By Carlos Manuel Alvarez (El Estornudo)
HAVANA TIMES – On Thursday, April 18, rapper and political prisoner Maykel Osorbo almost lost the helix of his left ear after being bitten during an attack by four common prisoners, in complicity with penitentiary authorities and Cuban State Security. The assault took place at the Pinar del Río maximum security prison where Osorbo is serving a nine-year sentence for “contempt” and “public disorder.”
Osorbo is in Section 3 of the prison, a unit housing 64 prisoners, all of whom receive extremely scarce food rations. Of the scant food that arrives there, workers, guards and officers at the prison constantly steal a good part of it. The morning of the assault, the section had received only 28 bread rolls to distribute for breakfast. Several inmates, among them Maykel, began to protest, clamoring that the authorities wanted to starve them to death.
Another prisoner, nicknamed El Bemba, then insulted and provoked Osorbo. According to the rapper, El Bemba already receives certain benefits and an occasional 1,200 peso incentive payments from the authorities to keep an eye on the rest and report any incidents. During and after the incident, Osorbo, who bore the brunt of the attack, remained handcuffed, while his assailants were left free.
In a letter he managed to get out of jail, Osorbo recounted: “A prisoner threw a punch at me and I defended myself. Seeing that he couldn’t take me, he gave me a bite that almost tore my ear off. However, I don’t blame the prisoner, since he is simply a tool in the hands of the regime.” Lieutenant Colonel Yusmani, head of prisons in Pinar del Río, later told him: “Shit, brother, you only managed to bite his ear. If I were you I would have beat the crap out of him – you weigh some 100 kilos (220 pounds).”
Along with Colonel Yusmani, Osorbo places responsibility for the attack on Major Raul Alejandro, an official of the Cuban State Security; on Captain Pedro, head of the Pinar del Rio prison known as “Kilometer 5 and a half,” and Captain Lazaro Castillo, assistant prison warden, who Osorbo says is the mastermind behind these ever more frequent episodes of violence directed against him. Maykel Osorbo, who won two Latin Grammys – Song of the Year and Best Urban Song – for the 2021 protest anthem Patria y Vida, has been declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International.
At the beginning of 2023, a surveillance camera was placed in the prison wing where Osorbo is being held. Since then, many of his friends and family members have denounced the constant risks to the musician’s physical integrity. They consider him the victim of an orchestrated program of harassment planned by the prison police and carried out by the common prisoners.
“Once again, I feel victorious, because if they were hoping I’d respond with violence, a smile was my defense. If they were counting on my disrespecting them, on the contrary, complete courtesy defines me,” Maykel told his oppressors in one of the letters denouncing the delicate situation he’s currently experiencing.
He clarifies: “If Captain Lazaro Castillo thought that I believed for a moment in his good will, he was wrong. I’d spent a month explaining how things were going to play out. As you can see, no one listened. Now, if at any time someone thought I was just sucking my thumb and didn’t know what was going on, I believe they made a mistake from start to finish, but no one’s going to kill this black man.”
The first information about Maykel’s fight on April 18 and the state of his health came via another common prisoner, a friend of Osorbo’s, who
