Ileana Puig

"I always had, like everything in the beginning, because as a mum...and this is one thing, in the beginning, although they [her two daughters], I tell you again, went to all the visits with me. When I got some food, it was for the father and the visitor. What's more, in a shortage, because of something I just remembered, there were no eggs in Cuba, and when I got some, they would say to me: 'Can we eat an egg during the visit'? It was really something when they let us bring in food. But at the same time, the illusion of seeing their father. One time they both had, I think, it was Chinese or measles, and they couldn't go - the crying in the house, how they couldn't go to see their dad, and how I was going alone to see their dad. It was something I'll never forget.”

"Those were dark days. We went to the trial [in April 1959, of his brother-in-law Manuel Puig aka Ñongo] my mother, my father, myself, a sister of my husband and Ñongo, it started I think at 8, 9 o'clock in the morning, it finished at 12 o'clock at night, it was a circus. The court had their feet on the table, they threw pebbles at each other, little balls, they laughed, we were surrounded by militiamen with long guns, because even though it was still the last days of the Bay of Pigs invasion. The atmosphere was heated in a way where the hatred felt towards anything that was not in favour of the Revolution [The Cuban Revolution is the main result of the leftist Cuban revolutionary movement that brought about the fall of the regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista] and Fidel Castro was palpable.”

"In 1959, we moved back to Havana, and my husband was transferred by the company he worked for. And the rebellion against Fidel Castro's regime was already underway, even though he had not declared himself a socialist or communist. Still, the mass shootings were just beginning; the lack of freedom of expression was already starting, so my husband and his brother became 100% involved in the struggle against the regime. Both my sister and I shared that struggle, not only because we loved our husbands but also because we shared that desire for freedom. This eagerness, let's say not so much because the structure had not yet been broken, but because we saw how they took the life of a human being without due process of law. Also, we saw how what was green today was red tomorrow; we saw how those who were and had been pilots of Batista supporters and had been acquitted from the law. Suddenly, the dictator Fidel Castro said this was not right and decided they all had to be retried and condemned.”