Big Brother is Watching

In retrospect of the past Jose' my father-in-law saw in 1962 what we have to worry about today Jose' said "It's Everybody's Battle" --Ian Jay Germaine Fear, intimidation, surveillance are the weapons used by the Communist's in Cuba today.

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If anyone informs on you, telling the government that you seem to have unclean thoughts with regard to the regime, it may be that one day a truck will stop in front of your home with loudspeakers blaring threats and insults. From that day on, you neighborhood dislikes you, it may be that soon the serial number of your rationing card will climb so high that you will be unable to obtain food for your family. At work, on the street, anywhere you go, you are always frightened lest something you say may be misunderstood and cause you to be imprisoned as an enemy of the state. Your mind is never at rest. When at work, you are anxiously waiting for the time to go home. When you arrive home, you find no peace. You are the victim of the fears they have put into your head. A simple knock at the door or noise of a car stopping on the street in front of your home make you think that the time has arrived when they have come to take you away to prison. You are constantly afraid that your children may be selected for special "education" and that you may never again hear from them. If you have received the visit of a mechanic to repair you telephone (you were unaware that it was out of order), you will not hereafter venture to speak at home of any matter remotely suggesting discontent. For it is entirely possible that the repairman has installed a secret device by which your conversation may be overheard. You must be careful what you say in front of your child. For at the schools and recreation centers the children of families suspected of "anti-revolutionary" thinking are pumped by the Communist agents. These agents often with saintly faces gain the child's confidence by kind words and sweet and the child tells his "new friend" everything. To escape detection desperate parents often warn their child to tell lies. The child then begins doubting his parents' integrity and may end up transferring his respect to the Communist's agents and confiding in them. This tragic episode has occurred time and again. A child is induced by soft talk and candy to tell about a list of persons to be visited by the militia. Soon there comes a knock at the door and a father is taken away, never to return. With such things going on around you, the impulse grows stronger and stronger to cry out, to protest. But reason tells you to hide your emotions. The constant repression of emotion harms your body and upsets your nerves and you live in a world of torment and anxiety. I spoke a moment ago of the informers. It has been estimated that 10 percent of the people of Cuba work as informers for the Communist government. Big Brother watched the Cuban citizen through the eyes of the so-called "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution." There is at least one such committee in each block of houses and in each work center. These committees work with the political secret police. They investigate your activities, habits and customs. They know who visits you and for what purpose. To be accused by a member of these committees is sufficient to put you in prison and take from you all your personal property. I saw committee members enter the home of an old woman and remove everything but her bed, a table and four chairs. There are now more than 100,000 of these committees min Cuba. Through this organization more than 200,000 Cubans were imprisoned in less than 24 hours during the ill-fated invasion of April 1961. I will tell you at a later point of one person's experience in a Castro prison. It is not a pretty story. One of the most important chores of the "defense" committees is that of assuring good attendance at demonstrations and the proper reaction to the speaker. Workers are threatened with loss of their jobs if they do not attend. Committee officials carry list of names which they check. They stand at strategic points and observe who is cheering and who is not. From fear of losing their jobs or even their lives, men take part and shout things which are against their own true feelings. In each office and factory, the Communists customarily make an example of at least one man. He is accused of failing to attend a demonstration or of being against the revolution ; he is taken away and never heard from again. Little wonder the cheers at the Castro meeting are so long and loud. There are always some, of coarse, whose reactions of enthusiasm are genuine. They are the fanatics, the men and women easily hypnotized in the mass. They shouted hysterically for Batista, they shout hysterically for Castro, and they will fall madly in love with the next demagogue to come along. We were all hypnotized in those first days of Castro, I admit. But I heard a prophetic warning from a Dutch visitor in my home in Havana. We turned on the television set and watched and listened to a great outpouring of emotion at a Castro speech. My visitor, who had lived through the insanity of the Hitler years in Europe, shook his head. "I have heard that sound before," he said. "I am sad for Cuba."
 I did not understand what he meant then, but I came to understand. (NEXT: Free Speech Buried in Cuba) Column reprinted with permission of the Long Beach Press-Telegram