Yoaxis Marcheco Suárez described in her blog “Isla Interior” a Cuba from the arteries, unknown to tourists, ignored by some governments and institutions in the world, a “country silenced by some men, but known and appreciated by God,” she wrote.

At the height of the first decade of the 21st century, she believed that this piece of land in the Caribbean Sea was beginning to whisper, and from the whisper, she predicted, it would move to the cry, to the protest, to the indignant word.

Her chronicles were born inside the island, not only because of the spatial reference of Taguayabón, a town “in the interior” where she lived, but also from Marcheco herself, from the island that is each individual and that socialist collectivism had tried to flood.

“In the midst of so much sea and so much internal suffocation and following the example of good Cubans who, in the very mouth of the beast, decided to crush their bonds and open their lips and hearts to express themselves, I decided to overcome all fear to break the overwhelming insularity and escape virtually to the physically unknown world,” she wrote in the first text of the blog.

It was the boom of those platforms that, used by independent creators, began to expose with very personal, self-taught visions, without the trappings of state censorship, a complex and raw Cuba. Marcheco did so from the Christian faith and the natural yearning for freedom associated with it.

The cost of this was exile with her husband, Mario Félix Lleonart, and the couple’s two daughters. In the United States, she published more than one book, completed her master’s degree in theology at the Faculty of Theological Studies in Miami, and her doctorate in Ministry at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. She also continued her activism, calling for and participating in demonstrations in front of the Cuban regime’s embassy in the United States. She became so uncomfortable for the Havana government that Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla accused her and Lleonart, in 2020, of promoting an armed attack against that building in Washington, D.C.

Here is my interview with Yoaxis.

What was it like to be a Christian in the 1980s and 1990s?

I was born in 1973, and I met Christ when I was a little girl. It was a sister from the Mayarí Methodist church in Holguín who told me about Him for the first time. That woman’s name was María Pepa, or at least that’s how all the neighbors knew her, a person full of compassion and passion for the lost.

Her house was right next to the elementary school where I studied from first to third grade. Her yard adjoined the school’s yard. María Pepa took advantage of recess to talk to the children about Christ, and so I expressed my desire to learn about the Bible.

From that moment on, I never missed a single appointment with the one who was my first Sunday School teacher. Every Sunday, when she returned from service, I went to her house and there I received the lesson that she had given to other children in the church.

At that time, congregating could have serious repercussions on people’s lives, whether in their jobs or in continuing their studies. Those who publicly upheld their faith, for example, were prevented from entering universities and were constantly checked by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) and by the political police.

For that reason, my parents let me go to María Pepa’s house, but not to church. The first time I set foot in the Methodist church in my hometown was when I was a teenager. I remember that day as one of the happiest of my life.

I cannot forget Raúl Parra Delgado, one of my classmates who was a believer and preached the gospel to the other boys without fear. It was he who inspired me to go to church to take the Bible lessons that I received for years at María Pepa’s house. Then, in 1992, the dictator Fidel Castro proclaimed the secular character of the State. My frequent attendance at church had no repercussions on my entry to university later in that decade.

How did you and Mario Félix meet? At that time did you agree on ideas about the state of things in Cuba?

We met at the University of Havana, we were both studying the same degree, Scientific Technical Information and Library Science, now called Information Sciences. To be more exact, I met Mario in 1995; the Special Period was raging at that time, and students were very hungry and suffered from other needs. It was very hard to study in those conditions.

In my particular case, my critical eyes on the system were opened thanks to my interaction with a cousin who was born and raised in Havana. Through her, I met a group of young people who spoke to each other as things were. It was there that I first heard someone say, “Down with Fidel.”

That was the moment when I defined something that I had been feeling since I was a teenager and had begun to be aware of the reality that surrounded me: I was anti-communist.

I began to feel happy if the communists did not enroll me in their things, I was apathetic to any activity I was invited to at the university, and I felt proud of being recognized as a “worm.”

Together with two friends from the university, I founded a party — that was before I met Mario. We baptized it as the Locomista Party, that is, of the crazy ones. It was a kind of parody of the Communist Party. That is why we were questioned and called to speak by the University Student Federation.

Our party was quite naive. What we did was read poems and sing. We had a language inspired by Latin with which we spoke among ourselves without running the risk of others understanding, we were like the black sheep of our university group. This is what one of those friends said a few days ago while we were remembering those years. We had the luxury of exercising our freedom in a world full of censorship and control.

I also carried with me, from the beginning of high school, the memory of a Marxist teacher I met in a competition where he was a judge. I am sure that if he was no longer a Marxist teacher, in that teacher a full-fledged opponent was emerging.

That man asked me how I would act if I saw a group of people protesting in the streets. A teenager at last, and without really understanding the nature of the question, I answered that it was assumed (and note that I used the verb assume and I emphasize this because what I want to say is that I was not sure of my answer) that the streets in Cuba were only for revolutionaries. The teacher, with astonishing calm, told me: “Well, the streets in Cuba should belong to all Cubans, don’t you think?”

And there he left me with what they call “the bug” in Cuba. A concern in my conscience that has not left me until today.

So when I met Mario, I was already an anti-communist who fled from any commitment to the regime. I remember that I hid from Ricardo Alarcón and his gang, for example, during those elections where everyone had to participate and vote for everyone, and the then-president of the People’s Power Assembly personally went to look for the students who stayed in their apartments in the Student Residence on F and 3rd, in Havana. I refused to participate in that spectacle and I never tired of criticizing him.

Fortunately, Mario was also clear about his ideas — he was not a communist either. I think he received that from his family.

When and how did you get involved with the opposition?

I became openly linked to the opposition as such in 2009, although I had already signed the Varela Project before, in 2002. Mario was one of the signature collectors, so just hearing what that initiative led by Oswaldo Payá consisted of, I signed.

I don’t think I signed it measuring the possible consequences, just as I didn’t measure the consequences when that same year I slipped away, so to speak, and didn’t go to sign that declaration of the irrevocable nature of socialism in Cuba, which was nothing more than a crude response to the Varela Project that had managed to collect the necessary number of signatures to present its proposal for a plebiscite to Parliament. It collected much more than necessary.

Imagine the aberration of wanting to impose socialism for eternity. I hope that very soon we can eliminate that absurdity by instituting a truly democratic system in our country.

And after the Varela Project?

My first opposition figures, besides Payá, were the journalists Reinaldo Escobar and his wife, Yoani Sánchez, whom I received at my home in September 2009.

Because of that visit I lost my job, and from then on I had to face many other difficulties, even in the church. So I told myself that if the tiger had already begun to receive its stripes, then one more was not important.

I began to write on my blog “Isla Interior,” on the blog “Religión en Revolución,” in Cubano Confesante, in the magazines Convivencia and La Rosa Blanca, in the digital newspaper CubaNet. I participated in Yoani Sánchez’s Academy, which offered a space in her house to teach us how to tweet blindly from a super archaic cell phone, with keys that had more than one function.

I will not forget that to type letters you had to press one of the keys several times. Still, I was happy with my little phone, and that’s how I sent my first messages to the outside world. I also do not forget that that first little telephone was put in my hands by my friends the Reverend Ricardo Santiago and Katia, a married couple with whom we shared more than one adventure in those first years of “counterrevolutionary” activity.

I also don’t forget that I won my first laptop in a contest that my friends Idabell and Armando Añel launched on Twitter, which consisted of writing in just 140 characters what one wanted for Cuba. That machine was very useful for my activism and ended up in the hands of the political police when Mario and I were arrested on a central street in Camajuaní in 2014. They took us to the police station and took our computers from us. They never returned them.

Despite everything that has come upon me since I took my first step as an open opponent of the regime, I have not stopped in my desire to express myself and be free, and to support those who fight alongside me.

I want to tell you that those first years of my walk in the opposition were unique. There was tremendous harmony among the known opponents. I remember seeing them all in Estado de Sats, or in the room of Yoani and Reinaldo Escobar. Initiatives were pouring in.

I was able to meet several political prisoners of the Black Spring such as Félix Navarro, José Daniel Ferrer, whom I also had the honor of receiving in my home and the privilege of sleeping in his and his family’s home, in Santiago de Cuba. I also met Ángel Moya, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, Iván Hernández Carrillo, so many...

I also had the privilege of meeting several Ladies in White or traveling to Pinar del Río to the headquarters of the think tank Convivencia. I would not finish telling everything in an interview.

Why and when did the idea of ??creating the Patmos Institute come about?

The Patmos Institute was founded on February 2, 2013 in the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Taguayabón, where Mario was pastor for several years, until 2016 when we left Cuba for good.

The presentation of the Institute took place during the special service celebrating the 74th anniversary of the church. For these anniversary services, the temple was filled with people, despite the persecution that the political police had started against us and against those who approached us.

That night there was not a single empty pew. Several pastors from neighboring churches who had come to celebrate the event with us were also present, and some opposition members from the province participated. It was a truly interesting and challenging night.

Among the founders, I must highlight the priest Felix Ben Castilla, who was then a member of an independent denomination not recognized by the regime. The idea of ??naming the Institute after Patmos was his.

Since its beginnings, the Institute has had the objective of holding discussion forums or debates in which people of different creeds and ideas have participated. In those early days of its creation, several were held. Ones that I remember very well were two in which the opposition member and activist Oscar Elías Biscet participated as a panelist. The first of these forums was held at the Luis Manuel González Peña Baptist Seminary in the city of Santa Clara, where both Mario and I were professors. I remember that Dr. Biscet defended his creationist position against other different opinions.

A short time later, a forum was held whose topic of debate was the right to life, and in this, Biscet argued against abortion. This last forum was held at the Capuchin Catholic Church in Santa Clara. That day was intense, because the political police surrounded the church and then “took measures” against one of the priests, who had to end up leaving Cuba.

But Patmos was not only that, it is much more. One of the most important tasks it carries out, if not the most important, is to monitor the situation of religious freedom in Cuba, investigate cases of violation of that right by the regime, and document them and report them to the relevant international entities.

Note that it is appropriate to clarify that Patmos not only defends and watches over the freedom of Cuban Christians, but fights for the right to religious freedom to be respected for all, regardless of religion. Atheists are included here.

In your case, what were the most critical moments and experiences in your resistance against the socialist regime?

There were several. I try to think little about it, although I do not fail to understand that it is important not to forget any.

The most critical of all moments was that Easter Sunday, March 20, 2016, the same day that the then-president of the United States, Barack Obama, landed in Cuba.

We had been several days with the church surrounded by officers of the political police, without being able to leave. Patrols, jeeps, men dressed in civilian clothes. This happened every time an important visitor arrived or a significant date was celebrated.

That day, after Sunday school, Mario decided to exercise his right to freedom of movement, to leave the house. I followed him with my cell phone in hand to document what we sensed was going to happen. Our daughter, Rachel, who was eight years old at the time, was next to me. When the soldiers jumped on Mario to restrain him and put him in the patrol car, she began to cry.

It was terrible for me to try to calm her down and, at the same time, continue filming that scene. I’ll tell you something: I’ve seen that video only once. Mario was taken to a police station, but I was detained in my own home under constant surveillance and my cell phone was blocked, without access to the internet or calls, during the three days that Obama was on the island.

I was able to get the video with the help of a brother from the church. He took it on a flash drive to Leonardo Rodríguez Alonso, a member of the Patmos Institute, who was in charge of sending it to Martí Noticias and, in that way, it was made known to the world.

As a Christian leader, do you think there are connections between the fight for freedom and your faith?

First of all, fighting against the oppression of a dictator will never go against God.

He made us free. There is nothing and no one who has the right to usurp that freedom that the sovereign God granted to all of us. To fight for the freedom of Cuba is to seek justice, and the word of God commands us to seek justice. It is to give voice to the silenced and defend them, it is like helping those little ones that Jesus refers to in the gospels.

I do not see any contradiction between my faith and my fight for the freedom of Cuba, quite the opposite. I am sure that God is the first who wants Cuba free from a decadent and oppressive system. Of course, God wants us to count on Him for that fight, to put Him at the forefront of all the battles. I hope that all Cubans can understand that.

Was there any specific event that marked a before and after in the decision to leave Cuba for exile in 2016?

I think that the Easter Sunday that I told you about was the main trigger. To be honest, one of the things that left the biggest impression on me was seeing so many people from the town watching, like spectators of a movie whose plot was foreign to them. No one was fazed by what they were doing to Mario.

Then, those days of almost total solitude in my house, surrounded by a dozen police officers. Afterward, the usual: many people from the town stopped looking at us and greeting us. Fear has always been a weapon in the hands of Castroism.

But what really made us value going into exile was our daughter Rachel. Mario put this decision to a family vote and Rachel, without thinking twice, with astonishing determination, said that we had to leave. It was impossible not to hear that voice and obey it.