CHRONICLE OF AN UNFORGETTABLE AGONY: CUBA'S POLITICAL PRISONS


By Jesus Hernandez Cuellas
Julio Antonio Yebra M.D. shook the hand of each member of his firing squad and told them that he forgave them. The order to shoot mixed with his own scream condemning communism, and his lifeless body hung from the pole to which it had been tied. Seconds later we heard the final shot to the head. In one of the prison wings at the Presidio Modelo in Isla de Pinos, Cuco Muniz and Armando Valladares were having a conversation in front of cell 35 when a human shadow fell from above and crashed on the cement, down below. It was Jesus Lopez Cuevas. He had thrown himself, in a suicidal jump, from the fourth floor. He was dead.

Pedro Luis Boitel, former candidate to the presidency of the University's Student Federation, believed that human beings should demand respect for themselves through any means. He undertook a tenacious hunger strike which led to international repercussions and complicitous silence. He died dehydrated on May 24, 1972, after 53 days without nourishment in a Cuban prison. Before then he had taken part in many hunger strikees.

Fortunately, Mario Chanes de Armas survived that hell, but at the price of spending 30 years in Castro's prisons, which turned him into the longest held held political prisoner in the world. Chanes de Armas suffered such fate in spite of having participated alongside Fidel Castro in the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, on July 26, 1953; after having taken part in the Granma trip from Veracruz, Mexico, landing on the eastern coast of Cuba, in 1956, which would mark the beginning of the armed struggle against the Batista regime and which found him, on the eve of the Revolution's triumph, in one of Fulgencio Batista's cells.

"I've never felt hatred or wished for vengeance against anyone, I will never be able to be a judge or a prosecutor", Chanes de Armas stated to CONTACTO, who stayed in prison from July 1961 until July 1991, accused of planning attacks against the leadership of Castro's regime. The former prisoner states that he was never involved with any group planning the murder of any leader. In his book Cuba: Myth and Reality, sociologist Juan Clark states that the highest record of political prisoners in Cuba (at a given time) throughout its history amounted to 60 thousand during the 1960's. Amnesty International points out that in the mid-1970's, some 20 thousand prisoners had been freed. Clark concludes that "in a comparative base, these two amounts would be the equivalent, in a country the size of the United States, in the amount of 1,410,000 and 466,000 during that era".

Juan Clark adds that "this would make Cuba the country with the highest percentage (per capita) of political prisoners in the Western Hemisphere, even higher than the percentage for the Soviet Union", a nation which kept the highest number of dissidents jailed before the process of perestroika and glasnost, started by Mijail Gorbachev during the second half of the 1980's.

Historically, the era with the highest number of political prisoners held in Cuba prior to Fidel Castro in power, had been under the dictatorship of General Gerardo Machado, between 1929 and 1933, when some 5 thousand opponents were jailed. During the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, between 1952 and 1958, some 500 political prisoners were held. The testimonies of some of the protagonists can clearly make the comparison between the treatment received by the prisoners during the different periods. Here's one such important testimony:

"I'm going to dine: spaghetti with calamari, italian chocolates for dessert, freshly brewed Cuban coffee and later an H-Upman #4 (cigar). Don't you envy me?.... When I get some sun in the mornings, wearing shorts and feeling the sea breeze, I think that I'm at the beach. They are going to make me think I'm on vacation! What would Karl Marx say of such revolutionaries?"

The above quotation comes from a letter written by Fidel Castro when he was being held at the Presidio Modelo in Isla de Pinos, serving a 15 year sentence for leading the attack on the Moncada Barracks, in which some 100 people died. Castro and his companions served 20 months in jail, after which they received an amnesty from Batista's regime.