27.01.2015 .
Havana, Cuba
Kenia Maria, I feel very sorry that even when you say that I could be a good collaborator for the Cuban State Security, in spite of your commendations on my qualities for that (I think that above all you said that I waspassionated and principled) I will never become one. Fortunately, I do not do things for ego’s sake, but because of my convictions; and working for a repressive entity (it does not matter for what country) goes against my principles. A police force that has forced us in -mostly to keep an eye on ourselves- first at school, then with the CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution), at work, and in that paranoid space that is Cuban daily life. Maybe so you wouldn’t have tried it, I should have explained to you that the image I have of State Security is not that of En silencio ha tenido que ser, but rather that of my father taking me for “a walk” to a house in Nuevo Vedado, close to the Acapulco movie house, so that some colonels from State Security would interrogate me about the newspaper Postwar Memory (Memoria de la Posguerra). If at that moment, having used my complicated affectionate relationship with my father-under the most severe psychological pressure that I have ever been in my life-they did not succeed in having me “talk” nor in “converting” me, how do you think that they would succeed now? When before dying in 2006, my father made peace with me, having realized that I was right in many of my criticisms. He said he was proud of me because when I believed in something I would defend it against everything and to its ultimate consequences, even if that included himself.
Kenia, it is not you, it is I, and like me there are many, and every day more.
Tania Bruguera
January 27, 2015