Coto is a social media advertiser who lives in Chula Vista.
I was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1991, a communist country where from the moment you are born, you are affected by the nation’s social and economic problems. My mother Zoila Coto raised me alone, under many economic adversities. I never got to know my father, Mario Alfonso Pena, a doctor, because when I was born, he went to Spain to give us a better life and the Cuban dictatorship never let him return to visit us because it branded him as a traitor for leaving his country.
When I was 11 years old, unfortunately, my father died in a car accident in Spain, and I never saw him again. I’ve had to live with this pain.
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Cuba, a country under a dictatorship for 62 years, is where thinking differently than the regime makes you anti-revolutionary in its eyes. It’s where asking for your rights makes you anti-communist, and where living in another country makes you a traitor. (Anyone who leaves the country for good is called a “worm.”)
My beautiful Cuba, beautiful only for tourists, where they can come and go to enjoy everything they want, but native Cubanos are not welcome back.
When I finished my studies, the dictatorship forced me to do an internship directly for it in the mayor’s office in Havana. I was 18, and it opened my eyes to what the Communist Party was all about. It made me realize that my destiny was to leave Cuba.
My first salary was $12 a month. It was a government job working from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. It was not enough for basic needs. There were months we ate and months we ate less. Life was about buying what we needed, not what we wanted. There was little choice.
One memory I still carry with me today was seeing a group of women known as las damas en blanco, or the ladies dressed in white, walking in the streets on Sundays holding a flower. They were silently protesting the imprisonment of their husbands and loved ones. Government workers were ordered to go outside and ridicule them. If they refused, they were fired.
Those were difficult years for me. Cubans could not enter hotels or talk to tourists and not even dream of buying a car or a house. Many of my friends, even being on an island surrounded by water, did not even know the famous Varadero Beach.
It was then I decided to leave the country, knowing that I would probably never return. My escape was something I will never forget. The details haunt my mind. I don’t talk about them anymore.
Today, I have been in the United States for 11 years, I have never returned to my native land, a land that I miss with all my heart.
I left my family members behind. I left my tios, tias and primos. Primos who were babies and today are teenagers and some that I do not even know, because they were not born yet.
These are the consequences of communism, a system where leaders say that everything is for the people and that everyone will be happy with equality, something that today we know is false. The only thing that communism generates is death, sadness, hunger, loneliness, pain and tears.
On July 11, I woke up just like any other day. But nothing was normal about it, after I looked at my phone. I started seeing videos of Cubans going out to the streets and shouting for freedom! For the first time in many years, I could not believe what I was seeing. I cried. I was filled with many emotions. I wanted to be there with them supporting them.
But the government fought back. I also saw videos of how the dictatorship once again repressed the people, how it used firearms against unarmed people. I saw how the dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel gave the order on national television to “wipe out” Cubans. He wants them out. Not because they broke the law, but for the simple fact that they think differently and want their freedom.
Cuba will no longer be the same. The whole world knows the truth now. Everyone has seen the videos and photos of the Castros’ repression, which the government has tried to hide for years.
Cuba will be different now. Freedom can be felt in the streets, the people are tired of so many lies, of so many Cubans separated by a political ideology and I am certain that this will be the year that the Cuban people finally get their freedom. Long live free Cuba!
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July 27, 2021 at 07:42AM
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Opinion: Interning for the Cuban government opened my eyes to what communism was all about - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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