I prefer victim to executioner
I didn’t want to write, my paranoia was telling me that I had to wait until I was in my right mind again. These last 48 hours I have been irritable, hateful, hysterical, sympathetic, maternal and filled with homicidal instincts… I have wanted to kill and I have wanted to save. I have been grateful to the police for protecting me from State Security and have wanted to destroy this body that responds to the demands of strangers. I have wanted to be in Yoani’s body and suffer the pain, I have felt deserving of the punches or worthy of leading the way to Doomsday. I have imagined myself capable of boring holes in the heads of those who beat Yoani and Orlando, but not me, on Friday, and have wondered why. I have forgiven and have turned around and condemned.
I have felt the guilt and the blame, I have wondered so many things that I don’t have time to answer myself. I have tried to reconstruct the facts two millions times but I think the gaps are getting worse. I don’t remember Tweeting from the patrol car, I don’t know if the first Tweet was when I was fervently clutching Yoani’s waist or when I saw her legs sticking out of the black State Security car. I don’t remember if I called, did not call, who I called. I can’t even recall the face of the Security agent who was next to me. What I do know is that I was resisting the urge to vomit the whole time, I regret not have sprayed all the coffee I had in my stomach all over my oppressor… at the time I was trying to seem strong.
A writer friend told me: You have to wait, every time you write it will unfold, there is nothing you can hide. She’s right, it doesn’t matter if they know: the brutality confuses me, the abuse makes me want to cry, the injustice stuns me, and these last hours I have had to fight a deep Hatred that wants to subsume me.
A single image frees me, I imagine the dialog between the bearded vulture and his son:
“Papa, what did they teach you in the academy?”
“They taught me to hit really hard without leaving marks.”
Then I run out of fury and irritation, because a profession so mean and despicable awakens no feeling in me.
(Editor's note: While I dont usually publish posts from other writers/bloggers in their entirety, I feel, given the circumstances, that our publishing this and other posts from Cuban bloggers in their entirety is the most protection we can give them.)
[...] Claudia Cadelo, another Cuban blogging from the island-prison, is posting now at Babalu. [...]
I wonder how many people know that when the Cuban bloggers use the Spanish word "Sumaté" asking people to join them, see their placards above, they are taking a page from the anti-Chavista movement in Venezuela?
http://www.sumate.org/
Could the Cuban bloggers be making common cause with the resistance to Latin American Leftist tyranny in a manner which permits us to see it as an international movement? This is worth considering, because it may be the start of something historic.
StJacques
StJacques Online: A Freedom Blog
StJacques: I wondered about the "súmate" thing myself. Venezuela has its own "women in white": wives, daughters, mothers of political prisonres,and they admit having their Cuban counterparts in mind, but nobody pays any attention to the Venezuelan ones. Venezuela also has "women in black" who protest street violence which claims around 14,000 lives every year. 14,000 each year in a population of 26 million... 140,000 in the 10 years of Chavez' tenure, it's like a war.