Javier Delgado Torna

* 1968

  • “What happened on July 11 [2021]? They ask my daughter: 'What is your dad going to do?' And I heard it. And I told her: 'What am I going to do?' She says: 'Aren't we going to run into the street?' I never imagined that I would summon as many people as that July 11. There were thousands of people and they were joining us. [They shouted] Patria y Vida, Díaz Canel singao, assh*le policemen, to speak clearly. There were 18 blocks, 1800 meters of protes. Those of the Rapid Response tried to cut off the march in two parts, on one side they succeeded, but those of us in front always made it to the end of the march, where I decided by my own decision to end the march. And it is there that the repression really begins and that is when we began to demonstrate. They won't catch me today! They take me to jail at 11 at night, they came to my house to look for me. They did judge me, but manipulated. We were able to talk as much as we wanted to talk. But the problem was not that they wouldn't us allow talking. The problem was that no one listened to what we were saying. Judge was like she had a plug here and another here. Because we were already sanctioned in advance. We were already sanctioned since July 11. I was not sanctioned by a court, I was sanctioned by the Political Police and State Security. They made it very clear at the trial."

  • “It is well known that punishments are on the first place, and much more so with political prisoners. They take away your phone minutes, they take away your visits, they leave you alone in a cell, they take away your communication with the other prisoners. They always have to watch you. But they know that you are not corruptible by anything, neither by their threats, nor by their actions."

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    Caibarién, Cuba, 01.01.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:02:35
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memoria de la Nación Cubana / Memory of the Cuban Nation
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Since we were born, we were indoctrinated

Javier Delgado Torna, 2022
Javier Delgado Torna, 2022
zdroj: Post Bellum

Javier Delgado Torna was born in 1968 in Caibarién in the Villa Clara province, Cuba. His father was a fisherman and a member of the Communist Party. Javier studied until grade 12 and lived a rebellious adolescence, although since his parents were workers, he received a scholarship in junior high school, where he learned to be independent. When the communist regimes in Europe began to collapse in 1989, and as a consequence the Special Period was approaching to Cuba, Javier for the first time came out to demonstrate his dissatisfaction with what was happening in Cuba at that time, although he still did not consider himself an opponent, but more well a reactionary. Due to his protest activities, he was imprisoned for the first time for three years since 1991 and lived through the scarcity of the Special Period in prison. That first time in prison, he managed to convert the opinion of the other prisoners so that they respected him as a political prisoner instead of a common one. After being released, he did not find support among family or friends, which he attributes to the constant pressure from the Cuban regime. He continued with his opposition activities, traveled a lot between the provinces, demonstrated, put flowers on the Malecón in Havana, until in 1999 he was arrested again, this time for eight years for the crime of propaganda and contempt. During the massive wave of protests in Cuba on July 11, 2021, Javier organized a protest to which hundreds of people joined, and that day at 11 p.m. they came to look for him at his house and in a judicial process manipulated, he was sentenced to three and a half years of imprisonment in the Guamajal prison. However, his deteriorated state of health due to serious heart problems linked to hypertension and diabetes raised strong international support and finally in September 2022 he received extra-penal leave. Despite being formally sentenced, Javier continues in his opposition activities.