By Vicente Morin Aguado
HAVANA TIMES – A nuclear submarine from Vladimir Putin has just anchored in the Port of Havana. Far from the debates caused by the Russian military presence in the Caribbean, history takes us back to the 19th century. On the southern coast of our country, the small Isle of Pines was turned into a place of confinement for freedom fighters. At that time, the repressive Spanish practices earned it the nickname of Cuba’s Siberia.
In 1978, as part of one of the regime’s typical propaganda operations, the island territory was renamed the Isle of Youth. Fidel Castro promised to erase forever its past as a prison island. Now, the news is that the past has been revived.
Lizandra Gongora Espinosa, a prisoner of conscience sentenced to 14 years, has been taken to the island, being confined in the Los Colonos women’s prison.
Lizandra was arrested 18 days after the protests of July 11, 2021, resulting from a fierce police persecution, as if she were a serial killer or a drug trafficker. Police, special troops, and paramilitaries organized by the so-called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution obeyed a combat order dictated on that date by the country’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
It was the response of the Head of State to tens of thousands of demonstrators who lost the fear imposed by decades of repression, shouting “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life) in about 50 cities across the country. Nothing similar had ever happened since 1959. The result is 1,113 political prisoners as of the end of May, documented by www.prisonersdefenders.org.
A mother of five children, at 35 years old, Lisandra was tried by a military court, accused of Public Disorder, Disrespect, and Sabotage. Guilty in advance in a country where justice is subject to the sole ruling communist party. The sentence was ratified by the corresponding chamber of th
