By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – It was around 5:00 in the morning, an hour before dawn, and I was there, on the road six kilometers from my house. The problem wasn’t that, the problem was that suddenly I realized I was completely naked.
I had to hurry to get home before daylight and avoid being discovered. I was worried about the pavement; barefoot, I couldn’t walk fast, not to mention that some passing cars might see me.
On the other hand, taking shortcuts through the undergrowth in the middle of a dark night seemed more difficult to me.
I decided on the former and started moving cautiously. It was a battle against time and the roughness of the ground against my bare feet, which were no longer the same as in childhood when they were toughened by walking among the marabou brush and being pricked over and over.
It didn’t take long before a powerful spotlight illuminated the darkness. I turned to see what it was, and I perceived a patrol car ready to run me over. I managed to dodge the impact, but I wasn’t as lucky with the batons that immediately fell upon my body.
I escaped as best I could, bruised and bloody. My strength no longer held up against my relentless pursuers. Without any other choice, I stopped with the firm will to confront them. I was scared, but pleading for mercy was not an option.
Fortunately, a bladed weapon appeared, and I defended myself, nearly killing them. In these cases, something always appears that allows me to fight, be it a stick, a rod, a machete, anything.
However, as expected, they resurrected to resume the chase, and so ad infinitum. A kind of punishment that reminds me of Sisyphus. Then I woke up, more with anger than with fear.
These are two unpleasant and recurring dreams that have merged for the first time. In one, I appear naked in the middle of the street; in the other, a monster, a murderer, or some terrifying entity pursues me, and when my strength is not enough, I stop, face it, kill it without understanding how I succeed, and then it’s as if it resurrects, and the cycle repeats.
I’ve been reading about dream interpretation theories and found that, in the first case, it’s about shyness, fear of a secret being discovered, or feelings of guilt. In the second case, it means fear or concern about daily life events. I don’t see myself reflected in either case. Besides, I’ve always doubted psychology as a true science.
The thing is, the night before, I had gone to bed after watching a video that went viral on social media. Two police officers, after colliding with a motorcycle, began beating the rider despite him offering no resistance.
I’m unaware of the reasons for this incident, but in any case, nothing justifies the excess of police violence, something common in our country. It’s not the first one that has gone viral. Last year, I saw quite a few, and in all of them, the abuse is evident.
While this happens, the official press dedicates many programs to clean up their image, which only a couple of naive people believe, or it only echoes similar events when they occur outside our borders, especially in the United States.
The difference they don’t tell you is that there, the involved law enforcement faces justice, as was the controversial case of the African American George Floyd, where his assailant is serving a long sentence, while in our beautiful Cuba, a police officer kills you, the Ministry of the Interior issues a brief note to justify the act, also weighing the alleged criminal record of the victim, and that’s the end of it, without protests, without complaints, and with the deceased’s relatives in total helplessness.
For these and other reasons, when I walk the streets and see them, I don’t feel protected; rather, I consider them potential enemies.
The police are supposed to exist to defend law-abiding citizens and instill fear only in wrongdoers. But in our case, the average Cuban doesn’t feel protected by such uniformed individuals.
They fear having their belongings searched and some essential item confiscated in a country plunged into extreme poverty, where the struggle for survival is almost the only driving force for humans; there is no time for dreaming.
They fear being detained or beaten by cowards; individuals aware of their complete impunity. And this citizen sentiment highlights that we live under a dictatorship.
Recently, another anniversary of the founding of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) was celebrated, where the institution was congratulated with words from which I extract this “gem”:
“The slander and plans of the enemy will always crash against the example of sacrifice, dedication, and respect for the people exercised by you, aware that if someone has to fall in your modest and heroic everyday work, they will do so with the same dignity as those who fell in the Bay of Pigs invasion.”
In my translator, this means that the PNR’s main function is not ensuring citizen tranquility, i.e., preventing a crime wave that has long been shaking our society — namely, the murder of women by partners or ex-partners, robberies for money or belongings, street fights, injuries, thefts, high-level corruption… quite the opposite.
Its main function is to suppress any sign of citizen independence or freedom and sustain, using violence, this unjust, impoverishing, and anachronistic social order. Especially now since the combat order has been given [since the protests of July 11, 2021].
Read more from the diary of Pedro Pablo Morejon here on Havana Times.
