The Juan Juan Almeida Affair: Dying to Live

A Hunger Strike for access to health care & family














Juan Juan Almeida is in Miami with his family and in the process of obtaining much needed medical care for a degenerative autoimmune/inflammatory disease: ankylosing spondylitis which the Cuban healthcare system was unable (or unwilling) to treat. Human rights activists and dissidents have been left emaciated through a process of ill treatment resulting in malnutrition and in at least one case paraplegic. To avoid their fate this son of past priviledge had to undergo a water only hunger strike and risk death to save his life and see his family again.

Although Juan Juan Almeida was the son of one of the political insiders of the Cuban dictatorship and Fidel Castro's godson he had fallen out of favor with the regime. When his father, Comandante Juan Almeida died, he was kicked out of his father's funeral. Despite a nice home and family abroad was otherwise treated not like one of the well connected but like an average Cuban. No longer able to travel freely since 2003 nor given access to state of the art health care available to the nomenklatura and foreigners. Human Rights Watch documented the travel restrictions placed on him in their 2010 report.

As years passed and the degenerative disease progressed and the risk of being physically crippled increased along with the pain. Juan Juan began to protest his situation. Escalating into new tactics over time and finally arriving at the ultimate non-violent method of protest: the water only hunger strike. Since, he was not in prison, he was able to announce his hunger strike on camera and issue his specific demands which were to be able to travel out of Cuba to see a doctor and embrace his family.



He was able to provide periodic updates like the one below given to Yoani Sanchez six days into the hunger strike.



After beginning the hunger strike he would still resort to some of his earlier high profile tactics, for example, taking to the streets demanding his right to travel. His relationship with prominent Cuban bloggers like Claudia Cadelo and Yoani Sanchez let the world know and see first hand his protests. Eventually he would begin his own blog and communicate to the world.



There are a number of factors of why his hunger strike ended with his arrival in Miami and not his death unlike the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. It is important to analyze what were the different factors and circumstances that led to the different outcomes.


Michael Nagler in his course an Introduction to Nonviolence filmed in the fall of 2006 offers a great analysis of fasts and hunger strikes beginning at 46 minutes 38 seconds, and is highly recommended for a deeper understanding of fasts and hunger strikes. In the video Nagler offers a word of caution: "Nonviolence is not a feel good operation its very scientific you have to know when to do what."

Nagler's Five rules for Hunger strikes

1. Have to be the right person for the job. Not to be used by just anybody.
2. Right audience. (You should only fast against someone who was in sympathy with you on a very deep level. Gandhi never fasted against the British.)
3. Doable demand
4. Last Resort
5. Consistent with the rest of your life

Nagler describes fasting unto the death within nonviolence:

"This is not a case of suicide. You are not killing yourself. You are risking death. What you are doing is putting your life into the hands of another person." ... "You are not killing yourself but you are saying to the person that your behavior is so unacceptable that if you continue it its going to kill me. It is an extreme case of taking on the suffering that is in a situation." ...This is different from a threat because what you are saying to the person is "I am going to exhibit to you mirror back to you the ultimate consequences of what you are doing." ... "This is an act of truth. You are killing us - you are killing our people and I'm going to show you that you are doing it to awaken your conscience."...Thats why you have to be carrying on a conversation on a nonverbal level.

There are no guarantees in nonviolent resistance as there are not in violent resistance but in studying the terrain and observing the strategy and tactics carried out one can gain an idea of what the likelihood is of success. In the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, imprisoned and cut off from the rest of the world with no ties to the dictatorship and years of principled non-violent opposition. This method of protest was consistent with the rest of his life. His demands were doable: stop torturing him and provide decent care to him and other prisoners. It was a last resort after nearly seven years of torture, beatings, and degradation. However, he did not have the right audience: according to Nagler you should only fast against someone who has sympathy with you on a deep level.

Now in the case of Guillermo Fariñas, he was not imprisoned therefore could communicate his strike to the world, but was also someone that the regime did not have ties of affection. On the other hand Juan Juan Almeida did have those ties, as Fidel Castro's godson and the son of one of the Comandante's of the revolution. A man without a history of violence making his protest in line with the rest of his life. Although not a guarantee that they would not let him die it increases his chances of success over both Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Guillermo Fariñas.

Nevertheless Orlando Zapata Tamayo's death shook the dictatorship and in that aftermath increased the odds for both Guillermo and Juan Juan's successful hunger strikes, but in the absence of the Zapata non-violent moment it would have been Juan Juan Almeida with the better chance to succeed.



Nevertheless, it required an escalation to a total hunger strike on August 9, 2010 and hospitalization along with the mediation of Cardinal Jaime Ortega for Juan Juan Almeida to be granted permission to travel and obtain the health care and reunification with his family that he had been asking for since 2003.

Exposing one of the myths about the dictatorship in Cuba: Healthcare

The Late General, his son, and the imprisoned doctor
A tale of medicine and privilege in today's Cuba

Juan Juan Almeida the ailing son of one of Cuba's "revolutionary heroes" the late Juan Almeida Bosque was taken into custody on Friday and detained by security officials for three days after protesting that authorities wouldn't let him leave the country for treatment. According to sources he suffers from a dangerous degenerative disease (rheumatoid spondylitis). Now according to National Arthritis.com the prognosis for this illness is good if treated. This raises two fundamental questions which this blog entry will attempt to answer: 1) Why can't he leave the country to obtain medical care and 2) If Cuba's health care is so wonderful why would the son of a revolutionary leader be seeking treatment outside of the country?

Question #1: Why is Juan Juan Almeida not able to leave the country to obtain life-saving medical treatment?

Answer: In any normal country in which Article 13 section (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is respected which states that: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country" Mr. Almeida, assuming he had the means could enter and exit his country freely. Cuba, however, is a totalitarian state that controls every aspect of an individuals existence much like North Korea and travel in and out of the country is strictly controlled. Cubans must ask the government for permission to cross outside the defined boundaries of Cuba by obtaining a “Travel Permit” and is known as “the white card” due to its color.

Dr. Darsi Ferrer
Question #2: Why would the son of the late revolutionary leader Juan Almeida be seeking healthcare outside of Cuba when official and international media along with travelers and filmmakers such as Michael Moore portray Cuba as a free health care paradise?

Answer: This question cannot be answered as quickly because there are a number of factors involved in the Juan Juan Almeida affair, but for the sake of brevity in this blog entry the focus will be on two of them. MTV's Kurt Loder offers a devastating expose of Micheal Moore's film Sicko where Mr. Loder quotes Cuban doctor Hilda Molina: "Cubans should be treated the same as foreigners. Cubans have less rights in their own country than foreigners who visit here." ABC's John Stossel offered a crushing rebuttal of Mr. Moores assertions:



The video Mr. Stossel refers to below with images of the two aspects of Cuba's healthcare system:



Cuba has a two tiered health care system one tier for the nomenklatura (which includes the sons and daughters of revolutionary leaders like Juan Juan Almeida) and foreign tourists with hard currency which is relatively good and offers care with modern equipment and fully stocked pharmacies, and then there is a second tier which is for everyone else which offers broken down equipment, run down buildings and rooms, and scarce supplies not to mention an appalling lack of hygiene and the denial of certain services and lengthy wait times. The statistics and numbers that the international community has access to with relation to the Cuban healthcare system have been manipulated by the dictatorship. Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist, in Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 describes how her idealistic preconceptions were dashed by 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality,' she observed a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights. This is a scholarly analyis that looks at the Cuban healthcare throughout Cuban history and offers a fair analysis. It is not a political tract. In conclusion, there is a health care system which is rather decent for regime elites and tourists and another one for everyday Cubans that is a disaster. A lot of the footage of the state of real health care in Cuba was provided by Dr. Darsi Ferrer who appears in some of the footage above, and here as well:



Dr. Ferrer is a clear example of why the truth of the Cuban healthcare system remains hidden. He spoke out and documented the reality of the situation and has suffered threats, beatings and has been imprisoned since July 21, 2009 without a trial. Others who have spoken out like Dr. Hilda Molina and Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a prisoner of conscience, serving a 25-year prison sentence have paid dearly for their dissent.

Nevertheless, that does not explain the plight of Juan Juan Almeida, the son of a high ranking "hero of the revolution" and a former member of the Ministry of the Interior. Reinaldo Escobar writing from Havana, Cuba offers an answer to this mystery:

Juan Juan Almeida was long favored because he enjoyed, in Cuba, a privilege that in any other place is merely a right: traveling the world. For a long time this problem of the travel permit was, for him, a procedure he paid no attention to, something like having to weigh your luggage at the airport. Any superficial analysis that might be made of his exceptional situation ended up concluding that this, and other benefits he then enjoyed, was due to his being the son of Juan Almeida Bosque, a select member of the highest revolutionary aristocracy, recently deceased.

One day J.J. fell into disgrace and they let him know that now his name was on another list, that of the excluded. Because of this, he is now not allowed to arrange a medical consultation at a hospital in Europe where, as he himself explains, he might have a chance to find a treatment for an illness that has found no solution in his own country. He wrote a book, conducted interviews, wrote letters, and last Friday, November 27, for the second time went out into the street with a poster on which, it is said, he asked for the resignation of the president of the Republic.

There you have the answer Juan Juan Almeida has fallen out of favor with the regime i.e. the Castro brothers and no longer has access to that world of top flight care and freedom of travel that belongs to the regime elite. He is now another Cuban citizen at the mercy of the nomenklatura that runs the island as its personal fiefdom as he once did but no longer can.