14ymedio, Havana, 18 February 2024 — The former prisoner of the Black Spring and Cuban activist, Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, died this Saturday of a massive heart attack at the age of 57, in the city of Syracuse, in the state of New York, United States. During his exile, the independent journalist maintained an intense activism against the Island’s regime.
Herrera Acosta, who in April 2003 was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his opposition to the Cuban regime, spent seven years and seven months in prison. During his stay in the Cubasí prison in Holguín and in the Combinado of Guantánamo, the dissident, who was also a reporter for the Eastern Free Press Agency, was subjected to severe punishment.
In August 2008, Herrera Acosta sewed his mouth shut in the Cubasí penitentiary center and remained in that condition for 12 days in protest against the violations of his human rights. Twenty opponents protested in Holguín in support of the prisoner; among them was Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who would die two years later after a long hunger strike.
In August 2008, Herrera Acosta sewed his mouth shut his mouth in the Cubasí penitentiary center and remained in that condition for 12 days in protest of the violations of his human rights
That same year, Herrera Acosta was transferred from the Cubasí prison to the Combinado of Guantánamo. “They brought me closer to my province, but they took me away from my family. What I have suffered is not enough for them,” he said when he learned of his imminent imprisonment in the prison known as “a den of terror.”
While in prison, the independent journalist suffered a family tragedy. On March 12, 2008, a bus traveling from Havana to Guantánamo was in an accident, and his only daughter, Lianet Herrera Disco, 14, lost her life, along with her mother, Elizabeth Disco Tito, 31, and her sister E