Most of our people pretend - Angel Santiesteban

Angel Santiesteban: Most of our people pretend
Posted on August 3, 2015
Interview with Ángel Santiesteban after his conditional release – Cuba 2015.

Havana, Cuba, Augusto César San Martín — The writer Ángel Santiesteban
Prats suffers with every word he writes. "I classify my work as social,"
he declares in an interview given to Cubanet. "It's always about the
environment that surrounds the Cuban," he adds.

And "suffering" is the best word to describe a people numb with fear,
according to the writer who won the Short Story Prize from the National
Union of Artists and Writers in Cuba (UNEAC).

"Most of our people pretend; they hope that this will pass and that they
don't encounter that wall. They don't brave any consesquences they might
receive for confronting the dictatorship," he expressed.

Named by Reporters Without Borders as one of the 100 Information Heroes
in 2014, Santiesteban was released from prison under a cautionary
measure that can reverse his current limited freedom.

The author of several books of short stories, he received the Franz
Kafka Novels of the Drawer Prize for his novel, "The Summer When God Was
Sleeping," where he recounts highlights that mark Cuban society: the
participation of Cubans in the war in Africa, prison and the rafters.

Perhaps this last is a reckoning with his past for the 14 months he
remained a prisoner at the age of 17, accused of conspiracy for saying
goodbye, on the coast, to the family that failed as rafters.

He confessed to Cubanet that he carries fears with him in order to
defend his ideas. They are in his blog, The Children That Nobody Wanted,
and in the fear of dragging his family along when he's repressed by the
police.

He states that the two and one-half years in prison made him grow as a
writer, a human being, and revealed to him the courage of Cuban
freemasonry, to which he belongs.

His memory for the offenses he received has the same power as his
disposition to reconcile with his adversaries. He suggested that I
invite them to a rapprochement, even though conciliation appears difficult.

Disoriented in time like every ex-prisoner, he brings with him a
thousand prison demons that will sleep with him for the rest of his
days. Perhaps he doesn't know that they'll be persistent companions, but
he is convinced that they are there, watching over his spiritual damage
on the orders of those who imprisoned him.

The writer describes death threats by the police, arrests, insults,
psychological damage to his family and imprisonment – a scenario that
could well accommodate negative feelings. But in the hour that we share
in one of the offices of the Great Masonic Temple, Ángel Santiesteban
Prats doesn't show the least hint of rancor.

Published in Cubanet.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Source: Angel Santiesteban: Most of our people pretend | Translating
Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/angel-santiesteban-most-of-our-people-pretend/