Letter to the PEN Writers’ Club in London

María Cristina Garrido

Dear members of the PEN Writers’ Club in London, please accept my most distinguished greetings. As you may know, I am a Cuban writer living in exile for more than three decades—almost four—and for some time now I have also served as Head of Foreign Affairs of the Republican Party of Cuba (PRC), of which the Cuban political prisoner María Cristina Garrido is National Executive Director, in addition to being a leader of the peaceful 11J movement in Cuba. For this reason, she is serving an unjust seven-year prison sentence in a Castro-regime prison.

Her sister, Angélica Garrido, a former political prisoner, PRC member, and Director of the PRC Women’s Front, arrived in Europe recently after completing an unjust three-year sentence in a Castro-regime prison for the same reasons. I am writing today to explain the following: the president of the PRC, Mr. Ibrahim Bosch, asked me to help Ms. Angélica Garrido upon her arrival in Europe, which I did. Later, both asked me to contact the VOX party, which I assume you know is Spain’s third political force, constitutionally recognized by Spain and by the European Union. Angélica Garrido and I visited the Disenso Foundation, and months later Mr. Ibrahim Bosch also visited VOX headquarters, for exchanges and support—something politicians do all over the world. As you will have noticed, the PRC has women in its senior leadership positions.

As a woman, mother, and writer, I can state that VOX is not against women—as claimed by Ms. Astrid Vehstedt of the German PEN Club in an email addressed to Angélica Garrido—an opinion to which you also appear to adhere, without providing examples. On the contrary, VOX is in fact the only party that has considered two women writers to be part of its ranks in the Senate: one was Julia Escobar, Spanish, recently deceased, and the other is myself, of Cuban origin—that is, of foreign origin—in addition to being a woman, a mother, and having a long history and trajectory for which I have been internationally recognized for my work and my struggle regarding human rights in Cuba and worldwide.

Ms. Vehstedt stated in her email to Angélica Garrido, a former political prisoner supported by VOX and by other political and non-political entities outside Spain, that from London an important award had been granted to her sister, the poet imprisoned for political reasons in Cuba, María Cristina Garrido—but that the same award was denied and withdrawn several hours later due to her and her party having maintained eventual contacts with VOX, in meetings that normally take place between parties and politicians in free countries. Vehstedt adds—questioning and interrogating them—whether the sisters know who VOX is, and its views on women and foreigners. Alas, the wolf’s claw appears to intimidate the poor Cuban women whom this lady assumes to be ignorant and unprotected. Let us continue…

Members of the PEN Club in London, VOX has never refused to support women. In fact, knowing that I voted center-left socialist in the past for the mayoralty of Paris because of unwavering support for the Ladies in White in Cuba—which I will never do again, of course—and for Les Républicains for the presidency in France (center-right), and for the PP in Spain in the past, and for VOX in the last elections—which I will continue to do—VOX had no hesitation in proposing me as a Senate candidate. Indeed, I am the first person to have been voted as a candidate in Cuba for an institution such as the Spanish Senate, freely, at the Spanish Consulate—my second country, which, had it not been for the Treaty of Paris, would still be a single country. VOX is also a party made up of people who have joined from different political forces, including recently—according to surveys—from the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), especially young people who no longer feel represented by the party they had previously supported.

I believe the attitude of PEN Club is, at the very least, contradictory and leaves much to be desired. Did you want to award a woman, a writer, a political prisoner, for being tortured in a communist prison, or rather an ideology that she would then, for all intents and purposes, be required to adopt, despite being aligned with the ideology of those who torture her daily while violating her rights? If so, I must say with complete clarity that in that case it would be the PEN Club of London that is not supporting women writers—and not VOX. VOX did not even ask how those political prisoners thought, nor what their ideals were, in order to support them; it helped them and continues to help them morally, without distinctive references or partisan prerogatives.

Dear members of the PEN Club in London, I am very sorry to have to send this letter—friendly to a certain extent, which would be entirely so in another context and with different content; but neither Angélica Garrido nor, much less, María Cristina Garrido—who I assume is aware of who we are in VOX—deserve such differential and exclusionary treatment. I too have had to endure such exclusionary treatment and continue to do so, simply for seeking support all these years for the struggle for Cuba’s freedom and now for defending Spain from communism, as well as for adhering to the anti-communist causes of Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Iranians, Tibetans, and Uyghurs.

I hope the PEN Club knows how to rectify and will once again grant the withdrawn award to María Cristina, who deserves it more than anyone. Her only ideology is the freedom of Cuba, exercising her right to think as she chooses—precisely why she is in an isolated prison and brutally tortured, and yet continues to write without faltering.

It has not been VOX that has deprived her of any recognition so far. It is you—the International PEN Club in London—who granted it only to cruelly take it away a few hours later, based on information you apparently received, we do not know from whom. Perhaps from the Castro-regime embassy in London? I believe that a woman imprisoned in a dark prison deserves, at the very least, a better explanation. Rectify: it is the duty of those who love freedom and work in its favor. May poetry and truth guide your decisions.