Wilfredo Carrazana Carvajal

* 1974

  • “Because of all this that I had already been telling you, of my continued peaceful participation in defense of the people, the repression and arbitrary arrests and fines began even more. In one of these arrests I was threatened. I contacted some peasants and I was forced to leave the province, because they threatened to take me back to prison. My son had already suffered a lot, he has a trauma from the loss of his mother, from me being in prison, from the strike... To avoid that, I decide to retire to a farm to work. And what happens? That State Security goes there and begins to sow the seed that I am a terrorist, that I plant bombs, that I add glass to cheese, that I steal, that the opposition steals children, that we, the counterrevolutionaries, murder. I have an anecdote – there was a boy who every time he saw me on the road, he would run. And over time, because people see and know how you act, no matter how scared they are, and that what you say is true. That the rights that we ask for are not just for us, they are for all the people of Cuba. And people, even if they are illiterate, illiterate peasants, they realize that what one fights for is reason. Over time, that child tells me that he was afraid of me because he had been told that we, the counterrevolutionaries, killed children and planted bombs. They got to the point of threatening me that if I didn't leave the farm, they could confiscate the farm from its owner”.

  • “That evening, several members of the Political Police came, cars belonging to the Black Wasp… Due to the suddenness of the arrest, the mother of my son, my wife, begins to feel bad, I left her very bad that night. Then, being there in the cells, the officer told me that my wife had died. She suffered a heart attack due to the detention and specifically so abrupt it was that night. So, from that moment on, my son was orphaned by his mother, a product of the dictatorial regime we have in this country. Product of the arbitrary detention that they did to me that night. From then on, the government never gave me work again, I had to manage to raise my son until today."

  • “At that time, life began to become much more difficult for me to raise my son. The repression increases, because they knew that they had murdered my wife. So the jobs that I had to dedicate myself to, masonry, carpentry, I had to leave because people began to be afraid of giving me work at home, because the Security began to make a false story about me, in order to not get a job from anyone. I was forced to dedicate myself to fishing. Some friends rented a car and we went to the dams, because they wouldn't let me fish on the beach. In one of those many trips we went to the Guantánamo dam, and then at the control point there in Guantánamo, they stop the car and take us out the car. They take us to the Operations Center in Guantanamo. And there, I found out that they were fabricating a crime for me of an illegal leaving. And from there, I went to the Guantánamo Combined Prison for two years of imprisonment for the crime of leaving the country illegally."

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    Cuba, 01.01.2022

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    délka: 27:31
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memoria de la Nación Cubana / Memory of the Cuban Nation
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My wife died on Father‘s Day. Sad gift communism gave me.

Wilfredo Carrazana Carvajal, 2022
Wilfredo Carrazana Carvajal, 2022
zdroj: Post Bellum

Wilfredo Carrazana Carvajal was born in 1974 in the town of El Cristo, Santiago de Cuba. His studies were carried out in El Cristo until he entered the English major at the university. However, the financial situation of his family prevented him from completing his studies and he had to dedicate himself to finding financial support. When he realized that the regime was not acting correctly, he found his way into the opposition and joined the Democratic Party November 30 Frank País. Immediately after, began a strong persecution by the Cuban Political Police. On June 19, 2000, he was arrested at his home, which caused his wife Yudi Adame Barsinde to have a severe heart attack, and subsequently died while Wilfredo was in jail. In order to provide a living for his son, with whom he was left alone, Wilfredo did countless masonry jobs, which, however, due to pressure from State Security, were diminishing in such a way that once again He had to find a livelihood in another way. With a group of friends he rented a car with which they went out to fish for the dams. One day, going to the Guantánamo Dam, they were detained and for an alleged attempt to leave Cuba illegally through the Guantánamo Naval Base, Wilfredo was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in the Guantánamo Combinated Prison. There he carried out his first hunger strike that lasted 29 days. Released after serving his sentence, he joined UNPACU‘s Huber Matos cell in El Cristo. The persecution by the Political Police intensified, until they raided a free UNPACU canteen at its headquarters in Altamira. Wilfredo with his companions launched a new hunger strike, which lasted 14 days. After this, his son was so traumatized that Wilfredo chose to find a job on a farm in the coastal area. However, every Thursday he continued to travel to UNPACU meetings in El Cristo and the Political Police prevented him from returning to his workplace. To this day, he has not been able to return to the farm and resides in Llanos de Maceira, and continues to be a peaceful political activist.