Manguera and Mandarria are the names of the men that prison authorities brought to Yeilis Pérez Cruz's cell at 100th and Aldabó on the third day of her imprisonment and who, she claims, raped her.
"They did it several times and I am sure that many of the July 11 girls who passed through there also suffered the same thing, because that was one of the first attacks they committed against us," she stated in an interview with DIARIO DE CUBA.
She also stated that, both at 100 and Aldabó and in Villa Marista violations of all the prisoners? rights are "constant" and "inhumane."
"These people have no scruples, no feelings, they are devils, they are led by a diabolical dictatorship and they themselves have become devils. If I remember correctly, the name of the one who took those two to my cell was Abel, who, when I arrived at 100 and Aldabó, had the rank of captain, and while I was there they promoted him to major."
Abel is the same name mentioned by another young woman arrested during the July 11 protests in Havana: Gabriela Zequeira Hernández.
"They were on top of me for more than three hours in the most disgusting way. I don't know if they were officers or inmates. From cell to cell you could hear: 'Have they already introduced you to Mandarria?" Pérez Cruz complained as soon as she arrived in the United States in statements to Martí Noticias.
The activist told this newspaper that the order to attack her in this way came "directly" from the investigating official in charge of her, named Freyre. "He played with me, with my mother's and my father's minds. While I was in prison they showed me videos of my daughter walking down the street and told me that the same thing that was happening to me could happen to my daughter, and that they could do nothing to stop it," she says now, now under US protection.
Despite these experiences, the bitter memories that still disturb her, and the fact that she is still separated from her mother and daughter, she insists that she will do everything in her power "to recover." With her family still in Cuba, they continue to receive threats of all kinds from State Security. "While I am free, they want to continue pressuring me to silence me, but they will not succeed," she said.
"My war is not over yet because there are hundreds of political prisoners in Cuba and I will continue condemning this and fighting against this diabolical dictatorship in Cuba. For the moment I am going to regain my strength. I still have other health battles to win. But it is 'Down with the dictatorship! every day', it is 'Homeland, Life and Freedom! for my Cuban people'," she concluded.
Unfortunately, this testimony is not unique. There are signs, and a pattern of violence that recurs in the experiences of other prisoners, indicating that sexual abuse is perpetrated in Cuban prisons in a systematic way.
On July 11, when Gabriela Zequeira Hernández was detained by the Cuban police, she repeated over and over again: "I'm a minor, I'm a minor. No one listened to her. The Cuban police, upon arresting her in the midst of the protests, made her undress and bend over. They also asked her to put her finger in her vagina, although she repeated: "I'm a minor, I'm a minor."
Her complaint was ignored and she was placed under arrest in the prison at 100 and Aldabó, regardless of the fact that she was 17 years old, No news of her arrest was given to her mother. In that prison she was blackmailed into informing on people she did not know as participants in the march, and was threatened with rape and sexual abuse.
"Major Abel came in and told me that he was going to look for me, to go see Manguera and Mandarria," Zequeira told Cubanet after her release.
On condition of anonymity, a 32-year-old woman, now on parole, agreed to tell this newspaper what she experienced at the 100 y Aldabó prison in May 2021. She explained that the first thing that happened to her when she arrived at the prison was that, although she had her period, they refused to give her compresses for the bleeding. "I was like that for three days, bleeding and bleeding without being able to put anything on. To top it off, there was no water, I don't even want to think about that."
The abuse of this young woman did not stop there: "Five days later an officer came to pick me up to take me to another cell, where I was left alone for about half an hour until an officer opened the door and two men raped me for at least two hours straight. They told me that this was what happened for being so rebellious and not wanting to do all the political activities they organized there."
There is also the case of Cuban activist Diasniurka Salcedo Verdecia, who reported at the end of 2020 that two agents of the political police sexually abused her during an arrest.
"I was mistreated in the worst way a human being can be mistreated. When I say mistreated, I mean it (...) All women know what I mean when I say that I was mistreated by two men: sexually and in the most brutal way," she reported in a harrowing statement, which she later deleted, on her Facebook wall.
The Torture in Cuba report, turned out by several civil society organizations, states that several people released from prison after 11-J reported "acts of torture and mistreatment," including 152 reports of "threats of sexual abuse."
"Manguera and Mandarria must be punished by retaliation when Cuba is free. They must be locked up with 2 well-hung black sodomites so that they can bust their rectums."