Guillermo Fariñas Hernández (born 3 January 1962) ("El Coco") is a Cuban doctor of psychology,[1] independent journalist[2] and political dissident in Cuba.

As a special forces soldier in the Commandos for Demolition, Penetration, and Sabotage, he participated in eleven missions into the UNITA rearguard, for which he received military decorations.

In 1981, Fariñas went to the U.S.S.R. to Tambov where he studied at the Airborne Academy but, due to official negligence, suffered exposure to a chemical nerve agent that damaged his health to the point that he had to be discharged from the army.

According to Fariñas, this was because he had denounced the corruption of the director of the hospital where he worked, a Central Committee member, to the National Revolutionary Police Force, and as a result was accused of various false crimes, including illegal possession of arms.

[5] In a 2007 interview with Harper's magazine ("The Battle of Ideas"), Fariñas described State Security officers detaining him in Santa Clara, forcibly committing him to a psychiatric hospital ward overnight, and supervising his injection with unknown drugs.

In 2006, Fariñas held a seven-month hunger strike to protest against the Internet censorship in Cuba, in particular the closure of the Ciber Cafe in Santa Clara by State Security forces.

It is not medicine that should resolve a problem that was created intentionally to discredit our political system -- but rather the patient himself, unpatriotic people, foreign diplomats and the media that manipulates him.

[9] On July 8, 2010, Fariñas ended his 134-day hunger strike Thursday, following signs the communist government is making good on its promise to release 52 political prisoners.

[13] On 3 June 2011, Fariñas declared his hunger strike to protest the Cuban authorities' response to fellow dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto García's death.

Fariñas called for those responsible for the reported police beating three days before Soto died in a Santa Clara hospital to be brought to justice.

[17] In 2016, Fariñas and other members of the opposition organization Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) protested against the increasingly violent repression of dissidents and activists.