Declaration

We, the political prisoners of conscience from the cause of the 75 of the Black Spring that find ourselves imprisoned in the Provincial Prison of Canaleta in Ciego de Avila, emphatically oppose the measures of violent repression that have been taken against The Ladies in White in different areas of Cuba, especially those events which have occurred in the Cuban capital. The group of peaceful women is simply asking for unconditional freedom for their loved ones who are currently in captivity for reasons of consciousness.

One must point out the violent acts and attitudes that events in Cuba are carrying out. In Cuba, inflammatory articles are being published, while certain famous figures read offensive declarations against the political sectors in the country that hold an opposition stance towards the prevailing regime, while these same opposition figures are not allowed to respond. We ask that you all increase your vigilance over the conduct of the Cuban government, for we must keep into account that uninformed, fanatical, or demented people could act violently against The Ladies in White or against any dissidents who openly oppose the regime and its politics.

We are making an appeal to the national and international communities so that they can intercede before the authorities of Havana and appeal to the sense of duty. The regime endangers the integrity of the brave Ladies in White and other people. Any ill-fated events that take place against these women will be traced back to the government, for it is their absolute responsibility.

Antonio Diaz Sanchez
Felix Navarro Rodriguez
Pedro Arguelles Moran
Adolfo Fernandez Sainz
Pablo Pacheco Avila

The Law of the Strongest

Skylight by Fernando Urena

 

The law which is imposed by many of the officials in the Canaleta prison is the law of the strongest, and in this case, the strongest are them. They resolve everything through physical blows, attacks, and abuses of power. To search amongst them for the champion through such actions results in a trophy that would be difficult to award, seeing that there are many who resort to physical and verbal violence. One of the latest victims was the prisoner Jeanny Castillo Hernandez, whom was attacked by a recluse while he was handcuffed, during the night time on Sunday, December 13th in the penal hospital. Amongst the hits delivered to him he also received blows in his face, head, and ears on behalf of the chief Eugenio de la Cruz and the first sub-official Alejandro Mecias. All of this was right infront of the doctor on guard and the lieutenant Daniel Solas, whom asked the attackers to stop hitting Castillo Hernandez.

Chief Eugenio de la Cruz has his own personal conduct code, through a manner where his service sheet includes physical blows, extortions, sale of the right to conjugal pavillions, and numerous pressures to impose through force, perhaps with the intention of terminating his position as vanguard.

Example such as these complicate and impede the government of Cuba in terms of permitting the entrance to the relator against torture of the United Nations.

Félix Navarro Rodríguez, political prisoner of the Black Spring, Canaleta Prison of Ciego de Avila, Cuba

 

Filthy Repression

Embarrassing to describe, but I do so with pure honesty. Military personnel are involved in filthy repression tactics against the young Yuniel Perdomo Pino, neighbor of the Cruz Verde building of Cotorro, in the city of Havana.

The guard, Rider, hit him twice with a stick when he asked for medical assistance for his leg that had been injected with fecal matter on June 15th, 2009. Lieutenant Eugenio de la Cruz ordered him to be taken to the Order of Interior with his hands handcuffed and against his back. There they struggle to remove part of a razor blade from his mouth. The sergeant Major, Landy, second chief of the prison, orders:

-“Check him! Fags hide blades between their butt-cheeks.”

They lowered his pants and the first sub-official, Omar Baudinot Malleta, checked in his (Yuniel) buttocks with a pencil before the gaze of all the officers with high ranking- Esmir, Gamboa, Guerra, Cartalla, and Viltres. Perdomo asks Landy if this is allowed in an inspection and he approves.

-“I will denounce you all!” screams Yuniel.

-“And you won’t be able to prove it because we are all officers here!” they respond.

They admit him into a punishment cell and he is left completely alone until 3 days after when the chief, Cintras, goes to visit him and takes him before the chief of the prison, Colonel Reinerio Diaz Betancourt , and also Landy and Omar Baudinot Malleta, where Perdomo Pino ratified the sexual aggression and the attempt on Yuniel’s dignity.

Soon, a declaration was made before the supposed fiscal officer on January 15, 2010. During an interview, colonel Reinerio Diaz Betancourt proposed:

-“If you were another person you would tell your mom to withdraw the accusation and we would help you over here, we’d take you out to work.”

From the Provincial Prison of Canaleta, Ciego de Avila. Felix Navarro Rodriguez, prisoner of conscience and member of the group for democracy, Pedro Luis Boitel.

A Trial By Fire for Sahilí

Representatives of the totalitarian and exclusive communist government which controls the fate of our people appeared at my home in Perico, Matanzas, on Tuesday January 12, to advise my daughter, Sahili Navarro Alvarez, that she would be permanently expelled from her fourth year of law school at the university because, months before, she took a journalism course in the Office of Interests and, as a principal requirement of Cuban universities, they train only young future professional revolutionaries.

A trial by fire for Sahili, who was beaten in the street by fanatic cheerleaders on April 26, along with six other Women in White opposite the Perico bus station. That order, against anyone in the 21st century, sent a clear message to the Cuban people and to the world, that the political system which rules in our country is more discriminatory and exclusive than the one which ruled in South Africa during apartheid and that it demands humiliation or submission if one wants to accomplish anything, because universities and liberties in Cuba are fief and chaplaincy of the communist party.

In addition, it is a message to whoever of us want to live with the dignity necessary to emigrate, to live either in glorious exile or in prison. But for the communists who give the orders in our country, I say to them from here that the three people in my home were born in this country and that we will continue to live here even if the only option remaining to us is in its slave prisons, but never on our knees.

From Canaleta Provincial Prison en Ciego de Ávila, Félix Navarro Rodríguez, prisoner of conscience and member of Pedro Luis Boitel Party for Democracy.

Panchito- Facing the Wall (Final)

Image: Latitudes of Insanity by Manuel Menassa.

Francisco Feijoo (Panchito), who resides in 87th Marti Avenue in Jobabo, Las Tunas, was one of those vivacious young men whose intellectual rate was higher than the norm. His classmates from the University of Havana would bow to him, move to the side to let him pass, and would even remove their hats when he passed, some jokingly and others in all seriousness. Sincerely, this was because Panchito was at the top of his class and had the ability to make all the professor’s words sound doubtful because he would even put them in a difficult spot.

One day, sitting in the terrace of his own Alma Mater, he dared to make a comment amongst those who were there debating: “We live in flat out slavery”. The next day he was detained and taken to Villa Marista (a prison in Havana notorious amongst political prisoners). An instructor, and captain of State Security, named Richard took on the task of interrogating him. The loneliness of the prison cell, the interrogations, and the screams produced the intended objective for the young man. After a few days of consuming foods contaminated with drugs for the mentally sick, his physical state decayed and his brain was destabilized.

He was then taken to Mazorra, a hospital for the mad, and between electroshocks and new drugs he collapsed. I digress: all those characters from all the read works, that were once part of their cultural heritage, were now becoming reality before their eyes. With great vehemence, he testified to visiting the moon during the previous night. Montesquieu was his personal friend or he had shared a cell with the author of The Prince or The Leviathan.

There was nothing else to be done. Panchito was not Francisco, he was only a human rag; he could say as much as he would like about Hamlet or Quixote, but even if he told the truth who would pay attention to him? Even if he spoke the truth, who would follow him? No one, absolutely no one, pays attention to what a crazy person has to say.

Today he fluctuates through the streets of Jobabo dressed in white, asking everyone he comes across if they are reading the works that he has read or is reading. Many look at him and laugh, but only a few know that he too stood before the execution wall.

Felix Navarro, prisoner of conscience. Text dictated by phone from the provincial prison of Canaleta, Ciego de Avila.

Facing the Wall (3)

Image: Blue Flame by Magdalena Salamanca.

Some time ago, a friend of mine told me, “Cuba is a country where one can only live as crazy or drunk.” I looked at him astonished and something perplexed me. I told him, “But I don’t even drink…”, and he responded, “Do you by any chance think you are sane?”, and I could not give him a reply.

It is probable that you may think very little, reasonably, about some of the truths which I live daily in my neighborhood, or about the comments heard in the street corner. I remember Raul Rivero and his articles, his comments, along with that question I used to ask myself: what led him to say, “There are traitors in all parts of the world, nevertheless look amongst your brothers and see who will defend you and seek a better future for Cuba”?

In my hands I have found an eager read of a book entitled ‘The Grand Fraud’ or ‘The Grand Lie of an Old Fighter’, and a great light turned on in my head. One of the battle methods of communists has been to discredit its opponents. Slander has been at the basis of its principles. How much must have Andrei Sajarov suffered thrown in one of the corners, suffering the ignominy of being one of the agents of the famous “Czechs”; or even Raul, a member of State Security, the political police. Today more than ever I am able to understand them; Andrei yesterday, and Raul today.

How much sadness must they have felt as they saw how the lies began taking shape, who knows, maybe amongst their circle of friends or family. Seeing themselves trapped in a circle surrounded by fire or being trapped in a grand cycle of waves, each moving in a different direction. For Andrei, only time and death separated him from the pain that weighed down upon his body. For Raul Rivero, Castro’s own hordes took up the task of cleansing him; he is a prisoner from the Black Spring of 2003 in Cuba and we all know what objective the government had in the imprisonment of those 75 men: nothing else but an exchange for the famous five spies. Rivero and Sajarov are already part of this brutal and macabre history. The first lives in forced exile and the latter already belongs to God, but even now there are still many of us still here in this long and green island, whom still are facing the execution wall.

Félix Navarro, prisoner of conscience. Text dictated by phone from the provincial prison of Ciego de Avila, Cuba.

Facing the Wall (2)

Image: The Poet and the Gold by Miguel Menassa

Still echoing in the ears are those words from a long and dull discourse that took place in the mid 1960’s.

“…We will create a system of collective vigilance.”

A kind of state security similar to that of the SS Nazis, a system of a collective group in which you kept an eye on your neighbor all the while that same neighbor was in charge of keeping watch of you.
Many remember; both those of us that are here and those in exile. They would come dressed as civilians with the intent of collecting information; like Antonio, a neighbor who would recount what he saw suspicious. One afternoon when he was supposed to be at home and he did not show, his neighbor was on watch. Antonio was detained; later on he found out that the one that would show up to his house, the one he was supposed to inform, was detained also. Antonio had more luck, they did not execute him and 12 years of his life were spent between pain and suffering. Antonio decided to leave; he did not want his children to live through what was nothing other than hate and resentment.

The Committee of the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) made themselves public and it is already known who were there members, and amongst these clans respect was not promoted. Amongst them, fear was unleashed, which transformed a battle hardened country into an amorphous mass in where the simple objective was to save oneself and family, a profit for the devil.

It is with much pain that I must hear that Venezuela and Ecuador are marching down the same path. I cry when I think of the divisions amongst families, the loss of human valor known as friendship, the forced neglect of all the churches, and it seems to me that their governments are perpetuating themselves in power and are only interested in their own interests, elevating their own egos through sweat and tears- not caring from whom. They laugh with them as if it was all a grand comedy and they don’t care, no, that they are amassing their population in front of an execution wall.

Félix Navarro, prisionero de conciencia. Texto dictado por teléfono desde la prisión provincial de Ciego de Ávila, Cuba.

Facing the Wall (1)

 
Image: Inner Storm by Olga de Lucia

I have read Faust several times, each line and each word of it and I cannot grasp it. I am going to take refuge among the tears that El Quixote causes me, maybe because I am just an Alonso Quijano playing another’s role. I press my temples trying not to listen, but the screams from the repudiation act go beyond my reach. The banging in the door caused by rocks, rotten eggs, excrement, all this brings two more tears to my eyes. Signs on the sidewalk carry me to the past, a past where they shouted over and over, “To the wall! To the wall! To the wall!”  [Translator’s note:  In the public trials, after the triumph of the Revolution, spectators would shout, “Paredón!” meaning “to the wall”, that is the wall where the firing squad would be ready.]

Today, like yesterday, it is the same people with the difference that now there’s fewer who can think and lead, and more who just follow. Who will be able to erase from our history those young men and women that from the very beginning of the Revolution were aware, like prophets, of where we were heading to: Manolito, Luis, José, Germán… Germán… damn it, Germán.   

We should never forget that evening when in the middle of the batey they gathered the whole community. “We have caught these rebels giving out proclamations and pamphlets”. “Get them out of here, get them out of here…!”, said the crowd. “Get them out of here!”, and they ran toward their places looking for dining tables to improvise a small platform. Elvira was also there, gesticulating as if she was the orchestra’s conductor. “Wall, wall, give him wall!”, “Get him out, get him out!”, the crowd keeps shouting. “Kill him! Wall, wall…!”, they kept shouting…  

Then, a low ranking officer arrived, someone who was seen as a god during the beginning of the Revolution in the early ’60s, just a lieutenant, and tried to calm down the crowd: “You have asked for it”. German got out of the Jeep but did not go up to the platform. The crowd was not looking at the officer nor the detainee anymore. They were all scared helping Elvira, who fainted. “Water, water; air, air…!”, you could hear. “She’s recovering, she’s recovering” they said. She squeezed her own hands in a cross shape against her chest. 

 

Féliz Navarro, prisoner of conscience. Text dictated on the phone from the county jail of Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. 

Translated by: Josema

Condolences

It with great grief and sorrow that we just watched the news report concerning the tragic accident of Air France Airbus 330 on Sunday May 31^st, 2009, where 228 lives were lost. We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the victims of the disaster and we join in the mourning of the international community, praying to God for the souls of the missing.

Félix Navarro Rodríguez, Adolfo Fernández Saiz, Pedro Argüelles Morán, Pablo Pacheco Ávila,  all send their condolences.

Pablo Pacheco: Canaleta Prison