Interviews with Manuel Vázquez Portal

The second hunger strike I participated in, I ended up at the hospital. There they discovered that I had an emphysematous bulla [a blister of the skin or mucous membranes containing fluid] in the apex of the right lung. They kept me there in the hospital and in 2004… June 2004, by that time the New York-based, Committee to Protect Journalists, awarded me its prize for freedom of the press and Human Rights Watch, gave me an award for documenting conditions in prison.

A few pieces of mine had been published abroad and to my surprise, on June 24, 2004, they [authorities] arrived at the Grillo Hospital, where I was admitted and told me, “Get ready, you are leaving as a transfer.” This sounded good to me… well… I will move to Havana, I will be close to my family; we’ll see what happens. But then the security officer said to me, “Why don’t you give your flip flops to this sick man?” “Well… it’s just that I am going to need them.” “No, I think that where you are going you’re not going to need them.” I assumed that he was giving me a signal because he also said, “Look, and this bucket, give it to so-and-so who doesn’t have one.” I said, “No wait a second, if you are going to give away my things, then I am going to give them away myself.”

And I began to give away my shirts, towels, shoes, soap, everything I had there, because I realized two things. I said, “Right now, they are either going to put me on the first plane out, or something is going to happen because this man is giving away my things and giving me a sign.” Next they put me in a small van and told me, “You’re free.” “You mean a free man?” He said, “Yes.” So in the same awkward, crazy, frightening way that we were taken prisoner [the Group of 75 nonviolent dissidents who were arrested during the March 2003 crackdown known as the Black Spring], I was released.

We traveled in the small van from Santiago in Cuba to Havana… in that same [model of] van that picked me up in the middle of the night and brought me to “Section 21” [state security] in Marianao [a district in Havana]. At 11 o´clock at night on June 24, I arrived at my house. And there of course I found my wife Yolanda with her leg in a cast up to her groin. She had already visited me in Boniato [prison] with her leg in a cast.

She was in a cast because a dog was released on her the day before visiting me in May; and yet, she still went to Santiago in a wheelchair with her leg in a cast. I already knew about her leg but to get home and find my wife with her leg in a cast; my son, of course, was already 10 years old. It was terrible.

Those were frightening days. There was a visible [state security] operation going on; they were following me, in what they call a “Japanese pursuit” that is to say, they make you notice that you’re being followed in order to provoke you and that’s how the first few days passed. When I was taken prisoner, I was already approved by the American Consulate to travel to the United States; I already had a visa, everything was ready and well when they arrested me [in 2003].

And when I returned, I consulted with my wife… my family and I said, “Look, I am not leaving [Cuba] because if they already gave me 18 years, and now I have completed almost 2 what more can they do? I´m going to continue my independent journalism; I´m going to continue to oppose these people.”

But, my wife told me that it wasn’t worth sacrificing her life, the life of my son, and my other older children and so I took my visa that I was given by the United States and on June 7, 2005, I landed in Miami. I discovered that Miami was a kind of small Cuban town but without a rationing system.

Miami is a very nice, very colorful, very picturesque village where the fruits are very big due to the hormones and everything here is gigantic; everything is very big, the passions, ideals, reason, discussions. I have been here in Miami since June 7th, 2005.

I worked for a few months at CubaNet, a website that I was working for in Cuba. After three or four months, I left CubaNet and I went on to work at Radio Marti. At Radio Martí, I worked nearly six years as a journalist, editor, newscast producer. In November 2011, I resigned from Radio Marti. I went on to work with NBC at Telemundo, producing the newscast; I was there for almost two years. And now I am the producer for a well-known journalist in Miami; I am the producer of the TV program “Ahora” with Oscar Haza.

Born in 1951, Manuel Vázquez Portal grew up in the early days of the Castro regime. He received a degree in philology and worked for several years as a teacher. Afterward, he served as a literature advisor in the Ministry of Culture and a journalist with a state-owned media outlet. Through his work, he discovered first-hand how the regime used media and literature as propaganda and banned anything that challenged government ideology. Disillusioned with the regime’s censorship, Manuel focused his talents on children’s literature, a field that offered more flexibility for creativity and imagination.

In 1995, Manuel joined an independent news agency called Cuba Press, and in 1998, he helped form a similar organization called the United Workers Group. In 2003, Manuel was arrested along with 74 other nonviolent dissidents as part of a massive government crackdown known as the Black Spring. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his criticism of the regime. While incarcerated, Manuel worked with fellow political prisoners to organize protests against the prison guards and hunger strikes.

Also during this time, Manuel smuggled his diary out of prison with its descriptions of the conditions he and fellow prisoners endured; his testimonies were published for the outside world under the title Written Without Permission. The Committee to Protect Journalists presented Manuel the International Press Freedom award in absentia for his efforts to expose the regime’s treatment of political prisoners..

In 2004, Cuban authorities transferred Manuel from prison to a hospital; years of abuse and malnutrition had caused his health to deteriorate. Much to his surprise, Manuel was released and went into exile. He brought his family to the United States where he continues to champion a free and democratic Cuba.

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.