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Ocala
Friday, March 29, 2024

Please support Cubans in efforts to attain freedom from communism, dictatorship

Please excuse me if my English is not very good, but I do my best to express my feelings. Thank you.

Dear Mr. Rochette,

What a pity that you cannot take a cruise to Cuba, my country, but don’t worry, I can tell you what you are missing.

First, from the port of Havana or on the tour that they can give you through Old Havana, you will not be able to see the poverty that Cubans live, you will not be able to see the policeman who hits a woman, a minor boy on the floor, or a black man, just for pronouncing the word Freedom. In that wonderful trip, you will not be able to see the cry of a mother who spent 6 hours in a line and could not buy food for her children. You will not be able to find out how much an honest worker earned and then asked himself what he can do with that money that he collected, if the food is sold in stores for foreign currency.

So, Mr. Rochette, you will not be able to see how the money you paid for that cruise, or for that hotel, will go to the personal accounts of the Castro family and their acolytes, it will not be used to repair a hospital, or a school, nor will they buy medicine, nor an ambulance, nor fuel for that ambulance.

Do you know what they will buy with that money? Police cars, cage trucks, suits and riot gear to repress an unarmed people.

Do you own a gun Mr. Rochette? Surely if you have it, it is to protect yourself and your family, because it is your right, it is in the constitution.

When Fidel Castro came to power he said: “Weapons for what?” and he seized them all. He did not do it with the intention of creating a country without violence, violence has always existed, he did it so that when one day the people realized that all his promises were a deception, that people could not rebel against him.

Right now, after 62 years of disappointment, family separations, fear of dissent, speaking softly so that the neighbor does not listen, my people are crying out for a change, not for a cruise, not for the United States sanctions are lifted, not for a ship of food donated by a neighboring country arrives, which they will later sell at exorbitant prices at stores. My people are screaming Freedom. My people yearn with all their might to have the right to say: This is not the destiny that I want for my children, I do not want to be beaten for thinking differently, I want to vote for the president (there are no elections in Cuba), I do not want communism. And they don’t want to be imprisoned or tortured for that. Right now in Cuba there are more than a thousand people missing for peaceful demonstrations, others have been killed by the police and the military.

I understand, Mr. Rochette, that you do not know Cuba, that in your kind heart you are not capable of imagining how much evil a communist dictatorship is capable of doing, but I lived there most of my life, and I still suffer every day because my family and friends are there. I can assure you that if the restrictions are lifted, not everyone will win, the dictators will win and the people will continue to be the same or more repressed.

I beg you and all kind-hearted Americans to help Cubans achieve their freedom. Freedom is the beginning of everything. Please support the Cuban Americans in their request for strong action by the American government.

Sincerely,

Yanexy Batista
Ocala

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