Militarized Cuba couldn’t drown calls for change and democracy

They’re afraid.

The Cuban regime is very, very afraid of a generation that won’t take “No” for an answer from the static patriarchy leading Cuba, island gulag, only 90 miles from Key West.

Threats and angry mobs armed by the government with clubs don’t dissuade them. Jail time doesn’t, either. They have truth and a just cause on their side.

Accustomed to 62 years of acquiescence by force, the dictatorship run by Miguel Díaz-Canel, the appointed strongman du jour unleashed its considerable repressive apparatus on Cubans intent on staging a second protest Monday, following July 11 demonstrations, to call for change and democracy.

This one, tagged #15NCuba, trended for two days on Twitter, as videos, spoken truths and photographs of acts of rebellion in Santa Clara, Santiago de Cuba, and Havana trickled in.

No, the protests called for across the island weren’t allowed to go on. But that was the point being made. In Cuba, there’s no room for speech outside reverence for a government not elected by the people but by the ruling Communist Party.

But this new day in Cuba was still poignant.

If the massive historic July 11 protests were fueled by a battle hymn “Patria y Vida ” — up for a Latin Grammy this week — then the small acts of courage under the threat of prison terms and beatings on Nov. 15 will be known as the protest of the white rose.

THE PLAYWRIGHT & HIS WHITE ROSE

On Sunday, goons surrounded the home of playwright Yunior García Aguilera and made it known that he would not be going anywhere to march on that day.

When García decided he would protest from his window, the posse assigned to babysit him for the government tried to silence him by draping a huge Cuban flag from the roof down and over his windows.

Nevertheless, García found a slat in the jalousie from which to peer and offer the Cuban people the white rose that Independence War hero José Martí immortalized in a poem, symbol of friendship and peace.

“I have a white rose to tend

In July as in January; I give it to the true friend

Who offers his frank hand to me.

And for the cruel one whose blows

Break the heart by which I live,

Thistle nor thorn do I give:

For him, too, I have a white rose.”

The Cuban regime sent a mob to stage an act of repudiation in front of his house and blocked access to his street with a school bus to keep journalists from interviewing the isolated young activist. But AP photographer Ramon Espinosa took the iconic image circulating around the world of García’s rose.

And the entire scene made the network news.

A COUNTRY WITH NO JUSTICE

Indeed, the repressive tactics corralled a massive showing across the island like the one on the historic 11th of July, a date that will be remembered in Cuba’s history as the day Cubans broke the shackles of fear like the statue in Matanzas’ Freedom Park.

Yet militarized Cuba couldn’t drown out the calls for “Libertad!” and the new images of Cuban bravery and craftiness. It couldn’t silence the fact that Cuba isn’t a country of justice, and that people are serving harsh prison terms for the simple act of speaking their minds.

The kids left the government standing there, its ruthlessness in plain view.

And Díaz-Canel is the naked emperor who started all this when he began his mandate by criminalizing art. And still, brave Cubans defy his crackdown and show the world just how powerful art and artists can be.

So often in life, you win by losing.

The Cuban dissidents won today by losing their internationally recognized right to free expression. Again.

But, at the end of the day, the mighty Cuban security forces couldn’t hold a candle to the power of a single white rose in the hand of a playwright.