 Five years ago, Honduran activist Edwin Espinal sat in a supermax prison facing trumped-up charges of arson, property damage, and use of homemade explosive material. Espinal was arrested by authorities on January 19, 2018, on the eve of a week-long national strike organized by social movements and organizations against electoral fraud committed by Juan Orlando Hernandez in the November 2017 presidential elections. The blatant fraud had sparked massive protests in cities and towns across Honduras for weeks and saw over 100 points of road blockades. During that period, over 40 people were killed in the violent repression of the protests. The charges against Edwin were related to a protest that took place on January 12 in Tegucigalpa, wherein damages were caused to the Marriott Hotel. He was one of the 27 people from across Honduras who had been criminalized over their participation in the weeks-long mass protests. Edwin ended up spending over 19 months in prison, facing constant threats to his life, enduring inhumane conditions, and was denied access to basic services. Espinal spoke to people's dispatch about his experience in prison and how despite overwhelming challenges, he fought for dignity for him and his fellow prisoners, achieved his release, and was eventually absolved of all charges. In the same way, as they killed Avertita for defending the common goods of indigenous peoples, other prisoners are still in prison, without evidence against them. There are prisoners in prison, and they haven't been able to get out of the prison, because this regime uses prisoners as a means of espionage. If you know espionage, they use them to scare the people. Look at this, what's going to happen to them. You're going to prison too, if you're serving as a stone to the government. And well, since 2018, the protests began, as I was saying, this country was burning. Well, the government didn't cease its persecution. Listen carefully, from 2009 until 2018. I don't know, this persecution, until they arrested me, and put me in charge of terrorism, for destroying private property, for making artisanal explosives, and damage and fire. Well, all those charges that they put me in, I think, together, had almost like a perp chain in prison. Yes, the funny thing is that I was in prison, and I, according to me, in the first 24 hours I was going to return home. Listen carefully, once they sent me to a court of national jurisdiction, which was created precisely by the regime of Juan Orlando, to process all the members of the opposition. They sent me directly to a battalion. The offices of that court were inside a battalion. The judge, Claudio Aguilar, is the same one who had signed the order to fill my house. The same judge who was going to determine if I was innocent and put me in my house, or if I could continue in the process and defend my freedom and continue in the process. No, he said, without any discussion, go to a maximum security prison. Yes, they sent me to a maximum security prison, and from the first day they made me know that I was already sentenced. Within the maximum security prison, those who control there is organized crime. And who thinks they control organized crime? The drug traffickers, the Honduras. They work with criminal organizations like the Maras and Pandillas. They control them. They filled this country with drugs. After the coup, here was a country of transit, of drugs. They did what they did in the planes, they downloaded the drugs and crossed them through the border of Guatemala to send them to El Chapo, to El Chapito, there, to Mexico. And so, Juan Orlando and his little brother, Tony Hernández, who is in prison there in New York, worked together. But this one came out more intelligent than all the drug traffickers and political drug traffickers. This one decided to make Honduras a market for drugs too. They control so much drugs that they have the ability to get out, right? To get out of here, in these countries, and take them at the same time to the north. Because the drug traffickers from before, they didn't. They just passed them here. They didn't leave drugs here. Brother, even before the coup, almost the cocaine was drugs that were hardly known here. Today, people can buy them in a corner, in a sale of tortillas, a sale of tacos. They sell you tacos and they can also sell you drugs at the same time. The drug was so accessible and the violence in this country after the coup, right? And so, I got to the maximum security prison and they gave me a very special receipt. Yes, from the moment I arrived, they asked me to take all my clothes off. Of course, I only left with my underwear and they put me in an isolation cell. And I thought it was part of the process and that I was going to be there for maybe 24 hours. And what do you think? A month passed there. A month passed there. And they took me out because they couldn't stand it anymore. Because they just passed by knocking on the doors and breaking the windows windows. That's why they took me out of there and they sent me to where the general population is. But where I was there, I mean, a month, I mean, I had never been arrested. I had never been processed, legally. I have never seen the laws. I have tried to behave like a good citizen, right? To give an example, because one cannot say that we fight against injustice and that we want a better country and we are violating the laws. So I always tried to behave well. And one day or the other, I am at the door of a maximum security prison. But wait a minute, you don't know that just a few months Juan Orlando Hernández had closed the other criminal centers that were already in very bad conditions. And it was supposed that for that he had created the maximum security prisons. But Juan Orlando Hernández created them for the opposition. Because he knew that after 2018 there was going to be a lot of repression. That there was going to be a lot of protests. So, well, there I was for a month and then they sent me to the modules of where the population is. About a few months, I think about two months, three months of being there was the first massacre. Imagine experimenting, I mean, looking at one, right? How the prisoners got caught among themselves. In a maximum prison where it is supposed that they should not have weapons inside. They assume that they should not have drugs inside. There they even had guns inside. The maximum security prison. And, according to them, they sent me to the maximum security prison to give me security. Only because I was a political prisoner. But it was to give me security, right? With those plans they sent me there. They told me the same things about the seas and pandas. You have to take care of yourself. Here your head already has a price. They were not interested in hurting me because I was not a person who came from a criminal structure or anything. They knew that I was out and fought against the conditions that took them to the prisons. So, rather they respected us and we were always kind, they tried to help us in whatever they could. We were in the middle of the most violent prisons in all of the prisons. In other words, in all of the prisons that were closed by old and inhuman infrastructures and all the most dangerous prisons were sent there. And they sent us there. Then, when we were inside, we realized that we were in the middle of the two seas. There were 18 of us and there were 13 of us. They were enemies to death. Outside. And we were in the middle of another. Like political prisoners. I said, there were some scouts there. And we were always in the middle of another. The police came. The military police were the ones in charge of the prison. And when there was a riot, what did the bastards do? Boom, boom, boom, boom. With tear gas bombs. And we were locked up. There was nowhere to grab. And what they were going to do was throw tear gas bombs. So the prisoners were in a state of great tension there when we arrived. And for that reason, we were hungry inside. Because the same conditions inside the prison, what the people were doing, they were killing each other. The same conditions that they had created inside the prison. So we implemented hunger strike. And we achieved the goals. Because they were sending water through the pipe, dirty water, river water. They were going to bring the pipes full of water to the river. And they were only unloaded in a tank there. They were going to bring a glass of water like this. Coffee. It was coffee. And that was the water we had to drink. And that was the water we had to drink. So many people got sick from the stomach. There were no medicines, either. There were many people with headaches, people who needed medical attention. Because they were 20 years old. People with a high level of stress had a headache. At any moment they came out of control. And we were in the middle of that, but we managed to get medical attention. We asked for medical attention inside the module where we were. Because we were 180 people in each module. So we achieved it. And we achieved that they brought us pure water, purified water, too. We achieved it. We achieved everything. So, of course, the prisoners, they always respected us. And they were always helping us. But they knew that they didn't need others. If there are orders to follow, we follow them, we obey them, even if they are our mother. That's what they told us. They were practically warning us. One time Karen Spring came in and asked one of them about the headaches that they had, that if they had plans with us, and they told them, not now, but I think it's better to get them out of here. I really don't know how I got out of there. 19 months later, we had to fight body to body, to get our freedom. Because we couldn't continue there. We couldn't continue. So we managed to get out of the module. We managed to get out of the module, we got trapped in a kitchen. We opened the doors and we managed to get out. So the directors took advantage to repress us even more, in the conditions we were in. But we preferred to be in a kitchen of 2 x 2, of 3 x 3 meters, to be in the middle of the population. Because in the middle of the population they were preparing themselves for a massacre. For the last one. Well, for the last one for us. They continued there. Every time they went out to the field to receive the sun, it was an hour every two weeks. Two hours a month. Every time they went out to the field they were looking to get a piece of varia, a piece of wire, and they made their knives to protect themselves. So, they no longer simulated. Sometimes they were like this in front of one. They were like this. And they were looking at each other. They were sharpening their knives and their knives. And... And no, before that happened we got stuck in that kitchen and we started another hunger strike. Another hunger strike. It was the second one. We were all weak with the stomach, with that parasite stuck in the stomach. So, we were all sick, all weak, and that's how we started a hunger strike. And... that's where we got freedom. Because we coordinated with the people, with Karen Spring and all the human rights defenders outside, that outside they spread it, that they made it public, that we were in a hunger strike, and that we were determined to die without hunger, but not die in the hands of those who were going to kill us, of our vegetables inside. So, after five days, our... our... It wasn't a letter of freedom. It was a... to go to the audience. It was a notification to go to the audience. And we went to the audience and they gave us the... Substitutive measures so that we could defend ourselves in freedom. And... it was... it was hard. And well, until recently I went to trial and finally I had to do it, right? From the beginning, right? But as they already had everything well planned, well planned and... And then what had to happen happened and...