Today, both symbolize the commitment to freedom.
14ymedio, Peter Corzo, Miami, 20 October 2024 — The prison systems of the Castro-Chavez regimes are particularly cruel and merciless. They establish such miserable conditions of survival that people subsist thanks to unbending moral values and the unbreakable brotherhood generated by perpetually lurking death.
Food is precarious, medical care is non-existent and, even worse, selective. The sick are treated based on instructions given by an official who is governed by political patrons, not by the health of the patient. Overcrowding is the rule, never the exception, and family visits are subject to the whims of a henchman, who arbitrarily suspends them, in addition to the innumerable difficulties for the family to provide goods or visit the inmate.
In these countries there are prisons that epitomize the extreme evil of the regime, without the rest of the dungeons being five-star hotels.
Food is precarious, medical care is non-existent and, even worse, selective
In Nicaragua, the Chipote fortress is by far the most frightening; in Venezuela this miserable honor corresponds to the Helicoide; Bolivia is not far behind with colonial prisons; and in Cuba there are many incarceration centers that can be considered antechambers of hell, in addition to being perhaps the country with the most prisons and political prisoners in the world, relative to its size and population.
In the prisons of each and every one of these countries there are prisoners who symbolize the cause that brought them to prison. People of absolute dedication and unfading courage, always ready for extreme sacrifice, like Armando Sosa Fortuny, who died in prison after having served 43 years in two stages, a death that looms over other patriots like Ernesto Borges, who served 26 years in prison last July, and Miguel Diaz Bouza, who completed his 30-year prison sentence on October 15 and remains behind bars.
In these 65 years of Castroism, more than half a million prisoners have passed through Cuban prisons, and have been behind bars for between one day and 30 years. In addition, many prisons have been distinguished as the most cruel and sadistic, among them the Castillo de San Severino, La Cabaña, Puerto Boniato, Guanajay, the National Prison on the Isle of Pines, Siete y Medio and Kilo Siete, while some prisoners have been examples of resistance and capacity for sacrifice, among others, Cari Roque, Pedro Luis Boitel, Mario Chanes de Armas, Roberto Martin Pérez and Amado Rodríguez.
There are currently at least two political prisoners, among a host of men and women in prison, who in my opinion symbolize everyone’s commitment to freedom and civil rights.
In Cuba, there are many prisons that can be considered antechambers of hell
José Daniel Ferrer and Félix Navarro, two opponents of totalitarianism who were imprisoned during the Cuban Black Spring in 2003 and released in 2011, refused to go into exile, despite being aware that they would return to prison because they would never give up on their efforts to free Cuba and Cubans from totalitarianism.
Ferrer, who was last arrested on 11 July 2021, tried to take part in the civic protests that took place across the island, and has since suffered continued ill-treatment by the regime. His family denounces the abuses he suffers, in particular the extreme isolation to which he is systematically subjected as part of Raúl Castro and Miguel Diaz-Canel’s plan to “bury him alive.” Again, in recent days, his wife was prevented from visiting him with their children.
Félix Navarro is in the gloomy prison of Agüica, in the province of Matanzas, a prison that has had a very bad reputation since the 1970s, due to the abusive henchmen and the diabolical conditions of its facilities.
Navarro, leader of the Pedro Luis Boitel Party for Democracy and vice president of the Council for Democratic Transition in Cuba, was also sentenced to nine years in prison for the 2021 national protests. Since last June, he has not received medication for the chronic illness he suffers from, a common practice of Castro’s henchmen working in the prison system.
Navarro and Ferrer should not be forgotten. To paraphrase a song by Albita Rodríguez: “They have the honor of having been born in Cuba and loving the freedom crushed by the Castros and their hitmen.”
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