Luis Zúñiga Rey

“In the prisons of Cuba, they impose on the prisoners, or at least they imposed at that time, I do not know now, the rehabilitation plans. That means that they wanted the political prisoners to regret their political thinking, their actions, which they had done and which led them into the prison. So, they wanted them to regret and to accept the rehabilitation plans and the Communist indoctrination. And of course, I did not accept it, and I paid the price. This price were beatings, the price was hunger, zero medical attention, mistreatment of all kinds, and for those who rebelled even more, and I was at this group that was not willing to accept the impositions of the Communist regime within the prison... I paid a high price... once they even tortured me, they applied me electric sounds, they put me on horns with some strange noises and terrible tones, so high that in a cell next to me a prisoner committed suicide, he hanged himself on a pair of socks. The situation was unbearable.”

“The Communism is above all a social engineering. It is a project that tries to change the people or tried to change to human beings the way how they perceived the society, government, economy, culture. It is a... a theoretically positive concept: society, equality, all equal, all perfect, but with an evil purpose - that they wanted to impose this equality by force. And we, the human beings, are not the same. Two brothers, while one studies, the another does not, one wants to work and the other is lazy, one has good relations with the mother and father and the other hates them. So, the human beings are different. In addition, we have different aspirations in life and the Communist regime tries to impose a concept that is simply fabricated, designed by a group of individuals. That's why it's a social engineering. And that practical experience has shown that it is not possible, that it ends in an unbearable oppression, thirdly - that creates a more unequal society than the one that they tried to eliminate, and fourthly - that the leaders that were theoretically considered as disinterested, as people concerned about society, aiming for equality and for achieving the goals that had been proposed, so these end up in worse bourgeois people, in oppressors, in abusers, in criminals and especially in rich ones.”

“Eventually, when I was about to enter the fifth year of my studies, thus the final year, they called me at the disciplinary headquarters of the University, there at the José Antonio Echeverría University Center, and the director who was at the same time the General Secretary of the Communist Party at the Faculty of Engineering told me that I did not have revolutionary integration and that either I was integrated into the revolution or I simply could not graduate, because they did not desire a professional who was not a revolutionary professional. I said: well, I feel revolutionary that I want change, I want things to change. And he said: no, no, no, the change you want is a change within the revolution and this is not going to happen, so, nothing like this, this is impossible, so either you join the Committee of Defense of the Revolution, you incorporate into something, or there is no graduation for you. Then we started to argue there and the matter took a very strong tone to the point that he said: well, do not attend the University anymore.”

“Talking about the future of Cuba is what we would call in physical science as a theory, unpredictable foremost within the long process that I have experienced and that I have known about Cuba, where the regime destroyed all institutions, destroyed all values, destroyed all the concepts that formed and they sustained the Cuban nationality. The regime turned the human beings into mere dolls that move within conditions that they have created and that have been changing for the worse, because the conditions of life in Cuba have always been decreasing. The people of Cuba have evolved into worse. Therefore, the possibility of a unifying, patriotic, libertarian, democratic force within Cuba is very far away. It does not exist... and I am always respecting individualities, I do not mean that everyone is like that, there are very decent people, there are people of faith, there are believers, but I do not see the patriotic concept that is needed to liberate Cuba, as the sacrifice is too high, if we take into account all the enormous control that the dictatorship exercises over each and every one of the Cubans. An identity card, while they have you in a computer and they know your whole life, where you were born, where you grew up, what you studied, where you went, where you work, where you go, what you do, what you think, who your friends are, everything they have controlled in constant reports.”