Bars of misfortune: Father and daughter imprisoned in Cuban prisons

Passes the Father's Day and the Navarro family, from Perico, Matanzas, prolongs their ordeal of separation and misfortune behind bars as a reliable parable of the Cuban tragedy.

Father and daughter are imprisoned for political reasons after protests July 11, 2021. Felix Navarro, a veteran of the opposition battle for the country's democratization, received a nine-year prison sentence; his only daughter, Number, a brave and firm follower of her father's ideals, expires an eight-year sentence.

In the family home he remains Sonia Álvarez Campillo, the wife and mother who bears all the pain of this madness of irrationality of the prevailing political system.

I have tried to find precedents for a similar situation in our recent history, with a father and daughter simultaneously serving prison terms for political reasons. A similar case affects the family of Fredi Beirut Matos and his daughter, Katia Beirut Rodríguez, also involved in the popular outbreak of 11-J and sentenced to 20 years in prison. There are probably more cases of parents and children imprisoned today for reasons of conscience. In any case, the imprisonment of Félix and Sayli is already in the history of national infamy and must be fixed in our memory for that possible future in which we will not be able to forget, because it would be risking repeating an unfortunate past.

Félix and his daughter today represent a living and tenacious example of the Cuba that suffers, the profound Cuba that cries out and resists the excesses of a totalitarian and voluntarist government that is condemning the nation to the greatest disaster in its history. At any cost, because what is at stake is maintaining power and ensuring that the ruling caste survives without fundamental deficiencies, with benefits to Russia, to China or whoever is the financier on duty to make up for the unproductivity of an exhausted country.

What crimes does this family carry to deserve this loss? What did Félix and Sayli Navarro do to deserve this?

Félix, who in a few days will turn 70 years old, is a teacher who taught for 21 years in Perico until he was expelled from the education system for “betrayal of the revolution” and sentenced to three years in prison for "enemy propaganda" in 1993. After serving 20 months in prison, he joined to the ranks of the active opposition and founded the Movement for Democracy Pedro Luis Boitel, in May 1999.

He went back to jail during the call Black Spring 2003 and received a sentence of 20 years in prison. In 2010, it was one of the last released from the Cause of the 75, with the mediation of the Catholic Church and the government of Spain, because Félix did not accept exile and is clinging to the conviction of not abandoning his homeland.

In those years, Sayli grew up with her father's vision under confinement and harassment, and also rose to prominence as an independent journalist, activist, and front-line participant in the women's movement. Ladies in White in Matanzas.

One of his childhood memories goes back to the State Security headquarters in Matanzas, at the age of six, when he went to visit his father, who showed his mother some blows on his knee due to the arrest. police.

Her life took a turn at the age of 17, when her father was arrested and prosecuted in 2003. Not only did she travel to visit him in a Guantánamo prison, but she determinedly joined the activism of the Ladies in White.

After his release, Félix received permission to travel to the United States. Sayli has also traveled to Miami to participate in an academic program, since her opportunities for improvement within Cuba have been nullified by her political ideas.

But both are part of the heroic legion of political opponents who are determined to fight within Cuba and not accept exile as an alternative to freedom.

The episode that led them to prison two years ago dates back to July 12, 2021, when They were violently arrested the day after the massive protests that shook Cuba. Félix and Sayli went to a Perico police station to ask about the whereabouts of the members of their organization who were arrested.

That day Félix was arrested and Sayli was given a prison sentence. house confinement. They were charged with crimes of "attack", "public disorder" and "contempt". Félix is being held in the Agüica prison, in Matanzas, while his daughter is serving her sentence in the women's prison known as Bellotex, also in Matanzas territory.

In captivity, Félix has gone on hunger strikes that have endangered his life, given his diabetic condition. He contracted COVID-19 on two occasions.

Both Félix Navarro and Sayli have been included in the Prisoners Why? campaign (Jailed For What?), which the United States government launched in 2018 to make visible cases of political prisoners and human rights violations in Cuba.

As far as I have been able to obtain news on this Sunday of celebrations for parents, Félix had not been able to speak with his daughter.

The activist Dagoberto Valdes, manager of the Coexistence project from Pinar del Río, says that he was able to speak with Sayli last Friday and told her that she and her father are “strong in spirit and in good health.”

The cruelty of the Cuban government towards this Cuban family has no other explanation than to surrender them for humiliation and condition them to freedom with definitive departure from the country, something that the Navarros have insistently rejected.

I have special admiration for Félix and Sayli, with whom I have spoken for many years in Cuba and also during their visits to Miami. I deeply respect your position, because the Cuban government has been skillful in exporting internal conflicts every time a political crisis looms.

As an exile for 29 years, today and with more zeal every day, I bet on the planted ones like Félix and Sayli. We must not leave the country to them, it is they, the infamous rulers, who must abandon power.

The movement of popular rejection of the regime and civic resistance that managed to regroup within Cuba after the dismantling of the opposition in 2003, bore fruit in public actions that reached their peak on 11-J. The strategy of the government and its political police has been to abort disagreements and dismantle transformative proposals by exiling their most lucid and determined actors, mostly young people with the energy and intellect to assault the future and avoid national collapse.

And that strategy, which was the one in 2010 with the members of the Cause of the 75, has once again worked for the regime as a relief to the tension of a country in the process of implosion, famine and disintegration.

This Sunday The Vatican confirmed that Pope Francis will receive the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel and the chancellor Bruno Rodriguez Grill in official hearing. It will be an opportunity for the Catholic hierarchy to insist on the release of all prisoners who are in captivity for exercising their fundamental rights of expression and demonstration, and so that the Cuban family can finally stop suffering from irreparable ruptures and madness.

Félix and Sayli deserve to be free without banishment. Cuba needs your permanence and your faith.