Julita Osendi He speaks exclusively with CiberCuba about his recent departure from Cuba.
Did you leave Cuba permanently, when?
Death is definitive. I came to this country claimed by one of my sons, Henry, who long ago asked me to come. I arrived a month ago.
Where are you living?
I live in Cape Coral, Florida.
What are you doing?
I continue writing for Cibercuba, which is the computer platform that has allowed me to “breathe,” to survive in Cuba in the last decade because I have always tried to be as least dependent as I could.
My first book is also in the editing phase, a compendium of a group of life interviews of athletes, artists and other people that have been published by me in CiberCuba.
In these days of the Cuban baseball play off I have ventured into tik tok with a kind of Out en Home, although I recognize that this baseball has nothing to do with the one that I covered for so many years.
Why did you leave Cuba?
As I told you before, my son Henry has been insisting for me to leave for many years and I always put him off. But now the oxygen has really been escaping from Cuba and you can't breathe.
The repetitive discourse of the authorities, always appealing to the same cause that has accompanied us for more than 60 years: the blockade, the escape of medicines, the lack of food because there is NO means to buy it, not being able to go to a theater, something so intellectually necessary, because there is no way to go and a car from Cerro to Vedado costs three thousand pesos round trip...it really isn't possible.
That Havana (multiply it by Cuba) collapsed, dirty, rude; with people who already don't care 8 or 88. The lack of water, of electricity, in short! There are some causes there.
For years you were a defender of the revolution. Why have you made this decision?
No defender; I loved the revolution, I was part of it like hundreds of thousands, millions, who today live outside Cuba or are deceased believers that someday it would improve. But since water is consumed when you boil it, my dreams evaporated. See that block of mine with that collapsed building; to my lifelong neighbors dying in life because no one helps, no one solves; All is a lie. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year living in the agony of the bathroom that is not there, cooking in the living room because the kitchen was crushed by the collapse.
Take a child to the doctor and have the excellent professional in front of you tell you that he or she has to take such and such medication but to look for it “outside” because there is none. And look for the medicine from those who bring it from abroad and sell it at a higher price than my retired salary of 40 years as a journalist. It's not life.
See every day more rosy and fat those who must make the country advance and the one next door, dead in life, please!
That sport that I love so much, in which I have so many friends, my best friends, children, brothers, falling behind in the Central American Games; That stampede of athletes who have sought a future outside, perched on podiums of other colors, who doesn't hurt that? But they have no choice and for the record, I am not calling for any desertion; I'm saying how fair it is.
What plans do you have?
Live, be happy! For now, return because I have part of my life in Cuba and I'm not going to abandon them, you know? I don't know why all this trouble has been made over a simple photo that my brother took of me. I have been to Las Vegas four times, but I have also visited New York, Washington, Chicago, Miami, several cities in Pennsylvania... I don't know why this commotion now.
How do you see the future of Cuba?
How do you want me to see it? Nothing good and dragging the same speech. I don't want to talk about politics but the truth is that there is no bright future in sight when the present is distressing.
Although you haven't asked me, I want to say something: the Cuban athletes, for whom I worked and always loved, are my friends and children wherever they are. I never hurt them or anyone else. Those who are saying such and more what I did to them, do not lie.
I thank everyone who has called me asking to chat with me but I'm not here for that. I am calm, with my son Henry, his wife, his son and I will also be calm when I can see the rest of my short family, all reunited. It's difficult but it's what I want.
What do you think?
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