Interviews with Ariel Sigler Amaya

After my fifth year in prison, my health began to deteriorate. During the first five years, I was conscious of my physical condition, trying to keep active and exercise, always trying to stay healthy. After the fifth year, my body started to wear down. First, my legs started getting weak and it was harder for me to stand up. I would stand up and quickly have to sit back down, until the moment came where I couldn’t stand at all.

One day as I was trying to get out of bed, I fell and my legs wouldn’t respond. I was taken to the hospital where they ran some tests and diagnosed me with paraplegia. Paraplegia is defined as the lack of movement in lower limbs. Many attributed it to a lack of vitamins; others said it was because of my spinal cord.

In Cuba, a political prisoner will never know what he really has. Why? Because the doctors that see these political prisoners belong to the regime or are part of government security.

Underneath they wear a green uniform representing the military, covered by a white gown that defines them as doctors. We are never going to trust their diagnosis. That diagnosis is a lie. It is false because we can’t trust them. Every day they would diagnose me with a different illness. I thought to myself, this is not possible, I am healthy. How can I have a different diagnosis every day? They said I had this one day, I had that the other day. That is impossible, it can’t be.

And every day my health was deteriorating more and more. I entered prison weighing 220 pounds and when I left, I weighed 116 pounds, almost half my weight. Even they were scared. They said I was on the verge of dying and that if I got any thinner, I would surely die. If I gained weight, I had a chance of surviving. During those one and a half to two years of disability due to my paraplegia, I didn’t receive proper medical care, knowing I had a severe back problem.

Ariel Sigler Amaya was a teacher and an accomplished amateur boxer in his native Cuba. After he began speaking out in favor of democratic reforms, he became one of the 75 dissidents arrested in the Black Spring of 2003 and was convicted of having acted “against the independence or territorial integrity of the state.” In prison he suffered torture and other forms of ill treatment.

By the time of his release in 2010, Sigler’s weight had gone down from 205 to 117 pounds. Once in excellent physical shape, he suffered from a variety of medical conditions resulting from his treatment in prison and his friends and family members feared he was near death. After arriving in the United States, he gradually began regaining his strength and began walking with a cane instead of using a wheelchair.

Sigler remains a vigorous advocate of freedom and democracy, not only for his fellow Cubans but also for others living in countries with totalitarian and highly authoritarian governments around the world.