The voice in the recording is tense, fuzzy and hard to make out amid a riot of background chatter. Inmates yell to one another in Spanish. Someone slams a door.
Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez, 42, hunched over the phone in a hallway inside Kilo 8, a maximum-security prison in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, recounting the past few weeks.
On April 15,five days after U.S. and Cuban officials held secret talks and delivered an ultimatum in Havana, two Cuban state security agents visited Castillo in his jail cell, according to a series of audio interviews made for USA TODAY.
The agents made him an offer: Leave Cuba or stay in prison.
The next day, they made the same offer to Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, at his maximum-security prison in Guanajay, southwest of Havana.
