Boris González Arenas

“In the last ten years that I have been in opposition, I have never seen the end of the dictatorship so close. What happened with ‘27N’ [27N is a name of a group of opponents that demands freedom in expression. The name arose because of the massive gathering that took place outside the Cuban Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020 after the protest hunger strike of the movement ‘San Isidro’] is the most visible sign, that there is going to be a change in Cuba and the ‘27N’ announced it. My admiration heads towards ‘San Isidro’, to Luis Manuel Otero [Cuban artist and opponent, leader of the ‘San Isidro’ movement in Havana], those are the people with whom I commune the most, not with the artists such as and not necessarily with the intellectuals from November 27th. I am not discriminating; it is just that I have done a lot of work with the members of ‘San Isidro’. But what happened on ‘27N’ has left a footprint that could not be passed. For the first time you see parents in the streets, not all parents of dissidents, but in a massive way yes.”

“The assassination of the opponent Orlando Zapata Tamayo in 2010 and the ‘Black Spring’ [Primavera Negra] uprising in 2003 represent a before and an after – an important milestone. The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo was that point, and when Orlando Zapata Tamayo dies, well until 18, 19 years old I had very revolutionary point of the view, because of my family communist orientation. But when I was 18, 19 years old, I no longer believed, I would never again believe this mess. But to explain myself correctly, I was a domestic opponent like many other people in Cuba, only inside the house. My friends from film school know me, they know I am not lying if I tell you that I could not bear communism more when I was in film school. With the death of Zapata Tamayo, one was ashamed to continue being only a domestic opponent, to continue having that position.”

“I am speaking to you from a very personal perspective, one cannot generalize, because I do not know what the vision of a person of my generation in the periphery of Havana was, I do not know what was the situation of a family that was not ‘integrated’ to the system, I do not know how life in a marginal area was, I do not know. I can tell you, at that time, there was much of certain confidence in leaving the children at school and that the institution would take care of them. There was a trust, confidence in the state institutions and public sector, in the system of state institutions, in the social structure, which I lived remotely. Today there would be those who were noticeably confident, and then there would be those who did not have any confidence. I think it can be said that there has been an imbalance in that, and it is not illogical.”