First of all, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to be here. I'm Cuban, and what happened to me in Cuba was really bad. So I'm really happy right now that we're talking about Cuba, about the situation we have in Cuba right now.
In 1990, I was only 20 years old, and based on the situation within my country I felt it was my duty to protest. But I knew that protesting against the government was like putting myself in jail right away, so I decided to go and start distributing propaganda against the regime, against the government propaganda, papers and things that we.... I say “we” because I belonged to a group, and we decided to fight for democracy in Cuba, to change the political system, to try to change the economic system.
The economic system is brutal in Cuba. It's a blockade that we have. The Cubans have a blockade from the government. The government is blockading the whole country. So nobody can do business. Nobody can have anything. Castro says the embargo is killing the Cuban people, but no, it's the government. It's the government that is blockading the people.
If you want to do business, you can't. It's absolutely out of the question. You can go to jail for that, even for selling pizzas on the street.
So I decided on that matter and I took action. I started distributing propaganda around the city against Castro, things that said “Vote for democracy”, “Vote for liberty”, “Don't vote for Castro”.
I started in 1992, in that period of time. There was the election in Cuba. It was an election for only one party. Just imagine, only one party, only one leader. What kind of election is that? What choice do you have? You don't have choice.
I said, “Okay, my choice is democracy, freedom.” I remember that one of the papers said, “No, Castro; yes, democracy.” That was my choice, democracy.
Finally they caught me. It was 5 o'clock in the morning. The secret police came into my house. My wife, Miriam, was 17 or 19 at the time. My daughter was five months old. They didn't even charge me with anything. They just took me and put me in a cell. I had interrogation, interrogation, and interrogation for almost three months. There was no charge, nothing. After that they sent me to jail, with no charge either.
After one month in jail, I received the papers from the judges. The judges asked for a sentence of eight years in jail. Just like that, one day in jail, in prison, they said, “You're going to trial now.” That day I went to trial. It was for a couple of hours, and that's it: eight years. I was thinking the whole time it was my duty to do that, because I knew something about human rights. It's difficult in Cuba to know about human rights. There isn't that kind of information in Cuba.
Imagine. You can go anywhere and find something that talks about human rights—not everywhere.
I knew something, and I knew what I was doing was my right. So they sentenced me to eight years in jail. In jail I got all kinds of threats. They were threats like, “You will never get out of here alive. You will die here.”
Every day they were trying to make me change my mind, maybe because I was young. They conditioned my beliefs with visits with my family. For example, “If you don't think this way, you won't see your family anymore.” And I said “Okay”, but I wouldn't negotiate on that. My principles are what I believe. So I ended up for more than two years without seeing my daughter and my wife. Basically, I met my daughter when I came to Canada, because this beautiful government fought for my release. They came one day to my cell and they said, “Okay, you're free, you're going to Canada.”
So I asked if I had any choice, and they said, no, I had no choice, I had to go to Canada or stay in jail. So that day I said, okay, and I decided to come here, and it has been good for me, because I learned more about democracy, about how things should work.
So that day, basically, I met my daughter at the airport. Then after that, I had to get my daughter back day by day. That's only one of the traumas I suffered. I suffered in prison--torture, beatings. They beat me up sometimes to try to change my mind, to make me think the way they think. Day by day I realized that I was more right, I was on the right path, I was doing the right thing. And I think that was the thing that kept me alive in jail and kept me on the verge of not being crazy.
I spent five years and four months in jail--of those eight years. They sentenced me to eight years, so I spent five years and four months in prison. Most of that time I didn't see my wife and I didn't see my daughter. I was reading books, just learning about democracy, learning about the way things should be done, learning about the economy. I'm not an economist. I never studied that, but I know some things about the right.... If you blockade your own country, your own people, to not do business, what kind of economy can you build based on that?
That's why I believe that the embargo is doing something. For example, if countries have business with Cuba, with Castro, that money will never go to the people. There is never any infrastructure built there. That money will never be used for the people. For example, if you want to start a business, will the government give you some money? No. The money absolutely disappears. Billions of dollars have disappeared. We don't have anything. There are not even beds available in the hospitals, in the hospitals that were built before Castro. That revolution built only one hospital in those 48 years, almost 50 years, and the population has doubled. So where is the money going? He says people trade with him, but it is never in our hands. That's one thing I learned later.
That's my experience in Cuba. That's what I suffered to defend freedom, to fight for freedom, to fight for what I believed was my right and my duty. It was terrible. Those years were horrible. Finally, I'm here, and this is a beautiful country with this democracy. I'm lucky to be here talking freely. Sometimes I feel I don't have to say this or that. But I say, no, use yourself, because here you can say it. I was there 28 years just thinking that it is no good saying anything, until I went to jail. When I went to jail, I said, no, that's it, that's stopped, I will say what is on my mind. Before, and when I went to jail, I said what was on my mind. I learned in the end that's the way it should be done.
Yes, we all should work to get Cuba back on the track of democracy, on the track of civil rights. That's very important. And economically, that will come after. But first, democracy. We should fight for democracy. We should fight to bring back the civil rights in Cuba, no matter what.