My tweets and CIC

A discordant tweet in the case of Juan Wilfredo Soto García; The regime did not mention that tweet in its media because it could conveniently ignore it; I felt compelled to publish that tweet in the form of a complaint after the shocking testimony given to me by this student, just before noon on May 5, when I last saw him alive; I attribute this tweet to the Cuban Council of Churches (Cic).

All readers are advised to read the first article on www.cubanoconfesante.com: This is Cuba’s confession.

There I explained that since I can remember I had a burning need to express myself and although there were many times when I wanted to express the poetry of my soul, especially when I began to hear about the alternative possibilities that social networks offered me, I postponed the idea because of the controversy surrounding its practice in Cuba. The degree of controversy that it causes in Cuba is as natural as a child talking to us about whales through a blog in Germany. In the first article I described my inner struggle until I received the initial call on the last page of the print newspaper “Youth Uprising” on Friday, October 1, 2010.

This is the call issued by the CIC Board of Directors on September 24, 2010, entitled “Heirs of Christ’s Peace”. The crux of the challenge is: “We encourage all CIC member institutions and all peace-loving people to create alternative networks to the mainstream media or to join existing ones – email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter…”

Receiving such a call, I did not hesitate to start working. It turns out that CIC was right: social networks constitute a good alternative to hegemony, while not escaping the hegemony implemented in practice by the Cuban regime’s monopoly control over all media. Social networks are ending this monopoly in Cuba. As Mayor Federico Zaragoza rightly said: “As could be expected, the virtual wave has begun to mobilize citizens, mostly young people, who have always been dissidents of global and local governance and are willing to give up the role of spectators… to become… citizens rather than subjects, actors rather than just witnesses… The century of the people has finally begun. Cuba is no exception. No matter how government propaganda tries to distort, manipulate the concept of the people, civil society, citizenship; here we are like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

In my first Cuban Confesante post I expressed with conviction: “…After I read the call of the Cic, I did not hesitate twice and decided to become a Cuban Confesante…”. Then, inspired by the same challenge, my Twitter account appeared: @maritovoz. In addition to the simplicity and immediacy of this social network, I could publish my tweets completely without direct access to the Internet. Just send a small message of no more than 140 characters from my mobile phone in real time and any idea or information you want will be fixed in cyberspace. For someone like me, a simple country priest, imprisoned in the thickest part of the vast forests surrounding the global village, it fits me like a glove. I will always be grateful to the Cic for making the final decision. His challenge was even published in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, a convincing proof that having a blog or a Twitter account is not just one of the illegal acts that we have collected widely; until then, many believed this and, unfortunately, many still continue to believe this. I understood that I also had something to say to the world and that I could find the smallest possibility to achieve it against all odds.

But something extremely paradoxical happened. The CIC that challenged me with such a selfless appeal did not seem to have read the tweet of 11:55 am on May 5, when I, this Cuban pastor, whether a member of the CIC or not – it does not matter if it is about authentic ecumenism – realized that a person confessed to me that some uniformed men had beaten him mercilessly. It is hard for me to believe that the CIC did not receive the news that a pastor of the Western Cuban Baptist Association accepted their challenge and opened the blog Cubano Confesante and a little later the Twitter account @maritovoz. It is even harder for me to believe that the CIC has not discovered that the whole scam orchestrated by the Cuban government was caused by that tweet that triggered the international scandal related to the unfortunate death of Juan Wilfredo Soto. We all know that the CIC has been given access to the Internet. But I prefer to make an extreme exercise of faith before thinking that they have discovered it. No, they must not have discovered it, otherwise they could not have testified as they did a few days ago, after the closing ceremony of the much-admired 70th birthday celebrations of his life, before a delegation led by the President of the World Council of Churches. Its secretary general, Olav Fykse Tveit, said: “… the prerequisite for revolution is people. “In socialist state engineering, life is the most precious thing, and this is also taught in the scriptures.” No, they must not have found my tweet. There can’t be so much indifference and collusion.

Brother. Mario Felix Leonart Barroso