Well, I want to say a really important thing, regarding the color of our skin. My brother´s skin color, my family skin color. We say the black Cuban. We don´t say “Afro-Cuban.” We just say black because we belong to the black race. Black is our color. I will take advantage of the fact I am here now to say that one of the worst things my brother experienced during his 17 years in prison was because of his black skin. That led to mistreatment and humiliation, which was more brutal because of that. One time, while in prison, they incited dogs to attack him and destroyed parts of his body.
That was horrible for our family. We said, “My God”, at that time, I remember that when I was in fourth grade, they taught us that Spaniards let dogs off their leashes to chase black people when they ran away from their quarters. They told us all those things. My brother, too. We were born and raised in that system. So in 1992-1993, the communists let dogs loose on my brother. They did the same as the Spaniards did in the past to black people. They would also say to him, “We are not going to cure you because you are a black counter-revolutionary.” To be counter-revolutionary in Cuba, as they say, is a crime.
They look for you. You have a problem for sure. But if in addition to having a guaranteed problem because you´re against the regime, you´re also black, then you have double the problem. You are against the government and you will be subject to mistreatment, you will be put in jail, you will be beaten, and also, the government says, “You as a black person must be grateful because the Revolution has saved you. The Revolution gave you rights.” So they are constantly saying, “We do not know why you complain. You´re black. Before, you could not walk in a park. Now, the Revolution has brought you out of the trees and dressed you.
So we do not understand.” They have educated people based on that premise. So in our country, they have used our race as — They´ve discriminated against it, because when you see the repression mechanisms…. If you go to a police station, you will find that the race of most of the people there are black. If you go to prisons, most of the prison population is black. There is control, surveillance in Cuba. You walk on a street, there is a policeman there.
Two persons are coming: one black and one white. If they ask for IDs, they ask the black man first… and then maybe the white man. They have discriminated against us. One of the problems, I repeat, that my brother has experienced in prison, was because he is black. Some of the greatest suffering and violations, and one of the greatest problems my family has had is because we are black people.
They say that we, as black people, we should be grateful. And I say, my brother says, my family says, and many black people in Cuba say, “Why should we be thankful to the Revolution? It hasn´t given us anything.” It did not give us the right to anything. It did not give us the right to speak, so, I don´t know. What right has it given us? But ironically, and as a way to humiliate us, they say to us, “You should be grateful to us because we brought you down from trees, and we dressed you.” And that is false, that is not true.
Bertha Antúnez Pernet was born in 1959 to a family of limited means. She began to become politically aware in 1990 when her brother, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (“Antúnez”), was unjustly charged with “enemy propaganda” for saying in a public square that Cuba should experience the same political changes that were taking place in Eastern Europe. He was incarcerated and then charged with additional political offenses during his confinement, which extended his sentence until 2007.
Antúnez Pernet became increasingly aware of the gravity of the human rights situation in Cuba through visiting her brother in prison and learning about the conditions to which he and other prisoners of conscience were subjected.
In 1997, Antúnez Pernet and other family members of political prisoners founded an organization called the National Movement of Civic Resistance Pedro Luis Boitel to fight ill-treatment in prison. By 1999, the movement had collected over 5,000 signatures for a general amnesty of political prisoners in Cuba. It has also carried out protests in front of various prisons throughout the island.
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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