Analysis
Yunior García criticized for fleeing to Spain instead of marching against the regime
‘They broke me,’ he said upon arrival in Madrid. The dissident playwright was allowed to leave, but even his comrades were unaware.
“In Cuba there is a dictatorship, a brutal tyranny, as has rarely been seen.”
Yunior García Aguilera is not shying away from making fiery accusations now that he is “safe” in Madrid, where he arrived on Monday evening, while in Cuba opponents and dissidents, which he himself had called on to rise up, were risking repression to demonstrate against the government.
The playwright said he didn’t know “why they let me out.”
“Maybe they think they’ve won,” he added, referring to the “Civic March” called by Archipelago, the platform for regime opponents of which García has become the de facto spokesman, as well as a main promoter. The march did not take place “because of the massive deployment of the police and army,” the dissidents said.
But also because a large part of those who were supposed to be mobilized, the Cubans of the marginal neighborhoods, mostly blacks or mulattos, who had taken to the streets on July 11 because they were suffering the most from the very serious crisis affecting Cuba, in the end did not trust the call by a group of “intellectuals.”
According to the Cubadebate blog, the fact that the most representative of the promoters of Archipelago “fled” the country, without even the other Cuban leaders of the opposition platform knowing about it “confirmed … how unrepresentative” the playwright actually was. (Archipelago reported online that García “had disappeared” and was probably arrested.)
Humberto Lopez, the (only) state TV journalist who took on the role of García’s nemesis, published a photo of him at the José Martí Airport, waiting to board a scheduled flight thanks to a visa obtained with great speed from the Spanish Embassy.
“Se marcha… a España” was Cubadebate’s comment, an ironic reference to the Civic March in which García did not participate in order to marcharse (leave, escape) to Spain with his wife.
The playwright and others in Archipelago wondered how both López and Cubadebate got the photo of the “escape.” The answer was obvious: it was provided “by State Security.” Which, however, made it clear that the authorities had neither forced García to leave the country nor suggested it. The Cuban authorities merely “did not place any obstacles” in his path. The responsibility for the choice to leave Cuba lies with the playwright himself, while the concrete help in making that choice a reality came from the Spanish authorities.
One political scientist who wished to remain anonymous commented that García chose “el destierro,” a kind of provoked exile, with the approval of the government, which thus sees one of its most prominent opponents leave the Cuban scene, and the complicity of Spain, which wants to avoid a serious crisis in relations with the island (five journalists of the Spanish agency EFE had been deprived of accreditation, and on Wednesday only four of them had the documents allowing them to work returned).
“They broke me,” was Yunior García’s first comment upon arrival in Madrid. The playwright claimed he had been threatened, subject to media lynching, and isolated in his home, where a large Cuban flag placed by neighbors had almost completely obscured his window. His situation could earn him solidarity on the human level even from those who disagree with him—much unlike his belligerent statements about the regime on Thursday, tailor-made for the consumption of the “free press.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/la-fuga-invece-della-marcia-yunior-garcia-spiazza-tutti/ on 2021-11-19