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El activista del movimiento San Isidro Oscar Casanella cuenta cómo y por qué se arriesgó a hacer una travesía tan larga y complicada con su hijo pequeño y su esposa embarazada. Entrevista exclusiva realizada por Nitsy Grau para ADN Cuba

Transcript

00:00In 2022, the biochemist and activist of the San Isidro-Oscar-Casanella movement arrived in Miami

00:08after crossing the border with his young son and his pregnant wife.

00:14Practically, I had no other option.

00:18In Cuba, I was simply expected to go to jail.

00:23It was a direct threat.

00:25In any case, one of the strongest reasons was

00:31to prevent my four-year-old son from going to school.

00:39I was afraid that he would go to school, and he was about to go to school,

00:44under that indoctrination and under what many children of activists and opponents suffer.

00:53This is psychological repression for being the parents they are.

01:01And also so that my second child, because my wife was seven months pregnant,

01:09would not be born in Cuba.

01:12We really feared a lot for our lives.

01:15But yes, fundamentally, to give my children a better future.

01:24And let's say that the quick exit at that moment was because

01:32I was in a home prison and the police itself told me,

01:36we are going to let you out of the house to create the papers and you go in a month.

01:41If you haven't left in a month, you go to jail.

01:47The journey was very hard.

01:49Almost everything that could go wrong happened.

01:54Luckily, we arrived alive, but we didn't know what we were exposed to.

01:58But we knew that in Cuba, if we stayed,

02:01we already knew what the black future awaited us, me and my children.

02:07But a lot of risk, a lot of fear.

02:12I had to show my son that I was in control of the situation,

02:16when I really wasn't.

02:18I had to do a bit like the character in the movie La Vida es Bella,

02:25try to create a different reality for my son,

02:33so that he wouldn't realize what we were really going through.

02:38And then I told him that we were in a game,

02:41that we had to escape from the bad guys,

02:44and then he couldn't speak,

02:46he couldn't speak so that we didn't know his nationality or anything.

02:51We had to be hidden many times.

02:55And I always told him, this is a game,

02:58if we win, we're going to get to a very nice place.

03:01Without telling him, of course, because I didn't give him any information,

03:04because we didn't know.

03:06We were, let's say, detained on two occasions,

03:10and it was so that no one could kidnap him, interrogate him or anything.

03:17And I had to create that modified reality

03:26so that he wouldn't suffer the trauma.

03:28Every afternoon, he would cry.

03:32Falling, I mean, at night, he would cry

03:35because many times we would end up in very ugly places.

03:39At random, sometimes, in very ugly places.

03:43And then he would get very sad and cry,

03:46and he would say, Dad, do we have to sleep here?

03:50Do we stay here?

03:51Do we sleep here?

03:53And I had to tell him, well, yes, but don't worry,

03:56the bad guys haven't found us.

03:58And I tried to tell him stories and anything

04:01to get him out of that reality, which was very ugly, very hard.

04:10We left Cuba and did the crossing.

04:15We thought we were going to do the crossing from Cuba to Mexico

04:21and then to the United States, but that didn't work.

04:26It didn't work in Nicaragua either, going through Nicaragua.

04:29And what happened to us was that they deported us to Mexico City,

04:33at the airport in Mexico City, they deported us to Colombia.

04:38I mean, they deported us to Cuba,

04:39but simply doing a stopover in Colombia, where we had done a stopover.

04:43And there, luckily, they didn't completely deport us to Cuba.

04:49We were in a limbo at the airport in Colombia,

04:52about 10 days sleeping on the floor of the airport,

04:55not knowing what they were going to do to us.

04:57And well, finally, we were able to leave the Colombian airport

05:02and go up from Colombia, totally on irregular roads,

05:07to the southern border of the United States.

05:10At that time, my eldest son was 4 years old,

05:13my wife was already 7 months, 7 months and so,

05:18there was even a moment when the airlines

05:22didn't even let her travel, even if we had tried.

05:26Because many airlines, after 7 months,

05:29don't risk letting a pregnant woman travel.

05:34But the problem is that we were very afraid,

05:38well, in all countries, but especially in Nicaragua,

05:42because Nicaragua denied us entry and threatened us with detention.

05:48And Mexico too.

05:51And well, Mexico, in fact, was the one who detained us and deported us.

05:57How could you define that indoctrination that you feared so much in Cuba?

06:03On the one hand, it is the manipulation,

06:05the distortion of the reality that they do in their favor, the Cuban regime.

06:10That is the indoctrination in which they rewrite the history of Cuba.

06:18They manipulate the concepts, they confuse children with the concepts of

06:24homeland, let's say, political ideology, all those things.

06:32But additionally, there is also intolerance,

06:37the lack of democracy, intolerance, discrimination towards those who think differently.

06:41So, I have met people, I even have a ...

06:48There was a child in my neighborhood who told me that at school

06:53his teacher showed a photo of the San Isidro barracks

06:59and at that time I was on strike.

07:02And the teacher began to say that those who were there in San Isidro on strike,

07:09well, we were terrorists, we were mercenaries, we were paid by the CIA,

07:14and a whole discourse of discredit and discredit, which is what the regime uses.

07:19Can that be reproduced, that same scene?

07:24That is, the son of an activist, an opponent, even my son,

07:28could have been in a class and the teacher in Cuba could be

07:32badmouthing his father, me, for not being a criminal,

07:37but for me thinking and acting peacefully,

07:41as a result of what I think, but different from what the regime wants,

07:46the leaders of the Communist Party.

07:49Do you think a Cuban child can be happy in the conditions he lives in?

07:55It really is very difficult.

07:58I believe that parents can always make the effort,

08:03as I did, to avoid that reality, let's say,

08:11makes the children unhappy,

08:14and try to make life easier for them,

08:16but I believe that the effort that Cuban parents have to make today

08:21in current Cuba is huge.

08:24The enjoyment and opportunities that children can have in Cuba

08:31are a very small fraction of the opportunities and life

08:37that children can have in many other countries,

08:41at least in the Western Hemisphere, at least here in America.

08:47I mean, the reality of Cuban children is very, very hard.

08:55I remember that on the crossing,

08:59we were in several places where there were children's parks,

09:05and they were underdeveloped countries in Latin America,

09:09and yet my son had never seen such a beautiful and well-kept park,

09:14and he told me,

09:16oh, look, dad, what a beautiful park.

09:21And well, those were moments of happiness,

09:25and he really enjoyed being in those parks,

09:28parks that did not exist in Cuban neighborhoods, that do not exist.

09:31They are totally abandoned,

09:35and neither the state nor, let's say,

09:41private entrepreneurs or private initiatives or organizations are in charge of that.

09:48And so there is a lot of lack, a lot of abandonment,

09:54a lot of lack of options for children and young people.

10:00And I believe that young people, children and young Cubans

10:04are kind of burning the stage and violating it,

10:07I remember when I was a teenager,

10:11in the corner of my block,

10:15at night, drinking,

10:19in the middle of a blackout because there were no other options.

10:24And I didn't want that future for myself.

10:37For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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