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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: 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. 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?
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.
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.” 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. 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? 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. 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 |
