Exiled writer Zoé Valdés on the Most Terrible Things About Life Under Castro

"Immediately afterwards I began to remember all the people who died in exile, as well as all of the people he murdered," she said. "And then my thoughts turned to his victims."

"My family told me, 'You must not repeat at school what you hear at home about Castro,'" she recalled. "And it was something that really left an impression on me because at home my mother and grandmother were against Castro, but at school everything that I heard was pro-Castro. So from a very early age I was taught two opposing ways of speaking and two opposing value systems."

"I learned that if I thought differently (from the government's party line) I was not to say it or to express it, and to be discreet,"

"The thing that was worse than the fear itself, was the acceptance of the fear and the way living in fear became a normal part of daily life," she said. "That was the most terrible thing."

"The internal repression against dissidents and artists is still the same," she said. "I think with Raúl Castro it will continue as before. After which his children will take over the regime, plus the military is still there. So it is difficult to say that things will change immediately."

The Daily Beast