I was wrongfully imprisoned for 22 years. It all started when I refused to put an “Im with Fidel” sign on my desk at work. I can not express the amount of hatred I felt towards anybody involved with the Cuban Revolution. Even though I supported their cause I was thrown in jail without a second glance. “Why are you doing this to me?”, I asked the guards, but no reply was given. The second my feet hit the cold concrete of the dingy jail cell floors I felt helpless and more alone than anybody could possibly know. I was sentenced to 30 years in this dungeon, that was longer than I had been alive at that point. I thought about how much life I had lived and how I would have to do it all again and then some to be freed. Put simply, there was no end in sight to my punishment. I'm not afraid to admit that I cried like a baby and when one other prisoner asked me why, I simply had no answer. I felt hopeless. From my eyes it seemed eternal and nothing short of it. I was offered Political rehabilitation but refused because I wanted to stand my ground and do my best to assert dominance. In some dusty corner of my brain I thought that if they were not able to control me they would let me go. I was doing nothing but fooling myself. Their solution was to cram me into tiny cells with multiple other people with no room to lay down and no bathroom access. It stank worse than a skunk that fell into a pile of horse manure and then fermented for 40 years. I was then labeled a prisoner of conscience because I did not share the beliefs of those who were in charge. My next step to show I wasn't going to be tamed was my hunger strikes. I went on more than a few hunger strikes while I was in the concrete skyscraper. My longest strike of 49 days had me feeling so weak that I thought if I was looked at wrong my bones would break and I would disintegrate. I then decided to play the victim card. I pretended to be so mistreated and weak that I needed a wheelchair. In the end it was all worth it because my plan worked. It was noticed that a number of my rights had been violated. For one it was realized that I was not given a fair trial. I was also given a busted wheelchair, it was so hard to get around i might as well be crawling around on sandpaper. I was so eager to get out and see my wife who I met in prison that when I was given the offer to leave the prison I was willing to do anything. I was told I could leave if I walked onto the plane with my own two legs in front of everybody, Proving i was lying about being crippled in the first place. I didn't care if this gave me a faulty reputation, I just wanted to see my wife Marta. So as I was Boarding the plane I lost all my credibility. That was the main reason that nobody believed my story, because they knew I had lied before.

Once I got off the plane my immediate goal was to restore my credibility by proving truths. After years I had a little credibility because other people were reporting the same things I was. There were soon so many reports of mistreatment towards prisoners during the Cuban Revolution that I was believed again. I started giving speeches on my time holed away from the world. I was often asked, “What was the worst part of your time in prison?” I always responded with, “The food.” The only reason behind it was that I would feel bad releasing the horrors of prison onto them.