Mariana Kroftova

We were in Havana to just wander around and see how it is, you know, visit places and see how it is and how it looks and whether Helena [Houdová] could help with her charity. It wasn't like we wanted to go and creep into strange places and take pictures and provoke people. ...

"We found a poor neighborhood. It was not a military zone; it was not a state institution or anything like that. It was just a poor neighborhood. A bit slummy, but that's what we were looking for, because, you know, Castro is big into saying there are no slums. We stopped by one really terrible hut — it wasn't really a hut; it just looked terrible, but the people there were so happy to see us. They invited us in and said, 'We want you to take pictures of this misery. We're not ashamed.' We talked to them, asked them how many children they had. At this point, a Revolution Watcher came by and started to scream. ...

"There was one woman, in her 50s and 60s. Then there was more and more women coming and screaming out loud. One of the women starts yelling, 'What kind of pictures are you taking? You are taking pictures of garbage, and this is working against our revolution. You are destroying our revolution!' And out of the blue, she starts giving us this talk about counterrevolutionary stuff. Normally I would have loved to have given her my opinion, but this is not fun in Cuba. So we were acting all submissive and we were like, 'Sorry lady. We're really sorry.' We were actually on our way when she made the phone call to the police. ...

"All of a sudden, a secret police officer appeared and said to us that we had to follow him. We walked to the station; it was not very far. We did not know what was going on because we were hearing all this stuff about counterrevolutionary activities, which is no fun in Cuba, and of course, right away they took both of our cameras and they took my film out because it was just a normal camera. Helena has this super-expensive camera because she was interested in photography. But she was quick. At some point she took the memory card and put it in her bra. ...

"We were really afraid at that moment. They just sat us there and didn't tell us anything and they refused to contact the [Czech] embassy. They were kind of ignoring us. They weren't hearing our requests. It was just a normal police station, but what actually made it not really nice was this secret police officer who was just sitting there the whole time, and he was bugging us in different ways, saying things like, 'Sit in a different position' and things like this. We were so afraid of what could happen. Of course they didn't let us call anybody, and they would not call someone who spoke English. ...

"At the police, they kept saying, 'What were you doing?' and 'Show us the film.' Helena said, 'I erased all the pictures.' But then we were taken to the immigration office, and things went bad. They started to ask, 'Where did you meet these elements?' and they were talking about our guides. Right away, even at the police station, they found out we were Czechs. ...

"I speak Portuguese, so I kind of understood things, but we were acting stupid. We thought it would be easier to lie if we act like we don't understand. We were acting like stupid blondes. We said things like, 'Ah, we love Cubans! We just met these people [our guides].' The immigration people were desperate. They had no one speaking English at this immigration office. ...

"I mean, in the end, of course you're kind of afraid about what's going to happen to you, or maybe they will find the card, and we were afraid. It was 3 o'clock in the morning when they came with papers they wanted us to sign. I could see that they were claiming that we were doing some counterrevolutionary activities. I would never sign this. I was like, 'It is not translated — it's against the law; we cannot sign this.' I was really afraid of signing something that included the names of these two guides. So in the end, they gave us this different paper and said we could not go unless we signed it. The paper said we would not continue doing counterrevolutionary activities such as taking pictures and 'You are not allowed to leave Havana' and 'You need to stay in a single place,' the same hotel."