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unspecified counterrevolutionary activities; eight were accused of writing
anti-Castro graffiti and distributing human rights leaflets. The others were
accused of a variety of offenses, including contempt for the regime, refusal
to serve in the armed forces, and alleged participation in plots to assassi–
nate Castro.
Most of these abuses took place in the Castellanos and Carbo-Servii
wards of the Havana Psychiatric Hospital, in the Gustavo Machin
Hospital in Santiago de Cuba, and in the Combinado del Este Prison
Hospital in a suburb of Havana. The forensic wards of these hospitals are
under the direct control of State Security officials. The duration of con–
finement ranged from three days to five years. Cuban penal law allows for
placing prisoners for up to one month in the Havana Psychiatric Hospital
for the purpose of psychiatric diagnosis, but in more than half the cases
the period of internment exceeded one month, and four of the dissidents
were interned for more than one year. Only eleven of the cases we inves–
tigated were diagnosed by the Cuban authorities as suffering from mental
illness. Three cases never received a psychiatric evaluation, and four oth–
ers were diagnosed as sane but were nevertheless sent back to the psychi–
atric wards. One case was diagnosed as "apathetic to socialism," and an–
other as suffering from "delusions of being a defender of human rights."
The thirty-one dissidents subjected to psychiatric abuse were classified
in our study into four types.
In
the first group were eleven dissidents
who, without prior history of mental illness, were interned with crimi–
nally insane patients during their interrogation, with the objective of
breaking them down and obtaining confessions . Although they did not
receive electroshock sessions or drugs, they remembered the experience as
hellish. Juan Manuel Garcia Cao, age twenty, was interned for three days
in the Havana Psychiatric Hospital for writing anti-Castro leaflets. He says
that his experiences at the psychiatric hospital were the worst of his three
years in prison: "It was like Dante's Inferno. Fights broke out among the
inmates continually. Some detainees were raped. The patients were se–
dated, as heavy doses of tranquilizers were mixed in with the food."
Dr.
Ariel Hidalgo, a professor of philosophy, was interned for ten days at the
Havana Psychiatric Hospital when a search of his home uncovered a draft
of his book criticizing Marxist philosophy. At the hospital, Hidalgo wit–
nessed rapes and mutilations of internees by criminally insane patients
acting under orders from the authorities. He was unable to sleep, fearing
for his personal safety. His fear was not unwarranted.
In
March 1990, the
dissident Angel Thomas Quinones , a thirty-nine-year old auto mechanic,
was hanged by criminally insane patients at the Havana Psychiatric
Hospital, who later burned his body.
A second group of fifteen dissidents without prior history of mental
illness were interned in psychiatric hospitals to receive electroshocks and
