The first part of my arrest was done professionally, without violence. In the middle phase, it became a bit violent, but more so psychologically than physically. I was driven to my home with three members of the National Revolutionary Police. They frisk you for no other reason than to handcuff you. They nearly broke my legs during the search. My house had two circular lines of police agents from the Revolutionary Police and from the Political Police.
One line was on my property and another, made up of people, cars and motorcycles, was more peripheral, more distant. They only lacked planes, helicopters and a dog. They searched me and seized most of my books. I had a small library in my home. It had about 1,000 books of all kinds, including the Complete Works of Lenin. It was a free and open library. My home’s doors were open to whoever wanted to borrow a book. The [police] seized almost all of my books. They put me in patrol car and took me to the Political Police Unit on the San Juan Road in Pinar del Rio Province.
The interrogations begin on the second day of the arrest. From the beginning, I said I would not make any of statement and that if I were to be condemned, it would be in silence. They suggested that I was to be condemned. In fact, not mentioning any names (I mention this so that it is not forgotten) there was a Political Police officer on the street who told me: “Fidel, be prepared. This is for a while, not like the other times”. He alerted me. Perhaps it was intentional to play good cop, bad cop. But at least he warned me.
When I say that I would be punished in silence if that moment arrived, after over a month of detention (the interrogations did not exceed 15 days) they brought me to the Provincial Prosecutor from the Provincial Division of the Pinar del Rio court. The man asks me why I did not want to testify. “I will be punished in silence if it goes to the tribunal”. They took me to the tribunal and I did not make a statement, just a plea. I was classified as and told I was a terrorist. My wife, with my son who was 14 days old, had a Political Police officer assigned to her.
Toward the end of the trial when I am classified as a terrorist, the presiding judge strikes his gavel and says that if accused has anything to say, this was the time to do so. I raised my hand and I was beckoned toward the microphone. I said to the president of the court: “I have been classified as a terrorist.
If what I say here is false, I have signed my death sentence before this Court. But if it is true, you must absolve all of us of charges.” The Chief could not respond. It was impossible. The situation was difficult. There was silence in between. “President of the Court, the only terrorist here is Fidel Castro and the regime you are representing. I am more than a free man.”
They took me back to the Pinar del Rio local prison. That was April 3. Sometime between May 11 and 13 they moved me to the Agüica Prison. There begins another ordeal. I was caught off-guard that it was for so many years, a 25-year sentence.
Fidel Suarez Cruz was born in 1970 in the small village of Manuel Lazo in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio Province. As a young man, he began to question the policies of Cuba’s communist government. In 1994, Fidel became active in the nonviolent opposition, including the Máximo Gómez Human Rights Front and the Human Rights Front Affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. He also established and ran an independent library in his hometown. Fidel was detained on numerous occasions and was branded a violent criminal by the state.
On March 19, 2003, Fidel was arrested, along with 74 other nonviolent opposition activists (the Group of 75) in the crackdown known as the Black Spring. In a summary judicial proceeding, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He served time with common criminals in maximum security prisons in Matanzas and Pinar del Río. Like other prisoners of conscience, he suffered brutal treatment and was physically and psychologically tortured, including long periods of solitary confinement. In 2005, he was subjected to nineteen beatings within a four month period, causing him many permanent health problems.
Fidel’s family also suffered during his imprisonment. The regime sent many of the Group of 75 to prisons that were distant from their hometowns and families. Fidel’s relatives would travel hundreds of kilometers to visit him in prison, but were sometimes denied permission to see him. When Fidel was first imprisoned his son was only fourteen days old. Fidel’s wife joined other female relatives of the Group of 75 prisoners of conscience in establishing the Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), conducting vigils and other activities to raise awareness of the Group of 75 and press for their release.
After more than seven years in prison, Fidel Suarez and the other Group of 75 prisoners were released in an agreement negotiated between the Roman Catholic Church and the governments of Cuba and Spain. On October 6, 2010, Fidel was released from prison and exiled to Spain with his son Jeferson (named for the American president), his mother Candelaria Cruz, and his wife Aniley Puentes, a member of the Ladies in White movement.
In 2011, he moved to the United States, where he and his family live in the city of Hialeah, Florida. He currently works in landscaping and remains active in the movement for Cuban freedom.
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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