HAVANA, Cuba.- Have a copy of Freer than the birdsa selection of chronicles published between 2000 and 2022 in CubaNet that make up the latest book by the independent journalist, poet and writer Tania Díaz Castro is fortunate (logically in Cuba they have not marketed the book). I owe this to the generosity of friends abroad, who made it possible for her to reach my hands.
Printed in Spain by Ediciones Deslinde in 2023, with texts chosen and edited by Casa Palanca, it has a prologue by Luz Escobar and a photo gallery.
The main objective of the book was to raise a fund to help women who practice this profession on their own, without having a possible retirement, and also to bear witness, with these few pages, to a relevant work.
The editor points out in the presentation note: “Tania is living history. History of Cuba, and history of independent journalism. And she adds later: “Choosing a few chronicles for this book has not been an easy task. Her work is very extensive and covers a lot of Cuba, much more than can fit in a book, no matter how long it may be… “
For her part, the prologue writer points out, among other aspects, the multiple difficulties faced by those who challenged, and still do so today, the Castro regime by doing journalism outside of state control. These people, like her, have suffered repressive measures such as prison, death or exile.
Tania was in prison between 1989 and 1990. She was general secretary of the Pro-Human Rights Party in Cuba, founded at her home on Lealtad Street, and had asked Fidel Castro for a plebiscite. Upon leaving prison she “… found the strength to continue confronting power through journalism.”
The 16 compiled works, of the hundreds that she wrote, are divided into three topics: “The country”, “Her history” and “My life”, representative of the very varied topics on which Tania wrote in her long career.
The first five deal with the emigration of Cubans, the Beatles, self-employed photographers, the problems suffered by homosexuals for exposing themselves in public, and one dedicated to Tania Brugueras.
Of these, the one dedicated to the stage where to listen to The Beatles had to be done in secret, something that I also suffered from, catches my attention. Tania heard them for the first time at the home of some North American friends who lived in the Casino Deportivo, in 1970. She pointed out that today the banned ones are the Cuban artists who emigrated and asked herself: “in which Havana park, very soon, we will see sitting in bronze Celia Cruz, the guarachera of Cuba, as John Lennon is today in a square in El Vedado.”
In others, he talks about his friend Ángel Rodríguez, mutilated in the war in Angola; of the case of the “silenced” dancer, Ramiro Guerra; of those shot at the beginning of the Revolution, and the Referendum Project called by the opposition Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas.
The third part closes, with articles dedicated to the death of his friend Carilda Oliver Labra, and others about the books burned by prisoners during their stay in prison to heat water, and those turned into pulp to prohibit their circulation, and a very curious one that he made for his old Olympia typewriter.
The work titled: “In a cell of Fidel Castro” has not lost relevance, where it exposes how members of State Security carry out their interrogations with psychological torture and narrates what she experienced: “The instructor was an expert in dismantling minds, technique learned in the KGB. His specialty: harassing, achieving submission, compliance, servility; especially in people incapable of withstanding strong pressure, incapable of defending themselves against torture.”
The call he makes in his work is significant: “Where rights are violated,” in which he addresses his arrest on March 10, 1990, motivated by: “…having sent a letter to the poet Armando Valladares for the victory obtained in the UN”. He concludes this chronicle with an energetic phrase: “Let no one tell me that human rights are not violated in Cuba! Don’t let anyone tell me!”
All of Tania’s general work stands out for its direct and clear language, something summarized by her in one phrase: “Say to the bread, bread, and to the wine, wine.”
The last years of her life were spent by Tania (who died on February 5) in a modest apartment located at the end of the town of Santa Fe, in the Playa municipality, far from the urban noise, with her invented family (her dogs and cats ) to live together: “Freer than the birds.”
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2024-05-28 08:54:06
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