Every story has a first line. This is mine: my name is Rafael, I am Cuban, I work in technology, and for a long time I believed that doing my part quietly, efficient, away from the noise, was enough. I no longer believe that.
This blog is born from a simple conviction: the freedom I enjoy is not a personal prize: it is a debt. I paid it by leaving Cuba; I keep paying it every time I remember those who stayed, those imprisoned for thinking out loud, those who stand in line for everything except their rights.
Here I write about four things, which deep down are one:
- Cuba and human rights: testimonies, political prisoners, and the reality propaganda leaves out.
- Freedom and exile: the life of those who left without ever fully leaving.
- Technology and society: the internet as a window to freedom, and the censorship that tries to close it.
- Cuban history: what does not get told from the island, episode by episode, with the case file open on the desk.
How I write here
By one rule I do not break: what I state has to be checkable without taking my word for it. Every figure and every prison sentence carries a link to whoever documented it. And when the source does not support a claim, I say so, instead of filling the gap with whatever would read well.
I write from Tampa, and that gives me an advantage I did not earn: nobody is coming for me tonight. I use it to tell what others cannot tell without going to prison, and that is why I hold myself to adding no ornament.
When I get something wrong, I correct it and I say so. It already happened comparing free VPNs: I was about to publish that Google Play blocks Cuba, I checked it in time, and I ended up explaining the mistake inside the article itself, because the mistake was instructive. Correcting a text is cheap. The other thing is not.
Where to start
If this is your first time here, three doors:
- The word “accident”: the sinking of the tugboat 13 de Marzo, with the Inter-American Commission report open on the desk.
- You do not have to publish: sharing is enough: two and a half years in prison over memes in a family group.
- How a website gets blocked in Cuba: the three levels where the state cuts, explained by someone who works in networking.
I serve on the Board of Directors of the Anti-Communist Movement and Freedom Defenders, and from time to time you will find their news here, always with credit. But let it be clear from day one: on this blog, the opinions are mine. The good, the bad, and the uncomfortable.
If you made it this far, that makes two of us. Welcome to Un Cubano Libre.
Rafael