Monday, May 9, 2011

The Student / Claudia Cadelo

The Student / Claudia Cadelo
Claudia Cadelo, Translator: Unstated

How do I relate the horror? The last image I have of Juan Wilfredo Soto
Garcia is at my side running around under the Santa Clara's relentless
sun. We tried to get permission from the Bishop so that Padre
Dominico–who had come halfway around the world to get to Cuba–could go
see Guillermo Fariñas in Intensive Care at the scheduled visiting hours.
At the church they told us that State Security was in charge of giving
out permissions, and at State Security they told us it was the Bishop.

Now I look at the photo in Penultimos Dias of the Student and I don't
recognize him. It must be that I refuse to accept that they beat him to
death. It must be that I can't admit that this time of horror has come
to this Island. I must be that I don't have the ability to look
death–murder–in the face. And I ask myself–is it the obvious uncertainty
of rationalism–how many Wilfredos have there already been and how many
are still to come? While sitting in a park, an incomprehensible crime,
the massive weight of half a century of police impunity falling on his body.

Anonymous faces in blue. For a long time people have feared them more
than the thieves, scammers and criminals. "Call the police" has become
the last card in the deck. Because justice does not come with them.
Because they are not here to protect us, but to control us at any price.
Because they are corrupt and they are unafraid to dirty their hands,
which in any event are almost all already dirty.

What are we going to ask a National Revolutionary Police that we've seen
them force into the patrol car of the "new" State power the former
Minister of Health, "compañero" Balaguer with his line of twenty-six
dead of starvation and cold at the psychiatric hospital; now that we
have seen the government, on national TV, justify the death of a man on
hunger strike? What can we ask of the police except that they not kill us?

9 May 2011

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