I am free

Raul Rivero is an independent journalist in Cuba. This edited column is reprinted from El Nuevo Herald.

HAVANA -- The letter of the Law for the Protection of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba enables my country's authorities to condemn me for the only sovereign act that I've taken since I reached the age of reason: to write unbidden.

I embarked on my journey into writing and journalism some years ago when I broke completely from government media. The culture gradually has transformed me into a different person -- someone taking the initiative to liberate himself, someone beginning to travel toward individual freedom despite threatening and hostile surroundings.

The fears, the prisons, the harassment have made my findings, or understandings, only more valuable. They have turned my devotion to man's sovereignty into an indomitable instinct, something greater than a mere idea or need.

Therefore, this ukase [decree] -- written with the perishable ink of political trickery, wrapped in a shoddy effort to portray the small number of independent journalists working in Cuba as accomplices of drug traffickers and pimps and as mercenaries on the U.S. payroll -- is just a repugnant cocktail.

Beyond the fear of being confined and punished, the years of imprisonment that the law pledges must be viewed with consternation. It's as if the Cuban nation were a tribe hidden away in the Caribbean, cut off from information and the exchange of ideas, unaware of evolution and change.

To cope with the upraised arm of this new law, the insults of obscure functionaries of the official press, the threatening phone calls to my home and the frights of everyday life, I have -- and I realize this when I'm alone with my typewriter -- the joy of knowing that I am free. I am certain that informing others objectively and professionally and writing my opinions about the society in which I live cannot be a very serious crime.

It takes some effort for me to feel guilty [about writing]. It's almost as if I were accused of breathing or as if I were threatened with imprisonment for loving my daughters, my mother, my wife, my brother and friends.

I will not assume that I'm a delinquent just because I accurately describe the drama of more than 300 political prisoners or report that a building collapsed in Old Havana or publish an interview with a Cuban who wants a pluralistic society for his country and complete freedom of expression.

No one, no law will make me believe that I have become a gangster or a delinquent just because I report the arrest of a dissident, or list the prices of staple foods in Cuba, or write that I find it appalling that more than 20,000 Cubans every year go into exile in the United States and hundreds of others try to go anywhere they can.

Nothing makes me feel like a criminal, an enemy agent, a turncoat or any of the other nonsensical descriptions that the government uses to degrade and humili- ate people. I am only a man who writes in the land where he and his great-grandparents were born.