Raúl Luis Risco Pérez, former lieutenant colonel of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), revealed in an interview with Tania Costa for CiberCuba how his access to privileged information within the military apparatus of the regime triggered his break with the system and his subsequent collaboration with the opposition.
Risco Pérez, a lawyer born in Camagüey and now residing in Tampa, Florida, held the position of deputy chief at the national level in the General Directorate of Prisons and Penitentiaries, a role that allowed him to closely observe the contradictions between the official discourse and the Cuban reality. "It's not the same to be in a prison in Camagüey—you don't know what's happening in the world—than to be in the General Directorate of Prisons and Penitentiaries and serve as deputy chief of a national specialty as was my case," he stated.
It was precisely that ability to observe which, according to him, motivated the regime to remove him from that environment. It all started when he submitted a report documenting his opposition to Fidel Castro's bill to increase penalties for theft and livestock slaughter from 5 to 20 years of imprisonment. As soon as his report reached the offices of the higher-ups, he was dismissed and sent to work at the Cerámica prison in Camagüey.
"They sent me away as punishment because the goal was to remove me from a place where I was already seeing and becoming aware of things, because I had much more information," he recounted.
The forced relocation did not halt his process of becoming aware. Before completing a year at his new post, Risco Pérez had already made a decision: "Before the year is up, I'm starting: I'm leaving, I'm leaving, I'm leaving."
While still an active military member, he began to collaborate with the Human Rights Party of Camagüey, specifically with the party's second-in-command, whom he met through a relative. He passed along information that was then broadcast by Radio Martí and other publications in Europe.
However, the organization was infiltrated. The party president in Camagüey, identified by Risco as Otto Duarte, turned out to be an undercover agent of State Security. "The party president in Camagüey was Mr. Otto Duarte, who turned out to be the agent Yunior of State Security," he reported.
Duarte used that position to testify against prisoners from the Group of 75 during the Black Spring of March 2003, the largest wave of repression against Cuban dissidence since the 1960s. His testimonies directly impacted the trials of Normando Hernández González, director of the Independent Journalists' College of Camagüey, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and Mario Enrique Mayo Hernández, director of the independent agency Félix Varela, who was sentenced to 20 years. He also testified against Alejandro González Raga, who currently resides in Spain.
The use of undercover agents in human rights organizations is a documented practice of the Cuban State Security to dismantle opposition from within, and the case described by Risco Pérez accurately illustrates this mechanism.
Risco Pérez was sentenced to five years in prison at Kilo 7 for charges he deems fabricated, and he served his sentence until 2008. From exile, he is part of the Cuban Movement of Conscientious Objector Military Personnel, which has repeatedly urged the FAR and MININT not to suppress the civilian population.
His message to the soldiers still serving the regime is straightforward: “I think that Cuban soldiers will disobey”, he declared in May of this year during an interview with NTN24.
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