Madrid, 20 March 2011
Statement by Ricardo González Alfonso, Cuban journalist, librarian and poet, sentenced to 20 years in prison in Cuba in 2003, released and exiled to Spain in July 2010. Ricardo is an Honorary Member of Finnish PEN and German PEN.
My dear colleagues who are attending the 9th Writers in Prison Conference organised in Brussels by PEN International, I wouldn't dare contact you without mentioning two words: solidarity and gratitude. Only someone who has been confined to a tiny cell, 1.80 by 3 metres, where you eat, sleep and answer calls of nature, where you stay with no company other the rodents, the insects, and the voices - only the voices of those fighting your cause - can understand what it means when, at her quarterly visits, my wife, in a purposeful clandestine whisper, would tell me that this or that non-governmental organisation was calling for our freedom; and always, always, one of these organisations was PEN.
It is undoubtedly a miracle to stop feeling alone in the solitude of a cell; to feel this solidarity which gets through the bars and illuminates the shadows, to restore a creator's spiritual energy. At least that is what happened in my case. It compelled me to take prohibited action, and with no more resources than strips of paper and a pencil, I wrote 45 poems about the terrible, relentless underworld that is Cuban prisons.
Under the name Hombres Sin Rostro [Men with No Faces], this collection of poems, short and secret, escaped the prison in a cigarette box. That daring led me to be sent to a punishment cell, which I could only escape by means of a 16 day hunger strike, and an international campaign of support from various non-governmental organisations, and once again PEN was one of these supportive allies.
The prison continued with its harsh, subhuman treatment, and although my spirit remained undefeated - I wrote another book: (Con)Fines humanos [Limits of Humanity] - my body was not as strong, and because of that I had to undergo surgery on four occasions.
Almost at the end of my captivity, when the censorship began to ease, my wife brought me dozens of Christmas cards. She had kept them with the love they deserved. They had been sent to me from Australia, Europe, Asia and America. PEN brought into my cell snowflakes and children singing carols, birds of a thousand and one colours with their happy trills of hope. The world appeared in the underworld of the prison. Even the daily damp seemed to do less damage, and even the mould on the walls seemed beautiful to me. It was as if freedom, that miracle, was staying in my cell.
After seven years and four months in prison, I was exiled to Madrid, where I requested political asylum; and, in accordance with Spanish law, I had to surrender my Cuban passport. As I have not yet been granted this request, I am unable to travel to Brussels to meet with you, to thank you from the depths of my soul for your boundless solidarity, and with the warmest of embraces express to you the gratitude of all imprisoned writers around the world.
Continue - we must continue - with this wonderful task of renewing the hope of writers who are still being held captive, by shouting out to the world their ideas, their truths, their souls transformed into words.
Let's work to ensure that tolerance is not an everyday dream, but the most precious gift of every man and every woman. Let's work, lastly, to bequeath to the future the tangible miracle of freedom.
Many thanks
Ricardo González Alfonso
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