Ellos Cuentan Cuba

Storyline

Through the stories of five journalists on the island, the series of interviews Ellos cuentan Cuba portrays the challenges and obstacles to the development of the independent press. Detentions, jail threats, independent communicators live for decades under Socialist tyranny. For successive years, Cuba has been the last country in the hemisphere and one of the last on the planet in terms of freedom of the press, according to the NGO Reporters Without Borders. The fifth episode of Ellos cuentan Cuba was released after Suárez filmed the last interview (with journalist Manuel Alejandro León Vázquez), and an operation by the National Revolutionary Police and the Political Police arrested him on Friday, August 9, 2019 while he was in the city of Guantánamo. Suárez traveled to that province with the purpose of carrying out a series of interviews with a view to future journalistic work. He intended to talk with the independent journalist Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces, sentenced by the regime for his work as an independent journalist, and with the family of pastors Ramón Rigal and Ayda Expósito, also prosecuted, in his case for educating to the children at home. After 5 hours of interrogations, prison threats, confiscation of assets and deportation to the neighboring province of Santiago de Cuba, Suárez was released. He managed to keep the footage of the interview with Manuel Alejandro León Vázquez, for the last chapter of the series, thanks to a backup hidden in a secret pocket of his backpack.