Je Suis Cuba

Je Suis Cuba / Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo
Posted on November 15, 2015

Diario de Cuba, Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo, 15 November 2015 — Two years
ago in Paris, at exactly this time, I had the satisfaction of meeting in
person a renowned Cuban writer who lives there. I was there only a few
days and travelled little around the city. They were days of work,
meetings and interviews before flying to Strasbourg, to attend the
Sakharov Prize ceremony for the child activist Malala Yousafzai, who had
suffered an assassination attempt at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban
in an attack that shocked the world.

I remember that at the foot of the most famous tour in the world all the
languages I could hear echoing. I imagine that this is the sound of
freedom of movement. Something thousands of Cubans have not had, Cubans
who escape the island on rafts, ready to die and in many cases dying in
the sea. The same freedom of movement that made possible the terror in
the City of Light this Friday, when eight boys started shooting dozens
of other boys.

I know what this is, I have lived it. The families of the more than 120
fatally wounded victims will never recover. This November it will not be
easy for the French people to overcome this. Like the Christian
refugees, who have been lucky enough to escape the ethnic cleansing
occurring in the Middle East with less media coverage, will not return
to their countries.

And again it is repeated: attacks on human dignity are no longer
circumscribed by geographical boundaries, call it jihadism or the
Castros' totalitarianism. Terror has shown the power to cross the
Mediterranean, like authoritarianism is reproducing in Latin America.

I fear that the crime that took the life of the young activist Harold
Cepero on a Cuban highway should warn us of the deaths of teenagers on
the streets of Caracas two years later.

Solidarity is no longer a question of altruism but of survival. We do
not ask for whom the bell tolls. As in Paris and so in Havana, it tolls
for all of us.

Source: Je Suis Cuba / Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/je-suis-cuba-diario-de-cuba-rosa-maria-paya-acevedo/