The Uruguayan PEN Center interviewed the Cuban poet and activist Ariel Maceo Téllez (1986), on the occasion of the commemoration of the first anniversary of the social protests of July 11, 2021 in Cuba.

For 63 years the «Cuban revolution» has contradicted the world. Despite the accumulation of evidence for more than six decades, many democracies still do not dare to describe, in its absolute dimension, the Cuban regime as a totalitarian and aggressive dictatorship.

There are those who justify it in the name of a supposed «anti-imperialist resistance» that is almost «heroic». Others defend it half-heartedly, calling it, euphemistically, as «a different democracy»; however, democracies answer certain basic questions to be called as such.

So, it would not be unreasonable to ask the Cuban government why there is no alternation in power? Why is full freedom of expression not allowed? Why is the free association of Cubans not allowed?

But the question that has currently called into question the image and discourse of the regime is: Why is the right to open, peaceful and free protest not allowed in the streets? Well, when the Cuban population demonstrated massively During a brief social unrest that occurred between July 11 and 17, 2021, the Government presided over by Miguel Días Canel responded with an armed repression that imprisoned more than 1,400 people who, to this day, face trials with exorbitant prison sentences. up to almost 30 years for alleged crimes of sedition, public disorder, among others.

The Cuban revolution has aroused almost unanimous admiration in the world since 1959, but more than the revolution itself as a social process, what aroused that admiration was the imposing presence of a 1.91 meter tall man, dressed in olive green, with a bushy beard and a penetrating voice that with a dazzling speech was able to distort history in his favor. Large majorities fell exhausted at his feet. Intellectuals, politicians, men, women, children and the elderly. All surrendered to the impressive figure of Fidel Castro, who opportunistically took advantage of the errors and insults of the free world and especially of the United States to arouse passions of a supposed «Latin American dignity.»

One year after the commemoration of 11J, PEN Uruguay contacted the young Cuban writer, artist and activist Ariel Maceo Téllez, who gave us an interview from Cuba, where he currently lives. So we asked him if he wanted us to keep his name anonymous for this story. But he clearly told us that: «I have no problem with my real name being used.»

So, without further delay, we proceeded to ask him:

PEN Uruguay: Why do you think there are still political actors, ordinary citizens and even governments that call themselves democratic that see in Cuba an example of self-determination, dignity and resistance to US «imperialism»?

Ariel Maceo: That perception is based on the lies that the tyrant Fidel Castro repeated over and over again, and unfortunately the people swallowed them. With that sentence I say it all. But I’m going to argue anyway.

Imagine for a second an angry and oppressed people that was freed from a military dictatorship by an army of rebels, commanded by a young 33-year-old lawyer (greetings Boric). Those young people came with a plan in which they all agreed to return to the path of democracy, restore the 1940 constitution, restore political rights and call free elections, but since the people were angry, the 33-year-old said that this was a new revolution, a new era, and he decided that nothing agreed in the Sierra Maestra charter was going to happen. And the people, sweetened by the words of one of the most perverse beings of all humanity, applauded him euphorically. You all know how that story ended.

That is the sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples that are so admired and applauded by international actors who like to enjoy Varadero, a good cigar and a beautiful mulatto. The joke is macabre and tells itself.

PU: As an artist, you are automatically targeted by the government. How have you managed not to be imprisoned for your work as a creator and activist critical of the regime?

AMT: The truth is very hard. Political repression is something very serious and should be prohibited, combated, and denounced by every democratic country that respects human rights. It is something that cannot happen under any circumstances. Starting from there, my personal experience goes back to the fight with other young artists demanding our cultural rights and human rights. From the first moment that in Cuba one says this mouth is mine, you are already a dissident and although you do not know it at that moment, there is already a whole well-equipped repressive apparatus to destroy you, and when I say destroy you it also goes back to the physical, because there are plenty of dead people, and in particular, a car was thrown at me one morning when I arrived at my house after leaving a meeting with members of Demóngeles and opposition artists such as Luis Dener and Abu Duyanah.

It takes a lot of patience, a lot of understanding from your family and friends. Even your neighbors get involved, because the repression comes in different ways, and if at the moment, a patrol with policemen and State Security agents (Cuba’s political police) shows up to arrest you in your own home, your neighbors get scared believing that all these years they have lived with a criminal, when the reality is quite another.

At that point in which you no longer remember how many interrogations you have suffered, in which they mount an operational guard so that you do not leave the house, in which they follow you in the street, in which they threaten to kill you or call your mother to scare her, in which they deny you leave the country like they did to me last year, this being one of the last measures used by the regime and one well knows that what follows is jail . What has saved me from all that is literature, my family, my close friends, my girlfriend, stress pills (they don’t sell them in Cuba), soccer, well, soccer in quotes, because the regime’s war against that sport is open and at all levels. We are going for two months without broadcasting a game.

Art has been a fundamental piece in my defense against power. Art, poetry, truth and principles without falling into heroism have saved me. And I make it clear that this is a war and we have to fight for you, for yours, for everyone.

PU: One year after 11J, can you explain to us what impact this civil rebellion had or continues to have within the country?

AMT: The impact of the social outbreak that took place in Cuba on July 11, 2021, and which spread to almost all the provinces and lasted for several days, will be in force in today’s Cuba and in the Cuba of the future. The demonstrations were so big that they came to stay in the popular imagination and become, from now on, a commemorative date, although the regime, through appearances, tries to deny everything.

And it is that the demonstrations took place at an exact moment in which the country was suffering a health, economic and also political crisis. There are many people who believe, falling in turn into the discourse of the regime, that the popular demonstrations took place as a result of the emergency call becoming a trend through the hashtag #SOSCuba, but no, that was the plus, the icing on the cake The outbreak began to cook from previous years, having its boiling point in the campaign in which a small group of artists confronted decree or law 349, and which had its peak during the San Isidro quartering and then with the protest on November 27 in front of the Ministry of Culture, and then another protest in April in the middle of Old Havana. Eye, all these were events correlated to the San Isidro Movement, which in turn was articulated in protests with opponents from past years and from exile. It was a chain.

Just today, July 10 (the date on which Ariel responded to this interview), one day after the first anniversary of the largest social uprising in Cuba, the regime has unleashed repression and organized military exercises to generate terror among the citizenship.

The best way to measure the impact of the protests in Cuba is to follow the steps that the regime takes in response, and the answer is to say that the protests were an attempted coup when in fact no high-ranking official of the dictatorship participated in them or spoke in favor of them on social networks. That’s how big it was and is today.

PU: After the protests, the regime has not spared in punishing almost more than a thousand political prisoners with severe judicial sentences: how has the Government’s repressive policy changed since 11J?

AM T: The atmosphere is one of terror, there is no other way to say it: the Cuban people are terribly afraid. Be careful, this is not the fault of the Cuban people, but of the repressive machinery that has maintained the military regime during these 60 years. Remember that the current government, to sound respectful, came to power through armed struggle and remained so. There are people today who remember the execution shots that rang out in the Cabaña fortress when the tyrant Fidel Castro gave the order to shoot them all. And Batista’s henchmen fell in those executions and also the young rebels who understood very quickly that they only exchanged one dictator for another, and that the democratic thread was not going to be reestablished. The fear of Cubans comes from that time and continues to this day, where a person X is terrified of giving a simple like to a publication that denounces the dictatorship on the Facebook social network.

That is the atmosphere in Cuba, of continuous terror and luckily, of contained rebellion. The Cuban people are as brave as the peoples of America. Briefly recall that our natives faced the conquerors, and the Creoles against the English, and the Mambises against the Spanish colony, and the dictator and army general Gerardo Machado, and then the dictator Fulgencio Batista until overthrowing him through the armed struggle and everything did not end there.

Fidel Castro established his communist dictatorship and brave Cubans put together the 2506 brigade to liberate Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, and then the civil war in the Escambray. Another demonstration where more than 10,000 Cubans entered the Peruvian embassy and another large demonstration called the Maleconazo in 1994. Yes, despite the terror, indoctrination and fear, the Cuban people have not stopped fighting for their rights. . For now, the people wait, keeping an eye on their prey.

PU: Did the regime manage to dismantle the aspirations of civil society for a democratic opening within the island? Do you notice the eventual existence of groups, organizations, artists, regional movements, political groups that continue to pressure the regime in the short and medium term for a democratic opening?

AMT: Not at all, Cuban civil society is alive and kicking. I already wanted the regime. But no, they have limits and work outside of them. And although last year they managed to dismantle various movements by imprisoning some of their main actors, and exiling many others, the rebellion continues and is reborn.

This is not new, the regime is communist and acts as a manual because those people are square, and in previous decades they also had rebellions, and the same pressure cooker has always been there, and they managed to get out of the quagmire through repression, toasting some economic crumbs or through the famous migratory exodus, which already this year 2022 crossed its historical peak adding more than 140,000 Cubans who arrived in another country, most of them to the United States; becoming the largest exodus that there has been in Cuba, leaving behind the one from Mariel.

Starting from there, it is impossible for the Castro dictatorship to achieve absolute control of civil society. It is true that we are slaves to the system for different reasons, but mainly because we are an island surrounded by sea . Despite that, there is always a Cuban, a Cuban woman who wakes up, who finds the fault and manages to get out of the Matrix. Against this phenomenon, no matter how vigilant it is, the regime cannot.

They only have half of a town left, the oldest of course, and the military power of course. In the protests of last July it was seen how they unleashed merciless violence against a population that demonstrated peacefully. Because the protests were peaceful, until Miguel Díaz Canel, the acting dictator, gave the order to fight.

It is as my brother the poet Abu Duyanah says: “the regime has not massacred us because we have not given them a reason”. But despite this bitter feeling, the Cuban people continue to wake up, understanding that if the protest cannot be in the streets, it can be on social networks, a terrain where the regime lost the ideological battle from the very moment they allowed the use of of mobile data back in 2018.