Meet Young Cuban Democracy Leader Sayli Navarro

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There's a must-read interview in Cafe Fuerte (translated by Havana Times) with young Cuban democracy leader Sayli Navarro.

Here's an excerpt:

One of Sayli Navarro’s earliest of childhood memories is going to the headquarters of Cuba’s State Security in the province of Matanzas at the age of six, when she went to visit her father, who had been detained there.

“I still remember his purple pants, how he showed us some bruises on his knee after his first arrest,” 27-year-old Navarro, now visiting Miami, recalled.

In December 1992, Felix Navarro was detained in the town of Perico, where the family lives, for writing anti-government graffiti. In October 1993, he was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of “enemy propaganda.”

This was a turning point in Sayli Navarro’s life. She spent a good part of her childhood and youth visiting her father in prisons, which she can name like someone quoting from books they’ve read, and remember like landscapes one has seen on a trip: Aguica, Combinado del Este, Canaleta, Ceiba Mocha, Bayamo and Guantanamo, among others.

In 2003, when she was only 17, her father became one of the 75 people imprisoned during Cuba’s Black Spring.

As of that point, Sayli began accompanying her mother to church, in company of Cuba’s Ladies in White. Today, she is one of the main activists of this organization in Matanzas.

This past July 14, authorities unleashed a wave of repressive measures against the Ladies in White who attempt to participate in the Sunday mass held in the town of Colon, Matanzas. Some twenty Ladies in White from different municipalities in the province regularly attempt to meet at the local Catholic Church, but they are generally detained on the street and dropped off in remote locations, far from their homes and any populated area.

Sundays of Repression

Navarro has been keeping tabs: this past Sunday was the 18th time of repressive measures against the Ladies in White. Throughout her life, she has been detained 15 times, mostly for attempting to participate at mass in the Colon church.

“The fear is always with you. I always say I’m never going to lose the fear. When I go to mass, however, I leave it behind,” young Navarro says. “One Sunday, they picked me and my father up and left us out in a field, where loose cattle were grazing, six kilometers from the municipality of Maximo Gomez. On another occasion, they left us near the municipality of Marti, more than 20 kilometers from my house. Luckily, a horse-driven carriage stopped and took us part of the way back.”

The aim, she explains, is to prevent them from going to mass and, at the same time, to avoid having to issue the detention order they have to draw up if the activists are taken to a police station.

“I never resist arrest, but they always use excess force and hit you. I am able to overcome my fear because I know they are the ones who are committing a crime,” Navarro added.

To carry out reprisals, the government’s repressive forces are increasingly relying on people employed in prisons and individuals from municipalities near Perico, particularly young people from the city of Cardenas, who are offered jobs in the tourist industry in Varadero in exchange for harassing the Ladies in White, Navarro explained.

“State Security agents are increasingly repressive. What’s more, they are corrupt. There’s one who goes by the name of Orestes Martinez, whose real name is apparently Yosvani, whom we call the “transporter”, because he steals meat from the Los Arabos plant to sell in Havana,” Navarro told us.

Another individual, identified as Orlando Figueroa (his real name), is an officer at the Aguica prison. Before that, “he stole and sold animal fodder to make ends meet and now he rents out rooms in the prison’s conjugal areas for 20 CUC,” she reported.

The repressors also fear being exposed in the video recordings made by the opposition.

“They’re so afraid of being filmed by us that, when they detain us, the first thing they take away are our telephones,” she said. “New technologies have changed the rules of the game.”