Friday, May 1, 2020

May Day in Cuba: Remembering when the dictatorship's scripted march met a spontaneous act of freedom

The price of freedom.

May 1, 2017 in Havana, Cuba Daniel Llorente with an American flag calls for freedom
There is nothing to celebrate on May Day in Cuba. Workers in Cuba are jailed for exercising their rights: The right to strike is prohibited. 2) Voluntary collective bargaining does not exist. 3) Cubans are sent to work abroad and the Castro regime takes up to 90-95% of their earnings and trade unionists are jailed for trying to organize independent and free unions.

Today, Cuba's Civic Plaza later renamed the Plaza of the Revolution under the Castro regime is silent, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but three years ago during a May Day Parade something unexpected happened that caught the communist dictatorship by surprise.

A lone Cuban wrapped in a flag of the United States burst out running in front of the march. He was quickly tackled down by secret police, beaten up and taken away.

This lone protester exposed the repressive nature of the Castro regime in Cuba. Daniel Llorente Miranda, then age 53, an independent dissident, not belonging to any organization, engaged in a seconds long run  with an American flag in front of the Castro regime's May Day gathering in the "Revolutionary Plaza" in Havana shouting "freedom for the people of Cuba." He  was charged with "public disorder and resistance."
Things took a more sinister turn when weeks later Daniel Llorente Miranda was transferred to the Comandante Dr. Bernabé Ordaz Ducungé Psychiatric Hospital better known by its pre-revolutionary name Mazorra.Using psychiatric facilities to torture dissidents is a practice that originated in the Soviet Union but was adopted early on by the revolutionary Cuban government's intelligence services. Worse yet, it was this facility's neglect that caused the death of 26 patients from exposure in 2010.

Eliezer Llorente is the victim of a "preventive arrest" for supporting his dad.
When you defy the Castro regime it is not you alone that are targeted, but your family, especially if they continue to associate with you, and visit  you. Eliezer Llorente was arrested by the Cuban political police on April 29, 2018 in San Antonio de los Baños, Artemisa in Cuba. Eliezer was 18 years old and he had spent the past year visiting his imprisoned dad. The arrest was called a "preventive arrest."

Both father and son were both finally released days later in May 2018, but Daniel Llorente Miranda was warned to remain silent. He continued to speak out for freedom, and in May 2019 he was picked up by the secret police in the early morning hours and was taken to the airport and placed on a flight to Guyana with the threat that if he returned to Cuba he would be disappeared.

This is the price of speaking out in Cuba. This is the price of freedom. Let us remember Daniel Llorente Miranda and his family on May Day, and his courageous stand for liberty.

Labor union organizers are jailed today in Cuba, and courageous human rights defenders speak up for them, and face the danger of prison or being forcibly exiled from their homeland and their family by a despotic dictatorship.

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