Mario Jorge Travieso Medina

“The communist system is what does not work, it is not a measure, it is this complete system that does not work. They are searching for all possible and impossible because there is no liquidity in Cuba, the Government of the nation is trying to search with everything that is around, to fulfill. And the extraordinary crisis that the nation is experiencing, that we have had blackouts, the ones that we used to have during the special period in the nineties, but transportation, access to the food we are worse than in the special period. So, what are they doing, they are throwing the last lurch to try to sustain something that is unsustainable, what is their power and what is their Government.”

“So here we are after 30 years, we have practically nothing. In Cuba we still do not have a Law of Religious Freedom, the Church of Jesus Christ continues to be persecuted, believers continue to be persecuted, pastors continue to be persecuted. Some time ago, they took me to the State Security office here, which is called ‘Instruction’, and I was in an interrogation, well, I was detained for three hours there. Since I arrived there, the officers told me that I was not going to leave because I was in prison. I was told ‘You are a Pastor, you are a shameless one, you are the one who steals everything that poses Church nowadays.’ And the offenses that no one ever told me. Those people told me, I had to listen quietly for three hours because I was in prison and they forbade me to speak. It was an exceedingly difficult moment, I spent three hours supporting those lies among lies against the Church, my wife, my family. My mother had just passed away, they had no consideration. They told me they were going to put my wife in a working camp with lesbians. That they were going imprison me, that they were going to rape me, all kinds of threats there in an air-conditioned room, alone. I was enduring about three hours. I came out of there, I can assure you, I felt like a raped woman. I understood what a raped woman feels because my soul was raped at that moment.”

“In 2004 we suffered a tremendous collapse, when ten police cars surrounded us, as if we were some drug dealers. There appeared several trucks with trailers, here in Cuba they are called Vikings, snipers, ambulances, they blocked two blocks around. They surrounded complete area, the courtyard of the church, they surrounded it, and confiscated everything. From four in the morning, when the operation began, to seven in the morning they stole everything we had. A quarter of a million Cuban pesos was robbed from us - among the benches we had, the pianos, the musical instruments, the loudspeakers, the drum, we had refrigeration equipment and so on. We had bought everything in the Cuban stores, so all of it was bought correctly.”