MIAMI, United States. – Former Cuban political prisoner Basilio Guzmán Marrero, fighter against the regimes of Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro, died this Wednesday at the age of 84, according to reported the Center for a Free Cuba.
Guzmán Marrero, who was imprisoned on the Island for 22 years and was one of the famous “planted”died due to a “long illness”, specified the same source.
Shortly after Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’état on March 10, 1952, Guzmán Marrero joined the resistance against the new regime while still a teenager.
However, after the triumph of the Revolution, in 1959, he joined the Cubans who had fought for the restoration of democracy and the 1940 Constitution. At that time, he joined the National Democratic Front (Frente Nacional Democrático), a resistance movement against the dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
After infiltrating that movement, in 1962 the Cuban regime identified, arrested and imprisoned Guzmán Marrero, who spent the next 22 years in prisons on the island.
The fighter was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
Guzmán Marrero was one of the “plantados”, that is, one of the prisoners who refused to participate in the regime’s re-education plans and to cooperate with the dictatorship.
The former Cuban prisoner was released and exiled in 1984. That year he flew to the United States along with 25 other Cuban political prisoners and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had requested his release when he visited the island.
Despite being ill, until his last years he was involved in the struggle for the recovery of democracy and freedom in his country, according to the Center for a Free Cuba. In fact, in July and November 2021 he participated in protests in front of the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC
Guzmán Marrero was born on April 15, 1937 in a humble family in the interior of the province of Havana, near Campo Florido.
In 2020 he published the autobiographical book After the night: My 22 years in the Political Prison of Cuba.
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