Interviews with Fidel Suarez Cruz

My name is Fidel Suárez Cruz. I was born in the town of Manuel Lazo, in the municipality of Sandino, in the Pinar del Río province. My family is a family of laborers or field workers. I spent my childhood there. I was fatherless at age 3. I was born in 1970 and in 1973 my father died. He was a laborer. He worked in the fields, cultivating food. The quality of life of the farmer is different. It is much lower than those who live in the city.

The regime focuses all its resources on the cities. Mainly Havana, Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, Oriente, Pinar del Río. In other words, the cities with the highest population density. The farmer works to survive. Many of them have no electricity, no TV, no radio. The economic level is rather low. The wages are very low. The same for all salaries, some more some less, but they cannot live on their salary either.

It is a system of slavery. Many opposition members were constantly detained. It is such a small town so you know everyone. I was about 22 or 23 years old and I was struck by these arrests and the “detain, release, detain, release” policy, because if you are detained and released then you are not guilty of anything. Then I was given a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 that enumerates basic human rights.] I began to study it to the best of my ability to understand the Declaration. But the strangest thing was that Cuba, which signed the declaration, did not fulfill any of it.

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.