Maria Cristina Garrido Rodriguez

María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez is a Cuban poet and activist. She was born in Quivicán, Mayaquebé province, in 1982. From a very young age, she became interested in poetry and has a special sensibility towards the arts. She has completed several specialized courses in literature. Her poetry has been published in various community anthologies. In 2008, she won the First National Prize in the Carlos Baliño Tabacalero Contest. Her poetry and artistic vision have led her to reflect and write about her daily life. In contrast, her trajectory as an activist led her to become part of the Red Femenina de Cuba, where she supports the visibility of women in various spaces.

María Cristina is a member of the Republican Party of Cuba, a delegate of the Fundación Vuelta abajo por Cuba and a member of the Federación Latina de Mujeres Rurales (FLAMUR). In a video recorded in December 2020, she commented on her activism in support of women’s rights: “We have found a space for us women to denounce the injustices committed by all the indoles (…), you raise your voice for us women in Cuba, and promote our work and defend our rights in a society that has been manipulated and is a victim of a totalitarian communist dictatorship, let us women continue our important work to make ourselves felt and valued.”

Garrido was detained on July 12, 2021, and beaten on more than three occasions by the Cuban political police. She was subjected to a forced disappearance for 18 days. The Cuban government accused her of resistance, assault, instigation to commit a crime, and public disorder for allegedly leading the July 11, 2021 protests in Quivicán, Mayabeque. In January 2022, when Maria Cristina Garrido’s trial was held, family members told Radio Marti that the regime had relied on false testimonies of police agents and other people who acted as witnesses.

In March 2022, following a prosecutor’s request for 15 years of imprisonment, the Provincial Court of Mayabeque handed down María Cristina’s final sentence of seven years. She is serving this unjust sentence in the Guatao prison, where she has been subjected to punishment, torture, denial of visits and calls from family members, and isolation, making it so that she can barely write. From prison, she managed to write a letter in which she expressed her pride for having been part of the events of 11J, and denounced the horrors faced by people like her inside Cuban prisons.

On July 11, we showed courage and determination–a break with the years-long silence; we showed unanimity and pluralism, because young people, adults, the elderly, university students and farmers, housewives and workers, also leaders and even party cadres took to the streets to say yes in favor of the overthrow of the dictatorship and for a prosperous and democratic Cuba.

The letter cost Maria Cristina numerous days in solitary confinement. During her imprisonment, she has been beaten, interrogated, and threatened.

A large part of Maria Cristina Garrido’s work was seized by the Cuban state from her home in Quivicán, according to a detailed profile of her literature by Alas Tensas. The remainder of her work is dispersed and hard to find, and it would be difficult to recover many of her notebooks in which the poet wrote and pondered her concerns through literature and poetry, at the same time creating irreverent works about her life in Cuba.

It has been written about her work that, “the poet María Cristina constitutes, without a doubt, a major danger for the regime, because the foundations of her ideas join her condition as a woman poet of a special sensibility and strength. Her most ‘dangerous’ poem was realized with each cry for ‘freedom!,’ and ‘homeland and life!’ A slap in the face to the power that always believes itself unreachable and safe. They have tried to silence her voice, all the more because it is the voice of a woman who dissents and fearlessly expresses her opposition in a public space dominated by men.”

Examen de tiempo is her first book of poems, published in 2022 by Iliada Ediciones, and can be purchased on Amazon. The book was written before her arbitrary arrest. A relative of María Cristina commented to Periódico Cubano that the publisher waived the profits from the sale of the book, so all the money collected is for Garrido and to pay taxes to Amazon.

Concerning the prison where she is confined, she wrote the poem “El cementerio de los vivos,” one of the few poems written in prison contained in her book:

I am writing this lament right now

in a dawn of prisoners and opprobrium

where the doors sound of weeping and oblivion.

I cannot sleep.

I discovered that it is better to write at this hour

when other people’s pain sleeps

and silence softens the mind

and the spirit.

Night is my spur,

although it is the greatest danger.

Doctors without gowns and without vocation

flee from pleas

and I fear to die in a long unexpected pain.

This place we call The Cemetery Of The Living.

Here inexorable justice in buried without a gravedigger

the inexorable justice of the homeland

as if burying the crime of a child

or of a flower.

(…)

Together with her sister Angélica Garrido, they went on hunger strike on September 20, 2022 rejecting their sentences and detentions. Five days later they ended the strike, although they said they are still protesting their unjust imprisonment.

Voz cautiva (poems written from prison), is her most recent book, published in 2023 by the Spanish publishing house Deslinde.

In this edition it is noted that “whether due to punishment cells, isolation and transfers, or surveillance and depression, Maria Cristina Garrido could not resume writing until the 349th day of her political imprisonment. At her discretion and contempt, they slipped her scarce paper and pencil and a spare twisted and disembodied pen. The first poems he leaked to the street [now gathered in this book: Voz Cautiva] arrived with trembling hands and translucent handwriting that could only be read with maximum image-editing contrast. The originals are kept in clear ink, scratched graphite, recklessly crumpled pages, and piled up verses.

Listen to the powerful audio message sent by #MaríaCristinaGarrido from prison. Garrido has been imprisoned in #Cuba since March 2022 for participating in peaceful protests. 

— PEN International (@pen_int) November 16, 2023

María Cristina Garrido remains in prison, facing a sentence that attempts to silence her and prevent her literature and activism. We, international organizations, continue to demand her immediate release.

Published on November 17, 2022 | Updated on July 23, 2024