They denounce state harassment against peasants in Pinar del Río

The Independent Peasant League of Cuba, warned Monday about the harassment by collection, state inspectors and the National Revolutionary Police, the independent peasants in Pinar del Río.

From San Diego de los Baños, in Los Palacios, Esteban Ajete Abascal, president of the peasant organization, explained that harassment occurs in the middle of the onion harvest.

«At the moment, in San Diego of the bathrooms and surrounding areas, there are the farmers engaged in the onion harvest, which does not occur at all times of the year and that, with tremendous effort and sacrifice, the man of the field manages to tear it to the earth, due to the poor state of the soils, without supplies, under budgets, low labor and with a poor transport.»

In the midst of this scenario, the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), in the figure of the head of sector, identified as raging, constantly harassed the peasants so that they cannot remove the onions from the municipality, «as if they were vile criminals.» Some have been prosecuted and taken to trial.

This level of harassment brings with it discomfort, disinterest and the loss of the sense of belonging of the peasantry, which affects agricultural production and the consequent food shortages.

«Enough of such repression with independent peasants,» said Ajete Abascal.

Meanwhile, the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (Flamur) warned about hopelessness, abandonment and the precarious conditions suffered by women in the countryside.

Katia Hernández Torres, who presides over the peasant organization in Los Palacios, described the situation of rural women.

«We are wrong, we don’t have water, we don’t have food, we don’t have electricity. Despair, the hopelessness that we have the women of here» is very large, he said.

Hernández Torres explained that most of their local mothers do not send children to school. «There are not even teachers in the rural school, teachers are not arriving. We are going through a lot of work,» he said.

«I consider myself a rural woman. The peasant woman … we are all passing and suffering because of a dictatorship,» concluded Hernández Torres.