Cuban Democratic Directorate brings us a story about the power of real “change”:
Baracoa, Cuba. January 9, 2008. Cuban Democratic Directorate. In the last few months, the CAMBIO bracelets have converted into a popular way of demostrating discontent with the Castro regime in Cuba. The bracelets have even been able to make their way into Cuban prisons.
According to opposition leader, Keyber Rodríguez Fernández, officials of the Paso de Cuba Prison in Baracoa violently broke off the bracelets of Julián Antonio Moné Borrero, political prisoner and President of the Miguel Valdés Tamayo Movement on December 27, 2007. The officials that committed this act were José Barrios, warden of the prison, and Captains Suárez and Leonardo. They threatened Moné Borrero that he would be accused of “enemy propaganda” if he continued using the CAMBIO bracelets.
In the streets of Baracoa, Capitain Michael Machado Navarro broke off a CAMBIO bracelet of opposition leader and human rights activist Eli Cadena on January 7, 2008. Cadena was wearing the bracelet as a symbol of civic resistance.
In prior months a group of young students were arrested in Havana for wearing said bracelets. It is evident that the word Cambio is an empowering symbol for all on the island.
I am prouder than ever, to wear mine.
En español, aquí.
I recently had the opportunity to buy (25) of them. I gave them out to my Cuban friends and family here in NJ. I wear mine with great pride and honor. Although, at times during the day I look down at it, and for a brief moment I get a bit of sorrow in my heart and remember all my loved ones that have past on in Cuba. But then I read the words on the bracelet “Cambio” – “Change” and it brings a small smile to my face, knowing that “change” will come. Every day I wake to wonder will this be the day the announcement will be made. For now, I can only dream of the day where I can return to explore my roots. Te Quiero Mi Cuba!………………………….”All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. ” — UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
One other thing, if I can recommend a great documentary I saw tonight. It’s called “BALSEROS”..For those that don’t know…….it’s a 2002 documentary about Cubans leaving during the Special Period after the financial support of the former USSR stopped. This resulted in so much poverty that in 1994 50,000 Cubans left, unimpeded by the Cuban government, using anything they could find or build to get to the nearest land, Florida in the USA.
The documentary consists largely of interviews with the raftbuilders (the ‘Balseros’), and traces over the course of seven years the lives of seven of those refugees, from the building of their rafts to their attempts at building new lives in America, giving insight in daily life in Cuba in those years (including some beautiful cinematography and sometimes amusing moments) and in the USA.
The documentary is 2 hours long The first half is filmed in Cuba, with in the end some scenes of the rafters’ months long detention in Guantanamo Bay, where lotteries were used to decide who would be allowed to go to the US. All the while, their families didn’t know about their whereabouts. The last hour is about the lives of those who managed to get to the USA, how they are distributed over the country. These people were filmed again seven years later, showing their difficulties adapting to a new type of society and the resulting homesickness, a “human adventure of people who are shipwrecked between two worlds”.