Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
anthems, among them the “Internationale.” It was from this camp that Batista had escaped Cuba, early on the morning of January l, barely two years ago. Now the militia was parading and hundreds of political prisoners were awaiting an uncertain destiny.
The names of the first transfer group were called off from lists which had already been made up at the prison in Havana. The plane, an old C-46, taxied up. The guards shouted and threatened the men getting on; it was a means they used to keep us frightened — even more frightened, that is.
When the plane turned for takeoff, a cloud of dust, dirty paper, and trash enveloped us. They had us off to one side of the runway, in a field of dry yellow weeds. The rest of us were going to have to wait for the plane to return before another contingent was transported. So the transfer was slow, but then it was suspended altogether because the plane was commandeered to carry a herd of cows to Camagüey Province. It was already nightfall. We hoped they would take us back to the barracks, but it was not to be. The militia received reinforcements and staked out a cordon of guards around us. We had to stay there on the side of the runway through the night.
The wind and cold rattled our bones. We took the blankets out of our sacks and huddled together as close as we could, to await the next day. Explosions were heard off and on.
Early in the morning the temperature fell considerably, and there was no way we could sleep anymore. We were shivering with cold. When above the houses and treetops on the other side of the fences it began to grow light, they brought us a little coffee and some bread. The wind swept across the grayish asphalt runway, bending the weeds and grass and scudding paper across the ground. I carefully took out my watch and put it on. I pulled the sleeve of my uniform down over it, and I also wrapped a handkerchief around it, to make sure it was completely covered. I might be able to use it in the other prison.
There was only a small group of us left. Platoons of militia stood in formation in front of the hangars and began their drills. They marched by within a few yards of us and looked at us out of the corners of their eyes. Many of those men, who at that time were ready to fight in defense of the Revolution, would fall fighting against it or go to the political jails years later for standing up to it; but at that moment they could not imagine what the country would become when Communism took over completely. So they couldn’t imagine our opposition, either.
At last our group was called. Boitel was taken aside for a moment to be handcuffed; other men were handcuffed in pairs. It was done not for security but out of simple cruelty. As we neared the boarding steps of the plane, the soldiers began to shout and yell and grow fiercer and more and more enraged. The transport plane had no seats, and they hadn’t cleaned it out at all after they had used it to transport the cattle, so the floor was covered with cow manure. A rope divided the plane in half lengthwise — we were crammed into one side and the guards were stationed on the other.
“Everybody on the floor! Down!” A murmur of protest swelled; were we going to have to sit in that cowshit all over the floor? But the guards began to push and shout like madmen. “Hurry it up! Everybody down! On the floor!” Boitel, handcuffed, tried to drag along one of his bags. Carrión was carrying the other one for him. They stuck a rifle butt into Guillermo’s back and shoved him violently. His feet tangled in his duffel and he fell flat on his face.
The metallic noise of the bolts of the machine guns was heard, and some orders were cried. No one moved. I was terrified.
“Now listen.” It was a lieutenant speaking. “We have orders to shoot any man that disobeys. No one is allowed to look out the windows or even raise your head. Anyone that does will pay the consequences. ... And another thing. Complete silence. No one will be permitted to speak during the trip. Is that understood?”
The aim of all those repressive measures was to discourage us from any attempt to take over the plane. After all, there were men of action in our group that had shown their courage on plenty of occasions — in the mountains fighting with the guerrillas as well as in the city and in underground groups.
The pilot was escorted on board by guards who shut themselves up with him in the cockpit. In Cuba this was not a measure taken only for transporting prisoners. Even at that early time in the Revolution all Cuban flights carried two guards, and the cockpit door and its peephole were armorplated. Until the plane touched down, the cockpit could not be opened, no matter what happened. This procedure is still being followed today.
With our heads lowered, unspeaking, we made the voyage.
The plane set down at the little airport of Nueva Gerona, the capital of Isla de Pinos. It bumped several times, as though the runway had ended and we were rolling across uneven ground. And so we were. The plane turned to the left toward the soldiers of the presidio, our reception committee, who were waiting for us with several military trucks. The door of the plane opened. Outside, high grass came up above the knees of the dozens of guards who surrounded the ship. Most of the soldiers in the group directly before the door were black, and they didn’t look like Cubans. Around their necks hung necklaces made of colored beads and seeds called oxeyes, and they had stuck little stalks of millet into their berets to distinguish themselves from the other guards.
As we descended from the plane, the soldiers began to shout fiercely and brandish their bayonets. But if the guards outside the plane were screaming and threatening us, the ones inside were even worse. “Get out! Now! Hurry up, quick! Jump!”
This time there were no boarding steps. The only way to get off the plane was to jump, and so prisoners were jumping out of the plane carrying the dead weight of the sacks. It was a mad marathon, a desperate jumble. Boitel dropped straight down and landed right in front of the door, and although he hardly scrambled two seconds to get to his feet again, one of the soldiers yanked him up by his arm, put his boot in his back, and shoved him away. Boitel fell on his face in the grass, handcuffed. He lost his glasses.
“Get on those trucks. Let’s go! Hurry it up!” And they called us every name in the book. “You’re on the Island, you sons of bitches! You bastards! We’re going to see to it that you like it here! Let’s go!” The noise, the confusion, the newness, the viciousness of our guards created a bedlam, ten endless minutes of pure panic. Prisoners ran like frightened animals, or at least I felt like one. I expected at any moment to be prodded with a bayonet or kicked headlong into the grass. Fear had overcome me. I felt a terrible tightness in my gut, like an iron claw squeezing and twisting my insides and slowly pulling them out of my belly. From that moment on, that sensation would remain with me for years, and I knew it was fear, panic, pure animal terror.
Hounded by the constant cries of the guards, we climbed up onto the trucks. There was one very fat, very slow-moving prisoner in the group, whom we called Tito. It was no easy task for him to get up onto a truck, and he stood there on the ground waiting for someone to give him a hand, but in those moments of fear and confusion, we had forgotten all about him. One of the guards raised his rifle and struck fat Tito with the flat of his bayonet, screaming, “Get up there! I told you to get on the truck!” And he hit him again. Several hands went out toward Tito and dragged him up onto the truck.
A rope bisected the truck bed. We prisoners were crammed into the front part next to the driver’s cab; on the other side, as in the plane, were the soldiers. They were glaring at us fiercely, and when the truck began to move they raised their bayonets and held them up almost against our necks.
Carrión and I were among the prisoners closest to the dividing rope. The sharp points of the bayonets, just inches from us, swayed with each movement of the truck. A lurch of the truck, a quick stop, a pot-hole would have been enough to bury them in our throats. In the truck, too, we were forbidden to look out, even to turn our heads or speak. The bayonets kept swaying, moving forward and back to the swaying of the truck. Instinctively, your head drew back, and then the guard would push the rifle forward a little more.
“Are you scared, faggot?” And you had to swallow the insult. “You don’t know what’s in store for you. You’re on Isla de Pinos now, and you’re going to find out whether what they say about it is true,” they said.
We had, in fact, heard a lot of talk about the prison we were being taken to, about the forced labor in the quarries,