Imprisoned and tortured for years: exiled Cuban journalist arrives in America
The man put a gun to my head, pressing it into my temple. The cold metal on my skin made me feel dead already. Trembling, I interlaced my fingers and silently prayed to God for my life. My mind went blank before I felt the roar of the gunshot. The bullet hit my right ear, bursting it apart on impact.
- 3 months ago
August 11, 2024
Lazaro Yuri Valle Roca worked as a journalist and activist in Cuba until he was imprisoned and exiled to America | Original photo courtesy of Roca's Facebook
PENNSYLVANIA, United States ꟷ In my home country of Cuba, the dictatorship holds a special dislike for me. I always knew they wanted me dead or in prison. As a political journalist with a family history [in the profession], I joined a group of social communicators and soon became viewed as a strong opponent of the government.
After spending three years as a political prisoner in Cuba, on June 5, 2024, I walked out and headed straight for America. [The release came after several months of negotiation between the U.S. Embassy in Havana and the Cuban government. Cuba agreed to release Hernandez from prison under the condition he leave Cuba and never come back. They afforded him what is called humanitarian parole. Essentially, Cuba exiled the journalist.]
Read more stories about journalists from around the globe at Orato World Media.
From clashes with the Castro brothers to being kidnapped and cuffed
As a young boy, I remained acutely aware of the ways the Castro brothers – Fidel and Raúl – treated my grandfather in his final years. The Castros served as leaders of the Cuban Communist Party. [My grandfather acted as secretary general for the Popular Socialist Party and headed the newspaper Noticias Hoy].
An ideological rift a decade earlier led to strong disagreements between the men. The final straw came when, during my grandfather’s wake at the iconic Plaza de la Republica in Havana, Cuba, Raul Castro sent for me. He told me to take my grandmother away from there.
I flew into a rage and insulted the Cuban leaders in front of the crowd before returning to my grandma. As she sat next to my grandfather’s coffin, I took her hand and stood beside her. I felt determined, nobody would remove us. I felt no fear of those men. This marked a turning point in my long history of confronting Castroism.
When the Ladies in White rose up in 2003, I became one of a few journalists covering them and narrating their stories. [The Ladies is White are a group of women who demand the Cuban government free their relatives being held as political prisoners]
By 2015, I was reporting every Sunday on the marches by the Ladies in White. One such day, a group of strong men grabbed me, pushed me in the back of a car, and tied my feet. After driving for half an hour, they pulled me into the bush and shoved me to my knees on the ground.
Shot and beaten, man narrowly escapes
Outside the car, the men handcuffed me, wrapping my arms tightly behind my back. Far from the city, all I heard was the wind, the rustling of trees and branches, and my own breathing. It felt desolate. Suddenly, someone approached me from behind. I expected the worst.
The man put a gun to my head, pressing it into my temple. The cold metal on my skin made me feel dead already. Trembling, I interlaced my fingers and silently prayed to God for my life. My mind went blank before I felt the roar of the gunshot. The bullet hit my right ear, bursting it apart on impact.
I went deaf as dizziness and shock set in. Visually, I saw the men gesturing and talking to me, but understood nothing they said. After a few minutes, they removed my cuffs, threw me to the ground, and beat me savagely. Writhing in pain, their voices became clearer to me. I heard the men say, “Next time, we will kill you.”
For a while, I lay there motionless. The men left and I gathered my last bit of strength to get to my feet. I trudged to the nearest road and stood until an Armed Forces Universal Warehouse truck stopped. When the driver opened the door, he immediately looked perplexed seeing my broken and bloody body. He helped me in and asked questions, but I lied.
I felt scared to death. So, I told the man I got assaulted in a taxi and escaped. He offered to take me to Santa Cruz del Norte to file a report, but I declined. “Someone is waiting for me,” I said, “I will take care of the report on my own.” Eventually, I got out of the truck and never saw the driver again.
Political activism kicks off years of torture
The years sped by, and confrontations and threats became frequent. In 2021, some colleagues and I decided to disseminate leaflets containing phrases by various Cuban heroes. I also published them on my YouTube channel. We quoted leaders in Cuba’s struggle for independence like José Martí and Antonio Maceo. Some phrases called out the strong political and financial decadence of Cuban officials.
Our group split up and began distributing the papers. We threw them around places we knew many people gathered. We put them in ques at shops and dropped them from the roofs of buildings. I knew my actions were dangerous; disagreement in Cuba creates real risks. In fact, I knew I would be arrested at some point.
A few days later, on June 15, 2021, I received the summons. I reported to the police station and a State Security Officer tried to force me to sign a document denouncing my actions against the regime. I flatly refused. Immediately, the officer tried taking my mobile phone. Reflexively, seeing my wife a few meters away, I threw it to her. In seconds, the unimaginable happened.
The officers moved toward my wife and began beating her. At the same time, they grabbed and hit me. The officers opened a nearby door and threw me in. I rolled down the stairs and they dragged me into what felt like a dungeon.
After transferring me to Villa Marista, I got locked there up for 32 days. For five days, I refused to drink a single drop of water. My kidneys practically collapsed, and my blood pressure rose to 200. This initiated the worst phase of my entire life. The lack of food and water would prove to be the best of the torture.
Political activist and journalist in Cuba resists “re-education,” faces trial
During my incarceration at Villa Marista, the military officials took me out to interrogate me any time they wanted. In a walled cell, I was in total isolation with no idea if it was day or night. During the interrogations, I continuously repeated that without my lawyer, I refused to talk. They finally gave me a lawyer at the last minute.
I received no medical attention except to have my blood pressure taken when I began to deteriorate, and I saw no visitors. On July 11, 2021, I found out about protests taking place – the largest in Cuba in years. I needed to stay alive at all costs.
After more than a month of imprisonment and torture, they sent me to a larger prison called El Combinado del Este. There, they told me my charges: enemy propaganda and resisting arrest. I never did what they claimed. Located in the south wing of the prison, State Security agents appeared constantly. They threatened that other prisoners may beat or stab me. They said drugs could end up under my bed or a knife could appear, setting up another case against me.
Despite the threats, I refused their so-called “re-education,” as they called it. Meanwhile, they continued torturing me. When my trial finally arrived on July 28, 2022 [over a year later], they deployed a big police operation. Three patrol cars guarded my transport vehicle. Inside my car, sat three guards. They closed avenues and filled the city with police.
In the courtroom, four cameras and State Security agents watched from an upper room. Certain diplomats wished to be present as trial observers but could not enter the courtroom. Those I indicated as witnesses never received a summons or even notification of the trial date. Impunity ruled the courtroom that day.
Cuban court sentences man to five years, moves him to maximum security
The prosecutors wanted to charge me with sedition and sentence me to up to 30 years in prison. Yet, that proved an impossible goal. My actions did not aim to destroy my country, nor did I represent the military. I never intimidated the population to keep from them entering the streets. I fought peacefully.
The defense attorney suggested I accept lesser guilt, leading to a minimum sentence, but I refused. I told him, “I am innocent. I will not accept any guilt.” When the trial started and this lawyer began defending me, I interrupted and fired him. From there, I made my own defense.
In the end, they sentenced me to five years in prison. I landed in “Zone Zero,” a minimum-security section of Combinado del Este. In this place, prisoners work without pay to earn a pass home for a few days. After several months, I earned my pass. Still under heavy surveillance, the regime said I met with certain “critical people” while out. When I got back, they revoked my status and sent me to maximum security.
As the days passed, my health deteriorated but they continued to withhold medical treatment. The guards took me out of the cell early in the morning and at night, constantly interrupting my sleep. During these times, they scolded, insulted, and beat me but I refused to talk. My interrogators told me my wife could be stabbed or attacked. “She could turn up dead or raped anywhere,” they menaced.
Life for a political prisoner in Cuba’s jails
One day, the second head of the Eastern Combined Prison took me from my cell with no mention of why. He locked me in a room and demanded I stand up straight, but I refused. The man had me handcuffed and together with another person, beat me to a pulp. They left me lying on the floor covered in blood. Unable to move, he put his knee on my neck to strangle me. Nothing could stop him.
I felt my body growing loose and I began to disappear when, suddenly, someone opened the office door and told him to stop. They dragged me to Building One in the maximum-security section. Somehow, I managed to pass my wife’s phone number on a piece of paper to another prisoner, who told her my condition.
In confinement, I lived with prisoners who committed rape and murder. I tried to stay calm and invisible, but they smelled weakness on me. I lived in constant tension, fighting at times when they tried to assault me.
In Cuba, they discriminate all political prisoners because of how we think. They deliberately surround us with common prisoners, even recruiting some to repress us in coordination with the State.
The recruited prisoners watch you and proceed to make fun, harass and provoke you. They try to get you in trouble, so you get another case. Some common prisoners have cut themselves, claiming the political prisoner attacked them. Those innocent men then receive additional time.
The conditions in Cuba’s prison system reveal outright failure
Out in the courtyard, where we enjoyed the warmth of a few brief rays of sunshine, I watched as they carried old prisoners down the stairs like a sack of potatoes. They literally threw them into the yard. Unable to move, the elderly often had to crawl to the toilet.
Our seven-by-five-meter cell housed 30 people in three-tier bunks, sharing two toilets. The same bucket we used to relieve ourselves, stored water for bathing and washing our hands and face. We had no way to heat the water and received soap and toothpaste every two months.
Cuba’s prisons guaranteed nothing. They only ever gave me blood pressure pills and something to help with urination. To be taken to the infirmary you needed to be in dire trouble. There, they use old syringes with headless needles. When my wife brought me my medicine, State Security sat on it for two months.
I acquired various ailments there. According to a doctor’s report, I now have sclerosis of the aorta, a deviated septum from the beating in the office, allergy problems, lung issues, chronic bronchitis and an issue in one eye. At one point, my wife attempted to get my medical record to appeal for extra penal sick leave. They gave it to her, but the record was empty. Ultimately, they denied my benefit.
We drank stagnant, untreated water collected in a small tank from a nearby lagoon, receiving constant treatments for parasites. Our rice allotment went from 90 to 40 grams, arriving with a dead mouse or lizard in it. Once they gave us polenta [cornmeal] full of cockroaches. The stew resembled water with a piece of pumpkin in it and the picadillo looked like diarrhea.
Cuban political prisoner released and sent to America, daughter still being held
In 2024, my brother-in-law initiatied a request for humanitarian parole for me and my wife. After lengthy negotiations, Cuba granted the agreement with U.S. authorities, ordering my exile. On June 5, 2024, I left prison a week short of three years.
At first, I did not want to leave Cuba, but my relatives insisted. On the day of my release, I chatted with a friend I made in jail. This young man called me dad and we got along well. We shared mutual sympathy and together, disconnected from the life we lived every day. In the middle of that conversation, Pedro, the head of the political police, walked up to us.
“You are leaving,” he said, “You are free.” I stood in disbelief. The young man looked at me and said, “Come on, dad, they’re getting you out of here. Go on.” As reality dawned on me, I began saying goodbye to those I forged relationships with in prison – men I consider my brothers.
They took me out of my cell handcuffed at my hands and feet and moved me to the prison ward of the National Hospital. Cuffed and hooked to a hospital bed, they only freed me to change my clothes. When they took me to meet my wife, after so long apart, we fell into an embrace and I felt my body come back to life.
The next day at dawn, under a rigorous police operation, they drove us to the airport. Cuban officials guarded us every moment, until we reached the door of the airplane. Today, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I work to recover my health. In prison, I took refuge in the power of my thoughts, the strength of my principles, and the unconditional support of my family. These things kept me from collapsing.
Yet, my 19-year-old daughter remains in holding in Cuba. The future of my country remains uncertain. Yet, I will continue fighting for my homeland. My ideals remain stronger than the blows they dealt me. Nothing but death can stop me.
