Alone with the oppositionist
By Aurelio Pedroso
This is the fourth morning Dr. Darsi Ferrer wakes up in his own bedroom, after a tribunal ruled that he should serve the four months left in his sentence confined to his home.
He lives in a very modest, not-at-all-luxurious building in the Santos Suárez barrio. When I arrived there unannounced, the dissident and his wife were watching a program about Chinese cooking, shown on the local TV. Moments later, he received a postcard from France that congratulated him for his release. It came from a woman who had previously sent him another card while he was in prison in Valle Grande. Ferrer showed me both, without any concealed pride.
We chatted for more than two hours about multiple topics, all current and local – about the 11 months he spent in prison, his experiences with the prison personnel, the living conditions, the food. He told me the only guard who beat him while he was in handcuffs had been removed from the prison.
Darsi Ferrer is about 40 years old and is a man with whom one can talk, discuss, and argue. He’s cultured enough for that. One of my main objectives was to meet him in person, to inquire about his opinions about the nascent dialogue between the Cuban authorities and the top hierarchy of the Cuban Catholic Church.
Having just left prison, where he had almost no access to national events, he acknowledges that he doesn’t have all the elements he needs. “I don’t have much information about what has happened in the past few months,” he says. Still, he voices opinions that are born not necessarily of information but of his philosophy and the ideas he held behind bars and outside prison.
“After so much immobility, to see the Catholic hierarchy performing a more active role – even mediating in issues as fundamental as the release of political prisoners and the end of aggression toward the Ladies in White – is very significant to me,” he says.
The talks “may have great results, or maybe not, but the circumstances are new,” he adds. “In my case, they nourish the hope for a peaceful way out of the dramatic situation the Cuban people are going through.”
Like many other dissidents, Dr. Ferrer is aware of the danger of a social explosion on the island. “I am very much afraid that, after so much suffering, the Cuban people will find a solution in a social explosion that would be tragic for all.” The equivalence he establishes between “explosion” and “tragic” leaves no doubt as to his stance.
To Ferrer, the problem “is human” and the solution must come from the human side, because the situation “makes all of us its victims.”
“What has impressed me the most in these past three days [outside prison] is that I find that the nation is going through new circumstances. I see that the need for unity in the search for solutions is increasingly reaffirmed – and that’s something very difficult and complex. A consensus needs to be found, a consensus that can be found in the situations that are common to all.”
Ferrer, director of the Juan Bruno Zayas Center for Health and Human Rights, states that “I applaud the dialogue, wherever it comes from, anything that fosters freedom, the law, justice,” but also wonders “how to do that? Who holds the absolute truth?”
He reflects and adds: “The people have clearly identified what we want and what we don’t want, amid this complex reality.”
Convinced that not everyone thinks alike, even inside the ranks of the opposition (he names those with whom he does not fully share his arguments), Ferrer does not forget his medical training and makes clear that “what we don’t have is the prescription to arrive at a solution.”
Outside the home, I ask him when he will resume the rebuilding of his home, knowing that he was sent to prison on charges that he illegally obtained construction materials. He smiles with sincerity and tells me that will continue once his finances improve.
