The Fertile Prison
Fidel Castro in Batista's jails
Mario Mencía
The Fertile Prison is the story of the period in which Fidel Castro and his young comrades, including two women, were imprisoned after the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada military garrison, and how the Batista dictatorship was eventually forced to release them.
From solitary confinement, Fidel Castro wrote: "I don't think we are wasting our time in prison... For us, this prison is our academy of struggle, and when the time comes, nothing will be able to stop us."
Mario Mencía has included many previously unpublished documents, such as Fidel Castro's letters from prison, as well as an extensive glossary and chronology - invaluable for students of Cuban history.
Mario Mencía is a journalist, essayist, associate professor at the University of Havana, author of several books on Cuban history. He is one of the most reputable historians of the 1952-56 insurrectional period of the Cuban revolution. Tad Szulc (author of Fidel: A Critical Portrait) described Mencía as "Cuba's most serious historian."
Mario Mencía’s ‘The Fertile Prison’ is the most comprehensive account of Castro’s time in prison.
—Peter Bourne, biographer of Fidel Castro
