Interviews with Ana Lazara Rodriguez

Well, the message to those to fight for freedom is that the truth always open in one way or another. That if you fight for liberty, if you have fight for freedom, if you fight for the truth in one way or another, you have to prevail.

Because truth is so powerful and freedom is so powerful that even though if you are born in a country without that and you want to be free, you will be free. In the worst of the circumstances, you can be free. And in the worst of the prisons, in the worst of the tapiadas, solitary confinement, you are free if you want to be free. And only truth make you free.

Ana Lazara Rodriguez began her career as a dissident as a teenager in the 1950s, opposing the Cuban dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. She continued her protest activities after Fidel Castro, who overthrew Batista in 1958, began to establish a Communist dictatorship. Rodriguez was a young medical student in 1961 when she was imprisoned for her anti-government views and activities. She and a group of her fellow female prisoners of conscience became known as the “Plantadas” (those who will not bend) because they refused to co-operate with their jailers, resisting with methods ranging from insults to hunger strikes. Rodriguez was released in 1979 and traveled to the United States via Costa Rica. In May 1995, she published ‘‘Diary of a Survivor” about her experiences in prison.