The artist had a dispute with a State Security agent last Thursday and lost the right to a visit.

14ymedio, Madrid, 28 April 2025 — Maykel Castillo ‘Osorbo’ has been in a punishment cell at Kilo 5.5 in Pinar del Río Provincial Prison for four days today. Curator Anamelys Ramos announced the news on Saturday and reported yesterday, Sunday, that she had received information from inside the prison that the political prisoner might be on strike.
“Maykel already had a virus before entering the cell, and if he’s in a state of isolation, his body will weaken faster than normal. If you want things to calm down, don’t keep pushing people to the limit,” the activist posted on her Facebook account, where she has been offering updates on the artist’s situation.
According to Ramos, last Thursday, Maykel Castillo had an argument with a State Security agent during a scheduled visit, which was suspended and should be reinstated, the curator claims. From her account, it can be inferred that the political prisoner confronted the official in response to his “provocations.”
“Regarding Maykel’s ’indiscipline’: They have been provoking Maykel to act violently for months. They have also been insisting for months that Maykel is misbehaving. They want to convince those close to him, and everyone else, that the blame for what is happening to Maykel, and therefore also this punishment, lies with him,” she wrote this Sunday. continue reading
“On Maykel’s ’indiscipline’: They’ve been provoking Maykel to act violently for months. They’ve also been insisting that Maykel is misbehaving for months.”
The activist warns State Security that the artist’s reputation precedes him. “Here we all know who Maykel is, and we also know who you are. No one will ever believe you’re innocent, so you’d better give up now. You’re late rewriting history. Maykel is in prison for nothing. Maykel is the one enduring constant humiliation and violence for making a song, in a filthy prison where there’s not even running water in the bathrooms. Before being sent to a prison for adults, Maykel was imprisoned in Combinadito and grew up learning that YOU ARE THE ENEMY (sic), something the Cuban people have also learned at the cost of much pain and misery,” she emphasizes.
Ramos demands that Castillo be able to make the phone call this Monday to which he should be entitled—if he’s not in isolation—to further confirm his condition. “To know that Maykel is okay, I only believe it on hearing his voice on a call. If it’s a lie that Maykel is plantado*, if it’s a lie that you’re plotting to open a new case against him, then let Maykel himself tell me,” she demands.
Just a few weeks ago, authorities denied Castillo—recognized by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience—the right to attend the funeral of his grandmother, Hilda Rojas Mora, who died on March 31 at the age of 85. Officials argued that regulations did not allow such a benefit for relatives with that degree of kinship.
“To the two soldiers who came here to offer their condolences, don’t feel sorry for me. Nothing hurts you, you’re not consistent people. Stop the nonsense, because the rules, what rules? You violate all the rules, you’ve violated them with me from beginning to end. I have dignity, I have plenty of dignity. How many people haven’t you sent to punch me, and I’ve gotten up? How many people haven’t you sent to beat me up, and I’ve gotten up? I’ll always get up. You didn’t take me, it doesn’t matter; my grandmother knows I love her. But if you came here thinking that when you gave me the news you were going to take me somewhere, you’re crazy. You take one of these brats, but me… If to take me somewhere you have to move half the country,” the artist said in an audio recording.
“You violate all the rules, you have violated me from beginning to end. I have dignity, I have plenty of dignity.
Osorbo, one of the authors of the song “Patria y Vida” (winner of two Latin Grammys), has been serving a nine-year prison sentence for contempt, assault, public disorder, and “defamation of institutions and organizations, heroes, and martyrs” since May 2022, although he had already spent 13 months in prison—since April 2021—which are being discounted from his sentence. In the same trial, artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was sentenced to five years.
Since then, Castillo has suffered countless punishments and health problems, and although it has been mentioned on several occasions that he could reach an agreement to leave prison in exchange for forced exile—he himself has expressed openness to the option—the fact has remained a rumor.
And although it was hoped that he would benefit from the releases made by the government as a “gesture for the Jubilee Year” decreed by the late Pope Francis, Osorbo remained among the thousand political prisoners—some of them emblematic—who remain behind bars, frequently subjected to mistreatment and humiliation. He currently has five years left on his sentence.
*Translator’s note: “Plantado’ — literally ’planted’ — is a term with a long history in Cuba and is used to describe a political prisoner who refuses to cooperate in any way with their incarceration.
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