“The government has its mechanism of control. Communist government wants everyone on their side. Everything must go through it; everything must be done for it and because of it. The church offers free and open thinking. But this kind of thinking allows people to evolve and make a progress.”
“The government does not approve it. In Cuba, they say that there is freedom of the press, but it’s a lie. There’s no such thing, because all the press belongs to the government. If the mass media weren’t owned by the government, there’d still be a lot of them talking well about the government, but also a lot of people saying that what the government does is not okay. And I think that’s how it should be because that’s the sign of doing something right. You must have a competence, someone that sees your mistakes and what you could do better. Nobody’s perfect, but people can fix things or get better at them, by being told what they did wrong. But all the journalism that exists in Cuba is supporting the government; all that is ever said is always on the same side as the government.”
“They took away our Supplies booklet. Many times, my mom tried to go and complain to OFICODA (Consumer registration offices) but they never... as if the whole world was against us. Like the government made all the sectors – economic, financial – not willing to help us. And to be honest, I didn’t even get it completely back then. Many things I just didn’t know because I was a kid. They would talk about everything in front of me, but I did not make the connections in my head to fully get it. But now I see the size of it. When I started to realize what things were actually like, I began to see how big the problem really is.”
“And this life left a scar on me. I’ve been scarred since my childhood because in my school, all the boys would always repeat to me what their parents told them at home. They would say that our house was taken because we’re religious. They were telling me: “You want your house back. Tell your dad to leave his Christian faith and they will give it back. “And my parents never had anything to say against that. I mean maybe they had something to say, but they never said it and so I would only hear what everyone else was saying. It would be older people, or boys my age, that heard it at home, basically everyone. It was me versus them all.
I was the only Christian in that school; maybe not the only one but I was the only pastor’s kid that was there.“
Jordenis Castillo Gómez was born on the 10th of May in 1992, in the province of Guantánamo, which is located on the east of Cuba. Because his parents were Christians, his childhood wasn’t easy. He was bullied in school and watched the government take away the citizen rights of his family, all because of their faith. That led to moments, where Jordenis and his parents were practically homeless, moving from house to house with the help of their friends. Now his parents are in charge of a church in Guantánamo, but they’re still strongly controlled by the State Security. He likes journalism, mostly the civic one and for that he once got detained by the police and questioned about his work that focused on coal mining in the province. Currently he lives in Guantánamo.
