Anabel Díaz Campos

* 1988

  • “In Cuba I was a graduate in Psychology, with I don't know how many diplomas, working in a National Center and I didn't earn anything. I couldn't buy two packages of chicken per month. My salary was being spent on a package of chicken, a package of hot dogs, a package of milk and a package of toilet paper. And if my daughter was hospitalized as it happened to me, I couldn't go out of there to buy her a juice because there wasn't any.”

  • “When I request discharge, that is when I am accused that I am betraying, that I am a traitor and the State Security sits me in the office… and they tell me that I knew what I was doing and that I had basic knowledge from the center [CENESEX] and that I couldn't leave like this and that I had to sign this committing myself that I was going to leave there without saying a word that I knew and I told them. But the thing is that I don't know anything, I just did my job, I'm not going to sign anything. [They answered] ‘Yes, you are going to sign it, because if you don't sign it you may have problems and your mother may have problems and you have a daughter.’ That's where the first threats came."

  • “Fidel [Castro] converted the generation of my mother a robot-like generation, because at school they were robots, and the only thing that was being studied was Communism, Lenin…, all these people’s minds were closed in one-way and did not open up but nothing. Be careful, I'm not defending the capitalist system, I'm not defending any of that kind of thing. I am defending a more open democracy, with a little more openness. So, to what you asked me; my mom and dad never forbade me or asked me to study. They exactly exhorted me to study and I thank them.”

  • “My mother instilled in us all the time what meant the Revolution movement, the Revolution victory, and then the times after Revolution. Fidel Castro at that time was in the boom of the topic – that this was what it was and what you had to follow. And I was one of the girls from: ‘Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Ché.’”

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    Mexico, 29.09.2021

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With Cuba every day of my life, wherever I am, with Cuba and for Cuba

Díaz Campos Anabel, 2021
Díaz Campos Anabel, 2021
photo: Post Bellum

Anabel Díaz Campos, was born in the municipality of Santo Domingo, located in the province of Santa Clara [or Villa Clara] on February 4, 1988. Her mother’s name is Alicia Campos, a teacher and educational psychologist, and her father, who died of sudden death, Leopoldo Díaz, a soldier belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces [FAR] lived in the Air Base neighborhood, located in Santa Clara. Her father decided to leave the FAR, so the whole family was at that point on the street, since the property was owned by the Cuban government. From then on, a season of scarcity began, since it was the time of the Special Period. Ana, as Anabel is also known, did her first studies at the March 13 school and then went on to a pedagogical school, where she only spent 15 days since she did not adapt. She decided to opt for a psychology university degree, from which she graduated. She worked at the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), led by Mariela Castro, from which she left due to threats from State Security. She currently resides in Mexico.