Related videos:
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro did not say exactly that there are political prisoners in Cuba.
Raúl Castro's grandson, known as 'El Cangrejo', opted for a more cautious and therefore more revealing approach: the regime would be willing, “under the right conditions,” to release individuals “considered political prisoners”.
The rodeo aims to maintain a minimum distance from reality. Prisoners would only be considered political by those who “consider” them as such, not by the totalitarian state that condemned them.
But the second part of the sentence undermines that caution: if the government can release them as a result of a political negotiation, it becomes very difficult to continue asserting that their imprisonment lacks a political nature.
The statement from 'El Cangrejo' does not signify a democratic conversion nor an acknowledgment of the injustices committed. It is something different: a crack in one of the most persistent denials of the official Cuban discourse.
Just three months earlier, Miguel Díaz-Canel had stated on U.S. television that there were no political prisoners in Cuba. According to the regime's usual narrative, the incarcerated were individuals convicted of vandalism, violence, or common crimes.
Now a colonel from the Ministry of the Interior appears, caretaker of his nonagenarian grandfather, without any occupation or benefit, and without any representative position, ready to discuss the conditions for releasing those who officially do not exist.
Deny, reclassify, negotiate
The manipulation of the political prisoner category is almost as old as the regime itself.
The dictator Fidel Castro built much of his rhetoric on a deliberate substitution: the imprisoned opponents were not political prisoners, but rather "counter-revolutionaries," "mercenaries," enemy agents, or individuals sanctioned for crimes against state security.
By changing their names, the authorities aimed to erase the motivation behind their sentences as well.
However, Castro was not consistent even with that denial. In November 1978, during a process of releasing prisoners and dialogue with the administration of Jimmy Carter, he stated that the 3,600 prisoners who would be released represented approximately 80% of the political prisoners existing at that time in Cuba. Most, he added, were classified by the regime as "counter-revolutionaries."
The contradiction shows that Castroism has never had a real problem identifying its political prisoners. Its issue has been publicly admitting that it incarcerates them for political reasons.
When the category implies responsibility, it disappears. When prisoners can be released to gain a diplomatic advantage, enhance international image, or facilitate a negotiation, it reappears.
Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) were already denouncing in the late 1990s that Cuban authorities resorted to wordplay to claim that the country had no political prisoners, even though its laws punished open opposition and prisons housed dissidents sentenced for exercising fundamental rights.
"Give me the list."
Raúl Castro brought this performance to one of his most memorable moments during Barack Obama's visit to Havana in March 2016.
The journalist Jim Acosta asked him in a joint press conference why Cuba did not release its political prisoners. Raúl responded defiantly: “Give me the list of political prisoners right now, and I will release them immediately.”
Later, he insisted that they provide the names, and if they were imprisoned, they would be freed before the night was over.
The bravado aimed to create the impression that there was no one to liberate. It turned the journalist into the one responsible for proving what the state itself knew perfectly well: the names of the people it had arrested, prosecuted, condemned, and imprisoned.
Raúl was not asking for information. He was feigning ignorance and perplexity at the boldness of inquiring about the political prisoners.
The lists existed. They had been published by Cuban and international organizations, family members, and human rights groups. But the general demanded a list as if he were requesting an impossible proof, sheltered by a system that monopolizes the courts, prisons, and information about the detainees.
Ten years later, his grandson alters the family rhetoric. He no longer asks sarcastically where those prisoners are. He talks about the conditions for their release.
A truth pursued from below
What’s striking is not that 'El Cangrejo' has revealed something unknown.
Generations of Cubans have denounced the existence of political prisoners. Family members have done so at the gates of prisons, opponents, independent journalists, human rights organizations, former prisoners, artists, religious leaders, and citizens with no political affiliation. Thousands have demanded a review of the proceedings, the annulment of sentences, or an amnesty.
Madelyn Sardiñas Padrón was arrested in Camagüey in 2023 for stating on Facebook that there were political prisoners in Cuba. Her case encapsulates an essential paradox: the same truth that drives a citizen's denunciation in front of a police station now allows a Castro to present himself as an international negotiator.
For powerless Cubans, naming political prisoners has meant surveillance, interrogations, job loss, acts of repudiation, imprisonment, or exile. For a member of the ruling family, indirectly acknowledging them can become a demonstration of pragmatism.
In Cuba, the truth does not solely depend on the facts. It also depends on the surname of the person who states it.
What are the "appropriate conditions"?
The most serious part of 'El Cangrejo's' words is not in "people considered political prisoners." It lies in the "adequate conditions".
Suitable for whom? For prisoners and their families? To annul arbitrary sentences? To end surveillance, harassment, and threats of re-incarceration? To allow those who were exiled to return?
Or are they suitable for the government to obtain fuel, relief from sanctions, investments, international recognition, or guarantees of survival?
'El Cangrejo' did not speak about reviewing judicial processes, investigating torture, compensating victims, or restoring rights. He spoke about releasing people if certain conditions are met.
He did not acknowledge that freedom belongs to them. He suggested that power can return it to them if something is given in exchange.
This formulation turns prisoners into negotiating capital. They cease to be officially non-existent and become potential pieces in a transaction.
A narrative that begins to unravel
The phrase from 'El Cangrejo' should be understood within the broader crisis of the official discourse.
For decades, the regime was able to assert simultaneously that there was no hunger, unemployment, racism, political emigration, or political prisoners in Cuba. The propaganda did not need to appear true; it was enough that no voice could publicly contradict it without facing consequences.
That monopoly has weakened.
The economic crisis, power outages, mass emigration, access to social networks, and the growing distrust among citizens have widened the gap between reality and the narrative. The government continues to repress, but it no longer manages to control the interpretation of what is happening with the same effectiveness.
From that decomposition arise strange outcrops. The ruler appointed by Raúl Castro denies the political prisoners in April, and his favored grandson speaks in July about the conditions for their release.
The discourse does not open up because the regime has embraced the truth, but rather because its various needs are starting to produce contradictions that are impossible to hide.
'El Cangrejo' needs to remain flexible towards Washington without questioning the artifact it intends to inherit, called "revolution." To do this, it partially acknowledges a reality that the regime continues to deny. Its statement does not represent a break with the system, but rather an effort to save it through less rigid and more negotiation-oriented language.
But once pronounced, the admission cannot be completely withdrawn.
Fidel called the prisoners counter-revolutionaries when he needed to criminalize them and political prisoners when he needed to release them. Raúl demanded a list to pretend they did not exist. 'El Cangrejo' no longer dares to repeat that denial with the same certainty: he offers to release them when "the proper conditions" arise.
The taboo has been broken, albeit in an oblique manner.
And behind the circus appears the truth that so many Cubans have paid for with surveillance, imprisonment, and exile: there are political prisoners in Cuba.
They do not need adequate conditions to be released. They need the injustice that led them to prison to end.
Filed under: