IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 12

That all Latin American and Caribbean citizens
actually do have the fundamental rights they
should, and that the States are all obliged to protect these rights. All, that is, except the Cuban
State. It was on account of this exception to the
rule in the Americas that I was held in a cell for
four days. For four days I was interrogated, having been arrested for defending what my country’s government is supposedly defending. The
State used an old-fashioned, Stalin-like accusation: Spreading False News against International
Peace, according to Article 115 of the Penal
Code. This Article attempts to discipline opinion
via the last, Soviet-style Constitution in the
world: the Cuban Constitution of 1976. The authorities say that my numerous texts and essays
about Cuba’s reality, and especially about the issues of race, are a threat to world peace. After I
was freed, the State imposed a Cautionary Measure on me that stipulated I had to present myself
every Tuesday at a police station, to sign in, until
the day of my presumed trial.
No one attending LASA to discuss Memory and
Democracy could support such an incredibly ridiculous pretext. Precisely because I organized a
panel for LASA 2014 titled “Cuba: The Memory
of Democracy,” my country’s government remembered that I am an “enemy of international
peace” and subjects me, once again, to a Cautionary Measure that had been suspended a month
earlier. On Tuesday, April 8th, I stopped signing
form 378 at Havana’s Police Station #5 because I
was informed that no further action had been

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taken (it had expired). On Wednesday, May 7th,
I was ordered to report in, only to be told that the
Cauti onary Measure against me was being reinstated: Now I am required to sign in on form 414
at the very same Station, exactly two weeks prior
to the LASA meeting in Chicago, where so many
Latin Americanists from this hemisphere are
meeting. This is an excellent example of power
that goes out of its way to demonstrate that it is
above the law.
Yet, I do not write this letter in complaint; ideas
have consequences and one must accept them
with resolve. My only desire here is to inform you
about what continues to go on in my country, a
situation that is hidden beneath the pro forma narrative the Cuban State uses to project its image,
one that is totally the opposite of the realities
within Cuba. What is important here is a precedent that uses legal, cautionary measures against
people, something that could well be a prolongation of a more than fifty year-old suspension of
rights in Cuba. It criminalizes ideas and initiatives
that result from people thinking and having ideas,
something that can only be accomplished via difference. Let us say that this is my warning to Academe.
Havana, May 2014
*Historian and political scientist
Spokesperson, Progressive Arc Party (Parp)
National Coordinator, Nuevo País Platform
Member, Citizens’ Committee for Racial Integration (CIR)