El activista del movimiento San Isidro Oscar Casanella cuenta cómo y por qué se arriesgó a hacer una travesía tan larga y complicada con su hijo pequeño y su esposa embarazada.
Entrevista exclusiva realizada por Nitsy Grau para ADN Cuba
Entrevista exclusiva realizada por Nitsy Grau para ADN Cuba
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00:00In 2022, the biochemist and activist of the San Isidro-Oscar-Casanella movement arrived in Miami
00:08after crossing the border with his young son and his pregnant wife.
00:14Practically, I had no other option.
00:18In Cuba, I was simply expected to go to jail.
00:23It was a direct threat.
00:25In any case, one of the strongest reasons was
00:31to prevent my four-year-old son from going to school.
00:39I was afraid that he would go to school, and he was about to go to school,
00:44under that indoctrination and under what many children of activists and opponents suffer.
00:53This is psychological repression for being the parents they are.
01:01And also so that my second child, because my wife was seven months pregnant,
01:09would not be born in Cuba.
01:12We really feared a lot for our lives.
01:15But yes, fundamentally, to give my children a better future.
01:24And let's say that the quick exit at that moment was because
01:32I was in a home prison and the police itself told me,
01:36we are going to let you out of the house to create the papers and you go in a month.
01:41If you haven't left in a month, you go to jail.
01:47The journey was very hard.
01:49Almost everything that could go wrong happened.
01:54Luckily, we arrived alive, but we didn't know what we were exposed to.
01:58But we knew that in Cuba, if we stayed,
02:01we already knew what the black future awaited us, me and my children.
02:07But a lot of risk, a lot of fear.
02:12I had to show my son that I was in control of the situation,
02:16when I really wasn't.
02:18I had to do a bit like the character in the movie La Vida es Bella,
02:25try to create a different reality for my son,
02:33so that he wouldn't realize what we were really going through.
02:38And then I told him that we were in a game,
02:41that we had to escape from the bad guys,
02:44and then he couldn't speak,
02:46he couldn't speak so that we didn't know his nationality or anything.
02:51We had to be hidden many times.
02:55And I always told him, this is a game,
02:58if we win, we're going to get to a very nice place.
03:01Without telling him, of course, because I didn't give him any information,
03:04because we didn't know.
03:06We were, let's say, detained on two occasions,
03:10and it was so that no one could kidnap him, interrogate him or anything.
03:17And I had to create that modified reality
03:26so that he wouldn't suffer the trauma.
03:28Every afternoon, he would cry.
03:32Falling, I mean, at night, he would cry
03:35because many times we would end up in very ugly places.
03:39At random, sometimes, in very ugly places.
03:43And then he would get very sad and cry,
03:46and he would say, Dad, do we have to sleep here?
03:50Do we stay here?
03:51Do we sleep here?
03:53And I had to tell him, well, yes, but don't worry,
03:56the bad guys haven't found us.
03:58And I tried to tell him stories and anything
04:01to get him out of that reality, which was very ugly, very hard.
04:10We left Cuba and did the crossing.
04:15We thought we were going to do the crossing from Cuba to Mexico
04:21and then to the United States, but that didn't work.
04:26It didn't work in Nicaragua either, going through Nicaragua.
04:29And what happened to us was that they deported us to Mexico City,
04:33at the airport in Mexico City, they deported us to Colombia.
04:38I mean, they deported us to Cuba,
04:39but simply doing a stopover in Colombia, where we had done a stopover.
04:43And there, luckily, they didn't completely deport us to Cuba.
04:49We were in a limbo at the airport in Colombia,
04:52about 10 days sleeping on the floor of the airport,
04:55not knowing what they were going to do to us.
04:57And well, finally, we were able to leave the Colombian airport
05:02and go up from Colombia, totally on irregular roads,
05:07to the southern border of the United States.
05:10At that time, my eldest son was 4 years old,
05:13my wife was already 7 months, 7 months and so,
05:18there was even a moment when the airlines
05:22didn't even let her travel, even if we had tried.
05:26Because many airlines, after 7 months,
05:29don't risk letting a pregnant woman travel.
05:34But the problem is that we were very afraid,
05:38well, in all countries, but especially in Nicaragua,
05:42because Nicaragua denied us entry and threatened us with detention.
05:48And Mexico too.
05:51And well, Mexico, in fact, was the one who detained us and deported us.
05:57How could you define that indoctrination that you feared so much in Cuba?
06:03On the one hand, it is the manipulation,
06:05the distortion of the reality that they do in their favor, the Cuban regime.
06:10That is the indoctrination in which they rewrite the history of Cuba.
06:18They manipulate the concepts, they confuse children with the concepts of
06:24homeland, let's say, political ideology, all those things.
06:32But additionally, there is also intolerance,
06:37the lack of democracy, intolerance, discrimination towards those who think differently.
06:41So, I have met people, I even have a ...
06:48There was a child in my neighborhood who told me that at school
06:53his teacher showed a photo of the San Isidro barracks
06:59and at that time I was on strike.
07:02And the teacher began to say that those who were there in San Isidro on strike,
07:09well, we were terrorists, we were mercenaries, we were paid by the CIA,
07:14and a whole discourse of discredit and discredit, which is what the regime uses.
07:19Can that be reproduced, that same scene?
07:24That is, the son of an activist, an opponent, even my son,
07:28could have been in a class and the teacher in Cuba could be
07:32badmouthing his father, me, for not being a criminal,
07:37but for me thinking and acting peacefully,
07:41as a result of what I think, but different from what the regime wants,
07:46the leaders of the Communist Party.
07:49Do you think a Cuban child can be happy in the conditions he lives in?
07:55It really is very difficult.
07:58I believe that parents can always make the effort,
08:03as I did, to avoid that reality, let's say,
08:11makes the children unhappy,
08:14and try to make life easier for them,
08:16but I believe that the effort that Cuban parents have to make today
08:21in current Cuba is huge.
08:24The enjoyment and opportunities that children can have in Cuba
08:31are a very small fraction of the opportunities and life
08:37that children can have in many other countries,
08:41at least in the Western Hemisphere, at least here in America.
08:47I mean, the reality of Cuban children is very, very hard.
08:55I remember that on the crossing,
08:59we were in several places where there were children's parks,
09:05and they were underdeveloped countries in Latin America,
09:09and yet my son had never seen such a beautiful and well-kept park,
09:14and he told me,
09:16oh, look, dad, what a beautiful park.
09:21And well, those were moments of happiness,
09:25and he really enjoyed being in those parks,
09:28parks that did not exist in Cuban neighborhoods, that do not exist.
09:31They are totally abandoned,
09:35and neither the state nor, let's say,
09:41private entrepreneurs or private initiatives or organizations are in charge of that.
09:48And so there is a lot of lack, a lot of abandonment,
09:54a lot of lack of options for children and young people.
10:00And I believe that young people, children and young Cubans
10:04are kind of burning the stage and violating it,
10:07I remember when I was a teenager,
10:11in the corner of my block,
10:15at night, drinking,
10:19in the middle of a blackout because there were no other options.
10:24And I didn't want that future for myself.
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