Life after prison
means facing fear daily
Vanessa Bauza. Published
January 18, 2004 in the Sun-Sentinel,
Florida.
HAVANA · It's a habit Bernardo Arévalo
Padrón picked up in his last year
behind bars. To mark time, he crossed off
each remaining day in his six-year sentence
on a calendar that hung in the cell he shared
with 28 other prisoners.
Today he counts his days in freedom and
quickly offers the tally: 65 since he was
released Nov. 13 from the Ariza prison in
central Cienfuegos province, where he served
six years on charges that he defamed Cuban
President Fidel Castro in an interview with
a Miami-based radio program.
Cuban officials offered to withdraw the
charges if he retracted his statements calling
Castro a liar, but he refused, he said.
For a time Arévalo Padrón,
39, was Cuba's only independent journalist
in prison. That changed last April when
28 others, including the well-known poet
Raul Rivero, were sentenced to up to 27
years on charges that they reported "false
news to satisfy the interests of their sponsors
in the U.S. government" and tried to
destabilize the Cuban government.
Arévalo Padrón has spent
the past couple of months adjusting to life
outside prison. He said he is writing a
book based on his experiences in jail and
is applying for a visa to move to Canada.
He has continued to file radio reports for
several Miami-based exile organizations,
including the federally funded Radio Marti,
which is generally blocked by the Cuban
government.
He says there are days when he still gets
nervous from the sound of a police motorcycle
or car idling outside his home. He fears
he could be arrested again.
"I feel fear, and every day I overcome
it," said the former railroad worker
who has no journalistic training. "Someone
has to report on the laments of the Cuban
people."
In letters from political prisoners across
the island, many describe conditions similar
to those Arévalo Padrón faced
at Ariza.
He said his mattress was stuffed with seaweed
where gnats and mosquitoes nested. His food
was often served rotten. Rainwater leaked
into his cell, and he contracted high fevers
after rats urinated in the food his wife,
Libertad Acosta Diaz, brought to supplement
the prison meals.
He spent much of his time reading books,
including The Godfather, Jules Verne's science-fiction
adventures and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
While Arévalo Padrón was
imprisoned, other dissidents helped his
family by donating rice, beans and other
foods. Now the roles are reversed, and he
collects food to help a jailed dissident's
family who live nearby.
Like many of Cuba's dissidents and independent
journalists, Arévalo Padrón
once supported Cuba's communist system and
its leadership.
But the former army reservist says he had
a change of heart in the late 1980s and
began to sympathize with Cuba's struggling
opposition groups.
"There was no definitive moment,"
he recalled. "It was a gradual disillusionment
with the communist regime which was influenced
by Radio Marti and the information I heard."
A dissident-led human rights organization
in Havana last week said the island has
315 political prisoners.
The list in the group's semiannual report
included some who were convicted for trying
to leave the country illegally.
It also included the 75 dissidents who
were sentenced in the crackdown last year
and are considered prisoners of conscience
by the human rights group Amnesty International.
The Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation
Commission said 10 of these prisoners are
so ill they should be allowed to serve out
their sentences at home.
Those in most frail condition, according
to the commission, are two former state
economists, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who suffers
from cirrhosis of the liver, and Martha
Beatriz Roque, who has high blood pressure.
They are being treated in military hospitals,
but Espinosa Chepe's wife says her husband's
medical care is inadequate.
The commission also highlighted the case
of blind dissident Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Leyva, who has been jailed since March 2002
without a trial.
The year "2003 was very unfavorable
due to the systematic violations of civil,
political and economic rights," the
report stated. "What is worrying for
us is that 2004 could be just as discouraging
in these areas."
Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at
vmbauza1@yahoo.com.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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