Rolando Tudela Irivar

“After we visited our injured friend, an opponent of the communist regime in a hospital, we went to the Revolution Square [Plaza de la Revolución] in Caimanera, it was about eight in the evening. There happened something, that I had never seen in my life. It was the first time when the Special Military Troops were used against pacific demonstration. These men wore anti-riot helmets, they carried cob rifles, practical bullets, the only thing they lacked was the riot shield, the only thing they lacked. They blocked our way with several cars of the Special Troops. Anti-riot car, a car of men dressed in civilian clothes from the State Security and a car that brought people from the Young Communists Party, who are trained for this type of operations as well.”

“In Cuba, the workers should denounce to the ‘CTS’ [The Central of Workers in Cuba, Central de Trabajadores de Cuba], the ‘CTS’ is an organization that supposedly defends labor rights of workers in Cuba. But in the end, everything is just an illusion to support directors and representatives of the communist Government more than the trade unionists or the workers. So, the ‘CUTS’ [Unitary Council of Cuban Workers, Consejo Unitario de Trabajadores de Cuba] is entrusted by the International Labor Organization to capture all these complaints and all these violations and publish them in the annual reports of the International Labor Organization. These reports were long, because there gathered data from several categories, divided by great number of sectors. These sectors were, for example, demographics, labor sector, education sector, health, tourism or youth sector.”

“I was also imprisoned, last six months of my military service I passed in prison. Because they accused me of stealing boots, that few soldiers had stolen, not me. But at the end, they sanctioned me, because I had – well previously I had accepted a pair of boots and watch. My dad worked in the United States of America, when he traveled to the United States, he brought me that watch. So, they imprisoned me for six months, instead of paying a fine, I was imprisoned, during my army training it should have been at most for three months, but they condemned me for six months. During the trial, my lawyer said to me, that it was even worse than the case of the ‘Five Heroes’, each boy was instructed for stealing, their lawyers were imprisoned too. My lawyer was never allowed to see me, the lawyer told me that. I was never allowed to talk to my lawyer.”