Before being called to military service, have you had a defined political thought? No, but then I realized that something was wrong. I could never understand why they imposed a military and political preparation that brought out the worst of me towards violence. I became very rebellious, with an attitude of " I do not accept, I do not accept ". Because of disobedience, I was sentenced to prison and sent to the West Disciplinary Center at Ganuza. The military prison is a way of destroying the soldier in the short term.
Was your rebellion beyond the mere rejection to cooperate with military preparedness? I was saturated with all of that, to the extent that I disappeared for days. The officers went to look for me at home and they even sent the military police to bring me back.
How did your father react? I was very scared because he started seeing a young rebel in me and I had never been such a boy. My father was never rebellious with this government. He worked in the Cuban Fishing Fleet, was the head of the National Association for Innovation and Rationalization( ANIR) in Old Havana, and even a member of the Communist Party. However, he never tried to influence me ideologically, because his feelings towards his family were above politics.
What were the consequences of having been in military prison? Were you stigmatized because of that in your working life? Not at all, but it meant an unconscious break with the government. I say unconscious because it was something I had not yet thought of.
Have you ever felt discriminated because of your humble origin or your race? There is something instilled in us since childhood: people have to interact with people of their same status. As a child and even as a teenager I wasn’ t very aware of that, but I found myself many times being stopped by the police and asked for my identification without having committed any crime, just because I was of African descent. The police even took me once to the precinct simply because I was talking to a foreigner, who did not say that I was bothering him. In Cuba, racism is something much deeper. You can feel discriminated on the street and by government organizations; I found racists even among the members of civil society groups who care about civil rights.
When did you start making cartoons with political intent? There was a definitive event: I saw a march of Ladies in White in Paseo del Prado. They were demanding freedom for political prisoners. A year later, I did a comic strip titled " Claims " and it was published on the Internet by Talk Press.
Have you gotten in trouble because of your illustrations in dissident media? Yes, the authorities have spoken to me and I was arrested at Central Park because I was carrying political cartoons, which were seized.
Do you think that there are possibilities of generating some kind of unity of purpose and action despite the division between the opposition projects?
The division among dissidents is nothing new. In times of Martí there were also divisions and since then, mankind has not changed much. The division is the vision that the government wants to spread about the opposition and it is part of its strategy for preventing recognition beyond the current levels.
115