogger, but it was she who put it in
practice, which consecrates her in the history of the Civic Resistance
on the island.

Translated by Raul G.

12 November 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/rodiles-targeted-by-the-regime-luis-felipe-rojas/