LETTER FROM THE DAUGHTER OF  A CUBAN POLITICAL PRISONER TO DICTATOR FIDEL CASTRO

To read the original letter in Spanish click here

Matanzas, September 7, 2004

To Señor Fidel Castro, First Secretary of the Council of State and Ministry:

First of all a respectful greeting, my name is Sahilí Navarro Alvárez, I am 18 years old, and live

in the Province of Matanzas, in the Municipality of Perico, and I am the daughter of Félix Navarro

Rodríguez who was sentenced to 25 years in jail during the last repressive wave ordered by your regime,

on March 18 2003, and I was the one who sent a letter to you on July 29, 2002 asking for your

immediate resignation.

I am sending this letter to you with two objectives, to make a little bit of history, reminding you of the life

conditions that were imposed to you by Batista’s tyrannical government, something that you detailed very

well in your book “The Fruitful Prison” (La Prision Fecunda), and that it seems that you forgot with the

victory of January 1959; and the other one so that you can explain to me why the treatment to the Cuban

political prisoners, and specially those who were arrested during the so called “Cuba’s Black Spring,” are

so unpleasant and degrading? Why doesn’t the Cuban media denounce the realities of Cuban prisons?

Why these cruel and inhumane acts are kept silenced? What is the difference between an Iraqi prisoner

and a Cuban prisoner? The dignity, the respect for their integrity and their rights should be the same

anywhere in the world.
 

On July 26, 1953, you directed an attack by a group of your followers against the Moncada Garrison in

Santiago de Cuba, you were taken prisoner and sentenced to 14 years in prison but you were only in

jail for 22 months because you benefited from the amnesty decree of 1955. You were part of a process

with all the legal guarantees, and were allowed to act as your own defense lawyer. Your confinement

in the Isle of Pines could be considered as a happy and needed vacation according to your own testimony.

During the months that you were in prison you received the privilege of family visits twice a month, access

to the prison store where you were able to make all your daily purchases. You founded a school with the

name of “Ideological Academy Abel Santamaría,” with the purpose of teaching class to the other companions

who were in jail with you, and a library with the name of “Raul Gomez Garcia.” The subjects (that were

taught) included philosophy, world history, geography and languages. You were able to send letters to

relatives and friends, and also receive correspondence without limitations or censorship. You received

visits from people who occupied important posts like, for example, the then Minister of Government

Ramon Hermida and the Judge from North Havana Waldo Medina.

Newsman Raul Martin Sanchez published and interview in Bohemia magazine of July 9, 1953 with seven

photos showing you in your jail cell and in the library. In the month of June of 1954 you had a small radio

brand Silverstone, a little later they modified your conditions at the prison, as you explained in your letter

of the month of August in which you said: “They communicated my cell with another department four times

bigger and with a big yard, open from 7 Am to 9 PM. We don’t have to stand in line or have any recounts.

We get up whenever we want, (we have) abundant water, food and clean clothes. However, I don’t know

how much longer we are going to be in this paradise.”
 

Among the letters that you sent we can quote other important descriptions like: “Since I like to cook, every

once in a while I entertain myself, preparing some ‘pisto’ (fried hash of chopped peppers, onions, tomato,

etc.) Some few days ago my sister, who lives in Oriente, sent me a small ham and I prepared a steak with

guava jelly. I also prepare spaghettis every once in a while, or a cheese omelet. I arranged my things and I

have here the most absolute order. The rooms at the Hotel Nacional are not as clean.. I am taking two

baths daily due to the heat, when I go out to take a sun tan in the morning wearing shorts I fell the air

from the sea and think that I’m on a beach, later on at a small restaurant here I go to eat spaghettis

with clams, Italian bonbons for desert, Cuban coffee and later an H Upmann cigar number 4.”

It is important that you remember that luxurious life that the tyrant Fulgencio Batista allowed you to have

in order for you to change the conditions that you provide in the current Cuban jails, and that I know that

you are not unaware of them. Because those who are condemned in your paradise suffer cruel treatment,

violations to their human rights, constant and savage beatings, mistreatments, lack of medical and religious

assistance. (The prisoners are held) in solitary confinement, (their) correspondence is completely violated,

(they are) kept at hundreds of kilometers from their own hometowns, share jail cells with dangerous

common criminals, with an extreme number of prisoners sharing a cell, without any possibility of cooking,

(the) visits are once every three months and the bags that we can bring to them can only weigh 30 pounds,

the sanitary-hygienic conditions cannot be compared because there is not a way to describe them.
 

The water is contaminated and is not enough, the food, for the most part, is spoiled, because the bonbons,

the ham, the spaghettis and the clams with cheese, the Cubans can only say that they know they because the

 ‘shopping’ that accepts foreign currency are the only ones offering them and at incredible high prices, even

though they are products made in our own island.
What a difference, isn’t it true, being you the best president that Cuba has ever had in its history, being

this the country, according to you, where no human rights are violated! Is truly your government an example

to be followed and a beacon of light for other countries to follow?
The time has come for you to reflect upon, there are too many political prisoners, there are too many that

you have sent to the firing squad since taking power by force, only for thinking different, or for dissenting

from the official ideas.
 

Fidel, it is never late to allow this country to construct its own road, without chains that impede its total

independence.
This letter that I’m writing can cost me years in jail o that my father be treated even more despotically

at the Guantánamo prison where you sent him to pay his unjust sentence. In either case, the world will be

witness and you will be even more aware that in Cuba still exist men and youngsters capable of all kind

of sacrifices for an ideal, despite the terror that you have put in place for more than four decades and

that still continues, and of all the repressive machinery, the most diabolic that exists in the world at

this time.
 

Sahilí Navarro Álvarez
Calle Peatonal #6, Reparto Las Canteras,
Perico, Matanzas,Cuba.
Birth date: March 11 de 1986.