Cuba: “If there’s one thing that’s rampant in Cuban prisons, it’s hunger."

I was arrested for participating in the July 11th protests in Caibarién, Villa Clara. The following day, I was taken to the municipal police station and then to La Pendiente prison in Santa Clara, where I remained until November 2021, when I was sentenced to two years and ten months on a fabricated charge of public disorder.

At that time, I went on a hunger strike to protest the legal proceedings, and they removed me because they were afraid that the more than 30 other July 11th prisoners there would follow my example. I was then transferred to Alambrada prison in Manacas, where I stayed for about two years and five months. Later, due to my defiant attitude, I was sent to the maximum-security regime at Guamajal prison, also in Santa Clara, and in February 2024, to the Villa Clara Provincial Prison, known as El Pre, where I remained until March 6, when I completed my sentence.

La Pendiente prison was overcrowded. I lived there with fifteen other incarcerated people in an extremely cramped space. During COVID quarantine, we could barely leave our cubicles or even get off our bunks. In Manacas prison, I lived in cubicles with thirty people. They were small, and the hygiene conditions were appalling. In fact, I contracted intestinal parasites there. Conditions in Guamajal prison were slightly better, but the space is still very limited. There, I shared a tiny cubicle with twenty other people. At the Pre prison, I contracted intestinal parasites again due to the poor sanitary conditions.

Of the prisons in Villa Clara, three have a critical water situation. Sometimes I went thirsty. The water tasted terrible, like dirt or fish. You usually have to carry it in buckets, and supply is very limited. If I used water to wash my clothes, I couldn’t shower, and if I flushed the toilet, I might not have enough water left for a bath. Besides, the water there is so cold that in the prisons with courtyards, incarcerated people would leave buckets in the sun to warm them up a bit.

In prison, they give you one or two changes of clothes, which you have to wear every day. Only in La Pendiente, which is for people who have not yet been sentenced, you are allowed to wear civilian clothes, mostly on weekends when you do laundry. Otherwise, you have to wear prison clothes exclusively, which are made of an extremely uncomfortable fabric that is unpleasant both to the eye and to the skin. If you do laundry on a weekday, you can be punished. They also give you a bedspread, usually very smelly and requiring a lot of detergent to get rid of the odour; a sheet, generally very worn; and a small towel that the incarcerated people use to dry their feet. One bar of bath soap and one bar of laundry soap per month, and sometimes a roll of toilet paper. A razor is never allowed, even though you are required to be clean-shaven.

Once, a group leader named Henry tried to hit me, but I struggled with him, and then the other prisoners in the cell intervened and stopped him from hitting me. For this, I was punished; they took away my phone and put me in a sealed cell. I had to go on a hunger strike for a week until Alfredo Gómez, the head of the prison administration, saw that my health was deteriorating and lifted the punishment.

On February 27, 2024, I was assaulted in Guamajal by Captain Félix Bucarí. I was arguing with a prisoner who was an informant working for State Security, who had insulted me. Captain Bucarí came and beat me. The next day, while I was being transferred to the Villa Clara Provincial Prison, Major Rolando assaulted me again simply because I asked where they were taking me.

The isolation cells have a terrible stench. You have to endure the smell of urine and feces that have accumulated for months and even years. Many times, I was taken to these cells without having committed any infraction, simply as another form of repression.

At the end of 2023, an officer who identified himself as “Diego” arrived in Manacas to repress the political prisoners. On one occasion, we had a heated argument because he wanted to force me to talk to him, which I refused. In retaliation, he sent Liván Hernández Sosa and me into a tunnel and left us handcuffed there for eight hours. That’s why I developed bursitis in my right arm.

When I was transferred from Manacas to Guamajal, I went on a hunger strike to accuse “Diego” before the Military Prosecutor’s Office of torturing me. I endured the strike for fifteen days, in appalling conditions, until a prosecutor arrived and I was able to file the legal complaint. In February 2024, the Prosecutor’s Office responded: it stated that “Diego” had not committed any infraction and that he had the authority to keep me handcuffed for eight hours. Total impunity.

While in Manacas, a prisoner committed suicide: he could no longer endure the hunger.

If there’s one thing that’s devastating in Cuban prisons, it’s hunger. No man can be satisfied with the meager, poorly prepared food they serve there. For breakfast, we were given a sour drink and a small piece of bread or a root vegetable. Around eleven in the morning, we had lunch, and dinner was served at four in the afternoon: a small portion of rice, which often turned into mush or was dirty, with seeds, trash, and small stones; a bit of water in which some root vegetable had previously been boiled, without salt or seasoning; a hash of tench, of very poor quality and with a terrible stench; or a mass of tench croquettes that only a pig could eat.

Prisoners who don’t have relatives to bring them food ─which is the vast majority─ must survive on that and often go twelve or fourteen hours without eating anything between dinner and breakfast. You can imagine the level of malnutrition in the prisons. While in Manacas, a prisoner committed suicide because he could no longer endure the hunger.

In general, medical care in Cuban prisons is poor. Sometimes, you have to go on a hunger strike to receive any attention. There are many elderly people with serious illnesses and medical conditions, and they aren’t granted early release. For that to happen, a prisoner practically has to be dead. We see a regime that has no compassion for the sick.

When I had a medical problem, they usually gave me the necessary tests, but only because they knew I was speaking out through the independent press, social media, and the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights. However, during my last hunger strike in February 2024, after being beaten by Captain Félix Bucarí and Major Rolando, the treatment I received was appalling. They isolated me from the rest of the prison population, without a single prisoner to look after me. One morning I had a severe tachycardia attack, and there was absolutely no one there to help me.

There are very few medications available. When a prisoner gets sick, the vast majority of the drugs the doctor might prescribe have to be obtained from outside the prison. If a sick prisoner doesn’t have a family member to care for him, he simply won’t get better.

On March 4, two days before my release, a State Security officer who never identified himself came to see me and accused me of alleged contempt. The next day, the head of the opposition unit in Villa Clara, a lieutenant colonel in the State Security forces, told me that the alleged contempt charge would not go anywhere, but that if I continued working as an independent journalist after my release, they would arrest me again.

And that is exactly what happened. On May 2, I was imprisoned again, accused of disobedience.

> Photography by Leonardo Fernández Otaño ©.¶