At the end of 2011, when the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) had only been founded for a few months, we understood that the Political Police would attempt to seize the modest resources we received to support our civic activities and provide food and medicine to those in great need.
On one occasion, Ángel Verdecia Díaz was supposed to collect 500 dollars sent by our Representative abroad, Luis Enrique Ferrer, through Western Union. The political police could apprehend him upon leaving the agency, so we decided to use a newly recruited activist, who was still unknown to the oppressors but had already inspired confidence in us: Roilán Álvarez Rensoler was the chosen one.
Ángel collected the delivery and discreetly handed it over to Roilán. Minutes later, Ángel and his son Andry were violently detained and searched at the police unit. While the officers futilely searched for the 500 dollars, Roilán was crossing fields, hills, and streams until he reached the UNPACU headquarters in Palmarito de Cauto with the money intact.
That experience confirmed what I had already perceived upon meeting him: Roilán was brave, bold, and trustworthy. Since then, he has embarked on a fifteen-year journey of dedicated non-violent civic struggle. He participated in peaceful protests, anti-government graffiti, other UNPACU activities, and humanitarian actions. The regime's response was to turn his life into a series of detentions, threats, interrogations, arbitrary searches, prisons, beatings, and torture.
One of the most brutal assaults occurred when agents from the Political Police and special forces took Roilán and other activists to the hills of Pinares de Mayarí. There, they were stripped naked and beaten with sticks and cables. Roilán ended up with his body marked by bruises and a wound on one leg.
But they did not limit themselves to beating them. The agents sexually humiliated them using a Makarov pistol, which they passed between their buttocks and placed against their temples while threatening to kill them and make them disappear in those mountains. They aimed to force them to shout "Down with José Daniel," "Down with UNPACU," and "Long live Fidel Castro."
On another occasion, the sadistic political police officer Dainier Suárez Pagán brutally beat Roilán inside the police unit in Mella and dealt him a severe blow to an eye with a walkie-talkie. The injury required urgent medical attention.
Prison and strikes represent another dramatic chapter in his history. On September 30, 2013, he was imprisoned and responded by declaring a hunger strike. He remained without food for 42 days and only ended the protest after attaining his freedom on November 15.
In 2020, he returned to prison. Once again, he used the only tool of protest he had within a Castro-communist regime prison: his own body. He went on a hunger strike for 30 days, until he was released on December 4. On this occasion, he was once again a victim of physical violence and the torture known as the "bicycle."
His mother, Valentina Rensoler, and his sisters Arianna and Irina have supported his struggle for years. When Roilán has been between life and death, they have publicly protested in Mella, and in parks in Santiago de Cuba and Holguín, also facing repression to demand his freedom.
At the end of January 2026, Roilán was imprisoned for the third time. He immediately began another hunger strike. This time, he went much further. After approximately 49 days, his body collapsed. He suffered a severe cardiac episode and had to be resuscitated. He was on the brink of death. The situation became so alarming that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures in his favor, considering that his rights to life, personal integrity, and health were at risk of irreparable harm.
But the violence continued. Last July, inside the Holguín Provincial Prison, Roilán suffered a brutal beating once again. His family reported that he was struck with blunt objects and sustained injuries in various parts of his body. In response, he declared another hunger strike. He went 20 days without eating, and according to his sister Arianna, when she was finally able to see him, she felt as if death was once again looming over him. This marked his fourth long hunger strike.
The accumulation of prolonged fasting, beatings, torture, and years of persecution has severely deteriorated his health. He suffers from cardiac and renal issues, among other consequences, making another hunger strike potentially fatal.
The political police have told his family that they will release him if he leaves Cuba, for which they need to obtain a ticket to a country that will accept him. In other words, after pursuing him, beating him, imprisoning him, and repeatedly bringing him to the brink of death, they intend to impose exile on him as the price of his freedom.
Roilán Álvarez Rensoler has been paying a tremendous price for nearly fifteen years for peacefully fighting for Cuba's freedom. Few Cuban activists of his generation have endured as many arrests, raids, imprisonments, beatings, tortures, and have carried out such lengthy hunger strikes. Today, he needs our solidarity.
Those of us who knew the young man who in 2011 crossed forests and streams to protect those 500 dollars know that he is still the same brave, steadfast, reliable man, ready to risk his life demanding his immediate release.
After so many years of resistance and cruel, inhumane treatment, his exhausted body demands proper medical care and, above all, conditions that are impossible in a Cuban prison. Now the priority is to get him out of jail and save his life. Can Roilán count on you?
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Opinion article: Las declaraciones y opiniones expresadas en este artículo son de exclusiva responsabilidad de su autor y no representan necesariamente el punto de vista de CiberCuba.