Huber Matos - Life After Prison

Life After Prison

Matos got reunited with his wife and children, who had left Cuba during the 1960s, in Costa Rica. They then moved to Miami where he resides to this day. Matos, and his son Huber Rogelio Matos Araluce (Huber Matos Jr.), became active participants in the U.S.-based opposition to the Castro regime. He wrote a book about his experiences, Cómo llegó la noche (How the Night Came), which is available in Spanish and in French (Et la nuit est tombée).

Matos has preformed the secretary general duties at Cuba Independiente y Democrática (CID), a Miami-based organization founded in October 1980 in Venezuela.

In October 1993 Huber Matos' son Huber Matos Jr. got indicted along with 11 other individuals in the $3.3 million medicare fraud case involving a Miami clinic called Florida Medical & Diagnostic Center Inc. that was co-owned by Matos Jr. and Juana Mayda Perez Batista. Unlike the other 11 defendants, Matos Jr. wasn't available to U.S. authorities since he had been living in Costa Rica since January 1993 where he owned a radio station and directed that country's arm of CID. In February 1994, U.S. authorities formally submitted an extradition request for Matos Jr. to Costa Rica, which Matos Sr. denounced as a "lie to discredit me, my son and CID". However, in June 1994, the Costa Rica supreme court blocked Matos Jr.'s extradition, ruling he could not be turned over to U.S. authorities because he had obtained Costa Rican citizenship. In 1995, Juana Mayda Perez Batista along with 10 co-defendants plead guilty to the variety of fraud charges.

While visiting Germany as guest of the Berlin International Literature Festival in 2003, in the wake of the Cuban government's crackdown on dissidents (the so-called Black Spring), 84-year-old Matos appealed on the European Union states to impose economic sanctions on Cuba.

Matos furthermore founded the Huber Matos Foundation for Democracy, a Jacksonville, Florida-based organization whose proclaimed goal is to "foster democratic rule, human rights, social justice and education in Latin America" while most of its efforts and resources are invested in "promoting democracy in Cuba".