The Cuban poet Ariel Maceo Téllez faced once again this week one of the toughest episodes of his recent life, not in a police station or an interrogation house, but from the screen of the state television.
There, in an official broadcast, he acknowledged the same State Security officer who interrogated, humiliated, and threatened him in 2021 for writing and thinking differently.
"I was interrogated by this Lieutenant Colonel of State Security," Maceo wrote in a lengthy thread published on X, where he identified the oppressor, known as Juan Carlos, although that may not be his real name, and vividly recounted what happened on that October 13.
According to his testimony, he was taken during a disproportionate operation to a "safe house" in Siboney, a place he describes as a common setting for illegal interrogations and covert recordings of opponents, journalists, and activists.
"They had a whole armed operation. As if I were an international criminal," he recalled. The poet recounted that from the very beginning, he was treated with disdain. "He told me that I played in the minors, that nobody knew me, that they had no record of me because I was nobody," he wrote, before ironically asking the question that triggered the official's anger: "So can I leave?"
For hours, Maceo claims to have been subjected to pressure, insults, and veiled threats. The interrogation included accusations of mercenarism, alleged ties to independent media, and even insinuations of payments from the CIA.
“Are you an idiot who works for free?” the repressor would have said, according to the account. Everything, it is reported, aimed at forcing statements under duress that could later be manipulated on official television.
The most tense moment came when the officer shifted from downplaying the situation to exhibiting total control over his life. “We know what you eat, who you meet with, we know everything about your family, we follow you everywhere. Anything could happen to you on the street,” the poet recalled.
In exchange for lifting the travel ban, they demanded that he sign a document renouncing his literature and political activism. His response was a resounding no.
"He laughed at me in ways you can't imagine. He ended up telling me to keep suffering, that they had me under control and that they would forget about me," Maceo wrote. Five years later, seeing him on television paying tribute as a regime official reopened wounds that never healed. "I'm sure he can't sleep, knowing that justice is slow, but it does arrive," he declared.
The testimony adds to a long history of documented repression against Ariel Maceo Téllez. In October 2021, he was summoned multiple times by State Security, interrogated, and regulated without any legal process. “They made it clear to me that the revolution is above our human rights”, he reported at that time. The travel ban kept him separated from his wife for over two years, one of the violations that most impacted his personal life.
Poet, photographer, and independent journalist, Maceo had four unpublished books in Cuba due to his critical stance and coordinated the Demongéles group, a platform for independent artists excluded from official institutions.
In 2022, he was summoned again for interrogations and filed complaints with Cuban courts regarding the abuses committed against him, without receiving a response.
Finally,
Today, from exile, his account not only targets a specific oppressor, but also a system that —as he himself has stated— "feeds on fear and silence," and continues to pursue those who dare to write, create, and speak out.
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