Ana Lazara Rodriguez began her career as a dissident as a teenager in the 1950s, opposing the Cuban dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. She continued her protest activities after Fidel Castro, who overthrew Batista in 1958, began to establish a Communist dictatorship. Rodriguez was a young medical student in 1961 when she was imprisoned for her anti-government views and activities. She and a group of her fellow female prisoners of conscience became known as the “Plantadas” (those who will not bend) because they refused to co-operate with their jailers, resisting with methods ranging from insults to hunger strikes. Rodriguez was released in 1979 and traveled to the United States via Costa Rica. In May 1995, she published ‘‘Diary of a Survivor” about her experiences in prison.

Well, they charge me for everything in this world, you know. And I explain them since the beginning that if they were blaming me for what I want to do, I deserve these charges. But not for what I have done. Because what I have done was almost nothing. And they charged me with 30 years in prison – 30 years in house confinement.

And later on because of my two escapes, they do another trial by themselves. They went to prison and they want me to sign the trial saying that they have erased my 30 years of at-home confinement. And I say, no, I don’t want that. Why don’t you want that? Because, well, you will have then put it against the home confinement when I go out, because you don’t have any other way to punish me. And I have escaped twice. And I will try to continue escaping. So I don’t go into sign anything that I didn’t sign. But this day, they don’t continue putting the 30 years in house confinement.

Well, it’s when you come from a home where you were treated well all the time, where you eat well, and have a good bed and parents that love you; it’s very strange to enter a place where since the beginning, they put the food so you realize that it’s dirty food. For example, in a state security department, they only have those plates, big plates, metal ones that were dirty, haven’t been clean, you know, perhaps for months.

So when you see the food, even though the food don’t look bad, it is very hard for you to eat that. So at the beginning, you eat nothing. And until you realize that if you want to live, you have to eat it. So it’s the first training that you do to yourself. Eat whatever comes. Don’t think about it, and try to survive. That is what I learned in the state security department.

Second, I learn that if you attack them and risk your life – so if you disregard your life, you are going to survive. If you try to keep it, they are going to hit you to death, you know. So when they thought that you don’t care about your own life, they don’t know what to do to you. Because the only thing that can menace you is with your life.

So what, "I’m going to kill you, you do – " "Well, kill me. I have 30 years in front of me and then 30 years in my home, without going out. So I’m going to be so miserable life that if you kill me, well you are going to spare me from all those things that are going to happen to me. But as you don’t have orders to kill me, you have to behave. So back up."

When you say that to people that thought that they have all the power of the world, and they know that if they kill you without permission, they are going to jail, then you have all the power and they have nothing. When you realize that, you start playing the game. And you always win because you have only your life. But they have nothing else to menace you.

That is why I always explain the state security department, that communist is a big punishment with small rewards. If you don’t want the rewards, they cannot punish you. That is what I demonstrate them – that even though I was in a solitary confinement, I was more powerful than them.