The Young Cuban Brandon Becerra is in a Punishment Cell for Singing ‘The Fools Fair’

Brandon David Becerra Curbelo, sentenced to 13 years in prison for demonstrating in Havana on 11J. (Cubalex)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 21 March 2022 — Brandon David Becerra Curbelo, a July 11 [11J] protester sentenced to 13 years in prison, spent three days in a punishment cell at the West Youth Prison in Havana, where he is being held. According to Cubalex the reason was for singing The Fools’ Fair, by Carlos Varela [see below for video with English subtitles].

“Godfather, from this darkness in which they think I am, I have a lot of clarity,” wrote the 18-year-old – who was not yet that age when he was arrested – in a letter to his godfather, identified on social networks as Miki Gómez. In the letter he emphasizes: “Do you know why? Because I am free. FREE, FREE. My mind is free, I am free.”

Becerra Curbelo, originally from Santos Suárez, Havana, insists that “the prisoners are them, of their forced and obligatory slavery” and concludes the letter wishing for a “free Cuba” and with the motto “Patria y Vida” [Homeland and Life].

Becerra Curbelo is one of the 17 defendants who, the Cubalex organization confirmed, received higher sentences than those requested by the Prosecutor’s Office in the 11J trials, some of them disproportionate, such as the 30 years received by Dayron Martín Rodríguez, Wilmer Moreno Suárez and Miguel Paez Estiven.

The 128 sentences published last Wednesday add up to almost 2,000 years in prison, and show the fury of the regime, in particular, with the protesters who were in two of the most symbolic points of the protests that day: in Toyo, where the protestors managed to overturn a police patrol car, and in La Güinera, where the police killed Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, shooting him in the back.

La Feria de los Tontos / The Fools’ Fair [with English subtitles]

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