Previous | Next :: Car Trouble #1 : Havana : Cuba | July 30, 2007, 2:07 pm

It takes a bit of nerve to reply openly as if you are the official opposition in the Castro bothers personal fiefdom. Cuban journalists and local people who have voiced dissenting political views can get prison sentences of around 20 years. So when you hear Oswaldo Paya's reply to Raul Castro's revolution day speech as if he is somehow the accepted voice of opposition under a regime that does not tolerate any........ hey you know he is taking an enormous personal risk. I have seen the huge intimidating lettering of the official graffiti on the walls opposite his very modest house on a square in Havana........ roughly translated to me as 'any dissent in the square under attack is treason'....... he himself has spent years in jail and has friends, fellow writers and activists still languishing in jail just for voicing support of ordinary political freedoms for the people of Cuba. There are some admirable aspects of the Cuba that emerged from the original revolution, things Fidel Castro's supporters love to mention, things that even Oswaldo Paya has supported and still does today. He is not a knee jerk anti-communist his brave stance is an opposition based on an always throughly decent support of human rights. He was first jailed himself for refusing to transport human rights activist prisoners during his required national service in the Cuban army.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6920080.stm

This is the first of a set of pictures I made a while back in Havana........ it is specifically of 'car trouble' but for me this set of pictures kind of sum up my experience of Cuba and especially life in Havana.

Cheers Jez XX