Yoandris Gutiérrez Vargas

* 1980

  • “The Sergeant Major who receives me there started to offend me; he began to tell me terrible things. He told me: ‘We are going to do you the same things as we did to that black, the one that we killed here in Holguín [city in Cuba], you know who I am talking about, don´t you?‘ I said: ‘Yes, you are talking about Orlando Zapata Tamayo [the human rights activist in Cuba, he died in the hunger strike in 2010].‘ Then he told me: ‘Yes, we are going to do that to you, no, we are going to make you feel worse.‘ Then I said: ‘So you recognize that you murdered Orlando Zapata Tamayo?‘ ‘We assassinated him, and we will murder you too and all of you, who will stand up against the Revolution.‘ Then I said: ‘But what revolution are you talking about? Do you think that it is a revolution when you beat the person for his right to preach the truth? For letting people know the real news? Because that's why they brought me here.‘ He replied: ‘I am not interested why they have brought you here, I am just warning you, stop it or we will stop you.‘ And I said: ‘Well, you will have to stop me, because I am never going to leave the opposition, I am and always will be an anti-communist. Therefore, if I must go through what happened to Orlando Zapata Tamayo, well now do what you have to do with me.‘ Then they put me in the cell and held me there for 72 hours.”

  • “He said: ‘Did you see? If you want to continue like this, well, keep going to Holguín [city in Cuba], but you will arrive dead.‘ I did not answer, because I was already feeling quite bad from those beatings. My vision at this time was like in a fog, I felt dizzy and I was in a terrible pain. And at this moment he gave me my backpack back. I opened it and see that my phone and memory were still there. I said: ‘Well, what a miracle, I thought you were going to steal things as you always steal from us.‘ Then he replied to me: ‘There was no need to do this now.‘ I told him: ‘Good.‘ And he told me: ‘You can go now.‘ I was surprised: ‘You are not going to stop me?‘ ‘No, what they had to do with you had been already done.‘ In other words, he was also mocking me because of the terrible beating and the conditions in which these people had left me. I am sure that he must have noticed the stink that I brought up, as I had urinated and pooped myself because of the terrible pain during the beating. Once they already released me, I walked out of the detention office with the tremendous pain in the rib, in the chest and in the liver. They kicked me so strong, that until today I still feel this pain in my liver.”

  • “One day I arrived home and I found the Cuban flag in the door, this tiny paper flag that is given to all Cubans in their blocks, in their neighbourhoods or in their communities, so that on July 26, each one places this flag to his house, as is the rhetoric of this totalitarian system. I came very stressed from my work, feeling weak as my body practically had no longer any strength. When I opened the door, I saw the flag on the floor. I remember since childhood, that when the flag falls to the floor, this flag is profaned and must be burned. At that time, I already knew about those 75 brothers and sisters in prison, who were detained in 2003 during the ‘Black Spring‘ [the 75 prisoners of conscience condemned during the protest in March 2003 in Cuba], and in 2006 many of them were still in prison, going through terrible situations. I remember that I left the flag where it was, I continued to seek where my wife put her make up. I took a black paint pencil for her eyes and painted the white stripes of the flag in black. I went outside the house and placed the flag on the frame of the house door and next to the frame I wrote in capital number ‘Freedom for 75‘.”

  • “That was a deep sadness, the great initiation, that gave me the courage from there onwards to start facing the authorities and the regime of this country. That was on the night when I was already 72 hours home after my detention. I received a visit from a married couple, if I remember the names correctly, Luis Sergio Núñez and his wife Dámaris [active opponents of the Cuban regime], who were by that time leading the ‘Cuba Group‘. And there I began to know, what was opposition about. They asked me to describe why I had been detained and why I had this problem with the Major from the State Security. They knew everything that had happened to me from my neighbour, he already spoke to the couple. That was my first time where I could have a communication with the ‘Radio Martí’. I publicly denounced at ‘Radio Martí’ all the injustice that had happened to me. I committed myself to the opposition, I confirmed that this couple can count on me, because I was an anti-communist and I say it here without lying. I do not regret this decision, even if it can mean my death, as I have been persecuted so many times. I was saying that I would always be an anti-communist and from that moment I was going to fight for human rights in this country, so that to any young man would not happen, what had happened to me.”

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    Cuba, 10.12.2019

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„I wanted to see a new, democratic and free Cuba, where the human rights of people were truly respected.“

Gutiérrez Vargas Yoandris
Gutiérrez Vargas Yoandris
zdroj: Post Bellum

Yoandris Gutiérrez Vargas was born on September 6 in Bayamo in Cuba and came from a low-income family. When Yoandris was still a baby, his mother abandoned him because of a difficult economic situation, so his paternal grandparents raised him. The socio-economic conditions and his own experience with the injustice of the communist regime in Cuba brought him to internal opposition. The result has been continuous arrests and countless violent attacks, which are causing him health problems. Yoandris spent three years in the prison “Las Mangas,” where he established an important friendship with other political prisoners and opponents. After leaving prison, he continued fighting against the communist system. He is currently dedicated to human rights activism. Yoandris is the national president of the „Republican Youth Impact,“ deputy director of the „Republican Party of Cuba,“ and a member of the organization „Eastern Democratic Alliance.“ Yoandris focuses on workshops for young Cubans, who are, according to Yoandris, the hope for democracy in Cuba. He has a son and resides in Bayamo with his wife Annia Peralta Zapata, a human rights activist.