The Smell of Fear

I still remember that constant phrase, of people in Cuba, "Be careful, the wall have ears", and even thought I didn't yet understand the reason for so much fear, I learned to be cautious and not say anything that would offend the revolution. I could smell fear, in the air that I breathed.

My parents generation, lived through the horrors of Castro's firing squads, the massive executions, without the luxury of a trial, the disappearances, the arrests in the middle of the night and the work camps. They couldn't just simply stay neutral, because to the authorities, that meant you were a counterrevolutionary. We were called maggots, how ironic! The Castro regime needed to degrade and silence any citizen with free ideals. Communism does not permit individualism, and free thinking, which is a basic right of every human being.

Once out of Cuba, I heard the stories and watched the images and videos available from the dark era in the history of our beloved Cuba. The firing squads continue, but not publicly, as at the beginning, after all, it's no longer necessary, because terror lives in everyone of us. Darkness reigns in our island, and we don't know when the dawn will come.