“I don’t see a future in this short-term democratic Cuba. The current politics are nothing new. They’re bad people and they are into the same totalitarian power. Plus, they don’t really offer anything that I would want. I am convinced that these people need to go, but I also have no faith left for believing that the next ones wouldn’t be just as bad. When I see the politic actors, that are racists, homophobic, and always have some kind of deficiency, I’m thinking to myself ‘Okay, what can we expect, another dictature?’”
“For example, in 2020, it was very exhausting. In February I realized that I’m not worth anything. I was stressed, because in November there had been 172 repressed women, in December 175, there have been more than 300 continuously. I couldn’t focus. If there’s anything that describes us as journalists, it’s that it’s not only your personal story anymore, nor is it about your family; you’re carrying the story of anyone who comes to you, asking you to share it. That’s what it’s like to write news, from the moment you start, to the moment you finish with all the risks it brings. The risk of having to leave to refuel, or when you’re taking a picture, but then a policeman sees you with it and he decides to find out why you were taking that photo in the first place, and you might not be able to find an excuse.”
“At the same time, I’ve got to tell you that I had a lot of things going on at the same time. From the 4th year of my career, I started to work in a magazine called ‘Ciribría,’ which still exists today.
I was… let’s say an illegal intern, that was doing corrections and editing. After I graduated, I started to work as a journalist in this super official paper. It was a move that the Ministry of Culture made regarding all those unofficial journals, which I actually collaborate with until now. I didn’t always have a good relationship with them, there were conflicts. But I found good professionals, who today are the main censors. For some reason, when they were working with me, they were very benevolent.”
“When all of this was over, came the Special Period, when the politics began to collapse, the state was behaving cruel, and the differences between people started to be noted, the hotels began to be built, the smell of food was spreading through the streets, and the people from ‘outside’ were directly criminalized. You couldn’t be young and black at these times, because then you were taken directly for a prostitute. If you were old, you were taken first, and even if you had the money to enter certain places, like for example hotels, you couldn’t get there. As Cubans, we were unable to access the hotels for years. If we were seen close to a hotel, the security guard at the door immediately asked us where we’re going and assured us that we’re not allowed to enter. We couldn’t even rent a motel.”
María de los Ángeles Matienzo Prieto is a writer, storyteller, independent journalist, and an activist fighting for the human rights in Cuba. She was born on 14th of August 1979 in Havana. She’s still living there, today with her partner Kirenia Yalit Núñez Pérez who also is an artist and an activist. When she finished her university studies of Spanish and Latin American literature in 2002, she started working for a communist newspaper called “Letras Cubanas” and as an editor for “Feria del libro.” At the same time, she was collaborating with independent journals, which led her to start writing for the opposition in a journal called “Diario de Cuba”. There she worked as correspondent for 4 years. That’s when the national security started to complicate her life, threaten her, and persecute her. In 2017 she published her book “The Havana Apocalypse (Americans are Coming),” which is a selection of articles published in “Diario de Cuba”. Currently she’s working with Cubanet and other independent digital news, focusing on the topics of human rights, the discrimination of women, and minorities in the Cuban society.
