"My dad worked at the Guantanamo Naval Base; he was a Communications Engineer. Dad had his own opinions, condemned by those who held different views. It was for these very ideas that he was imprisoned, leaving me alone with my mother. They sent him to Mazorra, where he spent eight long years. Dad shared that at the Mazorra Psychiatric Hospital in Havana, the upper part housed the more docile patients, while the lower part had prison cells. Political prisoners were placed alongside dangerously insane individuals. He described how they spat their food on them. Another detail he revealed was that every other day, they subjected them to electroshocks. A large room with a central prison-like cubicle with bars housed all the prisoners. They would drench them with cold water, an unimaginable ordeal, brother. And on alternate days, they administered electroshocks—they were unbearable. The prisoners would cry, be forcefully taken, thrown on the floor. I heard that the first punch struck them here [jaw], and the second here [temple]. This was the misery they endured, and when they mentioned José Luis Correa Medina, he collapsed, and when they hit him, the world went black.”
"The people of this country will always be pressured by the government, or by whoever, however, in whatever way. The human nature in here is not good, brother. The moment they notice someone holding ideas contrary to what they believe a person should think, or ideas different from what they instill, these very people grab you and make sure to report even the slightest thing to the President [of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution]. They marginalize you, push you aside. You are not accepted, for them, you are... I've sealed myself off in my house, and now I'm putting up a fence all around it so that everyone stays outside. I don't want to deal with people, brother. All they do is cause harm. They approach you because they want to pry into your life, to know what you're up to. Since I live in isolation, people only know that I bring in vinyl because I'm working on my shoe store, but they know nothing else because I keep my house closed. And that irritates them. In this neighborhood, people despise me because I stick to the same beliefs as my dad; I share the same thoughts as him."
José Ángel Correa Pardo was born on May 29, 1973, in Guantánamo, Cuba, and spent most of his childhood alone with his mother, as his father faced repeated imprisonments. His father Jose Luis Correa Medina worked as a Communications Engineer at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and was very critic of the Cuban communist regime. As a possible threat, he was accused of spying for the CIA, and sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment. He spent time in several prisons, including the Havana Psychiatric Hospital Comandante Doctor Eduardo Bernabé Ordaz Ducunge, better known as Mazorra. There, the Cuban regime subjected political prisoners to harsh conditions, placing them in rooms with the most severe psychiatric patients and subjecting them to torment with cold water hoses and electroshocks. Meanwhile, José Ángel and his mother had to support themselves. His mother worked in the hospital and to supplement their income she was making homemade aguardiente. José Ángel grew up as a rebellious boy in a hostile environment, focused against his family, restricting his musical pursuits under the pretext of enrollment shortages. Also, the family had to endure constant home inspections. Frustrated by these circumstances, José Ángel distanced himself from others, embracing the shoe business taught to him by his father to earn a livelihood. Eventually, he made the decision to emigrate, successfully navigating his way out.
