An Imprisoned Journalist Blogs From Inside Castro's Gulag

Today I continue my series of guest posts to introduce Huffington Post readers to some of my fellow citizens who blog from inside Cuba. Unfortunately, only a limited number of blogs are currently being translated into English, but our volunteer translators continue to add new blogs as fast as possible.

Today's guest blogger is Pablo Pacheco who was arrested during what has come to be called the Black Spring in 2003. With the world's attention turned to Iraq, Fidel Castro used the cover of the first days of the war to launch a crackdown against independent journalist in Cuba. Pablo Pacheco was one of seventy-five journalists arrested; he was subsequently sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. Two months ago Pablo launched his blog, From Behind The Bars, dictating his entries by telephone to fellow blogger Claudia Cadelo who prepares his entries for publication; additional helpers outside Cuba manage the translations.

The Power of Unity
By Pablo Pacheco, Prisoner of Conscience in Cuba.

It is true that throughout history, unity is what has bound all of mankind. When the idea of having my own blog first blossomed, and Ivan proposed to help me put one together, I planned at first to have something with a fictional flavor. I knew very little about what a blog was and even less about the internet due to the ferocious restrictions imposed on us by those who seek to enslave the thoughts of all Cubans.

I would like to believe that in all totalitarian systems there exist men like Boris Pasternak who won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature and declined the honor to remain ensconced with and continue suffering the pain of the Russian people.

Recently, Cuban blogger Claudia Cadelo has informed me that my blog is now being translated into English, Portuguese and those who manage it are pushing to try and get it translated into French.

Something interesting about my part in this story was that when Ivan went to the capital to find out if it was true, he was unable to get anyone to meet with him. This was March 14th, 2003, four days after I was arrested during the repressive wave of that year known to the outside world as the Black Spring.

I am unable to meet Claudia and am only able to speak to her on the telephone. The incredible thing is that it seems to me that I've known them my whole life. I will forever feel gratitude towards them, as it seems my mother taught me well when I was a young boy.

Since the beginning I decided to dedicate my blog to my compatriots who were arrested with me on that fateful day, to all their relatives and certainly to all those I know and communicate with. In my opinion, the blogger movement in Cuba has become an excellent alternative form of free communication that is so badly needed by those living in despair here on this island, taking on for a small moment the role of foreign press as the voice of the internal opposition and the dissident movement.

It has previously occurred to me that everyone with a blog is therefore a dissident with the choice to be joined to or to be independent of everyone else and to certainly not have to compete with other foreign press agencies.

In the end it is like we are the press, even if it's our own independent one, since news happens everywhere in the world. For the time being I consider myself to be the voice in this dismal prison of those whose voices have been taken away from them, and who do not have the chance to have a blog. I think I can also say without fear of being wrong that the voice that has been the most tightly muzzled among the 11 million Cubans is that of the prisoner.

Because of this it is our duty to speak for them, because they need us to fight for those with blogs and those without, since this is the true definition of unity.

Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanisanchez

Comments

[Locojhon]

Rodrigo,,,
Your post is spot-on-perfect.
There is just one thing you don't seem to understand.
The US public doesn't want to know--not about Cuba, not about Honduras, Bolivia, Venezuela, Panama, Chile, or for that matter Vietnam, or Korea or about every other atrocity the US public can not stand to see--but willingly and silently pays for with blood and taxes while accepting any pile of b.s. the government-led media chooses to feed to them.
I know. I served. I ate my share, too.
Other people care and other governments care--in part because they bear the brunt of what we do to them--but as long as we can live high on the hog at others' expense, then it is all so simple.
We. Don't. Care.
It is an integral part of our continuous history going all the way back to the pilgrims and the indigenous peoples.
And most certainly, we don't want to know.
Because then we'd have to admit it.
And then it would shame us.
And then we might have to do something about it, which could reduce our comfy lifestyle.
Which is why we don't want to know.
And eagerly lap up the b.s. instead.
To maintain the mythos.
Because we have to.
Because if we did not....who knows what we might do?
Otherwise,,,great post!
Regards,,,John

[Rodrigo Blanco]

Its a great thing the US public doesn't know much about the domestic occurrences in Cuba. Else they'd know that Pablo Pacheco, like the other prisoners disingenuously calling themselves "journalists" and "prisoners of conscience", was convicted, not of "speaking his mind" but of breaking the law by TAKING FUNDS FROM THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION for the purposes of undermining the government.

Its also a good thing (for you) the people of the US have not seen the footage of those embarrassing trials exposing how all of their groups were infiltrated by the government, so that evidence upon evidence was presented before them and all they could do was bow their heads in shame.

Yoani, show me one government in the world that would allow a citizen take money from a hostile foreign government to carry out illicit activity designed to undermine them?

I'll await your response!

[SigmundF]

Rodrigo...­.....you call illicit activities to report human right violations performs by a criminal dictatorship???
You call to break the law to work as an independent jornalist???
Undermine the "cuban government" ???? You sure mind the cuban tyranny. To undemine a criminal dictatorship is not to break the law but an act of justice and compassion with the victims.
I am sure you can't name a single act performed by those political prisoners!!!
I am sure you can't find a single reason that justify 50 years of terror, abuse, dead and prison of innocent people in Castr's Cuba.
Hostile foreign government­.... it is a joke??
Only naive communists that still believe that Castro is one of them and still believe that Castro and USA are enemies can asure that USA is hostile on Castro's dictatorship.
Take a look and learn that was just USA who helped Castro take the power:

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/us-cuba/gardner-smith.htm

Take a look and learn how USA became Castro's protector:

http://foia.state.gov/documents/foiadocs/2a31.PDF
http://foia.state.gov/documents/foiadocs/6d89.PDF
http://foia.state.gov/documents/FOIADocs/00005441.pdf

To learn make you free!!!