Amanda, this link takes you to a video of a woman shouting with a microphone that the Cuban people are revolutionaries, that thanks to the Revolution, there are doctors and daycare centers, that counter-revolutionaries should leave. I don’t know where, I don’t know when.

Take note of the people who echo her, the others that flutter about nearby, with flags, with loudspeakers on the corner. Look at the poverty on that block and the human misery of these people. The person filming is Katherine Bisquet, from the roof terrace. You’ve read her poems. She’s 28, and was one of the people held up at the San Isidro movement headquarters in November. The protest is against her. She replies with vivas (long live…), when they’re shouting vivas to the Government down on the ground.

Now, look at this screenshot.

A fake profile sent it to me on Facebook. It makes me sad, although I responded with a “haha” emoji. My mother told them that I had come back because of my love for the Homeland, my family, something like that. I don’t waste my time responding because I don’t really know why I came back. About who pays me…

In short, these are very strange days: with the usual repression. However, they’ve also felt like the freest since I’ve ever known about Cuba’s political situation. I follow events with a close eye, just like everyone has. And try to get involved as much as I can before fear takes over. I am still a coward like many in this unfair country where you must flee. From which many do not escape, when they have the chance, because of matters of the heart or resistance. These concepts which seem almost the same to me right now.

I visited Omara Ruiz Urquiola some days ago. She’s a brave woman, a cancer patient, and she was also at San Isidro during the hunger strike. There were three patrol cars on the corner. Three patrol cars all for one woman. I was able to go into her house, it was a miracle. They don’t want her to speak or see anyone, or for anyone to know what’s going on in her life. They are very afraid of her mind.

This was December… full of police officers, warlike vehicles, ninjas, assault rifles. They are stirring up darkness again. I get a call from a private number every five minutes. I know it’s State Security, but I don’t want to answer. I no longer wish to live with my heart in my throat, or to put my phone in airplane mode, or walk and hide as if I were a dangerous person. I have no reason to be sat in interrogations. The only thing I’ve done, like the many that they harass, is write journalism. I don’t even want to leave anymore, because of matters of the heart or resistance.

What I do want is to look into the future and see the day one of these agents step foot in Miami. To see the astonishment on their face when they see the magnificent streets full of cars and magnificent buildings. Seeing it and thinking: “Now, I’ve reached the Revolution.” Haha, such a silly thing.

Not too long ago, I was speaking to a colleague. I told him any conversation a guard and I have begins with the fact that I was in Miami and returned. That I was in the belly of the beast, I enjoyed it and suffered in its belly, and I came back to this monster of hardship and no future. “You would never have come back,” is what I should tell him. “You know that the day you step foot in Miami, you’ll never step this foot back in Havana, not even as a tourist.”

Being here still automatically makes me more of a revolutionary and foolish than them. It puts me more in Fidel Castro’s mind than them, who don’t even know where Biran is.

I wonder what it is that they defend. “The conversation should stem from recognizing and defending the revolutionary project,” Diosvany Acosta, first secretary of the UJC (Communist Youth), said. I wonder what it is they defend. What is the revolutionary project? There is no way for them to want a country that doesn’t exist elsewhere. What I mean to say is: if they wanted, I don’t know, China’s economy, this economy already exists in China; if they want Sweden’s freedoms, these freedoms already exist in Sweden. They don’t want anything else but power and to never let it go.

But, what about those of us who don’t have any power? What about the person behind the fake profile? The woman shouting into a microphone and the other wretched people? The patrol officers, ninjas, Diosvany? Aren’t they going hungry? Do they have deoderant and toothpaste? What’s their deal?

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This article was translated to English from the original in Spanish.