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Monday, March 01, 2010

What Do These Signs Indicate?

What Do These Signs Indicate?
By Reinaldo Escobar

In the last days of February 2010, there have been very clear signs that
there is not the slightest intention on the part of the government to
release its stranglehold on political control of the nation. They seem
like isolated events but it would be hard not to see the thread that
connects them.

The most notorious was the death of the prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo,
which occurred on the eve of the second anniversary of General Raul
Castro's assumption of the presidency. To leave someone to die, to allow
them to die, not to do something to prevent the death of a person who is
the exclusive responsibility of a penal establishment is, anywhere in
the world, a very serious thing. As serious, I would say, as letting
patients in a psychiatric hospital die of cold and hunger.

Then when, in a peaceful and civilized way, some people tried to sign
the book of condolences, they were brutally repressed and detained in
police stations. At about the same time the Cuban delegation to the
Spanish Language Academy's Fifth Congress announced they would not
attend because unsuitable people had been invited (by whom they meant
the writers Jorge Edwards and Mario Vargas Llosa and the Cuban blogger
Yoani Sanchez). In the same the newspaper Granma where the note from the
academics appeared, it was announced that Cuba would not participate in
the Central American Games to be held in Puerto Rico, because they had
not complied with all of the demands made by the Cubans.

In the meantime State Security--how do they get anyone to actually work
for this institution?!--visited dozens of citizens to intimidate those
of us who had signed an initiative called "Candidates for Change" whose
purpose is to nominate people who would be inclined to introduce
economic, political and social changes demanded by the opposition and
even by some government sectors.

Finally, February was not yet over and at a motion picture event known
as the Exhibition of Young Filmmakers, they prevented a group of young
people who are filmmakers, but not government addicts, from attending.

Right now other opponents, some in prison and some free, have started
new hunger strikes. In the provinces in the interior of the country they
have not ceased the arbitrary detentions: the Council of State
ombudsman's office cannot cope with all the citizen complaints. The
discontent, the repression, those inseparable brothers at each others'
throats threaten to raise their visibility.

Are all the events mentioned here isolated incidents? Are they
unequivocal signs that the revolution is stronger than ever and that the
construction of socialism is advancing smoothly? Or perhaps they are
indications that the days when no one listened, no one saw, no one
understood what was happening, are coming to an end?

Reinaldo Escobar, an independent journalist since 1989, writes from Cuba
where he was born and continues to live with his wife, Yoani Sanchez,
and their son. He received his degree in Journalism from the University
of Havana in 1971 and subsequently worked for different Cuban
publications. His articles can be found in various European
publications, and in the digital magazines "Cuba Encuentro" and "Contodos."

Yoani Sanchez: Does Zapata's Death Mark a Turning Point for Cuba? (1
March 2010)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/does-zapatas-death-mark-a_b_481048.html

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