Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
and there in the NBC studios he responded to the journalists’ questions. One of them, Lawrence Spivak, asked Castro point-blank: “I want to know where your heart lies in the struggle between Communism and democracy. Whose side, where is your heart and where are your feelings?” Castro immediately responded, “Democracy is my ideal, really ... I am not Communist. I am not agreed with Communism.... There is no doubt for me between democracy and Communism.”
These, then, were the statements always appealed to by those who did not want, or did not dare, to accept the fact of the deception. They were judging Castro by their own system of values, by their own ethical principles.
Dr. Raúl Roa, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations, also lashed out against Communism, calling it “an inhumane theory, because it enslaves mankind.” Saying that they were not Communists, that they never lied, that they would hold free elections, that they would respect human rights, was no more than a smokescreen, a tactic in the struggle. Therefore, the revolutionaries who insisted on believing that Fidel would put an end to the growing power of the Communists were incapable of admitting to themselves that although the government had still not declared itself Marxist, practices were being carried out which were indisputably Marxist in character — forcible expropriation of private property, land takeovers, nationalization, the transfer of privately held means of production to the State, and the constant preaching of hate and praising of the class struggle.
The Political Police officers continued the search. They finished in the bedrooms, the bathroom, the kitchen, and they came into the living room. They examined all the pictures on the walls and all the porcelain figurines. Suddenly they seemed to pounce on one of the figurines — they had discovered something inside. One of them fished out a piece of paper with the end of a ballpoint pen. It was a piece of shredded paper, the kind used to pack glassware. He opened it, but when he realized that I was smiling sardonically at his absurdity, he crumpled it and threw it out the window. They made us lift up the couch; they turned it over and examined it carefully. The search finally ended, and no weapons or explosives or propaganda or lists had turned up. Nothing, absolutely nothing. They had to leave empty-handed. Or almost empty-handed — they took me with them. Although they hadn’t found anything, there were some routine questions I had to answer. My mother argued with them. She said I hadn’t done anything; there was no reason to take me away. They told her not to worry, I’d be right back. They’d bring me back home themselves.
The return would take more than twenty years. We went out into the street. It was four o’clock in the morning; the night was very cold and there was a stiff wind blowing in from the bay. They put me into a gray Volkswagen and an agent sat on either side of me. They handcuffed me. Another car joined us at the corner. Not one word was spoken, though from time to time the radio crackled out a message incomprehensible to me. One of the transmissions was for the car I was in. The driver picked up the receiver and responded with a short phrase — a coded countersign, I assume.
We came to Fifth Avenue and Calle 14 in the Miramar section of Havana. That was then the location of the main headquarters of the Political Police, the Cuban Lubyanka. Several residences that had been taken over by the government formed the G-2 complex, which was what they called State Security in the beginning.
A white-helmeted soldier armed with a rifle opened the main gate. At the entrance of an office, there was a bench. They told me to sit down. About half an hour later, they led me to the back part of the building, where they had constructed a block of cells. They took off my handcuffs and put me into the first cell. There were already other prisoners in this small dungeon. In one corner, behind a wall, was the toilet. Three tiers of beds were attached to the walls. Some of the prisoners, from up on their perches, stuck out their heads to see the new boarder.
I was called out and taken to the second floor, the records office. They took my fingerprints and photographed me with a sign that read “COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY.”
That same afternoon, I was subjected to my first interrogation. It was held in a small office before a one-way mirror of dark-green glass. A group of agents was waiting for me, but only one officer was sitting down, and he was the one who spoke to me. He told me they knew about everything; they knew I was a counterrevolutionary, an enemy of the Revolution. He said they were going to see to it, too, that I was punished for that. I told him in return that I hadn’t committed any crime whatsoever, that they had searched my house from top to bottom and seen for themselves that there was nothing in my possession which could make them even remotely consider me a traitor or an enemy of the Revolution.
“But we know about the remarks you’ve made in your office — we know you’ve been attacking the Revolution.”
I defended myself. I said that I had not attacked the Revolution as an institution.
“But you have attacked Communism.”
I didn’t deny that. I couldn’t, nor did I want to.
“Yes, that’s true,” I said. “I think that Communism is a worse dictatorship than the one we Cubans have just overthrown. And if Communist rule is established in Cuba, then Cuba will be just like Russia, going from czarism to the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
“We didn’t fight this revolution for just more of the same privilege and exploitation. Yankee imperialist exploitation is finished in Cuba, and we’re not going to allow people like you, in the service of capitalist interests, to interrupt the march of revolutionary progress.”
That, then, was my first interrogation. It hardly lasted ten minutes. That same afternoon, they took me along with a group of other prisoners, including one woman, into a small room. They ordered us to sit down on a wooden bench. They turned on spotlights set up around the room, and photographers and cameramen began to take pictures and movies of us. The next day we appeared in the newspapers as a band of terrorists, CIA agents captured by State Security. I didn’t know any of those people; I had never even seen any of them before. It was only there that I first came in contact with Nestor Piñango, Alfredo Carrión, and Carlos Alberto Montaner, all three, university students. I also met Richard Heredia there, who had been one of the leaders of the 26th of July Movement in Oriente Province. He had fought in both the Sierra Maestra and the underground, and when the Revolution triumphed he became the first governor of Santiago de Cuba. When they arrested him, they forced him to put on one of the uniforms of the defeated Batista army; they photographed him in it and published a picture of what they called a “recruit of dictatorship” in all the newspapers.
The next day I went through my second interrogation. Each day they would give us the official newspaper, the daily Revolución, which was calling us terrorists. In the interrogation, I protested against that. The officer told me they were sure that I was an enemy of the people.
“You studied in a school run by priests,” he said to me.
“Yes in Escolapius. What difference does that make?”
“A big difference. Priests are counterrevolutionary, and the fact that you went to that school is one more piece of evidence against you.”
“But Fidel Castro studied in a school taught by Jesuits. He went to Belén.”
“Yes, but Fidel is a revolutionary. You, on the other hand, are a counterrevolutionary, tied to priests and capitalists, and so we are going to sentence you to jail.”
“There isn’t a shred of evidence against me. You have discovered nothing that incriminates me in any way.”
“It’s true — we have no proof, or rather no concrete proof, against you. But we do have the conviction that you are a potential enemy of the Revolution. For us, that is enough.”
When I came out of the interrogation, I heard people shouting and automobile horns blowing. A march had been staged in front of the buildings, along Fifth Avenue, and the people were calling out, “Firing squad! Firing squad! for the CIA terrorists.” The Communists had organized not only that demonstration but another one in front of the Presidential Palace as well. That one called for our execution too.
That night, they took Richard Heredia and me out of the cell, into a room where they made a movie of us for the