Shayra: Is Cuban misery only in the stomach?

Shayra Gonzalez Pernia (Manzanillo, 1986). He was born a man with the brain and soul of a woman. Transsexual, although she retains her male genitalia, tried to make her way, like many of her countrymen, away from Cuba, but she was deported, after a journey through Russia, Egypt, a fateful stopover in Turkey, where she had to change planes to fly to Serbia; again to Moscow, which returned it to Istanbul and back to Havana.

After returning to her cradle, she prostitutes herself on the Internet and fights to make Cuba more habitable; based on values of freedom, prosperity, tolerance, justice and mutual respect.

What is Cuba for Shayra?

Cuba is another dimension. A society in evolution, lacking respect for people and nature. Cuba is like ancient Rome. A crowd that survives poorly even with a bad smell in the streets, old women who fall to the floor and others laugh and do not help them. Humanitarian acts are an exception, almost a miracle

In Cuba, a female jockey has more purchasing power than a neurosurgeon, bad music attacks the soul, in the streets and almendrones; despite the fact that tourists come with the idea that salsa and boleros will be part of their days on the island, where the reality is different, like those children asking for money from foreigners, who are also harassed by taxi drivers, tobacco sellers and other hustlers.

Is misery only in the stomach? I refuse to believe that bad education and vulgarity invaded us, even though we are a country on the run, because the fundamental concern of many families is not to educate children to respect, but to find a way to escape.

All Cubans know who is to blame for our disaster, but few of us who are brave say it because we are like the people of Moses, fleeing to the promised land, abandoning what belongs to us, ours.

How and where did your sex change occur?

Legally I am a man. They only give you a legal sex change at trans with sexual reaffirmation if they already have a vagina. I think that the sex change is only mental in me and, for many people, I am a man, for others a big woman, others think I am a clown and many believers believe I am a sinner. I respect everyone's opinions and demand equal respect.

What is your life like as a deportee in Cuba?

With mixed feelings. Not wanting to live in my homeland, feeling like my life is passing away. When I returned, I felt like I was returning to hell; so I told it in Facebook and my story went viral. There are still people who ask me and I have discovered that it affects me, because I don't want to talk about it. I have come to wonder why I was not born in Europe, why this happened to me. I'm filling up with questions.

I returned after five days without bathing, without suitcases or anything; smelling bad I just wanted a shower and the smell of hot coffee because I knew my dreams were annihilated. I felt like a sucker, even though I knew I was not guilty.

And how do you survive, have you managed to work?

Now I prostitute myself on the Internet. Many Cubans do it. We ask for recharges, in exchange for photos or videos for photos or videos. Many guys, when they see you online, showing flesh, immediately make proposals to you. Harassment situations also occur. But the internet is the way to let them know about you; You put a tag and the dance begins...

When you left Cuba, where did you go?

I left for Russia in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. I was crazy about the confinement and my dreams of crossing the Atlantic and reaching my favorite country, Spain. After three months in Moscow, I flew to Cairo, where I stayed for a month and from there I headed to Serbia, but I never arrived because my odyssey began during the stopover in Istanbul. They re-embarked me to Russia, but they no longer let me enter and returned me to Turkey, where I was detained for four days in an apartment, without a passport and without knowing what would become of me. Two police officers, I think from Turkish Customs, escorted me to Havana.