Inside Castro's Prisons

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Another man whom I met in prison had been sentenced to six years for having transcribed passages out of the Bible for his friends and colleagues. It is very difficult to obtain a Bible. Once a group of Jamaican churchmen shipped some Bibles to Cuba. These were loaded onto a truck in the port of Havana and taken to a paper factory where they were recycled and used for government publications. Once José Maria Rivero Diaz, a Protestant minister, was surprised by a guard while reading a small Bible which had been smuggled into prison. He was savagely beaten up in his cell by the prison director and other high-ranking officials. After they had left, José Maria's back was just one vast, bloody wound. Even on the dawn of their execution, prisoners are unable to have the support of a priest.

Close family members of detainees do not have the right to address any request to government authorities. If they ask questions, they receive a visit from the political police and are informed that it is forbidden to inquire into the possibility of visiting prisoners. They are also barred from meeting with the families of other detainees. Thus any assembly of more than three close relatives of political prisoners renders them liable to conspiracy proceedings. Prisoners' families are kept under constant surveillance by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (neighborhood block committees) and the police. In May 1979, because I had refused to write a letter disavowing the contents of my books and denouncing those who had published my poetry or who had talked of my situation abroad, my family was refused an exit visa to leave the country and my brother-in-law lost his job. My friends and relatives were forbidden to visit my house.

The political police bullied both my mother—who was already advanced in years—and my sister. One day, threatening to imprison my sister, they forced my mother to write that I was an enemy of all peoples, that the solitary confinement and the maltreatment I suffered were only what I deserved and that I should be grateful to the revolution.

My sister underwent interrogation several times and had to put up with threats. Once a colonel went to the house and showed her a court judgment that sentenced her to twelve years' imprisonment. My sister had neither been charged nor brought before any court. The colonel ordered her to follow him to the women's prison. The process took twelve hours; they said that certain formalities had still to be completed, and she was to return home and remain there until they came for her. Through such coercion, the authorities hoped to unbalance the minds of members of my family. They succeeded. My sister is currently in the U.S. undergoing psychiatric treatment.*