“Although I am not very happy talking about this issue, I have suffered machism and the mistreatment by a man, because the Cubans are very macho and the Cuban women are quite feminists. So, of course, since we cannot find a law that could protects us, even if we claim our rights, your husband can come and beat you as he pleases. Then if you go to the police, as long as they don't see that your face is beaten, or if they have grabbed you by the neck and you may have run out of breath, thus, if you get to the police and they don't see anything on your neck, they tell you that nothing is wrong, even if you were about to die. It is normal, thus, that there are so many femicides in Cuba. Neither the Federation of Cuban Women, nor the LGBT Community, because it also happens with homosexuals, neither has rights. None. In other words, women and homosexuals are a very disadvantaged branch of the Cuban society, they live in a society so macho and so violent.”
“That is one of the reasons why nowadays the Cuban nation behaves like sheep, like rams, thus simply submissive, because they [the Government] have been creating laws and resolutions. And the people cannot do this and cannot do that, until, of course, the people themselves feel their self-esteem very low. You feel the pressure on you, and in the end, you simply think that you cannot do anything. And that is how the Cubans in Cuba live, with that feeling that they cannot fight, that they cannot do anything, they cannot think, they cannot live and that they cannot choose. I think they [the Government] have it very well thought out. This Cuban dictatorship knows what it is doing. They know that with these laws they will keep the people meek and without protesting. And that is how the government kept on remaining for the past 61 years.”
“At that time, as our case was so well known in the city of Ciego de Ávila, the teachers looked at me differently, they treated me differently, the same with my sister, with my cousins. In fact, my uncle decided to leave the town because of how frustrated he was and how bad the people made us feel. Then in the school meetings, they invited my parents to attend, they let them know. My aunt who worked in the CDR [Committees for the Defense of the Revolution], which is a state organization, and during those meetings they touched this topic constantly, because, I think, they often do it on purpose to make people feel bad because of their way of acting and thinking. And over the years it continued hurting me, because once I tried to enter the Caracol stores to work as a shop assistant and I was still dragging myself with what happened to us.”
“I began to see my life in a different way because we were more observed by the people. We drew more attention, they pointed their fingers at us, at what I call communist bullying, because everywhere, they point to you as if you were the worm [common denomination of the counter-revolutionaries], the mercenary, the one who does not have the ideology that it is necessary to have because everything is designed so that you have to think and act in a way and as we were not like that, because I grew up seeing things from another point of view. There are people who have to leave [the country] to realize what is happening in Cuba. I already knew what was happening from the inside. I knew that it was not a system in which a person should live, because of the repression and indoctrination to which you are subjected.”
Diana Caridad Ángel Bello Álvarez was born in the city of Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. When she was very young, the small business owned by her family was seized by Cuban State Security. This left her traumatized and demoralized. She was passionate about art in her youth, especially dance and theatre, but she could never study it in Cuba because her family was considered counterrevolutionary. Instead had to study for 4 years to become an Accounting Technician. She founded the first animal protection group in her home province and had several encounters with State Security. On two occasions, she was imprisoned for her reactionary ideas. She emigrated to Madrid in 2017 with her daughter, where she worked as a waitress and insurance agent. She currently lives in Madrid and is a member of the Actions for Democracy Movement. She participates in activities promoting the unmasking of the Castro brothers’ regime.
