Since May 6, Victoria Martínez Valdivia has no life. On that day, two of her sons were arrested for protest in the streets of Caimanera, Guantanamo, where a crowd gathered shouting “Freedom!”, “Homeland and Life!” and “Down with the communist system!”. Since then, the brothers have been detained “in appalling conditions”, denounces the mother to 14ymedio.
Felipe Octavio Correa Martínez, 26, and Luis Miguel Alarcón Martínez, 32, have been in the Provincial Criminal Investigation and Operations Unit in the city of Guantánamo for more than three weeks. The family has visited them on several occasions and “they are in very poor condition,” describes Victoria Martínez.
“My children are in pure bones, the smallest was even trembling,” he adds. “The first times I went to visit them I realized that my son Luis Miguel was hiding his face and later I found out that it was because two of his teeth had been knocked out with the blows, I could hardly recognize him because he was in such bad shape.”
“The place of the visit is in such conditions that it is evident that they are filming everything we do,” describes the mother. “There’s a table, two chairs, and everything is set up in a way that you can tell there’s a camera somewhere to record what we talk and do while we’re there.”
“I have already had to hire two lawyers, I paid 4,200 pesos for each one and that was very difficult for my family because we are low-income people”
Martínez warns that her children have not had all the procedural guarantees: “I have already had to hire two lawyers, I paid 4,200 pesos for each one and that was very difficult for my family because we are low-income people. But the lawyers have not been able to I don’t even talk to my kids.”
“At the beginning I hired a lawyer who later I had to withdraw from the case because in the first week he did nothing for my children,” he says. “Then, when I went to see him to show him the videos of the protest where it is seen that Felipe Octavio and Luis Miguel had not committed any act of violence, he told me that they ‘were already on board.'”
The lawyer “had already sanctioned them and I decided to withdraw the contract with him. How was it possible that he had already found them guilty,” he explained to this newspaper. “When I went to see the police investigator in the case, who is First Lieutenant Dailovis Torres, he gave me a paper that says they are being prosecuted for public disorder and Felipe Octavio also says they are prosecuting him for resistance.”
“I asked him until when they are going to be detained. But they tell me that their files are in the Military Prosecutor’s Office. I don’t know why, because they are civilians. Why do they do this to them?”, he reproaches. “They do not give us a date for the trial or details of what will happen to them, they do not tell us anything, they just delay us, they want to entertain us.”
Martínez considers that so much time of arrest does not correspond to what Luis Miguel and Felipe Octavio did: “My children got tired, because here in Caimanera we are starving. The last peas that they sold us for the basic basket were full of weevils “, complaint. “They took to the streets telling the truth and the people began to join them, who supported them. They complained about the poor food supplies, that there is no fuel for ambulances either. They demonstrated peacefully, without weapons.” .
“They took to the streets telling the truth and the people began to join them, who supported them. They complained about the poor food supplies, that there is no fuel for ambulances either”
“That was in the afternoon, but at night the trucks full of Black Berets arrived and they were beaten like animals,” recalls the mother. “They dragged my son for three blocks. His brother came up to find out what they were doing to his brother and they beat him too. They have been in prison since that day.”
“Luis Miguel is married, he is in charge of his wife’s son and two nephews, one of them who suffered a stroke,” he adds. “We have lived our whole lives in Caimanera, I am 51 years old and I was born here, my parents are also from here. I have a bedridden sister under my care, who has a disability and the arrest of my children has made my day more difficult day”.
“For example, here in my house there is no water, my children have to carry it from afar to be able to bathe and take care of the people in the house who are bedridden,” he explains. “I don’t even want to eat, I can’t sleep, I have no life since that day they were taken away.”
Regarding the situation in the Guantanamo town, Martínez describes it clearly: “Now they have tried to calm the situation in Caimanera by restocking the stores. They brought oil and hash. They have us standing in line so that we don’t complain, so that we can’t think of anything else.”
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