Hunger strike, sovereign action of the rightsless.

By: Pedro Corzo - 24/08/2026

Guest columnist.
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Hunger strikes have been a resource used by numerous people in all corners of the world to claim rights, or simply to draw attention to a situation that is considered unfair.

It is an extremely dangerous decision that puts one's own life at risk or carries the danger of suffering very tragic consequences. It is an action that borders on suicide, with the added factor that death can become a long and exhausting agony.

I have no doubt that if an investigation were carried out on which countries have had the most hunger strikes by their citizens in the last sixty years, Cuba would be among the top three, despite the fact that numerous proofs are demanded that the Castro regime is indifferent to hunger strikers and the protests they cause.

I have spent many years trying to draw attention to hunger strikers. I have addressed this issue on numerous occasions because, even when their demands are met, the hunger striker will survive with lasting effects that severely impact their living conditions.

The first person to die from a hunger strike in Cuba was student leader Pedro Luis Boitel, on May 25, 1972. His ordeal lasted 52 days. He had already carried out numerous hunger strikes previously, which is why his physical condition was not the best.

Boitel, like the rest of the hunger strikers anywhere in the world, demonstrated a moral fortitude, a courage to slowly accept an inevitable death, that even those who reject this way of demanding their rights or demanding respect for their dignity, feel admiration for the capacity of these people to dedicate themselves to the cause they defend.

The Castro tyranny has been responsible for the deaths of at least 14 political prisoners during these 67 years of oppression, and it is to be expected, though hopefully not, that this painful list will increase because there is no shortage of Cubans who, to paraphrase Jose Martí, although there are many men without honor, there are others who have it to spare, as has been done by the journalist and director of the independent news agency “Santa Clara Visión” Guillermo del Sol Pérez, on hunger strike since August 13 of this year.

The independent journalist on hunger strike is not demanding anything for himself. His voluntary sacrifice requires the release of 18 political prisoners and he criticizes the regime for revoking the freedom of Leonel Tristá, a protester in the massive anti-government demonstrations of July 11, 2021, who was sentenced to eight years in prison and who, at the end of June, carried out another hunger strike at the Third Unit of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) in Santa Clara.

Sol Pérez suffers from two chronic illnesses, hypertension and diabetes, to which we must add his age, more than fifty years old and his participation in other strikes such as one he carried out, for more than 40 days, in 2019, in which he was expelled from the Arnaldo Millian Castro hospital in the city of Santa Clara.

The striker's son, Adrián, reported, according to the Cuban publication 14ymedio, that his father "has difficulty speaking and seems somewhat disoriented. He has pain in some joints and kidney pain. He has also been unable to urinate today, and the situation is becoming worrying due to the passing days and the fact that the biological clock doesn't wait," his son added.

Reading these statements from the Cuban publication, I felt a deep chill as I recalled the testimony of Osvaldo Figueroa Vázquez, a fellow prisoner who assumed the historical responsibility of keeping a diary of Pedro Luis Boitel's hunger strike.

“Maqueca,” as we call Figueroa, wrote in the diary published by Ángel de Fana, something he reiterated in the documentary “Boitel, Dying in Installments” by filmmaker Daniel Urdanivia and produced by the Cuban Institute of Historical Memory against totalitarianism. It was very similar to what Adrián, Guillermo del Sol Pérez’s son, said: “He rinsed his mouth because he was throwing up. He didn’t drink yesterday or urinate all day. He hasn’t today either.” Pedro died two days later.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».