Rivero was born on 23 November 1945 in Morón, Camagüey, in central Cuba.[2]
In his youth, he was an ardent follower of
communist
Cuba.
Dissident work
In 1999 Rivero was awarded
World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years.[3]
During the Cuban government's 2003 "
James Cason.[4] Rivero was convicted and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. He spent his first 11 months in a tiny one-man cell with no windows or any contact to the outside world. The arrest and imprisonment of Rivero was later defended by Cuban writer and culture minister Abel Prieto who argued that Rivero "was not arrested for his views, but for receiving US funding for his collaboration with a country that has besieged our island." As Castro fades, a crop of new Cuban leaders Rivero asserted, in prison interrogations as well as in public, that all the funds which he received consisted of fees for his articles, paid by the publishing media, not by governments or political organizations. His account of his life and his treatment by the Cuban government is given in his book "Proof of Contact".[5]
