To report what hurts us, to write about what we have encountered, touched, suffered, transcends the journalistic experience to become a living testimony. The distance between articles about a man on a hunger strike and the act of feeling his ribs protruding from his sides, is an abyss. Thus, no interview can reproduce the tear filled eyes of Clara, Guillermo Fariñas’ wife, while she tells me that for their daughter her father has a stomach illness and so grows thinner every day. Not even a long report could manage to describe the panic induced by the camera which, a hundred yards from the home of this Villa Claran, observes and films everyone who approaches number 615A Calle Alemán.

To accumulate paragraphs, compile quotes and show recordings, fails to convey the odor of the emergency room where Fariñas was moved yesterday. My guilt for having come too late to beg him to eat again, to persuade him to avoid irreversible damage to his health, is unbearable. On the drive there I wove together some phrases to convince him not to carry on to the end, but before coming into the city a text message confirmed he was hospitalized. I would have said to him, “You have already accomplished it, you have helped to remove their mask,” but instead of this I had to offer words of consolation to his family, sitting in his absence in that room in the humble neighborhood of La Chirusa.

Why have they brought us to this point? How can they close all the paths of dialog, debate, healthy dissent and necessary criticism? When this kind of protest, a protest of empty stomachs, happens in a country we have to question whether they have left citizens any other way to show their lack of consent. Fariñas knows they will never give him one minute on the radio, that his voice cannot rise up, without penalty, in a public place. Refusing to eat was the way he found to show the desperation and despair of living under a system that gags and masks his most important “conquests.”

Coco cannot die. Because in the long funeral procession that is taking Orlando Zapata Tamayo, our voice and the rights of citizens which they killed long ago… there is no room for one more death.

Along with Brazilian soap operas, documentaries pirated from the Discovery Channel, and the boring Round Table talk show, there is another form of television reporting that emulates the saga of “Big Brother.” On our little screen we see citizens filmed by hidden cameras and get a view of the emails in their electronic in-boxes, without any of this having been ordered by a judge. As if we lived in a glass house overseen by the State’s severe eye, even the telephone company records the conversations of its clients and broadcasts them to eleven million shocked viewers.

The final form of this public dissection is to air the declarations of doctors who violate the privacy of what is said in a consultation to reveal the details of a medical case, an act as serious as that of the priest who betrays the secrets of the confessional. Photos of the insides of the homes and even the refrigerators of those who have dared to contravene official opinion emerge, while the paparazzi and political police are fused into a single character very close to a voyeur. It would not surprise me that some dossier – waiting to be brought to light – displays the nude body of a non-conformist, as if being naked were irrefutable proof of his “badness.”

Images taken out of context, edited phrases, and unfavorable angles meant to generate aversion in public opinion, are some of the techniques around which these TV reports are built. In none of them is the “victim” interviewed, which of course prevents the run-of-the-mill viewer from finding out they have critical opinions in common. Unfortunately for the crude producers of this kind of reality show, the technology in the hands of citizens has started to make the walls around our lives transparent as well. Having been so long observed, we now see that there is hole we can look through to the other side of the fence.

I watch my fellow citizens go to the bodega like automatons, meekly vegetate at work and cast hopeless ballots at the polls. Their lives pass by while they shop for ever shrinking bread rations, collect their symbolic wages which don’t stretch far enough for even a bad life, and raise their hands at the meetings to nominate candidates. None of those chosen in the current electoral process will manage to solve the daily problems that weigh upon life in Cuba. Of the candidates my fellow citizens know almost nothing, barely recognizing their photos or their biographies, which are stuffed with “accomplishments” and the almost universal statement that they are “of humble origin.” Yet not a single word is devoted to their programs or intentions once they assume their new post.

Curiously almost everyone who comes to be a district delegate is a militant of the Cuban Communist Party and puts their party discipline ahead of their obligations to the voters. They will not represent us against the government, nor be our voice projected to the institutions, but rather will serve as heralds for the bad news coming down from above, transmission channels for regulations and directives decided by a few. In the more than thirty years of their existence, these representatives of the People’s Power have not managed to efficiently collect the garbage, coax quality products from the bakeries, or ensure that the sewers are not everywhere overflowing. Nor do they embody the heterogeneity of opinions in our society. They have come to their positions more through proven loyalty than by their ability to manage.

Tonight is the meeting to nominate candidates for the area of concrete blocks where I live. The citation arrived a couple of days ago, meanwhile on TV they are calling for us to choose the best and most capable. I have not one iota of faith, however, in a mechanism that has proven itself unworkable and discriminatory. I would like to raise my hand for the neighbor of strong words and concrete projects who lives across from me, but there are orders to forestall any nomination of a “dissident,” including those who may only seem inclined toward change. It is highly likely that the nomination will go to the same delegate who has, for more than ten years, promised us solutions, knowing full well it is not in his hands to deliver them. He is the comfortable candidate of these useless elections, while we are mere figurines who must raise our hands or mark our ballots.

The lady raises the stamp and brings it near the paper, then finally sets it off to the side without having stamped your permission to leave.  “You are not authorized to travel,” she says, and the whole office hears the phrase that condemns you to remain confined on this Island.  At other tables the applicants look at their feet to avoid meeting your eyes looking into theirs, searching for solidarity. The soldiers passing by scrutinize you from above with the reproach of those who think, “She must have done something, not to be allowed to leave.”

Until this last minute you thought that maybe the archives of the Ministry of the Interior would not be too well organized and your history of nonconformity would not come to light. You often imagined that a secretary would go for pizza at the exact moment she checked your file and the rumblings of her stomach would make her put it, as quickly as possible, in the pile of those approved. You know well the effect that melted cheese and tomato sauce can cause in a bureaucrat who looks at her watch at three in the afternoon.

But the option of state negligence didn’t work this time. They uncovered your case from the moment you presented the first papers for a trip south. Some boss with the rank of lieutenant colonel would have smiled on seeing you were finally in his hands. After you believed you could act like a free man, speaking your mind loudly and publishing articles without a pseudonym, you had reached the point where you would feel all the walls, all the bars, all the locks.

You have no criminal record, have never been found guilty by a court, and your most frequent offenses consist of buying cheese or milk on the black market. Nevertheless you have just verified that you are suffering a punishment. Your sentence is to remain behind the bars of this archipelago, confined by this band of sea which some in their naïveté consider a bridge and not the uncrossable moat it really is. Nobody will let you out because you are a prisoner with a number stuck to your back, even though you think you are wearing the blouse you took from the closet this morning. You are in the dungeon of the “immobilized pilgrims,” in the cell of those forced to stay.

Through the window a voice berates you for not having shut up, faked it a little… worn the mask to be able to travel. You will not see the light until the entire prison is torn down.

Life never returns to normal, it does not go back to that time before the tragedy that now – illusorily – we evoke as a period of calm. I open my datebook, try to resume my life, the blog, the Twitter messages… but nothing comes out. These last days have been too intense. The face of Reina Tamayo, in the shadows in front of the morgue where she prepared and dressed her son for his longest journey, is the only thing in my mind. Then the images of Wednesday piled on: arrests, beatings, violence, a jail cell with the stink of urine that adjoined another where Eugenio Leal and Ricardo Santiago demanded their rights.  The rest of the time I continue on like a mannequin, looking without seeing, furiously typing.

And so, there is no one who writes a coherent and restrained line. I so want to scream, but February 24 left me hoarse.

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This afternoon, hours after the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Reinaldo and I were able to approach the Department of Legal Medicine, where autopsies are performed, in Boyeros Street.

A cordon of men from State Security were watching the place, but we managed to approach Reina, the mother of the deceased, and ask her the questions in the recording posted here.

Pain, indignation in our case… sadness and fortitude in hers.  Here is the recording, amateur and in very low light, but the heartbreaking testimony of an anguished mother.

English transcript of Yoani Sanchez video interview of Reina Tamayo, mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo

Yoani Sanchez: We are here to express our condolences. We would like to know at what time did he pass away, what do you know about his last minutes, what are your feelings right now, and what is going to happen after he is released by the coroner?

Reina Luisa Tamayo Dangier: I am Reina Luisa Tamayo Dangier, the mother of prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo who was interned in the hospital of the Habana del Este Prison. Last night he was moved to the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital where he passed away at 3:00 PM.

I can tell you I feel a horrible pain, but I am holding on, enduring through this pain. I was able to be at his side until he passed away and now hope to have the courage to dress my son Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

We will leave for Banes, Holguin Province, Embarcadero road, house number six, where we will hold the wake before our family altar, at my home, for as long as required.

I want to tell the world about my pain. I think my son’s death was a premeditated murder. My son was tortured throughout his incarceration. His plight has brought me great pain and has been excruciating for the entire family. Even, as he was transferred to this prison, he was first held in Camaguey without drinking water for 18 days. My son dies after an 86-day hunger strike. He is another Pedro Boitel for Cuba. [Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 during a hunger strike while serving a 10-year prison sentence in Cuba]

In the midst of deep pain, I call on the world to demand the freedom of the other prisoners and brothers unfairly sentenced so that what happened to my boy, my second child, who leaves behind no physical legacy, no child or wife, does not happen again. Thank you!

Below is the webcast of the Euro-Latin America Summit by Pablo de Laiglesia, Spain’s Secretary of State for Latin America.

This is an event organized by the Society of the West Indies for the Latin American blogosphere.

Here is the video. Below are links for discussion, and a text transcript (in Spanish).

For those readers who want to comment here is the link:

http://www.lasindias.coop/presentacion-de-la-cumbre-eurolatinoamericana-a-la-blogsfera-latinoamericana/#respond

A transcript can be seen here.

http://www.lasindias.coop/presentacion-de-la-cumbre-eurolatinoamericana-a-la-blogsfera-latinoamericana/

You could have been a prostitute selling her favors, or equally an interrogator for State Security.  The needs were so many, that to exchange your body for a bottle of shampoo or some soaps, was always a possibility.  Only your figure was too frail for the trade and your skin so pale, for those foreigners who come looking for the cinnamon tone of the tourist ads.  You lacked a “certain something” to carry off the tight-fitting garments of exchanging sex for money, of strutting around outside some hotel to get your family out of a tight spot.

You were on the point of donning a uniform when, on finishing the ninth grade, you thought of going to the Camilo Cienfuegos military school, to escape from a house with  too many prohibitions and too much misery. You thought you were ready to become a pursed lipped soldier with access to those little privileges you saw the members of the Army and the Interior Ministry enjoying.  The timely advice of a friend made you abandon the shouts of “Ah-ten-SHUN!” and the constant rattle of a machine gun.  But if, on that afternoon in 1990, you had not heard the query, “What would you do with yourself, wedged between orders and trenches?” perhaps now you would be intimidating someone in a closed room at Villa Marista, where they take the political prisoners.

You could have been a rafter, a suicide, a government minister’s lover, a censor, a political prisoner, a cop or a victim.  It was not possible to emerge unscathed from this crisis of the nineties that touched your life, the collapse of values, the marginal scene where you came of age.  Some part of you was left in red lycra standing on the corner, in the epaulet of a lieutenant, in these possible people you could have been, from which by chance, by events, and by your own weariness you were saved.

Concerning the migration talks between Cuba and the United States which are taking place today in Havana.

Carlitos finally made it to Atlanta, after trying five times to cross the Straits of Florida. On two occasions he was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned to the Island. For months he saved the yellow form they gave him to request – legally – a visa from the United States Interest Section. However, he preferred a faster way to leave behind the room he shared with his grandmother and the police harassment in his neighborhood. He was also captured by the Cubans, on August 13 three years ago, when the boat’s propeller broke and his trip ended in a jail in the village of Cojimar. There he was fined and a plainclothes office began visiting him to demand he find a job.

After demonstrating his few talents as a sailor, this young man of 32 managed to go to Ecuador, one of the few countries that still does not require a visa from Cubans. The South American nation was the trampoline to enter the United States, where he is now trying to start a new life. He left his GPS in the hands of some of his friends who had helped him in his journeys, along with that form he had never filled out to ask for a humanitarian visa. He did not leave for a pre-determined destiny, rather he feared turning into a frustrated forty-year-old. Not even in his most optimistic days could he foresee he would come to have his own roof, or a salary that would save him from having to divert State resources to survive.

Like so many other Cubans, Carlitos had no hope that the promises made to him when he was a child would materialize. He did not want to grow old sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house, taking the edge off his failure with alcohol and some other pill. He planned every kind of escape, but finally his uncle paid for the ticket to Quito with the illusion that he would be able to get the rest of the family out. He still dreams of boats that draw near in the middle of the night and take him back to Cuba in handcuffs, smelling of salt and oil. He wakes up and looks around to confirm that he is still in the little apartment he has rented with a girlfriend. “Once a rafter, always a rafter,” he muses, while turning over his pillow and trying to dream on solid ground.

I have heard hundreds of times that the university – like a cemetery – could not be invaded by the demons of repression. I imagined them milling around the steps, without the power to enter this zone of letters and mathematical formulas where the students are sheltered. But this supposed immunity lived only in my fantasies, as Cuban history shows successive transgressions suffered by the universities in my country. Before the gaze of the statue of Pallas Athena, the ideological castigation has broken into these precincts dedicated to knowledge and scholarship countless times.

During the first half of the Twentieth Century, several student protests went so far as to demand the resignation of the president, bearing witness to the social force that emanated from the student desks. Painted on the walls around La Colina, where the University is located, you can still see the youthful nonconformity that later revolutionary purges reduced to apathy. The University Student Federation (FEU) has ceased to be a hotbed of ideas and actions that more than once shook the city, and become, to the students, a representation of power. Thus, the organization lost all its rebel character and its leaders are no longer elected for their charisma or popularity, but rather for their political reliability. The slogan, “The University is for Revolutionaries,” has contributed to imposing the mask as the safest way to achieve a diploma.

In these two years since Raul Castro came to power, expulsions for ideological reasons have continued – and are on an upward course – in the centers of higher education. When Sahily Navarro, daughter of a prisoner of the Black Spring, was prevented from returning to her classroom, I learned that the battered student league had gone from agony to necrosis. A few days after the headstone of sectarianism was placed over the remains of the FEU, Marta Bravo was expelled from her teacher training program for demanding reforms in the country. The notes of a requiem was composed by those who fired the teacher Darío Alejandro Paulino, after he opened a Facebook group to discuss issues with regards to the faculty of Social Communication. With these sad events, the federation – once led by Julio Antonio Mella – has confirmed its death at the hands of the dragons of dogmatism and intolerance, who now freely roam the university campus.

* A group — “Stop the Expulsions in Cuban Universities” — has been created on Facebook to protest, at least virtually, against these outrages.