“It is very difficult. It is very difficult, because they close you the doors everywhere. They close the doors of work, they close the doors of your relatives, they close the doors of friends. And it is very difficult. Every day we see ourselves more and more self-conscious about things and afraid of repression, afraid of what they might do with our children. More than difficult, the reality of the life of an opposition mother, of a mother with children facing a murderous regime, is hard and sad.”
“My crimes are going out to do journalistic work. My crimes for them are to demonstrate peacefully. For them, telling the truth to their face is a crime. Those are the crimes that they have always imposed on me.” "What is the truth?" "That they are murderers, that they are abusers, that they are manipulators, that they are destroying and drowning the people of Cuba."
“They know that I am not afraid. Let's see, State Security knows exactly what I'm doing. And they know that I am not afraid. I have always faced them. Let's see, I do mind going to prison, because I have three children and if I go to prison, I'm going to leave them alone. Alone and helpless. Alone and exposed to the regime doing what it wants with them. But despite the fact that I have been sanctioned and that they are threatening me with going to prison, I am not going to give up. [My children] are growing up and they are feeling my absence. They feel that sometimes I'm not there for them because I'm detained, because I'm doing some journalistic work. But they and I are prepared for everything, I have always talked to them, I have always told them the reality and they know what I am facing. They know what can happen to us."
Yadisley Rodríguez Ramírez was born on February 8, 1988 in Camagüey, into a family of Fidel Castro’s supporters. Her grandparents fought in the Sierra de Escambray within the action called Limpia de Escambray (Escambray Cleanup), directed against opponents of the recently established Fidel Castro regime. But when Yadisley, as a child, saw that her grandparents, who should be heroes for the regime, died alone and abandoned, it marked her childhood memories. However, she was caught for the Communist Youth. At the age of 16, she got pregnant for the first time and when her eldest son (she has three children) turned one year old, she resumed her studies until she graduated in economics. Little by little, around that time, she began to question herself more about the regime and finally in 2010, when her second child, a daughter, was born, she joined the Cuban opposition. She experienced countless arrests, beatings and threats and is currently under house arrest, having been sentenced to three and a half years for an alleged attack and disobedience within a peaceful demonstration.
