Félix Navarro Celebrates the ‘Battle’ of Three Ladies in White Still Imprisoned by the Cuban Regime

Félix Navarro (2nd from R) and his family, shortly after his release from prison was announced this Saturday. / OCDH

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 18 January 2025 — Opposition leader Félix Navarro has been in prison since 11 July 2021 (11J). Almost four years later, as part of a deal between the Cuban regime and the Vatican to release 553 prisoners, he was granted conditional release this Saturday. He left the Agüica prison in Matanzas with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen to his daughter Sayli Navarro, imprisoned for also participating in the mass protests.

Among the “many visits” and calls that besiege him to celebrate his release, he spoke to 14ymedio. “If I didn’t have this family and the brothers who have surrounded me in Cuba and around the world, I wouldn’t have been able to leave prison,” he says. “I found the family to be very well and very united.”

As of November 2022, he was allowed to see his daughter Sayli, a prisoner in the Matanzas Women’s Prison, who was transferred every 45 days to meet her father in the Agüica prison – almost 100 kilometers away – for two hours. There she had to talk to her in front of her guards, in an office.

As of November 2022, he was allowed to see his daughter Sayli, a prisoner in the Matanzas Women’s Prison,

“I always see her thin. The food situation [in Cuban prisons] is always bad. But [she has managed to mitigate it] thanks to friends and brothers in the struggle, with visits every 15 days,” he says. At first, when his jailers suggested he call his daughter, Navarro rejected the offer. “You put her in jail,” he told them. Finally they decided to take him to her.

Navarro believes that his daughter, as well as other political prisoners such as Sissi Abascal and Tania Echevarría – all three of whom are Ladies in White – “have fought the battle that they have fought.” “We would not have wanted to go through this situation, but we are amazed at how these three women have behaved.”

In prison, only two other people could visit him at a time and every 50 days. His family and friends had to rotate. “There was always one of my brothers or nephews there. Anyone with the surname Navarro or Rodriguez could go in, that was the way,” he says.

His jailers were inflexible with this rule. Opposition member Iván Hernández Carrillo, for example, was not allowed in even though Navarro considers him his “blood brother” because – political activism aside – he did not have his last name. “However, he accompanied my family many times,” he says. “I told Iván: ’My brother, I need you not to let yourself be provoked in the street so that they don’t take you to jail.’ If they had put Iván in jail, what would be lost would be an army.”

In 2016, Navarro was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease that caused him to endure difficult days in prison.

In 2016, Navarro was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease that caused him to endure difficult days in prison. Now, he says, he has “low blood sugar levels,” although he does not consider that he is going through a critical moment. “Sometimes I lose consciousness, I can’t get out of bed. Diabetes knocked me out once at midnight and other times at dawn. I don’t remember anything that happened during that time.”

He has been unconscious for one to two hours. In prison, his diet contributed to the worsening of his illness and did not meet the requirements to maintain his sugar level. “The last visit I had was on December 6. Since then I have gained five kilograms and I have not had any more lows. However, this Sunday I ran out of medicine and I could not talk to my family either.”

Navarro thanked his “brothers in exile” for the visibility given to his case, in particular the Rescate Jurídico Foundation and its president, Santiago Álvarez Fernández-Magriña, a “Cuban patriot,” Navarro describes. He also thanked the Cuban American National Foundation. He celebrates the release on Thursday of José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, whom he describes as “a lion, a great man.”

At midday on Saturday, the organization Prisoners Defenders reported 89 releases, “the vast majority of which were conditional releases that had been due to them for some time and had been denied.” The government, for its part, said on Friday that it had already released 127 inmates , a figure that has sparked controversy and indicates – if true – that there are a large number of common prisoners who have been discreet about their release. Of these, only about 50 were political prisoners.

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