Inside Castro's Prisons

Armando Valladares was a 23-year-old minor bureaucrat in Cuba's Ministry of Communications when the police arrested him in December 1960. The charge: "counterrevolutionary activity" because he had publicly criticized Fidel Castro's increasing dependence on the Soviet Union. Although he had supported Castro's 1959 overthrow of Dictator Fulgencio Batista, Valladares was, after a two-hour trial, sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. During his confinement, Valladares began to record images and thoughts on the torn-off margins of Castro's official newspaper, Granma. Some of these fragments, which were smuggled out of prison in dirty laundry and sent out of Cuba in toothpaste tubes, were published in Spanish as two books of poems, From My Wheelchair (1977) and The Heart in Which I Live (1980). Prefaced by a long introduction, a collection of some of those same poems, together with many of the prisoner's letters, was published in French as a third volume, Castro's Prisoner (1979). These works established his literary reputation internationally. Last October, thanks to the efforts of French President Fran&3231;ois Mitterrand and the Spanish writer Fernando Arrabal, among others, Castro agreed to release Valladares. He now lives in Madrid, where he spends his time writing. He also runs Internationale de la Resistance, a Paris-based human rights organization that he helped found earlier this year. The group's purpose, he says, is to support the overthrow of all dictators. Following is Valladares' first extensive English-language account of his experiences during almost 22 years in Castro's jails. His narrative is accompanied by illustrations that he drew himself on cigarette papers and that he later managed to smuggle out of prison.

I had not committed any offense. Moreover, nothing was found when my home was searched: neither explosives, nor arms, nor compromising documents. However, the police officers who interrogated me said that despite the absence of material evidence they were convinced that I was a potential enemy of the revolution. The real reason for my imprisonment was that I had constantly warned my friends and compatriots against a Communist takeover of our country. Because I always refused to repudiate my ideas, I was systematically beaten, kept in solitary confinement, physically and mentally tortured. My mind and my hands still bear the traces. I saw my companions tortured; I was both witness to and victim of a violent and ruthless penitentiary system.

There are almost 140,000 political and criminal prisoners in 68 penitentiaries throughout Cuba. In Havana province, for example, one finds prisons such as the Combinado del Este where I was imprisoned and which, at one time, held up to 13,500 detainees. In addition, more than 30 farm prisons and concentration camps are scattered around the island, including one camp that is exclusively for young girls and another that is reserved for young boys. There are also Frentes Abiertos (Open Fronts), which consist of groups of prisoners who are serving light sentences or who are about to be released. These detainees travel around the island constructing roads, schools, dairies and buildings. Tourists who see these men on the construction sites do not suspect that they are in fact prisoners who have accepted "political rehabilitation." Havana province alone has six such groups.

I myself spent the major part of my detention in high-security prisons, at first in La Cabana prison. There, political prisoners from Havana province were executed by firing squad against an execution wall that had been set in the fortress' 200-year-old draining ditches. Night after night the firing was punctuated with cries of "Long live Christ the King!" and "Down with Communism!" from prisoners as they went to their deaths. From 1963 on, they were gagged.

I remained in La Cabana only a few days before being transferred to an island south of Cuba called Isla de Pinos.* It had been converted by the Communists into the Siberia of the Americas. In conditions identical to those of the Soviet concentration camps under Stalin, the Cuban authorities had made Isla de Pinos the detention area for political prisoners who were sentenced to forced labor.

There, a prisoner's life was worthless. I saw many of my companions murdered. The first of them was Ernesto Diaz Madruga, who was bayoneted to death by the officer responsible for the application of camp regulations. Thus began a campaign of terror that resulted in numerous deaths and mutilations. In April 1961, 13 1/2 tons of dynamite were placed in each building to blow us up in the event of an attack on Cuba. I held one of these murderous cartridges in my hands. They were made in Canada; evidently Castro had very little confidence in the efficiency of Soviet explosives. In Guanajay prison I recall witnessing the visit of a group of Soviet penal experts. All the political prisoners chanted in unison, "Soviets go home"; they were rewarded with the harshest of floggings.

For a long time I worked in agricultural camps and marble quarries. It was exhausting. We were victims of the constant blows of the officers responsible for the work squads. A few years later, I was taken to the Boniato prison in Oriente province. All the doors and windows were steel-shuttered. That period was one of the worst. But I felt myself neither alone nor abandoned because God was with me inside that jail. The greater the hatred my jailers directed at me, the more my heart brimmed over with Christian love and faith. I never felt hatred for my jailers, and even today, with the detachment of time, I offer prayers for them that they might repent. Once I succeeded in getting hold of a small Bible, but the soldiers ultimately found it and furiously tore it to shreds.

In August 1974, the detainees at La Cabana, to which I had been returned, were deprived of food for 46 days. At the end of that ordeal, six prisoners, myself included, could move only in wheelchairs. For years we were refused any medical care whatsoever. In 1976, as the result of pressure by Amnesty International, the Cuban government sent a report to that organization, admitting that I was suffering from "deficiency polyneuropathy," which restricted movement of my arms and legs. For more than four years all my efforts to obtain medical care and assistance were in vain.

In 1979, however, as a result of a new political strategy, Castro announced that he would lighten some prison sentences. I was taken to a civilian hospital, where I began to receive appropriate treatment. However, the publication of Castro's Prisoner in France resulted in the suspension of this treatment. I was sent back to prison, this time to Combinado del Este, where I remained until my release. In April 1981, the military transferred me to las celdas de castigo (punishment cells), which, at the time, housed 67 people who had been sentenced to death either for political reasons or for common crimes. I saw young boys and workers led off to the execution post simply because they had peacefully opposed the regime. Four months later, only 13 of the 67 were still alive.

By August, the authorities had built special premises so as to keep me in utter solitary confinement. The walls and ceiling were painted dazzling white, and just above my head, my jailers installed ten neon tubes about five feet long. These were kept on all the time, throwing off a blinding light that caused my sight to be damaged.

Next to my cell, they had installed a gymnasium equipped with all the requisite physiotherapy contraptions: tables, pulleys and parallel bars. They then began to put me through intensive treatment. Supervision was very strict and the guards were handpicked. The authorities already had the intention of releasing me, and their objective was to remove all the aftereffects of the ill-treatment I had been subjected to. Castro had told several ambassadors and statesmen who had taken an interest in my plight that until I could walk I would not leave the country. The colonels in the political police often told me that the only prisoner who could not leave Cuba in a wheelchair was me. Other detainees left the country in just such a condition, and two of them, still invalids, are now living in the U.S.

Little by little I began to regain the use of my legs. I was given food that was in short supply: a liter of milk each day, lots of meat, fruit, vegetables, vitamins and minerals. Several months later I was able to stop using the orthopedic devices. I began to walk between the parallel bars, lurching and staggering at first, then moving with more confidence. I was able to squat down and run in place, but I was still unable to walk without holding on to the parallel bars. I tended to reel off sideways, the result of having remained too long in an enclosed space. (After we had spent a few years in small cells in the Boniato prison, several of us were brought out into the corridors: we reeled as if we were drunk.)

I remained in that condition for many months. The wardens refused to let me walk outside the gymnasium. I learned later that they wanted to maintain complete secrecy concerning my re-education in order to win a propaganda victory with all those who, expecting me in a wheelchair, would be astonished to see me walking normally. At that time I was far from imagining that the treatment was, in fact, an anticipation of my release. I was in complete isolation. I thought this was the result of a government decision aimed at putting a stop to the campaign, which I suspected existed, to have me granted the medical care I needed. Each week I received a visit from officers in the political police who tried to convince me that everyone had forsaken me, that even my family wished to remain in Cuba. I did not believe a word of that, but neither did I have any inkling of the magnitude of the campaign being mounted for my release. The treatments continued. However, once the exercises and massages were finished, I still had to use my wheelchair to return to my cell or to go to the bathroom.

The Cuban government had already tried to discredit me abroad by printing a phony card that was supposed to show I was a member of Batista's political police and by trying to show that I had been a torturer. On my release I was easily able to show how worthless this proof was. If I had been a police torturer, Castro himself would have had me shot or imprisoned as soon as the revolutionaries seized power. Instead, I was promoted, and at the time of my arrest, I was a civil servant.

In Cuba, minors are sent to detention centers for offenses, which, in most countries, do not result in imprisonment. In Combinado del Este I met a twelve-year-old boy named Roberto. At night he would weep and cry out for his mother, pleading to be allowed to go home. To silence him, the guards would throw buckets of cold water and bottles at him or beat him with a rope. Roberto had been sentenced to prison because, while walking in the street, he had seen a pistol lying on the seat of an automobile belonging to a commander in the Ministry of the Interior. Just for fun, he had picked up the gun and shot it into the air.

On his arrival in prison, Roberto was put with the common criminals. A few days later, after having been raped by four men, he had to be hospitalized. On his return, he was classified as a homosexual and transferred to the section reserved for homosexuals. He subsequently had to return to the hospital many times because he was suffering from venereal disease. There are many Robertos in Cuba.

While I was in prison I also met four Jehovah's Witnesses, all of whom are probably still imprisoned in Combinado del Este. I saw several Protestant churches on Isla de Pinos that had been turned into fertilizer stores. Many Catholic churches have been closed and traditional religious ceremonies banned. The celebration of Christmas has been suppressed, and even the smallest of Christmas trees is looked upon as counterrevolutionary. Only a few people, generally the aged, run the risk of going to church; young people who attend Mass are stigmatized as "enemies of the revolution" and run the risk of expulsion from the university.

Another man whom I met in prison had been sentenced to six years for having transcribed passages out of the Bible for his friends and colleagues. It is very difficult to obtain a Bible. Once a group of Jamaican churchmen shipped some Bibles to Cuba. These were loaded onto a truck in the port of Havana and taken to a paper factory where they were recycled and used for government publications. Once Jose Maria Rivero Diaz, a Protestant minister, was surprised by a guard while reading a small Bible which had been smuggled into prison. He was savagely beaten up in his cell by the prison director and other high-ranking officials. After they had left, Jose Maria's back was just one vast, bloody wound. Even on the dawn of their execution, prisoners are unable to have the support of a priest.

Close family members of detainees do not have the right to address any request to government authorities. If they ask questions, they receive a visit from the political police and are informed that it is forbidden to inquire into the possibility of visiting prisoners. They are also barred from meeting with the families of other detainees. Thus any assembly of more than three close relatives of political prisoners renders them liable to conspiracy proceedings. Prisoners' families are kept under constant surveillance by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (neighborhood block committees) and the police. In May 1979, because I had refused to write a letter disavowing the contents of my books and denouncing those who had published my poetry or who had talked of my situation abroad, my family was refused an exit visa to leave the country and my brother-in-law lost his job. My friends and relatives were forbidden to visit my house.

The political police bullied both my mother--who was already advanced in years--and my sister. One day, threatening to imprison my sister, they forced my mother to write that I was an enemy of all peoples, that the solitary confinement and the maltreatment I suffered were only what I deserved and that I should be grateful to the revolution.

My sister underwent interrogation several times and had to put up with threats. Once a colonel went to the house and showed her a court judgment that sentenced her to twelve years' imprisonment. My sister had neither been charged nor brought before any court. The colonel ordered her to follow him to the women's prison. The process took twelve hours; they said that certain formalities had still to be completed, and she was to return home and remain there until they came for her. Through such coercion, the authorities hoped to unbalance the minds of members of my family. They succeeded. My sister is currently in the U.S. undergoing psychiatric treatment.*

A week before leaving Cuba I was taken to the headquarters of the political police to meet Dr. Alvarez Cambra, who was responsible for my physical rehabilitation. Cambra was the author of statements published in a magazine interview maintaining that I had been examined by the best Cuban specialists and that their diagnosis confirmed I was suffering from "deficiency polyneuropathy." They took me to a sports field, and Cambra explained to me that I would, in a very short time, recover the ability to walk straight and that it was a question of readaptation of the brain. Then, during a whole week of intensive exercises, I was made to walk up and down stairs, exercise in the gymnasium, even go out on the track in the worst of the heat.

An hour before my departure for the airport, I ran a lap under the watchful eyes of the generals and colonels of the political police. They could now present me to the entire world. Two hours later I was on a plane to Paris. The resounding impact that the Cuban government expected from this event lasted only a few hours, until I explained I was no longer in a wheelchair only because I had been given the appropriate treatment.

The Cuban government thought I would just lose myself in the Cuban community in Miami, that I would become involved with the conventional anti-Castro movements. Paradoxically, it was the colonels of the political police who were the biggest sponsors of the international opinion campaign initiated on my behalf. I recognize them as having been my best publicity agents and my best literary agents.

Since December, I have received several anonymous threats, but they have not weakened my resolve to continue to expose the horrors of the Cuban regime. Recently in Paris, a person who introduced himself as an official of the Cuban embassy requested a meeting with me to "show me proof that would be made public if I did not refrain from my "counterrevolutionary" activities. My answer caused him to slam down the phone. Subsequently, I received an anonymous telephone call warning me they would make public a film showing me exercising. They were, I presume, hoping to discredit my claims of paralysis. Finally, Fidel Castro wrote to French Communist Party Leader Georges Marchais describing me as a murderer and threatening to supply the proof. I publicly challenged Castro to bring forth his alleged proof. I am not afraid of the result.

The Cuban people are now beginning to awaken to the situation. Thousands of workers have begun to organize an independent trade union. Recently, five trade unionists were sentenced to death and saved only through the mobilization of world opinion. Tens of workers have been sent to prison, and eleven farmers are facing the death penalty because they burned their crops rather than sell them to the government at prices that were unjust.

Hundreds of my compatriots are detained today in political prisons because they refuse to accept "political rehabilitation." For years, these people have been living without clothes, without visitors or correspondence or medical attention, and without sunlight of any kind. Amnesty International, the Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States and numerous intellectuals throughout the world have spoken out against this situation.

Reprisals have been taken against several Cuban intellectuals who have already spent many years behind bars or in concentration camps. At the end of May, the former diplomat and poet Andres Vargas Gomez--grandson of General Maximo Gomez, the architect of Cuban independence--left prison seriously ill. He has been relentlessly threatened and kept under close surveillance, and was told he would never be permitted to leave the country. The poet Angel Cuadra, the socialist Ricardo Bofill, the sociologist Enrique Hernandez, the mathematician Adolfo Rivero and many others find themselves in the same situation.

For years the Cuban government has been able to conceal its repressive nature, torturing and burying its dead in secrecy, gagging its victims. After almost a quarter of a century of Communism in Cuba, no one can continue to excuse its crimes by talking of the immaturity of the political process. No philosophy, no symbol, can justify the impunity with which Castroism kills its enemies.

* Now known as Isla de la Juventud (Island of Youth), this island was where Fidel Castro was incarcerated after his failed attempt to seize the Moncada barracks in 1953. A museum now commemorates his stay there, and children from Africa and Central America are brought to study on the island.

* When Valladares was released last year, he refused to depart unless his family was also given permission to leave. The French Ambassador therefore interceded, procuring exit visas for four members of the prisoner's family. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.