Jorge Olivera Castillo

Jorge Olivera Castillo (b. Havana, Cuba, 1961) is a Cuban poet and dissident.

He worked as a journalist for the Cuban state-run television station ICRT for 10 years.[1] He was briefly detained in 1992 for trying to leave the country on a raft;[1] in 1993, he left his position at ICRT and began writing reports for Radio Martí, a U.S.-funded, Miami-based station critical of the Cuban government.[2] With two other journalists, he founded an independent news agency, Havana Press, in 1995, and later became the director.[1]

Olivera Castillo was arrested in 2003 as part of the Black Spring crackdown and sentenced to eighteen years in prison for writing articles "against national independence and Cuba's economy".[3] In prison, he spent nine months in solitary confinement, and suffered from a range of health problems.[2][1] He began writing poetry and fiction while in prison as a coping mechanism.[2] His wife, Nancy Alfaya, became a member of the Ladies in White, agitating for his release.[4][2] After international pressure,[5] he was released for health reasons after serving only 18 months of his sentence, but remained under close supervision.[2][3] He is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University.[6]