Leaving Cuba is not the same as leaving any other country for the first time. To leave Cuba is to fall into the world, to verify that Cuba has been kidnapped by a political system that has caused the country to find itself still in the XNUMXth century," says the independent Cuban journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa in the epilogue of his book 'La hidden island' (Books of the KO). In this volume, the author compiles a series of articles in which he makes an intimate and surreal x-ray of the marginal life that inhabits the island, "unknown even to many Cubans"; as well as his own departure from the country after being 'regulated' for five years (with a ban on leaving Cuba) by the regime.
Jiménez Enoa reveals to us in this volume the existence of 'the aquatics', a unique community in the process of extinction; the daily life of Ernesto, a jinetero (prostitute) who balances the agenda to the millimeter so that tourists do not overlap; the frustration of Namibian boxer Flores, who is prohibited from fighting on the island because he is a woman; the peculiarities of Cándido Fabré, the bird man; the life of Argelia Fellove, a lesbian who has survived a long and painful record of extreme violence; or the dissidence of the biologist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, who for decades has questioned the official lies of the Cuban government.
“I am interested in the Cuban underground, the one that is not in the media, where it usually appears for specific issues. And to do so, he used characters that bordered on surreality, ”explained Jiménez Enoa during an interview with ABC a few meters from the Retiro park in Madrid.
'The hidden island' is not an ideological or activist text, but a mirror that reflects personal and also collective stories – the San Isidro Movement, the 27-N, the protests of July 11, 2021–, some of which have convulsed the island in recent years. “Cuba is always treated from extremes: hate and embrace. I was interested, as a professional exercise, to put a fixed camera and have people walk past it without me appearing. At least at the beginning –he clarifies–, later the course of events made me be present”.
Jiménez Enoa, who for years has suffered arbitrary arrests – “I lost count” – and harassment by State Security agents for his activity as an independent journalist – he is one of the founders of the magazine 'El Estornudo' – refers to That epilogue in which he narrates how his departure from Cuba was on January 9, 2021. When he was "taken out" - he received a phone call informing him that he could pick up his passport -, he decided to also recount what it has meant for his "health mentally and his family” leave the island, and get used to “capitalism”. Choosing among all the offers that are in the stores, full of products, will need anxiety after landing in Spain, he confesses in the book. "In Cuba you cannot choose."
The 'thaw' generation
Jiménez Enoa (Havana, 1988) lost to his generation of young people who lived in the 'thaw' of relations between the US and Cuba –initiated by Barack Obama– a chance to produce changes in Cuba, something that was of the hand of the advent of the internet. "An illusion was born with the opening, the empowerment of small Cuban businessmen and civil society, the birth of the independent press... A young generation emerged that moved the status quo of the country." The arrival of Trump has the US Presidency in 2016 and the "slowdown" of the Cuban government, "because he realized that the country was getting out of hand", changed the future prospects of that generation . "But civil society continued to live, giving rise to a brutal clash between it and the government," he points out.
President Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, in March 2016, in Havana Reuters
Ties with Castroism
The author was not always on the side of the barricades. Relevant to a family with close ties to Castroism -his father worked for the Ministry of the Interior and Che Guevara was best man at his grandparents' wedding-, they come to confirm that things were not as the regime painted them when they entered the university: “I grew up in a pro-revolutionary, pro-government family, admiring Che and Fidel. I started to open my eyes when I decided that I wanted to do journalism. And that's where I started to realize that it was all a fallacy, ”he recalls.
His incipient rebellion took its toll on his family: “My father had to retire due to pressure from his boss, who asked him to stop writing; my mother and my sister were expelled from work. This is totalitarianism." Despite this, consider that his experience "served to open my family's eyes a little."
As a journalist, Jiménez Enoa has witnessed the birth and emergence of the San Isidro Movement, made up of young artists like Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, persecuted by the regime and in prison since 11-J when the most important protests in recent decades broke out. “I was one of the few independent journalists left on the island.” The repression for the protests, "which the regime raised to levels never seen before," left him wrapped in unbearable loneliness. “The generation that participated in them is in exile, and those who are not outside are in jail. Today in Cuba there are almost no independent journalists or activists left... Right now there is a political desert on the island. Barrier with everything. It is true that it is an articulated exile, that they do not abandon the Cuban cause – he admits – but after all they are in exile, from where what you do has a limited incident on the Government and the Cuban reality”.
“When you are in exile, what you do has a limited impact on the Government and the Cuban reality”
Abraham Jimenez Enoa
Cuban independent journalist
The writer is part of that list of those expelled from Cuba that has been growing in the last two years: "Before the internet, the government used the 'regulation' strategy so that the reality of the country did not leave the island, but the internet broke with that, and managed to block it and censor the independent media through laws. Now I prefer that we be outside, and that we shout outside”. It is the same strategy that other countries follow. “Nicaragua and Venezuela are carbon paper of Castroism, they are mechanisms that have been born under the auspices of the Cuban regime. The representation is identical.
In short, he regrets that, thanks to the international situation –the war in Ukraine, the protests in Peru…–, the focus on his country has shifted. “The regime is living a good moment. Cuba has disappeared from the arena and that suits it very well”.
