“My horizon now is to achieve change in Cuba”

Havana Cuba. – Cuban professor, essayist and historian Alina Bárbara López Hernández, 58 years old, and her colleague, Jenny Pantoja Torres, were detained on June 18 by State Security and Police officers when they were leaving Matanzas heading to Havana to develop into a peaceful protest. Both were released hours later, but that night they ended up in the hospital due to the beatings they received.

Alina was the most affected: she received a strong impact on the head after a MININT officer knocked her to the ground. She was also dragged to the patrol car, grabbed by her hands and feet, and even pulled by her hair to get her into the vehicle. On the way to the police station, the officer tightened her handcuffs so much that, according to the intellectual later, her pain became so strong that she stopped feeling it. It was like her hands went numb, she said. “That’s so you can learn,” the woman told her in response to her complaints.

Still in pain, López Hernández answered several questions CubaNet.

―Several of your arrests have occurred in connection with the protest you try to hold every month. What kind of protest is it? What is its objective?

―It was in March 2023 when this began. At that time, taking advantage of the commemoration of the centenary of the Protest of the 13, which had occurred on March 18, 1923, it seemed to me a fair moment ―given the situation of absolute crisis, not only economic, but political, social, symbolic, cultural, that existed in Cuba― to pay tribute, to wink at history and, from that date on, on the 18th of each month to carry out a symbolic act of peaceful protest.

There are several demands: the convening of a national constituent assembly to draft a constitution that can be applied in all its parts; attention to families and individuals, retirees, poor people – here they are called “vulnerable” and in reality they are poor people –; the issue of political prisoners, unconditional freedom, that is, without mandatory exile; and, finally, respect for freedom of expression because that is the basis for civic honesty of people in any country in the world.

I want to clarify that the first time that Counterintelligence tried to pressure me, I hadn’t even done this, I was just a historian who wrote because I’m not even a journalist; I started writing for an alternative media outlet, then I founded another one, and what I’ve done is, in a way, apply my knowledge to my country, try to be honest, try to participate in things that are necessary.

-When and why did the harassment of the Cuban repressive bodies against you begin?

―The persecution by State Security dates back to October 2022, and I started in the demonstrations in March 2023.

Note that in those processes, when the questioning and lack of credibility of the world socialist system began, in almost all magazines the first thing that was done was to review the past, try to recover memory, try to vindicate facts, figures, processes, reinterpret, and that is not convenient to do.

And that is what I have done, in a way, due to my training as a historian and as a researcher in the field of ideas in Cuba. In addition to my research, books and essays, I began to write more accessible articles, for a broad audience, in Young Cubaan online press medium.

As people started reading those articles, they started talking about me more. I think that’s where things started, before I did anything at all in the public space. And that’s what started to bother people, I would say much more than the demonstrations I go out to do on the 18th. I think that has been more damaging to the system than the demonstrations themselves.

―Despite all this persecution, you have remained within the framework of official institutions, that is, working as an editor at Ediciones Matanzas (Ministry of Culture), and even being part of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the Cuban Academy of History. What is it like to work for institutions that are part of an officialdom that you yourself question? Have you been threatened with expulsion or repudiated for your criticism?

―Yes, I always worked in Cuban State institutions; first in the Ministry of Higher Education and currently in the Ministry of Culture. During the time I worked in Education, of course, she was seen as a hypercritical, somewhat conflictive teacher, who, although she worked in a department of Marxism and History, was not part of the Communist Party – she never wanted to be part of it. In fact, at that stage it was more complicated [expresarse] because there was no internet yet; The Internet came into force almost in the last two years that I worked at the university, that is, a little more access; Before you only had the right to email and a few other things.

I started writing for alternative media [no oficiales] in the year 2017.

Actually, at Ediciones Matanzas I have not had any type of difficulty. I work there and try to do my job as editor as best as possible. My boss and my colleagues respect my ideas and have not lent themselves to any type of expulsion or pressure.

I am also respectful and I do not impose any of my political ideas. I respect other people’s times because I fully understand that the system in which we live is a system with totalitarian features. I do not impose on anyone that they evolve or that they have a mechanism to break with certain considerations as I can have. And I do it thinking of a Cuba of the future, in which we will have to deal with different political positions. And so I am being like this, respectful, plural, from now on. This is not something that will be learned later, you have to learn to do this from now on.

―You said in an interview that when you started writing in Young Cubaan openly socialist media, believed that this political and social model could be reformed, but that at this point that vision has been transformed, and today it believes that the model must be changed. How and why did this transition occur? What political model do you want for Cuba?

―All people evolve. When I began to write in that medium I considered that it was possible to reform the system, perhaps economic, that would entail a political change in the future or I also thought that, for example, the change of people to direct certain functions could guarantee a transformation of the system, that is, that was the idea; that it could even be reformable with a vertical direction, as had happened in other countries of the socialist camp, but evidently life itself, reality, attitudes, the Cuban Government, showed me that this was not a possibility.

And that medium, The Young Cubawhich I thought was openly socialist, really wasn’t either; it was a medium that, in some way, had a very limited view of the Government, that is, of the Cuban model, because many things could be criticized but not the political system; and when I then began to criticize the political system for himselfits structure, its functioning, and I stopped believing that it was possible that this same system could be transformed to improve, and I began to consider that it was necessary to change it definitively, because then I collided a little with this.

There are three things that are very unacceptable to certain lukewarm criticism or to certain apparently socialist criticism, which is actually a pro-state position: one is the unique character of the Party as the center of the political system, the other is the unique ideology, and the other is the social character of property, that is, apparently social. When you start to question those three things, you are already an uncomfortable person because, evidently, you have already reached the point of understanding that the model cannot be reformed.

And that’s why in Young Cuba I was an unwelcome person. And I understand them, we must respect them, but that was not the vision that existed or that I believed existed when I arrived in that environment.

Then I was able to help form another medium, another organization, which is Cuba X Cubaa civic thought laboratory that does have a very respectful vision of achieving, through civic education, a social commitment of people to change through non-violent means, but with an evidently profound, radical change, both economically and politically.

I know that I am a person with leftist ideas. For me, the ideal model should be a democratic socialism, with pluralism, with respect, even with entrepreneurship, with private companies as well, but with a strong public company, which is truly controlled by citizens, with elections, with diverse political parties. .

But right now this is not my goal; my goal now is to achieve change in Cuba and, to do that, I have to respect other political opinions. That is the most important thing. Right now, Cuba’s case is not whether it is going to be socialist or capitalist; Cuba’s case is that it has to be respectful of the rights of its citizens and give its citizens the opportunity to choose the future they want. Otherwise, we will continue to plough the sea.

And of course change is not going to come from power. Those in power must be convinced that they have to change through pressure from below, which for me must be through peaceful, non-violent means. Without social pressure, no system has changed and, in the end, all have evolved.

I do believe that we are close to achieving this, but I cannot predict exactly when it will be because this is not an exact science, but we are close.

In Cuba we are experiencing a different historical moment, where people little by little are finding themselves as subjects, they are finding their voice; What happens is that we must denounce the repression to those voices that are emerging because, otherwise, we will not be able to, because they are going to crush us all because very serious things are happening.

What happened to me and Jenny that day has happened in many other cases, but it is certainly an escalation. Any change must bring with it a commitment to prevent people in Cuba from being violently repressed so that they do not exercise their ideas.

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