Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
ever carried out. More than three hundred prisoners’ names had been called.
Prisoner transfers are always a frantic rush. Before the echoes from the lists of names had faded away, platoons of soldiers were already formed up in front of the cells, ordering the men whose names had been called to get moving. Anxiously, we were throwing our few belongings together, any old way, into the canvas sacks which all prisoners were provided with. Our families usually brought them to us.
“Let’s go! Get a move on!” the guards were mechanically calling out. They looked tired. Reserves, soldiers that had just come off guard duty — everyone had to turn out and help during the transfers; they couldn’t sleep. And so they were all in a bad mood, but it was always the prisoners who paid the consequences.
The first prisoners, who had come out of galeras 8, 9, and 10, were gathering in the prison yard. They were loaded down. They all had to carry their sacks and other bags if they had them; aluminum cups and spoons hung from their belts, and towels were draped around their necks; many of them had a toothbrush and toothpaste sticking out of the pockets of their prison shirts.
“Let’s go, everybody out!”
As the guards hurried the prisoners into the prison yard, there were moving scenes inside the cells. The men staying at La Cabaña clasped the hands of their departing comrades and friends. Cries of “Good luck at your trial!” were called constantly. All of us, those of us staying and those of us leaving, were virtually certain that we’d never see anyone from the other group alive again, so there was really very little we could say in those moments. You embraced your friend in farewell, but it was almost like embracing a dead man — so few of us felt we had any chance of survival. There were no words for that — the eyes had to speak, and the prayer sprang up silently in our hearts.
Almost two hundred prisoners with their sacks were finally standing in the prison yard. A group of lieutenants carrying lists began to call out names, and the prisoners nearest the soldiers would turn and repeat the names so the men in back could hear. So we started filing out and forming up at the main gate, two by two. When there was a group of about fifty, they were taken out; then followed another, and another. Many hours passed in this roll call.
Our group was one of the very last. We were herded out into the street, Boitel straggling along. Boitel was a “ninetyseven-pound weakling.” He had been a sickly child. From the time he was a little boy he had had to work, though, helping one of his uncles in a coffee home-delivery business: And by dint of his parents’ efforts and his own will to overcome his weak constitution, he had managed to go to the University, where he studied electrical engineering. He was a popular student; other students admired him for his strength of character, his uprightness, and his dedication. But he left college to join the action groups fighting against Batista. He was almost caught, but he got away to Venezuela, from where he went on aiding Castro. It was in Caracas that the news of the fall of the dictator reached him; he returned to Cuba in January 1959. He went back to the University and was nominated for student president by the other students. During his campaign, he had worn a large crucifix that a Catholic priest had given him. But Boitel had to resign his candidacy and leave the University, since he had become an active anti-Communist and Castro had threatened him personally; Boitel went into hiding, living underground for months before he was finally tracked down and captured.
We were standing with our bags and bundles in the street outside the main gate, that same street I had been on when they took me to my trial, but now it was full of guards coming and going constantly, in battle dress with helmets and fixed bayonets.
“Let’s go! Double file!” It was a fat black sergeant that I had never seen before. We began to form up. The sergeant went down the line counting. He checked the count against some lists he was carrying and gave the order to move out.
At the end of the first tunnel, a little beyond the portcullis-like main entrance to the prison, buses were waiting. They were English Leylands, painted white; they had originally belonged to a private busline and had been expropriated by the government. The rear seat was taken up by six escorts with submachine guns. I got in. Carrión sat beside me; Boitel had plumped down with his load on the first seat. When all the seats were full, other guards were posted at the doors and behind the driver. A lieutenant came in and warned us not to so much as dare to stand up, let alone try to escape. The caravan of buses, escorted by National Police patrol cars and Political Police unmarked vehicles, pulled out.
I had hidden my watch since the day of the search. I was sure that when we got to Isla de Pinos it would be discovered so I thought I might as well put it on my wrist, but not now; I’d do it when we were closer to the other prison. It might be that I could get it through there, without any terrible consequences.
The caravan of buses drew away from the fortress, came to the Vía Monumental, turned right, and entered the tunnel into Havana, headed toward the Columbia Military Camp, from which we prisoners, loaded into planes, would depart for Isla de Pinos.
Doubts and questions always plague the prisoner when he is transferred — hundreds of questions. They arise, one after another, but they always go unanswered. There is intense mental activity going on in every man; even as silence descends and not a single voice is to be heard. Many men, perhaps, passed by their own houses, since we were crossing the city. A rush of memories assailed all of us. How many times had I walked down those avenues a free man; never even remotely suspecting that one day I would be driven through them a prisoner!
We came to the military camp and rolled to a stop before hangars and other Air Force installations. High fences and lookouts with rifles protected the airport. A little farther on, the office buildings and barracks, gray runways, and silhouettes of transport planes were blurred shapes in the gloomy night.
We got out of the buses in front of a barracks. There were guards everywhere, coming and going like ants. There was the sound of hammering; they were finishing the job of boarding up the barracks’ windows. Inside, there was a large room full of bunks made of wood and covered with heavy canvas; there were no pillows. Outside, orders were still being shouted back and forth. They were stationing soldiers on guard all around the building. One soldier dragged a chair over in front of the only door and sat down.
Boitel, Carrión, Ulises, Piñango, and I took some of the last bunks. Prisoners were already beginning to adapt to this new situation. Some of them asked the guard where the latrines were, but they had to wait until he could consult his superiors. When the answer finally came, he let us go in groups of four. Boitel and I went more to look the place over than out of any physical urgency; we thought we should explore every possibility of escape. But there was only one window set very high in the wall, next to the ceiling, and it opened onto the side of the building where a large group of soldiers was posted. We went back and lay down on the bunks, some to sleep, some to meditate, trying to see into the future that awaited us.
Around that time, there was tremendous optimism about the possibility of the fall of the regime. Only a few weeks before, the United States had broken off relations with Cuba, and President Eisenhower had stated that “the Communist penetration into Cuba is real, and it constitutes a grave threat to the Western world.” At that time many Cubans believed that a Marxist regime would not be tolerated in the Americas; analysts argued, on the basis of OAS treaties and Cuba’s geographic proximity to the United States, that the United States would have to take action. People were saying with complete assurance that Castro would not last many more weeks in power. And at the same time, there was hope — and this was indeed more reasonable — that the Resistance in Cuba, which was becoming more and more powerful, could pull off a coup.
“On your feet! Headcount formation here!” Very early, before it was light, a group of officers came in to get us up.
Sleepily, we started lining up, wrapped in blankets — even though the barracks was completely closed up, it was cold.
They brought in a big aluminum drum and gave us a piece of bread and a sip of coffee. They ordered us to get our things together, then took us out of the barracks and headed us to the transfer point. The sky was still gray and dense, and clouds were running low before the north wind.
We crossed one of the runways.