"Nothing but iron bars"

From Cubanet:


Nothing but iron barsRafael Ferro,

Abdala PressPINAR DEL RIO, Cuba - July (www.cubanet.org) -

Cuba is an immense prison. There are prisons everywhere. If someone goes on a hunger strike, he's put behind bars. Whoever tries to sell some of his property also meets the same fate. If you're a Cuban and live on the island, you can't sell your car, your motorcycle or even the pig you raised; they can put you behind bars. Prison bars everywhere. If you're an opponent of the regime, behind bars in a summary trial. If you don't find work and don't find favor with the neighborhood police, a candidate for prison bars; well then, all prison bars.And as if that weren't enough, the very citizens are now setting their quota of iron bars, a way of private confinement, independent, optional. Now, whoever has a little money orders the making of their own bars from street welders. Iron bars in arcades, bars on windows, their allocation of bars for doors, too. And from the start every Cuban has become a prisoner of himself.I never liked to see caged birds or small trees in parks with those wire meshes circling the tree trunks to prevent accidental damage. Birds and trees are incompatible with bars. Human beings, too.The most elderly recount that before, every Cuban home showed off its doors wide open toward the street, with nothing to fear, as if inviting the passerby to enter and meet nice people. That's been left to memory.Now they've shut the doors and as if that weren't enough, the iron bars have arrived, the macabre, obligatory fashion of self-confinement. So much iron in sight overwhelms.It's a mandatory style. There's no other option in a country in which the crime rate shoots upward, scarcity is the order of the day and everyone unfortunately is becoming individualized. We have that, that's left to us, they've left us that: the small prison with the cries of so many drowned persons behind the walls of injustice, and the big prison, this whole island that we, the apparently free ones, walk day to day, startled by the splendor of the acetelyne torches that go welding the iron lattices of each residence. Our only option, bars... nothing but iron bars.