Released Honorary Member Jorge Olivera Castillo
Jorge Olivera Castillo was an editor at Cuba's official television station between 1983 and 1993, but was forced to leave his work after making public his disagreement with censorship policies in his country.
From 1995 onwards, he worked as a journalist at Havana Press, becoming its Director in 1999. In 2003, however, he was one of 35 journalists, writers and librarians who were arrested during a crackdown on alleged dissidents, and sentenced at one-day, closed trials held on 3-4 April 2003 to 18 years imprisonment (under Law 88). The defendants at these trials were given insufficient time to prepare their cases.
On 6 December 2004, after 20 months and 18 days in prison (often in solitary confinement), Olivera Castillo was released on health grounds. He had lost 30 lbs (13 kilos) and was suffering from high blood pressure and serious infections. Various conditions were imposed on his release, and he was also repeatedly threatened with re-arrest if he resumed his political journalism.
Since 2004, therefore, Olivera Castillo has been a writer of poetry and short stories. His poetry written in prison (Confesiones antes del Crepusculo - Confessions Before the Sunset: Poems in Prison) was published by the Independent Libraries Project in Miami in 2005. It included 37 poems on love and politics. A number of his poems were then published in 2006 in an Italian anthology (Verses Behind Bars published in Milan by In Foglio). In February 2007, a collection of his short stories (Huésped del Infierno - The Guest of Hell) was published in Spain by Aduana Vieja, including ten stories based on his experiences in prison. In 2008, Czech PEN published a bilingual edition (Czech - Spanish) of his collection of poems En cuerpo y alma. His journalistic work has been published in newspapers in Sweden, Argentina, the United States and the Czech Republic. His work has also been published on web sites such www.cubanet.org and www.payolibre.com.
Olivera Castillo lives in La Habana, Cuba, with his wife Nancy, where he continues to write tirelessly. In 2009, he hopes to finish his second collection of short stories, and also plans to embark on his first novel.
In a recent email to English PEN's Writers in Prison Programme, Olivera Castillo described his present situation:
"Por aca la situacion sigue tensa... Yo continúo con la espada de Damocles sobre mi cabeza. Cada vez que alguien toca a la puerta no puedo desembarazarme de la premonicion que es la policia que viene a buscarme. Algo muy logico en un sistema totalitario. A pesar de eso sigo haciendo periodismo y literatura. No puedo dejar de escribir, si no lo pudiera hacer no se que seria de mi"
("Here, the situation remains tense… The sword of Damocles continues to hang over me. Every time that someone knocks at the door, I cannot rid myself of the idea that it is the police coming to take me away; entirely possible in this totalitarian system. In spite of this, I continue to write articles and literature. I can't stop writing, if I couldn't write I don't know what would become of me")
Olivera Castillo and his family remain under constant surveillance and he is periodically hauled before tribunals as a grim reminder that he can be re-arrested on some pretext at any time.
This is one of Olivera Castillo's most recent poems, from the unedited collection 'Cenizas Alumbradas' ('Illuminous Ashes'):
Resurrection
I must die once in a while.
My spirit has already learned by heart
the ritual of the farewell and
the manoevres for the encounter.
There are always assassins in close proximity
and at a distance.
The hypocrites use poisoned lances
32 calibre pistols are the envy of today and tomorrow.
Now the most visible perpetrators of crime
are the hooded men
who shoot straight to the heart and
cover the corpse with a counter-revolutionary poster.
They kill during the night
beneath the light of a thousand candles.
Between the last gasps of death
I continue to ponder the traditional workings
of rebirth.