Interviews with Manuel Vázquez Portal

Of course, we started to feel bad. And the first protest we had was on July 26 [2003]. We lost our voices protesting and beating our shoes against the steel that enclosed our cells. The second protest we had was on August 13.

And this continued until the early hours. On August 13… well already the 14th, the officers appeared and of course they were going to punish us for our lack of discipline, for being rowdy against authority. They told us they were going to suspend the “conjugal pavilion.” The conjugal pavilion was a kind of visit of your wife for three hours every five months; the visits were three each at a time. And well, not I, nor Normando [Hernández], Prospero [Gainza Aguero], or Juan Carlos [Herrera Acosta] accepted that they could deny us the pavilion, and so we went and prepared, what I think, was the first hunger strike that was led by [members of] the Group of 75. And perhaps the prison authorities made a mistake and thought that no… we were not going to do it. And from the 30th… from August 31 to September 1,we embarked on a hunger strike.

Sanctions by the European Union towards Cuba were increased. The Group of 75, of course, had been working on a journal since May [2003], that I had smuggled out of the prison secretly and had been published around the world; a journal [published under the title, Written Without Permission] that told all the tragedies of prison life. And the group was becoming well known, already international organizations were helping the group gain attention and preparing ways to grant awards to some of the intellectuals, writers, poets, activists, opponents, in the general sense, that were inside the prison.

Already the Group of 75 was earning a name and the hunger strike was very effective in helping to raise awareness for the group on an international level and it also awakened a little solidarity within the Cuban political prisoners. So of course, the authorities immediately separated us, they dispersed us. Normando Hernández went to Pinar del Rio. I went to another jail in Santiago called Aguadores. Juan Carlos Herrera [Acosta] went to Guantanamo. Nelson Aguiar [Ramirez], I think, also went to Guantanamo. [Normando Hernández, Prospero Gainza Aguero, Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, and Nelson Aguiar Ramirez are Cuban freedom advocates. From 2003 to 2010, they were prisoners of conscience after their arrest in the Black Spring crackdown that arrested 75 nonviolent dissidents.]

In short, they removed us all, they scattered us… it was the manner in which they thought they were going to silence us. The hunger strike lasted between 11 to 13 days, I do not remember well. With all of us scattered, the strike was less effective than when we were all still in Boniato [prison], and they went on removing us one by one… and isolating the strike… and we returned to the tedious routine of a prisoner in Cuba.

Born in 1951, Manuel Vázquez Portal grew up in the early days of the Castro regime. He received a degree in philology and worked for several years as a teacher. Afterward, he served as a literature advisor in the Ministry of Culture and a journalist with a state-owned media outlet. Through his work, he discovered first-hand how the regime used media and literature as propaganda and banned anything that challenged government ideology. Disillusioned with the regime’s censorship, Manuel focused his talents on children’s literature, a field that offered more flexibility for creativity and imagination.

In 1995, Manuel joined an independent news agency called Cuba Press, and in 1998, he helped form a similar organization called the United Workers Group. In 2003, Manuel was arrested along with 74 other nonviolent dissidents as part of a massive government crackdown known as the Black Spring. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his criticism of the regime. While incarcerated, Manuel worked with fellow political prisoners to organize protests against the prison guards and hunger strikes.

Also during this time, Manuel smuggled his diary out of prison with its descriptions of the conditions he and fellow prisoners endured; his testimonies were published for the outside world under the title Written Without Permission. The Committee to Protect Journalists presented Manuel the International Press Freedom award in absentia for his efforts to expose the regime’s treatment of political prisoners..

In 2004, Cuban authorities transferred Manuel from prison to a hospital; years of abuse and malnutrition had caused his health to deteriorate. Much to his surprise, Manuel was released and went into exile. He brought his family to the United States where he continues to champion a free and democratic Cuba.

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.