“There will be a lot of support needed, because Cuba is a country that is in total economic collapse and there will be a need of a trustful project in order to have people to help you. If by the time we have something in advance, it would be better. We want to propose something which is possible, and we know that there are reformers within the country, as well as we know that within the government’s leadership, everybody goes against everybody, and the issue is very complicated. So, it might be that creating a bond to those many people who would like to take the step and who do not dare because they are afraid and they don’t know to who to turn to and neither they know how to do it, so we want to tell them: gentlemen, if you do it here, you will find support, which is the only thing we can do from outside. Support and legitimacy for a change, as soon as it begins.”
“So, I said that we were going to monitor, to do our work, but to monitor everything, what really happens. In other words, [the issue of] the prisoners is phenomenal, but in Cuba everyone is imprisoned, but in the end people get used to the issue of the prisoners and they get exhausted, so we were going to try to handle it out from other points of view. And then we started, Alejandro, Bertha [Soler], all the prisoners, among others, and we started to work and it began to pick up its pace. We have many observers within the country. It works well and we have also had a lot of problems. We have achieved many things in Europe, although not everything we would have wanted, but we could bring a Motion to the Council of Europe on workers' rights. We were able to get all the recommendations to the bilateral Agreement, because we did not agree with what Mogherini was proposing. We also presented all the amendments to the Constitutional Reform.”
“In the United States, we didn't have a bad time. That house was a big house where they were welcoming people all the time. And there I began to experience what exile was like. People, relatives or not, relatives or friends, who were there and then left, were welcomed all the time. You could never create any strong ties. These were three very difficult and very instructive years. When my father left [Cuba] and finally he got there, he said, well, now we have to organize us, because this does not seem to have any function. The Bay of Pigs had just happened, it was difficult.”
“We no longer belong to ourselves, we belong to the Homeland. With this phrase, the Revolution claimed the right to dismantle society and families. Not only, let's say, through education, meaning that they closed all private schools, free schools, they monopolized education, but also the system which was imposed in kindergartens, country schools, pre-university schools and high school boarding schools. They took the children away from their families. In addition, they threatened to take away the parental authority of the children from the parents and send the children to Russia, but after that they didn’t send them there. But that was when my family and many others made the decision to take their children out [from Cuba], because they did not want to lose their children's parental authority. They [the Cuban government] did not want Catholic families. You probably already know that Marxism and Christianity are almost religions, because Marxism almost became a religion. Marxism denied God, but you had to worship a human being as if he were God, which is an absurd thing.”
Elena Larrinaga de Luis was born in Havana, Cuba, on December 4, 1955. At the time of the Cuban Revolution, her father was the Executive Vice President of the Antillana de Acero company. Because foreign companies were nationalized as of January 1, 1959, their managers were forced to leave Cuba, including Elena’s family. Elena comes from a fervent Catholic family, so wherever they lived, her mother always looked for the Sacred Heart of Jesus schools for the couple’s children to attend. Her parents died when Elena was very young. After getting involved in Cuban issues, she was elected President of the Federation of Cuban Associations in Spain, collaborating through projects and welcoming political prisoners. Her first return trip to Cuba was unsuccessful, and she was only able to enter Cuba after obtaining permission from the Cuban Consulate in Spain. During this second trip, she met with Oswaldo Payá, Laura Pollán, Guillermo [Coco] Fariñas, among other opponents from the island. She created the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights to document violations of these in Cuba. Elena currently resides in the city of Madrid and is married.
