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The Ladies in White Yesterday

 Photos: Claudio Fuentes Madan

Testimony of Claudio Fuentes Madan

Who is behind Rodney?

Photo and text: Claudio Fuentes Madan

I have, at this very moment, enormous doubts about what shape my words should take to recount and testify about what happened last Friday, November 20, 2009, at the already hot corner of 23rd and G. I wanted to record, journalistically, through the lens of my video camera a verbal duel. It was supposed to be and was proposed to be, more than anything else, the beginning of a totally peaceful conversation between two people: REINALDO ESCOBAR and AGENT RODNEY. The meeting was intended to clarify a case of abuse and violence that happened two weeks earlier, carried out by agents of the ever more covert and surreptitious State Security, against Yoani Sanchez, wife of a person who at least attempted an ethical meeting for the exchange of words and opinions of various kinds.

The doubts that accompany my words come also with fears that will dilute and control said words, with the sole desire of avoiding the self-censorship which would prevent the reader from absorbing the modest truth gathered in by my senses. I was a citizen who participated in an activity that was transformed into an odd festival of trolls. Even when they tried to petrify me with threats disguised as sweet tips for a future of dark freedoms, the young man warning me that I was going to get arrested, and even asking me if I was quite ready for this. Fears that would only cease to be a burden to the extent that one denounces every violation of the most elemental rights of oneself and others. I thought of the old saying, “He who holds the leg is as guilty as he who kills the cow,” knowing I needed to avoid holding the leg, and much less giving a sidelong shy kiss to the butcher, his spotless apron stained with blood. And now, to the point; I am always at risk of boring people with my extensive flourishes.

I was arrested while filming the detention of Silvio Benitez (who remained at the side of Reinaldo Escobar the whole time, as they were being crushed by the frenzied horde). In the final moments of the event as I was inside the car taking me to the police station, they seized the memory card from my video camera. It contained all the images I had taken as an historical documentary of the facts. Still, today, the 22nd, they have not returned it to me, violating with impunity the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

It seems that they do not know that the Cuban government claims itself a magnificent signer of the declaration, so I suspect that either Raul Castro has not properly informed his subordinates to enforce the above in full, or they are completely crushing us with this marvelous clause, without mercy, with total impunity, and shitting on the idea. An odd way to proceed.

I include the notification on the part of the officer or agent who handled my case, “Your images will be returned,” although in the final moments I was informed that the memory card had momentarily gone astray, they asked for my vote of confidence and said I would be advised by telephone regarding its return. I will wait for the promised event and my patience, necessarily, is infinite, although it is often tinged with cautious sarcasms.

On reaching the police station they explained to me that I was detained there only and exclusively to protect me from the reaction of the impassioned people, in open battle against a minority group of people who want to ask to converse on equal terms. Reinaldo Escobar and the few friends who were with him until the end, were cataloged by the group of trolls disguised as The People, as mercenaries, worms, counterrevolutionaries etc. What strange sector of The People is this? Who mix up an act of political questioning with the deafening carrying on of carnival characters with their fancy outfits and props, and even a band playing popular music? A group designed to quench the sound that the cameras and audio equipment need to record, and as a body to confuse the purpose of the event with their presence in the viewfinders. So that the foreign press as well as the official and independent press who, with the same objective in common, all have the need and the right to record the facts. Such a calumny against the concept of The People, as well as against that other group, which we may call ourselves, those without a group, those who for thinking and expressing themselves differently must be, for the moment, excluded from all acceptance and respect, and yet who irredeemably form part of this total contradiction that is Cuba.

What the law enforcement officials and police have decided to call THE PEOPLE, is not, I believe, a representation of all of it. Nor do I believe that the real Cuban people have a tradition of behaving in this way. I must report that at no time did I feel that this mob was on the point of violating my physical integrity, even though some people were punched, severely pushed and mobbed. At the police station we shared glances and handshakes although they prohibited us from talking and deprived us of our cell phones. These prohibitionary measures, applied to “protected persons” from among a mass so extreme in their conduct, I don’t think to be organically related to the sullen treatment of us, as victims, in that unit. It is really too bad that I lost the images captured by my lens, which would show this to the fullest. Hopefully other cameras have material that will reveal part of what happened.

While the whole mob surrounded and nearly asphyxiated Reinaldo Escobar and friends who clung precariously to each other for their mutual protection, we could see a group of the National Revolutionary Police, stationed across the street in small groups of two, three, four and even larger numbers, contemplating the obvious brawl of cries and aggression without taking part. It seems a reading of the previous orders included turning a blind eye to the sector of The People who are specifically expecting their help, and that the repressive forces will be forgiven an act equally repressive, with a total inability to listen before making violent determinations and forming opinions. The portion of The People who commit an atrocity will not be punished or reprimanded, rather what they do is justified: unfortunate but necessary. As in the eighties with the migrants leaving through the Port of Mariel, The People incited by everyone knows who, launched their repudiation rallies, egg-throwing parties, workplace exclusions and beatings at those who decided to leave, while our law enforcement never issued any kind of citation against this kind of action nor called for wisdom and respect.

On Friday, like Claudia Cadelo and many others, I met the wave of terror, saw how dear is the cost of freedom of thought and its direct organic expression. I have known, also, individuals having, though it is a minimum of power when protected by natural justice, the power of knowing oneself is not alone, of having something to say and of being disposed to say it by whatever media or channel possible. Today I have reaffirmed, more than ever, that every decision or idea has the highest price and whether you like it nor, you have to pay in one currency or another. Life always wins out over us, even when one contemplates within it a variety of successes.

Women in White

A documentary by Ciro Diaz and Claudio Fuentes
Music: Eric Sanchez

Blissful violations from the actual absurd fifty

Foto: Claudia Cadelo

Texto: Claudio Fuentes Madan

I would much rather consider the events that took place than to just describe them and to talk a little about the reasons that brought us to the attempt. While at Claudia Cadelo’s house for more or less a week now, I find myself faced with her worry about the Antúnez situation. She was torn by a mix of contradictory assessments and battling clashing feelings.

She would comment to me about the points or statutes that this gentleman defends and demands of the Cuban government in a hunger strike he himself started a little over a month ago, according to what little information we had on the subject.

Claudia would tell me that the news about the dire state of his health was not moving anyone, or very few, and that, in addition, she considered it somewhat ghoulish that if anything happened to Porno Para Ricardo or to Yoani Sanchez, for example, then no doubt a big media fuss would ensue, but in the case of Antúnez, nothing of the kind was happening.

I remember that we reached an agreement of ideas in the things we talked about: the different people who hope for and attempt changes in Cuba, those who question the laws and measures of the fifty-year-old government, those who, on great many occasions, have been on the receiving end of every kind of repression, harassment and violation of their most basic civil rights. We don’t think alike in our analyses of methods and ways when facing the same situation of aberrant deficiencies in which the majority finds itself.

But along with the disagreements over chosen strategies, there exists a magnificent concurrent point: we all want the whole range of historically known freedoms, which I won’t talk about, and each day, not only outside Cuba, but from the very entrails of the sparsely bearded one there are more who confront them, out of personal courage, even, of course, at the risk of errors that will take place along the way.

Claudia would look at me and would repeat that no one was doing anything, that even she wasn’t doing anything. In a certain way, I was deep in a similar situation, so, in order to eliminate that strange feeling of absence, in which I knew very well that we were all part of this mass now called by Claudia, NO ONE, I blurted out pretending I didn’t mean it: why don’t we go there, straight to the source of the problem, along the way we can visit Placetas, soak it up first hand, we could talk to Antúnez, discuss our points of view, etc., we can interview him. I was remembering a fantastic article by Reinaldo Escobar tilted, if I remember correctly, “the problem, my problem,” that I read in his blog Desde Aquí. Claudia suddenly stopped hyperventilating, she became calm and, without blinking, she agreed.

Four days later Ciro Javier Díaz and this writer left for Placetas, having paid for the tickets with our own money and the taste of a break from our daily routines with the damn adventure. Barely 20 minutes after our arrival, at around 11 A.M. on Monday, March 23rd, 2009, a few meters from the supposed corner of Antúnez’s house, a patrol car met us with that certain usual violence in these cases, taking us to the police station for the usual interrogations. We were freed the next day, March 24th, when they put us in a car and took us to the Havana bus terminal without charges, accusations, or further explanations, returning our personal belongings: my cameras, bags, identification cards and even some CDs of Porno Para Ricardo and La Babosa Azul that Ciro was carrying to give to Antúnez as presents.

And now, comrades, for a climax, the list of violations that the repressors in this trivial and not-so-tragic-in-appearance case have committed in the exercise of their full-time routines:

1 – The inability to roam freely in any zone or region of the national and sovereign territory. It’s clear, then, that the nation is only enjoyed, embraced by its controllers, and our experience reaffirms the suspicions that citizens without government duties or related to it are confined to a ever increasingly precise and limited region.

2 – We were deprived of the right to make a phone call while detained. When we asked if this was possible, the official in charge inquired what was the objective of our request, if we intended to inform our family and friends about our situation. On hearing the logical and affirmative answer from our own throats, he started to laugh sarcastically and asked us how we came up with such an idea, that we’d be leaving soon… we left the next day. At least we did not have to pay for the return ticket; that turned out to be the responsibility of the Security of this Shameless State of Siege.

3 – They crushed the simple right and freedom to assemble with whomever we wish, the civil right to freely get information through whichever means we feel like, and the power to later disseminate our views about this, although this last one turns out to be more shocking, furious and difficult every time. The little Internet that we manage to scrounge will also serve to denounce them and to express ourselves.

4 – Hours after having had my cameras returned, I realized that they had erased the photos contained in one of them, the compact digital. The images in it could be easily seen on its screen and were personal images and memories that had nothing to do with what happened. I understand that this is the obligatory and violating modus operandi in these cases, which shows that they have a terrible fear of the investigations by common citizens, where it’s clear that it’s the controllers who have to hide their barbaric actions, and who fly into a rage behind the backing of an abusive authority at any attempt at real journalism.

Nevertheless, I want to make it clear to them that we didn’t expect any other action on their part, always with their ritual of abuse and manipulation. We understand that they do not have the option of other methods, always the same and dogmatic ones. I really understand and commiserate, with and without irony, that they should act from the same cage of conduct. It’s the only way they can maintain their ambitious and powerful predatory behavior, increasingly weaker and lacking in arguments, so I hope they will also forgive me if I subtly shit on their guts and toast to them, besides, my most sincere pity for contributing and carrying such a painful burden of evil.

PS – It’s already Thursday and it’s now that I’m finishing this writing, not only because of a slight, real and habitual laziness that generally accompanies my intellectual activities, but also because, on top of everything else, when I started these lines yesterday, Wednesday the 25th, I found out that Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo had a summons for 3 P.M. at the Lawton police station. Waiting outside were his girlfriend, and Claudia and Lia, so I decided to join the fat bastion. He came out at around eight P.M. in a state of an indescribable emotions, and together, all of us decided to continue the evening, analyzing this new instance of violation.

It may seem odd to you, but I continue to enjoy that strange living life to the fullest of everything that is happening, and I pride myself on having at my side people from whom I learn while enjoying them immensely from the silence that always remains with me while I laugh about some thing.