Castro Logic? Covering up an Injustice by Making it Worse

Castro Logic? Covering up an Injustice by Making it Worse / Angel
Santiesteban
Posted on February 24, 2014

Neither the righteous nor the sinners

The settlement where I find myself detained is a fine example of the
slave labor that exists in the Castro brothers' dictatorship.

The prisoners are up at five in the morning, and they keep them going
almost until midnight, or perhaps longer, according to the immediate
work needed. The food, in addition to being scare, is poorly prepared
and sometimes rotten: acid picadillo, raw undercooked chicken and,
countless times, stale bread. Eggs, rice and a tasteless, colorless soup
is the constant menu.

These prisoners endure the long march because it offers them the
possibility of visiting their family every 27 days for 72 hours. They go
from one pass to another, moreover enduring bad treatment and the usual
blackmail that can make them lose the pass if they don't complete their
work in the time demanded.

In my case, as I don't collaborate with the reeducation program, my
regulation pass for my punishment is for every 70 days. State Security
suspended my last passes. They don't want me immersed in civil society;
I represent a great danger. It wasn't just for the fun of doing it that
they constructed my crime.

Really, as I made known to Major Cobas and the rest of the repressors
who accompanied him, "You will not be able hurt my ideas in any way."
When I preferred to be taken prisoner rather than emigrate on a boat to
Miami, it was because I felt fortified for the experience that awaited
me. The worst thing about hired assassins is that their injustice is
without limits, and to justify my not leaving, they have withheld the
pass from these ruined hands that remain captive, without carrying about
the extreme submission, that they accept full-time.

To cover up the injustice committed against me, they have made it
greater. I would have to decipher the true intention they pursue;
perhaps it's to provoke criticism of me by those prisoners and at some
moment generate some retaliation upon seeing me at fault for their
punishments. I remain alone awaiting their reactions. The dictatorship
observes. They are interested only in maintaining power for the dynastic
clan of the Castro brothers. What's certain is that nothing provokes me
to break. Their abuses redouble my resolve.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement, February 2014

Please follow the link to sign the petition to have Angel Santiesteban
declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

Translated by Regina Anavy

7 February 2014

Source: Castro Logic? Covering up an Injustice by Making it Worse /
Angel Santiesteban | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/castro-logic-covering-up-an-injustice-by-making-it-worse-angel-santiesteban/