Amir Valle

“…we would end up empty, naked, bathed in sweat and semen and exhaustion, and we would wait for the first light and that annoying bell that again called us to classes”.

City Never Lost

Freedom was once again his most sacred jewel. He said what he thought and was censored. He learned to think by reading everything new that entered the country illegally, sick of the Soviet school of journalism and the manuals of Russian philosophy, and the millions of editions of socialist books, from which the only saving grace was “having discovered great Russian literature”.

He considers himself fortunate for having made so many friends: he took his first two years of his journalism degree at the University of Oriente, in Santiago de Cuba; the other three at the University of Havana, in the country’s capital. “That is how I know what is most valuable and sparkling in this country’s journalism, and it’s people with talent. Leaving aside the ideological differences that I obviously have with some of them, I respect them a lot because they continue demonstrating that talent, despite all the different restrictions that Cuban journalists on the island have had to deal with since 1959”.

He always dreamed of doing the Big Story, Great Journalism. Now studying the career path, he discovered that only this profession would give him the tools to study his society. And the habit of writing. “I believe that Cuban journalism is pitiful, triumphant, partisan and monotonous, in addition to being lamentably servile”.

He was sent into military service with the rank of Reserve Lieutenant, which was granted to all university students at that time. It confirmed what he already feared: war, even in self-defense, is the worst shit that man has ever invented, “and I suffered with my own flesh the Cuban government’s political strategy of injecting into Cubans the fear of a war that exists only in the minds of our rulers, who are sick with power”.