Presidio Modelo
The Presidio Modelo (Spanish for model prison ) was designed on the model of the panopticon prison on the Cuban island Isla de la Juventud (formerly Isle of Pines ).
The prison was built under dictator Gerardo Machado 1926-1928. During the Second World War, two of the prison belonging to the building served to house interned German and Japanese nationals. After the victory of the US-led Fidel Castro Revolution in 1959, the Presidio Modelo was used to political opponents, counter-revolutionaries, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and others who did not fit in the new socialist state to intern. The five circular buildings, one of which was the middle of the dining room were dimensioned for 2500 inmates, but in fact the prison was having 6,000 to 8,000 prisoners often crowded. In 1961 there were therefore several prison riots and hunger strikes among the mainly political prisoners of the new Castro government.
According to statements of former prisoners preparations were made shortly before the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the prisons ( together with the inmates ) to blow in case of a liberation attempt by TNT charges in the underground passages. The explosives were removed after the missile crisis in the fall of 1962.
On a total of five floors, there were around numbered cells, a total of 465 per building. Each cell was originally designed for two people and had a toilet and a wash basin. From a central tower, which was only accessible via an underground passage, all cells could be seen around the clock. On the ground floor the showers were along the wall.
Most of the surviving insurgents of the attack on the Moncada Barracks, such as the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, Ramiro Valdés, Juan Almeida and Mario Chanes de Armas were interned in the Presidio Modelo 1953-1955. For the prominent political prisoners, but there was a separate wing in which they were kept isolated from the other prisoners. In this rectangular room was a bed next to the other, and the light was never identified. For this tract there was a sanitary room with three showers, two toilets and a sink.
Among the thousands of political prisoners who were imprisoned here after the Cuban Revolution, included, among others Huber Matos, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, Armando Valladares, Luis Andrés Vargas Gómez, Pedro Luis Boitel and 1959 at the war crimes trial against members of the Cuban Air Force condemned.
The prison was closed in 1967, declared a national monument and is now a museum. So you can here, for example, visit the beds in which are located prominent prisoners. In the former administration building now an elementary school is housed.