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The Cuban Penitentiary System: A Critique

class and gender in Cuba and the world

Veizant Boloy González
Attorney and journalist
Cubalex Legal Information Centre
Havana, Cuba

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ehind the wonderful image the Cuban
government wants to project to the world
concerning the reality of its penitentiary
system, hides an alarming situation in the country’s prisons, and their critical state, throughout
the entire country.
In 2013, during a moment in which the government supposedly opened up, the international and
national media were able to enter Cuban prisons.
The objective of these visits for journalists was to
gather information about what they were like and
see first hand the problems and abuses that human
rights organizations describe. Yet, what was behind that official decision was an attempt to mitigate Cuba worldwide discredit on account of
these reports. Guided by out-of-date ideology no
longer being employed, the government very ably
facilitated the issuing of a number of reports
about “the goodness of the Cuban prison system.”
The government is convinced that the issue of it
prisons and prisoners is frequently used to efficiently garner political returns internationally and
project the image desired by the international
community. A few days after those visits, Cuba
underwent the U.N. Human Rights Commission’s
Examen Periódico Universal [Universal Periodic
Review] (EPU).
The official media have evidently and insistently
devoted themselves to obscuring real information
regarding prisons. Yet, a year after those visits,
the difficult existential drama persists: disregard
for human rights, lack of security at installations,

an increasing prison population, lack of legal recourse for inmates, internal crime, overpopulation in facilities, a lack of hygiene and unbridled
violence—even among inmates. All of this is seriously worsening because the people responsible
for looking after and protecting the lives and
physical integrity of prisoners are also prisoners.
One of the problems that continue to be a primary
concern for international organization are the violent conflicts in prisons and the increasing number of younger, mostly black youth that are swelling their population. Prison overpopulation creates overcrowding.
Lázaro Marquetti Cao, an inmate at the Combinado del Este prison who was able to talk to the
foreign press on April 19th, 2013, stated: “The
only thing the Cuban government has done is fill
the prisons; sometimes people go to prison with
any due process at all.” Another prisoner, Michel
López Rivas, added: “When Marquetti Cao was
over thirty, he was serving my sentence at the
Kilo 9 prison; after a fight with a guard in which
he slashed his face, he was sent to the Kilo 8
prison, and savagely beaten by guards, which
caused him to die of a brain hemorrhage.” He also
said: “Forty-two year old José Lao Reyes, a diabetic, was tested for glucose. The result showed it
was very high, but he died right in Kilo 9 because
he did not receive adequate medical attention.”
A number of people have died, some even as a
result of hunger strikes protesting prison guard
abuse and torture. Medical attention is lacking,