„It is much faster to overthrow communism through armed struggle, although it is a bloody method. However, there are many who wish to die for the homeland.“
Stáhnout obrázek
Francisco Herodes Díaz Echemendía was born on September 16, 1956 in Santiago de Cuba. He grew up with his siblings - communist militants - until 1982. From the age of 13, he began to have political questions concerning Castro’s regime, but he did not know how to express them. In his youth, he was rebellious. He liked to dress in American fashion and became a hippie. In 1972 he went to Havana to study electroplating. He liked weapons from a young age, so during his military service, he was willing to fight in the Angolan War. However, after being injected with sodium pentobarbital, he became violent and was put in an underground cell. Later, he wanted to enroll in a school in Czechoslovakia, but his brother withdrew the invitation; this marked the beginning of Francisco‘s strong disagreement with the regime. In 1978 he finished his degree at the Faculty of Physics and began teaching at a special school in Santiago de Cuba, where he won the appreciation of his students. In 1982 he was imprisoned for trying to buy his children shoes with foreign currency. He served approximately 13 months of deprivation of liberty. He met several political prisoners who helped to form his anti-communist ideas in more detail. By 1984 he had felt his most explicit political concerns and decided to express them by disseminating prohibited books on the streets of Cuba. He married a worker from the Soviet Embassy and had relations with Soviet diplomatic personnel. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, he founded a cell and began collecting weapons for armed actions against the communist government of Cuba. For this, he was sentenced to 20 years of deprivation of liberty. In the years 1990 to 2010, he was imprisoned in the Boniato and Guantánamo prisons, of which 7 consecutive years he was not allowed even one visit. He experienced numerous beatings and extreme violence by the guards, especially in the prison department called “Boniatico.” Francisco is a living witness to some of the greatest Cuban political prisoners, with whom he shared cells and Cuban prison courtyards. Francisco‘s father died in 2004 while Francisco was in prison. He was allowed to see him at the funeral home for only eight minutes. He was released on February 15, 2010, after serving 20 years and 10 days in prison. During his incarceration, he always maintained his anti-communist conviction. He never saw his Soviet wife again, nor his former wife, nor his children, of whom he knows only that she is a jazz musician and resides in the Netherlands. He currently lives in Santiago de Cuba.
