In 1977, I was a political prisoner in Combinado del Este Prison in Havana province. I had already been in prison for more than 17 years.
One day, I was suddenly called out and taken to the State Security Headquarters in Villa Marista without being given a reason. At Villa Marista I was interrogated repeatedly regarding some information I was supposed to have passed on to “counterrevolutionary” exiles back in 1963!!
{Then} one night, I was taken out of Security Headquarters and driven through Havana. At one point I was forced to lie down on the floor of the car. Soon we arrived at the National Psychiatric Hospital.
The Psychiatric Hospital is one of the “jewels” of the revolution. It is a required stop for all foreign delegations that visit Cuba. The foreigners, of course, are not taken to the chamber of horrors where they put me known officially as the Carbó-Serviá Ward. There is another ward called the Castellanos Ward which is just as bad.
There were about 80 men in this ward, all violently disturbed. The smell of urine and excrement was sickening. There would be brawls among the patients every so often, and shattered bloody bodies had to be carted out. During my stay there five patients were killed in brawls among themselves.
My first encounter with group electroshock treatments occurred one night when I saw a team of four men, directed by a man called Mederos, who was dressed as an orderly, enter the ward. Six patients were grabbed and rubber pieces stuffed in their mouths. They were thrown on the floor in a row side by side. Right there, on the floor, the electrodes were applied to both sides of their heads and the shocks applied. Six bodies started to contort one by one. The next six were then captured by the orderlies, forced to lie down and the procedure repeated. By then, the floor was already running with urine, excrement and vomit. The shocks were applied to the temples of the patient, but to me, they applied most of the shocks to the testicles instead. I received about 14 electroshocks this way.
This nightmare, this terrible episode lasted for five months. It took place in 1977, in the 18th year of the revolutionary government of Cuba.