Interviews with Ana Lazara Rodriguez

We have in solitary confinement sometime one year. They always put water out of our reach when we do hunger strikes. And I have been once in Guanabacoa, that at the third day of without water, I start having hallucinations. And I knew, because I was studying medicine in Cuba before I entered prison, that I was losing, you know, neurons by thousands.

But then I start seeing a jar at the third day of the hallucination. And the jar was full of ice and water. And it was leaking, you know. When the jar is very cold and the temperature outside is hot. And I said well, my brain tell me, “I don’t believe in you because jars don’t fly.” Then I start hearing the wind of the jar. And I say, “Oh my god. I’m going to believe you!” Then I jump to grab the jar and I hit myself against the wall and I lost conscious.

And when I recover, it was a doctor there. And he said, “Now, we are going to go to the hospital and we are going to treat you.” And I say, “No. I’m going to die here. And believe me, when I die, all those countries that don’t know how to behave against communism, are going to have my name in every conference in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, in every place of this world. Even if you go to a doctor’s conference, my name is going to appear. That is my punishment for you. I’m not going to stop the hunger strike. I’m going to die here.”

Then they stop the hunger strike. They were the ones that give us. Because the hunger strike was – because they put us in the same – they want to put us in the same galleries of the common-law prisoners. And believe me, this is a nightmare. It’s better to die. Because those people don’t know how to defend themselves with words. They always fight with knife, with everything. So if you live there, you have to be like them. If you convert like them, you stop being a political prisoner. That is what they do right now with the people in Cuba when they dissent. They put them in the same place of the common-law prisoners. They try to do to us that, like 20 times. All the times we decide to die before they let them do that.

So in this occasion, they have to stop the hunger strike and send us to the hospital to recover from those. But I know how water can do to you. Food is almost nothing, you know. At the third day of hunger strikes, you feel no hungry at all. You can live, you know, there without feeling hunger-ness until you die. But thirst – when you don’t have water is a nightmare. And they do that all the time to make you bend.

Ana Lazara Rodriguez began her career as a dissident as a teenager in the 1950s, opposing the Cuban dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. She continued her protest activities after Fidel Castro, who overthrew Batista in 1958, began to establish a Communist dictatorship. Rodriguez was a young medical student in 1961 when she was imprisoned for her anti-government views and activities. She and a group of her fellow female prisoners of conscience became known as the “Plantadas” (those who will not bend) because they refused to co-operate with their jailers, resisting with methods ranging from insults to hunger strikes. Rodriguez was released in 1979 and traveled to the United States via Costa Rica. In May 1995, she published ‘‘Diary of a Survivor” about her experiences in prison.

Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.

Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.

Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.

In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.

While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.

Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.

Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.

The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.

The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.

Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.

In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.