From The Real Cuba.com comes these dramatically contrasting photos along with the illuminating commentary printed below.The first photo (top left) shows Fidel Castro being interviewed in 1954 inside his cell at the Isle of Pines' prison.
In this photo, Castro is being interviewed by Raúl Martín Sánchez, a journalist who was working for Bohemia magazine at the time. The interview, together with several photos, was published in Bohemia without any censorship.
Look at all the books, behind Castro, that he had in his cell. The man who was later going to turn into a brutal dictator and show no mercy for anyone who opposed him, referred to his imprisonment at Isle of Pines as being in a "country club."
In a letter to one of his friends while in prison, Castro wrote: "Since I like to cook, I am able to entertain myself preparing different plates. The other day, my brother sent me a ham from Oriente and I cooked myself a ham steak with guava jelly....Not even the rooms at the Hotel Nacional are as clean as my cell. When I go out in the morning, I can feel the air coming from the sea, I think that I am at the beach. Later, at a small restaurant in the prison, I go to get spaghettis with clams and Italian bonbons for desert. And then a cup of Cuban coffee and an H. Upman #4."
This was a man who was in jail for leading an armed attack against a government garrison, that caused the death of dozens of soldiers and attackers.
Castro was sentenced to 15 years, but was pardoned after serving only 22 months.
The cell on the right is a replica of the cell where Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is being held.Dr. Biscet is a black Cuban who was sentenced to 25 years in jail for teaching fellow Cubans about Dr. Martin Luther King and his non violent movement for civil rights.
Dr. Biscet is not allowed to receive visitors, except for scheduled monthly visits by his immediate family.
He is being held on a filthy cell full of rats and roaches.
He is not allowed to have any books, except for a Bible.
He can't cook, because he cannot receive any food from outside and his cell has no electricity and no running water. He is being held on solitary confinement for committing no crime, while Castro was held on what he referred to as a "country club," after conducting an armed attack against the government.
The person who was governing Cuba when Fidel Castro was sent to jail is always referred to by the press as "dictator Batista," and I believe that properly so.
What I cannot understand is how the press can continue to refer to the brutal dictator who sent Dr. Biscet and tens of thousands of innocent Cubans to jail, murdered thousands of others and destroyed the island of Cuba as "ex-president Fidel Castro," and his equally brutal brother who brother who substituted him as "president Raul Castro."
Who the hell elected either of them?
Batista's biggest crime, in my opinion, was to have interrupted Cuba's democratic process, not to allow honest and free elections in 1958 and and then to cowardly flee the country a few months later, allowing a gangster like Castro to come in and grab absolute power.
Batista was Castro's political father. Without Batista, there would have never have been a Castro in charge of Cuba. Castro would have never been elected president of Cuba and much less, dictator for life.
I want to thank independent journalist Carlos Serpa Maceira for sending the picture of Castro in prison.