Interviews with Pablo Pacheco Ávila

Remembering what we endured is hard. I think no one chooses to remember, even though it is inevitable to remember it every night. The soul’s wounds never heal.

I was in prison seven years and four months.

My first two years were terrible. They took me 400 kilometers away from my family to Agüica in an isolation area.

Twenty years of punishment with lousy medical care, no religious support, three books in my cell, and 18 months without sun. It was very hard in the Agüica prison.

In that section of Agüica we were alone. There were common criminals or political prisoners in the other cells but we were in solitary. We did not see each other.

[I was sent] 400 kilometers from my province. I am from Ciego de Avila and was sent to Matanzas.

It was the regime’s additional punishment against our families. They knew the transportation conditions in Cuba are terrible. Going from one province to another with food. A diabolical plan they created for us. Fortunately, God is with us. Those from Matanzas were taken to Ciego de Avila. The families from Matanzas would unite with those in Ciego. Far from solving [the regime’s] problem, I think that it created a problem for them because human solidarity prevailed. I think that helped a lot.

I believe that those who paid the highest price in this were my wife and my son. I think my son still faces repercussions. I do not know if he will ever forgive me that I was taken from him when he was only four. My son was all over me because they would not allow him to enter kindergarten because he was the son of a dissident.

Pablo Pacheco was born in the city of Puerto Padre in Cuba’s Las Tunas province.

He first became involved with the opposition in 1998 when he joined the Cuban Human Rights Foundation, an organization that monitors and denounces human rights violations and supports Cuban political prisoners. He became the foundation’s secretary.

In 1999, Pablo started a career as an independent journalist. He worked for several independent news agencies such as the College of Independent Journalists of Camaguey, the Avila Independent Journalists Cooperative, and the web-based Cubanet, an online compendium of independent news stories offering alternative perspectives from those of government-controlled media.

On March 19, 2003, Pablo was arrested during a massive government crackdown on activists known as the Black Spring. He was one of 75 nonviolent dissidents, human rights activists, and independent librarians arrested by security forces. In a summary judicial proceeding, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

During his incarceration, Pablo helped to establish a blog called “Voices Behind Bars” with dissident bloggers Iván García, Yoani Sánchez and Claudia Cadelo. The platform featured testimonials from political prisoners describing conditions and abuse inside Cuban jails. Their stories were recorded over the phone during the prisoners’ limited telephone privileges. In the event that guards cut off the phone lines, relatives would smuggle written testimonials out of the prison for inclusion in the blog. In 2009, “Voices Behind Bars” was recognized as the best of 187 Cuban opposition blogs in the Una Isla Virtual (A Virtual Island) competition.

After 7 years, Pablo was freed when the Catholic Church and the Spanish government negotiated the release of the 75 Black Spring prisoners. Pablo went into exile and currently lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife and son. He continues to share his experiences from his time in prison and remains active in Cuba’s freedom movement.