Why I am in a Cuban prison

Fabio Prieto Llorente
Many Cuban political prisoners, presumably, could have avoided their fate if they had just shut up. They could have continued on with their lives, if they had just avoided talking about the injustices of the dictatorship and their desire, for themselves and for their country, for liberty. After all, that is not how slaves are trained to think, speak and act.
So it is too much to ask, an insult really, to expect the political prisoners now to abandon their cause because the cruelties they suffer in the gulag, and to give the dictatorship a victory it does not deserve.
The most committed of Cuba’s prisoners of conscience, realize that their struggle for freedom continues, only on another front. They have faith that they have a role to play, even from behind bars, and they act accordingly. They have faith that their cause — perhaps, in part, because of their sufferings — will prevail.
At least, I think Fabio Prieto Llorente has that faith.
An independent journalist, Prieto was arrested during the “black spring” of March-April 2003, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
After more than four years of suffering the worst the gulag has to give, Prieto’s resolve against the dictatorship is as strong as ever, as revealed in a short essay published today at CubaNet.
Here is a translation (any errors are my own):

In 1998, when I was interviewed by State Security for the first time, they told me:
“Fabio, here everybody is at the same level. Anybody who sticks their head out, we cut it. Think like you want but don’t say it. Because if you say it, you are looking for trouble.”
That is why they finally condemned me for 20 years, because I kept talking. I keep saying what I think because nobody can cancel my existence.
A few days ago, I was approached by a soldier who pretended to give me some advice:
“Fabio, why don’t you go to a detachment? There, all you have to do is not talk, not converse with anyone. Look, your cause and why you are in prison, doesn’t matter to anyone.”
This outrage not only made me think and speak, but also denounce that after condemning me to 20 years of depriving me of freedom and confining me in a small punishment cell where I sleep on a cement bench and I do my exercises in a hole in the ground, where I live with insects and rats, after making my lungs sick and destroying my health and my family, the political police still wants me to silence myself, that I not express what I think.
This is the height of ostracism. I am unjustly and ruthlessly condemned for giving my opinion about those things that affect me, my family and the society where I live, about the lives of Cubans and the wrongs done to them. And now they are trying to let me out of my cell with a gag on my mouth and expose me to assaults from common prisoners fueled by the political police.

You can read it in Spanish, below the fold.

PRISIÓN EL GUAYABO, ISLA DE LA JUVENTUD, octubre (www.cubanet.org) – En 1998, la primera vez que la Seguridad del Estado me entrevistó, me dijo:
“Fabio, aquí todo el mundo tiene que estar a la misma altura. El que saque la cabeza se la cortamos. Piensa como tú quieras, pero no lo digas. Porque si lo dices, te buscas problemas.”
Al final, me condenaron a 20 años de cárcel, por eso, porque seguí hablando. Continué diciendo lo que yo pienso, porque nadie puede anular mi existencia.
Hace unos pocos días, un militar se me acercó y fingió darme un consejo. Me dijo:
“Fabio, ¿Por qué tú no vas para un destacamento? Allí lo único que tienes que hacer es: no hablar, no conversar con nadie. Mira, a nadie le importa tu causa, ni por qué estás preso.”
Esta ignominia no sólo me hace reflexionar y hablar, sino que también denunciar, porque no sólo me condenaron a 20 años de privación de libertad, confinándome a una semi tapiada y estrecha celda, donde duermo sobre un banco de cemento, hago mis necesidades fisiológicas en un hueco en el suelo, convivo con insectos y roedores, me han enfermado de los pulmones, y destruido mi salud conjuntamente con mi familia, sino que la policía política también quiere, que aún enclaustrado, no manifieste lo que pienso.
Este es el colmo del ostracismo. Estoy injusta y despiadadamente condenado por dar mi opinión, sobre lo que me afecta a mí, a mi familia y a la sociedad donde vivo; sobre la vida de los cubanos, lo que está mal hecho, y ahora pretenden sacarme de la celda de confinamiento, con una mordaza sobre mi boca y exponer mi vida a las agresiones de los reos comunes azuzados por la policía política.