Jun 6, 2008

Cómo llegó la noche

Today is also coincidence's day.

While putting together some thoughts to post about my latest reading, "Cómo llegó la noche", by Huber Matos, I stompped with this interview Juan Gonzáles Febles did with him, for Cubanet.

And I've been amused, one more time, by his testimony. There is no way to tell you the things I've discovered reading his memoirs.

Amid people who say bad and good things about him --I still haven't met someone that, one way or the other, hasn't been fooled by the castro's machine... lucky those who opened their eyes one time and escaped alive to tell their stories-- after reading the book I was left with a feeling of having met someone consecuente con sus principios, con todas las de la ley.

As a young child, I lived in Camaguey. And, among some blurred memories from my surroundings and the people back there, I remember his name was pronounced as a whisper. I had no idea why or whom they were talking about. Now I know. Now I understand the whispering.

I don't know if this Cuba's re-education program is gonna make me any good, or if it's going to make it worse. But when you read stories like this, you reach a dimension where you really realize the evil and terror that Cuba has suffered for half a century. And how your family, your relatives, your friends and yourself have been just un grupo de peones en la mesa de ajedrez.

It is unavoidable, for a person like me, from the generation of "el hombre nuevo", the process of going back and re-examine everything you were taught, everything you were told, everything you've always heard.

It is also unavoidable the sense of being robbed. The feeling that a bunch of scumbags stole you entire life, twisting the reality you've know since you were born.

And it is a lesson. A cold turkey lesson of the prisons in Cuba, of the terror story of El Presidio Modelo, a macabre lesson of the evil that lies behind the royal pieces of the so called Cuban revolution.

This book is a must. And I am extremely glad to know that is been circulating in the island. People need to know. The Cuban people needs to read zillion of testimonies like this.

Para no perder la costumbre, I'm now reading "Against all hope", by Armando Valladares.


2 comments:

Gusano said...

Cubanita:
the best thing about "Against all Hope" is that its a love story. Valladare's love for God , Country, Freedom and his Wife. Why isn't this book a movie?

Cubanita said...

Gusano, I've been asking myself the same question. I'm really hooked with the book, I have devoured it in three days... y que conste, I don't have a lot of free time to read.