The faces of the “prison horror” in Cuba for “standing” before Fidel Castro

Cuban Luis Zúñiga (74 years old) is accompanied for life by a prominent scar on his hand and a cleft in the skull caused by bayonets; in Ángel de Fana’s head (82) the phrase “Justice, not revenge” resounds over and over again; Ernesto Díaz (82 years old) has the faces of his jailers engraved in his mind; and Maritza Lugo (58 years old) came to doubt whether she was “alive or dead.”

They are the visible faces of the thousands of “political” prisoners who “stood” before the communist regime of Fidel Castro and that they were repressed for their convictions in prisons scattered throughout Cuba, recounts the documentary film “Plantados”, by Cuban filmmaker Lilo Vilaplana (Centurión Films), which opens on November 19.

These exes are part of 30,000 inmates, according to estimates, who went through Cuban maximum security prisons between 1960 and 1975 due to their opposition to Castroism.

Of them, half are considered “planted”, prisoners who refused to submit to the government’s “rehabilitation” plans and preferred to lose their lives or be tortured rather than wear the blue uniform that characterized common inmates.

Prisons such as Boniato, Pinar del Río, El Príncipe or La Cabaña witnessed systematic abuses of human rights, explain the “planted”, who ranged from beating them to keeping them crammed into tiny cells without electricity, water or hygiene, to torturing them psychologically with false shots of grace using blank weapons or making them drink muddy water, according to his story.

Ángel, Luis, Ernesto and Maritza managed to get out of prison after more than two decades in prison and, in most cases, they sought refuge in Miami (United States), a city considered the capital of the Cuban exile.

They continue with the open wounds and with the objective that justice is done with jailers and repressors, they say; That is why they have given their testimony for the Vilaplana documentation process on the stories of these former prisoners.

“Freedom is the essence of life”

The documentary is structured around two interconnected timelines. On the one hand, the violence and oppression suffered by the “planted” in gloomy dungeons is recounted.

And, on the other, the traumatic encounter in Miami of Ramón, a former inmate “planted”, with Mauricio, a savage ex-jailer who murdered Ramón’s companions inside the prison, according to the film. Both plots, the interviewees consider, are currently valid because “everything” that appears in it “happened”.

“In Cuba there are political prisoners, specifically now there are more than eight hundred and some have been in prison for more than 25 years,” says Ángel de Fana. To which Luis Zúñiga immediately adds: “And many of them, minors.”

Others, like Maritza Lugo, assure that in Miami there are many who “have worked for the government in prisons” and ask that “people who have collaborated with a dictatorship that has oppressed” the people not be supported. “It is very hard to see people who have tortured free,” he concludes.

These “planted” acknowledge that they got out of jail alive as a matter of chance and now relate with integrity the tortuous path to get out of their prisons because, according to Ernesto Díaz, “it is not worth living without freedom, it is the essence of life”.

“Justice and not revenge”

On July 11, thousands of Cubans in more than forty cities took to the streets to protest against the Cuban Government in the considered largest mobilization since the so-called “maleconazo” (1994).

After these massive demonstrations, the balance was 805 detainees during or after the concentrations, according to the legal advice Cubalex. However, this has encouraged the “planted” to trust that “the youth is determined to regain their freedom, to live with dignity,” as Díaz maintains.

Also motivated by the screening of the film, the ex-prisoners of the Castro regime hope that justice will soon be done with those who oppressed them.

“For there to be a reunion, the criminals have to acknowledge their guilt and that the Justice is in charge of determining the degree of punishment, but without revenge. Respect for human rights differentiates us from them, ”says Zúñiga.

They all emphasize the importance of democratic values ​​so that “it does not happen like in Cuba” because, according to them, “Fidel Castro betrayed the people, he offered false happiness, but it was all a deception into a diabolical project, which has turned Cuba in one of the most suffering towns in Latin America ”.