The opponent Santiaguero entered prison being an active man who came out every day to make a living, but came out in very different conditions.
Santiago de Cuba. – Evangelio Sánchez Alayo, a 63 -year -old man, barely imagined that his life would change dramatically on November 27, 2023, when two Cuban -American assumptions touched their door in Songo, Santiago de Cuba. They were asking about another opponent of the area and just asked him for help to find him. Then, they confessed that their intention was to organize violent actions against the government. Gospel and the opponent they were looking for sharply rejected the proposal, as they practice the peaceful struggle.
The strangers left after asking Sánchez Alayo to show them where to take a transport to the Mayan, about six kilometers from Songo. He thought everything was there. But the next day, while resting in the park, he was arrested by a state security officer. In the police unit of Songo, he was questioned by an older who accused him of having met with “terrorist elements.” As they told him, those men planned to place explosives, and two people in La Maya had already been arrested. For Gospel, all that was a trap.
An accusation without evidence
The official version was never sustained with evidence. There was no judgment or judicial file. Sánchez Alayo was not the only one detained, since other people were arrested in similar circumstances. Although the opponent does not include among the most media or recognized in the area, he has always raised his voice against the system and maintains links with human rights defenders in Songo and Maya.
It was never known about the two Cuban -American assumptions involved in the case or confirmed if their plan was real.
Even so, the opponent was transferred to the Versailles detention center, known because there are usually methods of psychological torture against detainees. After three months he was transferred to the prison of Aguadores, where he spent one day, and then passed through the green and sweet potato prisons. In total, he spent a year and two months held, without trial, under an unfounded accusation of terrorism.
Sick in prison
Sánchez Alayo entered prison being an active man who came out every day to earn a living, but, in a short time, his health, already committed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), worsened drastically. He contracted twice, suffered a pleural spill in the left lung as a result of tuberculosis, which he also acquired in prison. During his first income after being arrested, he spent 13 days without eating and had great muscle weakness. Thus began to lose weight and vitality in alarming way. “My relatives did not recognize me. I put on green. There they didn’t even attend to me,” he says.
Given the deterioration of his physical condition, he had to be transferred several times from the Hospital of the Bonato prison to the Surgical Clinical Hospital “Dr. Ambrosio Grillo Portuondo”, where he was performed several tests and drained liquid from the lung. Finally, he was transferred to the Oncological Hospital “Conrado Benítez”, of Santiago de Cuba, where he was practiced a tomography that, in the first instance, showed that he suffered a malignant tumor, a diagnosis that was later discarded despite the doubts.
In the end, an extrapenal license was granted (just over three months ago). Sánchez Alayo was able to return home, although his life has become more difficult.
Survive
“They have given the brother a wrong imprisoned,” was the first impression that Sánchez Alayo’s mother had to see him get home. “When he arrived here I did not know him, differently that the physicist had, and skinny as a lethargy,” said the old woman.
It has risen some weight, but it is not yet the shadow that was before being imprisoned. Sick, marginalized, with his nonagenarian mother in tow, but continues, as much as he can.
Today, the opponent cannot work, since his condition is disabling. It has difficulty breathing, getting fatigue easily and even needs help to climb a car, because it has no strength in the legs, as it refers. He lives with his nonagenarian mother, also sick, and together they survive with pensions that do not exceed 3,000 pesos per month. Despite the risk of inhaling smoke, it must cook with firewood due to lack of gas and constant electric cuts.
Both, mother and son, sleep on the remains of a wool mat that is thrown on a wooden frame. Social security promised them help: a mattress, tanks, some relief, but nothing has come. “I am tired of promises,” says Sánchez Alayo. “All ribs hurt and drinking dust of the broken mattress,” he laments.
Since the passage of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which He destroyed his househis health began to resent. He lost everything, including the mattress. Although he tried to rebuild him on his own, he has only managed to collect wool and sleep on it.
It is not an isolated case
The case of Sánchez Alayo is no exception: dozens of opponents have entered prison and have been very sick. Cristian Pérez Carmenate, for example, died In 2021 for a multiple myeloma after spending months without adequate medical attention in prison. His condition was triggered from a fracture caused during a beating at the time of being arrested, in 2019. He was released only when there was no remedy.
THE POLITICAL EXPRISIONER XIOMARA CRUZ MIRANDAon the other hand, he almost dies from an alleged tuberculosis that he contracted in jail. However, when he arrived in Miami, thanks to a humanitarian visa, the studies indicated that he contracted very aggressive bacteria, possibly “inoculated within prison.” In addition, it presented a pulmonary collapse and a severe malnutrition picture. “One more day in Cuba and would not have survived,” said his header when he arrived in the United States, Alfredo Melgar.
More recently, the opponent José Daniel Ferrer, who has been the victim of multiple imprisonments and is held today in the Verde Sea prison, said he had contracted some kind of contagious infectionmanifested as boils that come out throughout his body. When he was released under probation last January, his injuries sprouted again, both to him and his wife and young son. According to Ferrer, these infections contracted them at the Hospital in La Cárcel de Bincato.
In addition, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) currently suffers from stomach problems, migraines and alarming physical deterioration. He himself assured that at least 20 prisoners died in that prison in 2024 due to tuberculosis, malnutrition and other conditions without treatment.
