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MARIO J. TORRES
The Weight of chains
In Cuba, the badly called Commander
in Chief has become or believes he is, the owner of every piece of land in
the country and the master of bodies and souls of all Cubans and hence he
applies his title of boss to everything that moves, lives or breathes in the
island.
Indirectly recognizing that his system equals that of a huge jail, this
sinister character is totally merciless with the unfortunate who, in one way
or another, have managed to obtain the cherished dream of every Cuban
nowadays: to be able to leave the country. Maybe due to jealousy, envy or
pure evil, the Cuban leader has devised, as a final punishment before
farewell, lots of measures that torture the future immigrants till they are
able to lay his feet on the plane.
Laws as that of tax payments for the verification of all persons' legitimate
property that they might leave behind in the country when traveling and that
would unfairly become government's property, inventory of home assets and
utensils from a spoon, a bulb to a chair, excessive charges for mandatory
medical exams, certificates and documents of all kinds and endless obstacles
made on purpose are all part of the price of breaking such strong and rusty
chains that tie Cubans to their wounded homeland.
A special offense for the tyrant is that professionals, who, according to
his viewpoint, were formed by his revolution, now reject it and decide to
leave the country. The cases of engineers, teachers, artists or leaders who
"desert" imply a personal treason to the dictator as if those people had
signed an agreement with the devil or sold his soul to him when they
graduated from a career in their country with the conditions and features of
the government of their time, which in this case has been his more than 45
years in the power, so he demands they should get a "release" from the
ministry of each branch which will be faster and less painful or slower and
more agonic according to each ministry or career. The word "release" meaning
"freedom" or "liberation" which are the actual words in Spanish already
denote the conditions of prisoners in the streets for all Cubans in the
island.
Among the group of professionals who leave their homeland, the field that
annoys the commander most is that of medical doctors and other health
related professionals in general, who the owner considers as his slaves due
to the importance in Cuba of the career they chose and the propaganda he has
set up about it as a major achievement of his system and according to his
views, doctors must live and die in the island or pay a very expensive price
if they want to run away from the boat that sinks.
For these reasons, punitive measures with those daring to escape are
extreme, so there is a special and wide range of harassment and retaliation
measures that doctors will suffer to a greater or lesser degree according to
their rank and degree of "treason", so it is understood that the higher the
rank was, the greater the punishment will be and the most common are:
1- Deny the departure of the country for an indefinite period of time.
2- Delay Public Health Minister's release for years on purpose.
3- Transfer them to institutions with a lower rank or category.
4- Demote them from any leading position.
5- Transfer them to far away places with poor conditions as if they had made
a mistake and had been punished
6- Deprive them from any kind of rights, merits or acknowledgement.
7- Demand from them full payment of their career.
8- Politically and socially corner them, despise them and isolate them.
9- Look for ways to discredit them before society, harassing them in all
spheres.
10- Try to find something "illegal" they have or are doing that may bring
them more complications as in a blackmail.
11- Strive to separate their families, trying to leave them alone in the
country.
12- In many occasions, accuse them of knowing state secrets or of betraying
the system in the case of doctors close to the commander in their work or
who had had leading positions in the regime elite.
In conclusion, the unexplainable historical sentence of the Cuban people is
so strong, deep and so rooted to their skin as a cursed seal or devilish
mark that when trying to flee from it, it brings about the pain of removing
it either by suffering from these retaliations or risking their lives in the
sea, but this is the price of getting rid of the weight of these chains.
MARIO J TORRES
NOVEMBER 2004
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