Voices Behind The Bars

Image: Paintings by Paul Cézanne

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This is a bomb!
The nerve!
Incredible!
But the evidence does not seem to be television productions!
For this and things that the Cuban people don’t know we have the worst economy in Latin America and the worst in the world!
It’s a large carat cynicism!

Exclamations and commentaries as narrated before were heard in many of the sectors of Canaletas provincial prison in Ciego de Avila, where prisoners could see the DVD in which Oscar Haza,in his excellent program “A Mano Limpia,” interviews Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, a former lieutenant colonel of the personal escort of former Cuban president and supreme leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz.

I learned from several sources, whom I do not quote for obvious reasons, that in the early days of 2010 they clandestinely entered the famous tape. So far they have not caught the bold architect of such a brilliant idea; the most curious fact is that it was passed hand to hand and from section to section of the prison and many sections enjoyed the tape, the talk about the video was so widespread that the penal house sounded like a pot full crickets.

Sure,the news would inevitably come to the ears of some informant who chose to see the video, then leaked the information to the military.

According to my sources, Lt. Col. Reinerio Diaz Betancourt, director of the prison, seemed just like a recently caged lion, foaming at the mouth. Then he gave the order to find the damn DVD and the person responsible for the conspiracy against the commander in chief.

The prisoners relate that the officer Orervis, re-educator of section No. 2, where one finds our brother-in-the-struggle Adolfo Fernández Sainz,is the soldier with the greatest information network in the whole prison, well above the notorious officials of the department of internal investigation and those of the interior order. Well, Orervis sounded the alarm among his people and in no time found the trophy that gives him points with his boss. Orervis found the film in section No. 11 and to make things more dramatic the film was found in the cell of my companion-in-the-cause Félix Navarro Rodríguez.

I will omit the majority of details of the video, since i know that most of my countryman have seen it. I will not make any comment about Fidel Castro’s private life, it’s his privacy, but it hurts to see him with two cows for personal use when milk is not supplied to children over the age of 7 years in Cuba; furthermore, it is said that each member of the Castro family has one cow. Likewise, it is noteworthy that the prisoners were astonished with the version given by Reinaldo Sanchez on the Ochoa case, about Fidel Castro’s personal gold mine and his private little island. I can not ignore the constant unbridled criticism from the Maximum Leader against savage capitalism for being consumer society. We must now study what Castro’s philosophy is on a consumer society. I can not assure you that what Juan Reinaldo Sanchez said is an absolute truth or a way of earning a living, he like many others has jumped ship before it sinks; nor do criticize him, a correction is also valid in politics.

However, this penal body is living in the shadow of doubt by what they saw and doubt always weighs more than one truth. Perhaps, this year the government in Havana continues to violate my constitutional rights by denying me the right to progress. For my family, friends and colleagues, the hatred towards me and the men of the cause of the 75 since is no secret, it is for not remaining silent in front of an injustice. We will continue, we will continue to swim, at this time not so much against the current.

Translated by: Raúl Dopico & LJM