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Solidarity is the key for the release of Gerardo, Ramon and Tony. We should keep on with the activities in Washington. Every day, more Cubans living in Europe join this struggle.
The keys to the prisons of Gerardo, Ramon and Tony are solidarity. It is really important to have the American people join our struggle for the release of our brothers. There have been more than 15 years serving and time is pressuring,” said Evelio Quevedo, a Cuban living in Sweden who gives serious importance to this fight.
“We should increase the activities inside the territory of the United States (U.S.); demonstrations, the media campaigns, sending letter to President Obama, and sittings in front of the White House. We have the conditions to repeat the activities like those we carried out in May and June last year in Washington.
“We will try to break again the wall of silence about the case of the Cuban Five. In that occasion, we protested on the streets, spread propaganda so the Americans knew on the case of the Cuban Five and there happened impressive things that show the ignorance of the American on this topic, but we will be restless and will keep on fighting for their return.”
Black people were more sensitive
“I was visiting Cuba when the International Committee for the Release of the Cuban Five made a call to all with economic possibilities and visa travel to the US. As I have European passport immediately agreed. We went to Washington with our own money; no one pays us for anything. We lived in a hostel with bunks, nothing luxurious. We spent a week there. We go because we feel it with all our hearts.
“We performed a great parade until the White House on June 1, but the right wing media did not publish it, just TeleSur. We marched for an hour. It was the time permission they granted. We could not stay there. We shifted all the time, because otherwise, they could evict us from the area we had in that place.
“American society is plunged in marketing propaganda for consumption. Once we were for more than an hour in front of the entrance of the subway trying to deliver propaganda, but anybody took neither the cards, nor the photos, nor the posters, not even a newspaper. They did not pay attention to us.
“Then, we decided to be in the exit doors. We chanted Free the Five! Cuba! And we demonstrated our propaganda was neither on shampoo,, nor cheese, nor bread; but something for Obama about the Cuban Five and only the black citizens took all the information we were offering. They were the ones giving the greatest support. I realized white people did not approach us. There was a lot of information left and we delivered it in cafeterias.”
“I found a man acting as he did not understand. He asked what it was about all that we were doing. He waited until we explained who the Cuban Five were; what we were doing in Washington and at the end he was a right wing Cuban. He crumpled the newspaper in his hands up, threw it to my face and said: “they should get rotten in jail”.
“That was one of the negative things that happened to us, but the positive thing was that he knew who the Cuban Five were. It was a very important experience for me and I am ready to keep on doing it, without fear to the risks.”
Cubans for Cuba
“When I am in Sweden I continue collaborating with Cubans for Cuba and support the International Committee in Solidarity for the Freedom of the Cuban Five. We carry out cultural activities every month to collect funds and send them to Washington that is where they are more needed.
“Every year we organize the Meeting of Cubans in Europe, in 2013 it was in Athens and every time we do it in a different country. It is a way to unite us, to make people hear and feel us and find initiatives to continue helping the Cuban Five and our country. The solidarity gesture depends on the great personal effort we make. Most of us were afraid at the beginning, but the situation has incredibly changed and now we are many who join this works.
“I live in Sweden but I do not pretend not to have heard. I carry Cuba with me. I am linked to the Cuban embassy in Stockholm where I help with the groups in solidarity with Cuba. I frequently come to Cuba, so I always feel as if I were at home. In my case, I have not lost my roots. I neither like the food, nor the culture, nor the weather in Sweden. I watch Spanish television and I have relations with the Cuban community there.
“Sometimes life there has been difficult. Sweden is a very left wing country. The media neither mention Cuba at all, nor the Cuban Five. If they do it is to say the contrary, all the bad things. They now know a little thanks to us that we are on the streets with banners in manifestations. We gather information at the embassy on what our journalists write.
“We demand the lifting of the embargo and the freedom of our Cuban Five brothers. We want to demonstrate the world that not all Cubans living abroad are enemies of the homeland.”
The Paradise that never exists
“I left Cuba when I was 21. I could by a flight to Moscow and as they said Sweden was a country with good economy, I jumped there and settled. Emigration exists in the whole world, but for sure, the majority travels like me, I do not deny it, dreaming with a paradise that never found, and to value and love my homeland –I die for it- I had to leave. Later I realized there are many banal things and it is when you start longing your people, its beaches, the food, its culture, walking barefoot, hang around on the streets and you are shocked.
Counterrevolutionaries in Sweden threatened to kill me after we became public as delegates who meet in Europe every year and participated in meetings Nation and Emigration that was held in the Conventional Palace if Havana invited Fidel Castro. They took us photos in the event and they are in Internet. In their propaganda they called us ´Cubans paid by Castro´.
“They threatened us by phone. Groups of Cubans in Europe started to support us then with letters, telling us not to be afraid, they encourage us. At the end, it ended in nothing. Cubans are now very solid on the streets, at the embassies that the anti Cuban right wing is overshadowed. This is the way to love and respect Cuba.
That is why the Cuban Five mean so much or everything for me. And if necessary I would have done all they did for our homeland.
“We should keep on fighting for the conquests of the Revolution. I have been in Sweden for 20 years and when I come to Cuba, I see the Cubans happy, without saying that hard word we say in Europe that is depression. They talk about real situations, but children laugh, play on the streets and I am happy to hear their mothers calling them to have dinner or go to bed without any fear that something bad could happen to them.
I have four nephews living in Europe and none of them get in touch each others. They are all in front of their computers with the games, in Facebook, each of them in their bedrooms; they do not talk to their mothers, there is no spirit, there is no soul. They were born in Cuba and grew up until they left. Their family is a computer or a cell phone.
“I am Cuban until death. Nothing will make me change.”
