Diosdel Lores Tiser

“Every year, on the May 1st, they take all the prisoners to the dining room, where is the television , so that everybody watches the president’s speech [at that time in 2013 President of the Republic of Cuba was Fidel Castro]. On the first May 1st that José Manuel Rodríguez Navarro [political prisoner] and I were imprisoned, we told the Council that we were not going to see any speech, because we were not interested. It was not in our interest to see this May speech. And Coco [head of the Council of Prisoners] and the Council used that moment for a repression against José Manuel and me. Luckily, there was passing Paz, I am not sure if I can say it, who is the partner of José Manuel and belongs to the Council of Prisoners. They held us there, and the guard came up. The guard officer came up, but it was for Paz, that this day nothing happened to us, on the contrary, they took us down, they took us to the cell. The next day I demonstrated again, by hanging the white sheet, when the prisoners from the 3rd and the 4th floors came down, they came down to have a walk below the sun, I demonstrated and I hang a long white sheet over the bars saying ‘Away with the dictatorship’.”

“When you are defending your rights in the prison, they handcuff you and take you up to the medical post. The doctors are also in a favor of their plan, they are kind of spies, the doctors work together with the communist regime, they are under the same system. The guards tell the doctor that you are upset and other things and lies. The doctor gives you a medicine, I do not know the name, but after this medicine your mouth hearts, it makes you vomit, it makes you sick, it numbs your mouth, it gives you a very bad symptoms. Later, they move you to that room that has five beds. They tie you up by both hands and feet, in the room full of mosquitoes, the leave you there so that the mosquitoes eat you, you cannot do anything. You ask them, you beg them to please let you go, or just to untied you one hand to get rid of the mosquitoes on you. Because there is no one who could possibly support this. And they don’t help you.”

“Many young people were every day at different places [instead of being at school or work] here in Guantánamo. Us students, we also received strong attacks from those young people, we always received strong aggressions from them, because the same people from whom we received attacks were also robbing things that were necessary for them. Also I saw several times many teachers, teachers that I saw on the streets looking for their students, trying to take these youth back to the school, but this young people turned back and continued in what they were doing. Professors never took the control of anything they never took the control over their students. The only control that had the principal at that time, I tell the truth, was the control over the prettiest girl from the school, this was the control that he always had on one hundred percent.”