Last month, the US representative in Havana, Mike Hammer, visited her in Placetas.
14ymedio, Madrid, 11 June 2025 — The Provincial Court of Villa Clara has revoked the release of another political prisoner who had been released earlier this year as part of the agreement between the regime and the Vatican. This is Donaida Pérez Paseiro, a Yoruba priestess and resident of Placetas, sentenced to eight years in prison for “public disorder,” “disobedience,” “contempt,” and “assault” after participating in the historic Island-wide protests of July 11, 2021.
In a brief statement released Wednesday on its social media, the court argues that the “benefit of early release,” which it claims—without detailing how—was granted to a total of 553 people, has been revoked “due to noncompliance with obligations, essentially related to the workplace, and for failing to appear when summoned by the Executive Magistrate.”
The “conditional” release granted on January 15, they explain, “involves a probationary period equal to the remainder of the sentence remaining to be served,” something the regime had warned about from the moment it began the releases. According to government spokespersons, it was “neither an amnesty nor a pardon,” but rather “benefits” that did not exempt those released from returning to prison if they failed to comply with their “obligations.”
This is what happened to Pérez Paseiro, who has continued to exercise and assert her rights. As exiled journalist José Raúl Gallego notes in a Facebook post, she has demanded the release of her husband, Loreto Hernández, also an opponent and political prisoner, who is “in a serious health condition.”
That request and her “political stance” were the reasons Cuban authorities gave on May 26 for denying Pérez Paseiro permission to travel to an event in Bogotá, Colombia, organized by the Christian Democratic Organization of America. “They weren’t going to allow me to speak ill of the revolution or how they treated counterrevolutionary prisoners, much less promote the ‘Don’t Let Loreto Die’ campaign,” she told Martí Noticias that a State Security agent had told her.
“They weren’t going to allow me to speak ill of the revolution or how they treated counterrevolutionary prisoners.”
This demonstrated “the intransigence of this totalitarian regime toward those of us who fight for a free Cuba,” the opposition leader continued, asserting: “As far as I’m concerned, I stand my ground. They won’t let me leave for another country, but from here I will continue to denounce all the atrocities they commit against political prisoners and the Cuban people in general.”
In addition, at the beginning of that same month of May, she received a visit from the head of mission of the US Embassy in Havana, Mike Hammer, on one of his trips around the interior of the island, which have been denounced by the regime.
Her case follows those of José Daniel Ferrer and Félix Navarro, whose release was revoked on April 29. In Ferrer’s case, he was violently detained during a raid on the headquarters of the organization he leads, the Patriotic Union of Cuba, in Santiago de Cuba. According to his wife, Nelva Ortega, two weeks later, the opposition leader is being charged with propaganda against the constitutional order and contempt of Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The release process was announced on January 14, just hours after Washington, in the final days of the Biden administration, unexpectedly announced Cuba’s removal from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a list the Island was returned to as soon as Donald Trump took office a week later. Although Havana defended the releases as a unilateral and sovereign measure, taken as a humanitarian gesture for the jubilee year decreed by Pope Francis, the coincidence with the White House announcement was evidence of the agreement. Nor does it seem a coincidence that the arrests of Ferrer and Navarro occurred a week after Pope Jorge Bergoglio’s death.
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