Andres Carrion Alvarez speaks to the Times Free Press’s Tyler Jett and Ken Barrett at his home on Thursday. Barrett acted as a translator. Alvarez was arrested in 2012 for shouting “Down with Communism!” during a a papal visit to the island. He and his wife have sought asylum from the United States and are now living in Chattanooga.
A man is taken away by security as he shouts “Down with the Revolution! Down with the dictatorship!” shortly after Pope Benedict XVI arrived to Revolution Square for a Mass in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer identified the protester as Andres Carrion Alvarez, a 38-year-old resident of the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, and that he was still in police custody as of Friday March 30, 2012.From a second-floor balcony in the Park Village Apartment complex, a man in a jacket and a beanie leaned against the rail and stared across the parking lot to the other side of the complex, to a first-floor front door. His door.
The man, 41-year-old Andrés Carrión Alvarez, says he keeps watch to make sure his one-bedroom apartment off North Germantown Road is safe. Every day, he does “security work.” He declined to elaborate on what that entails, just in case the wrong people find out.
He says his enemies are many. He says those loyal to the Cuban government have never forgiven him for what he did two years ago, when he protested in front of international reporters as Pope Benedict XVI prepared to conduct Mass in Santiago, Cuba, Carrión’s hometown.
Since that day – March 26, 2012 – Carrión has been imprisoned, beaten, freed, targeted and jailed again. Last year, the United States granted him asylum. And two months ago, he came to Chattanooga. It was the government’s decision, though he has no complaints.
He likes the freedom here. He likes the peace, too, though he still fears that undercover Cuban agents will try to find him.