Yunior García: “Returning to Cuba now would be suicide”

The first days of Yunior García (Holguín, 39 years old) in Spain, where he arrived on November 17, passed in a bustle of interviews with the press and doors that were opened before this playwright turned voice of the Cuban opposition. García spoke —he recalls— “with a hundred media outlets”, he met with deputies and with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares. Just a few days before, the dissident had been photographed in the window of his house in the Havana neighborhood of La Coronela while, from the street, a mob rebuked him for having called the frustrated March for Change on November 15. In his hand, the playwright held what is a symbol of peace in Cuba, a white rose like the one that the Cuban poet and national hero José Martí glossed about in his verses.That escrache —in Cuba it is called an “act of repudiation”— by supporters of the regime precipitated their decision to go into exile with a 90-day tourist visa granted by Spain. Already in Madrid, when the media lights went out, he and his wife, Dayana Prieto, were left alone, with a suitcase and 220 euros in their pocket.

Yunior García does not regret the silence that has surrounded his life since then. In the Plaza de Nelson Mandela in the Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés, where he now lives, he quotes Martí: "In politics, what is real is what cannot be seen" to describe the "discreet" work that he maintains has continued to carry out for the democracy in Cuba, the same longing that led the platform he founded, Archipiélago, to ask Cubans to take to the streets on November 15. The March for Change, prohibited by the authorities, was also intended to demand the release of political prisoners, many of them detained after the demonstrations that began on July 11 in Cuba, the largest that the island has experienced since the 1990s. .

In these two months, the playwright has understood the real dimension of his exile. That request for political asylum that he ruled out when he arrived in Spain is now considered almost the only way for him and his wife, and he has already accepted that his return "will not be immediate." In his mind he is aware of “the threat made in the summer by two prosecutors from Havana”: 27 years in prison in a prison already decided, the Condominium of the East. “After my arrival in Madrid, my theater group in Cuba was closed and the actors were fired. My works are prohibited. The case against me is still open. They have excuses for, as soon as I set foot in the Havana airport, to take me to jail for 27 or 30 years, as they have done with other protesters. Returning now is not a real possibility. It would be suicide," he says.

Yunior García, in the Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés, where he lives, on January 17. JOHN BARBOSA

eat and dress.

Now it's time to "look for a job of whatever it takes to earn our bread honestly," she stresses.

Even the light feathers he wears he says they bought it from him, but what he describes as “the most painful thing” about exile is having left a ten-year-old son from a previous relationship, Diego, in Cuba.

"There are details of my private life that I cannot reveal, such as my address," emphasizes the founder of Archipiélago. García fears for his safety: “We are in some danger. We are a concern for the dictatorship, which has tentacles everywhere. There are even programs on television that have broadcast images of our life in Spain”. He then explains that, in profiles of social networks and televisions related to the Cuban government, images of him and his wife shopping in cheap clothing stores in Madrid have been broadcast, with the aim of painting them "as consumers who are happy eating ham." .

The ties between Spain and Cuba, the "multiculturalism" of Lavapiés, the "warmth" that "the Spanish and the Cuban exiles" have given him, allow this opponent "not to feel like a stranger" in Madrid, but the situation in Cuba does not leaves room for relief, he points out.

"Cuba is worse than when we left, with this crisis of political prisoners, of minor children who are in prison," he laments.

The Cuban Prosecutor's Office has requested up to 30 years in prison for those detained for the July 11 protests;

The 14 minors arrested in the demonstrations initially faced sentences of up to 15 years in prison, later reduced to a maximum of seven.

The co-founder of the dissident platform Archipiélago walks down a street in Madrid's multicultural neighborhood of Lavapiés. JUAN BARBOSA

The life of the playwright in Madrid therefore has "one foot here and the other in Cuba", the country with which he assures that many nights he remains connected by video call with his son, the moderators of Archipelago and the relatives of the Cuban political prisoners until five in the morning.

His days in Spain are also devoted to writing.

The playwright collaborates with the portal of the Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez,

, and is working on a play precisely entitled

.

Culpability

García says that the memory of the precariousness suffered by his compatriots taints with guilt small pleasures rediscovered in his exile “like buying a chocolate bar” or pork, which in his country has become a precious and prohibitive good. The “pleasant experiences” that he lists, such as the discovery of a performing arts bookstore in Lavapiés, have been “many”. Among the bad ones, he mentions only one, the escrache he suffered on December 13 at the Complutense University in an act with the Venezuelan opponent Leopoldo López.

The now-exiled man attributes that act to "young people from the United Left." In his eyes, these young people are part of those who still believe in a Cuba that is the guardian of the essence of a revolutionary ideal and social justice, which he defines as "a myth" as unreal as the existence of "a blue unicorn." To the "people of good will" who "do not dare to call Cuba a dictatorship," he wishes them to "understand that this romantic vision is doing Cubans a lot of harm." He asks the international community to abandon its "hypocrisy" and its "lukewarmness" with "that brutal and cruel dictatorship that rips out the hearts of Cubans." García “will never give up returning to his country,” he reiterates: “Being Cuban is a chronic condition that has no cure. I cannot forget that I am a Cuban who wants to return to Cuba.”

The Cuban dissident, in a street near the Plaza de Lavapiés, in Madrid, on January 17, 2021. JUAN BARBOSA

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