Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
at the shooter’s feet, it always got tangled. Someone thought of the bobbins on looms, and the problem was solved. Thread was coiled around an aluminum cone, exactly as it comes from the factory on bobbins. When they made the shot with this new apparatus, another prisoner stood next to the shooter, with his hand stuck into the cone to steady and hold it. The lead piece shot off, and behind, with dizzying speed, the thread unwound cleanly.
On the other side, they stuck two broomsticks with a thread strung between them out the window of one of the cells closest to our Circular. They caught the piece of lead on the fly.
Prisoners kept adding refinements to the system — the latest advance consisted of using nylon fishing line that somebody had gotten from somewhere. This had the advantage of being almost invisible, so that it could be left in place. And since all this “archery” took place on the fifth floor, the guards couldn’t see anything from the ground. This system lasted until one fine afternoon when Lieutenant Paneque, walking unconcernedly along between the Circulars, looked upward, did a double-take, and stood petrified with his eyes glued on the Heavens. There before his eyes was a little bird sitting in midair, unmoving. That is how they discovered us — a beautiful, free little bird ruined our line of communications by perching on it.
“Search!” was the alarm cry among us. The garrison barracks was situated at the back part of the prison, very clearly visible from Circular 4. When there was going to be a search, platoons of soldiers would run out of the building. If they got onto trucks or came toward our Circulars, the alarm “Search!” was cried throughout the building. We could never know which Circular they were headed for, but the alarm was given in all four. They could never surprise us, since we had organized a twenty-four-hour vigilance committee. There was one man per floor, relieved every two hours, around the clock. Although the notification gave us only about a two-minute headstart on their arrival, this was enough to allow us to destroy any compromising papers and hide the radio or any other proscribed items. When the platoons of guards formed up in front of the entrance to the buildings, the prisoners were already on top of the situation, following every movement with full attention.
The guards, armed with machetes, truncheons, rubber-clad chains, and bayonets, would fill the prison yard in seconds. Several of them carrying rifles would appear on the central tower to keep watch on the high floors and on the movements of the prisoners. If they saw some suspicious operation, they would fire off a warning shot and point at the cell involved, screaming at the prisoner to raise his hands and not to move until the other guards below came to his cell.
Within the presidio, there were two enclosures or corrals about ninety yards square, formed by nine-foot chain-link fences crowned with barbed wire strung in a V. Two files of guards lined up from the entrance to the Circulars out to those corrals. They would be armed with fixed bayonets, and prisoners had to pass naked down that gauntlet at a dead run. The guards gathered at the main gate and flailed at the prisoners as they ran out. Then the guards in the two files prodded us in our backsides and thighs with their bayonets — always from behind. Every search left a toll of more than a hundred wounded by bayonet stabs, over and above the number of men beaten. And we returned to the Circular in the same way.
On our return, we would find the Circular looking as if a hurricane had blown through it. Clothes, shoes, toilet articles would be jumbled and strewn through the prison yard as they had been thrown down from the floors onto the ground floor. That is why we had put our prisoner number on everything, from our underwear and socks to our toothbrushes. After every search, many men would find their canvas or burlap cot covering slashed by a bayonet, or the sugar or powdered milk their families had sent them, and that they carefully rationed so that it would last forty-five days, poured out over the bed. Sometimes the powdered milk would be dumped into our pails of water. Cigarette packages would be cut in half, as would bars of soap.
The most important task after a search was to try to help the wounded. If a case seemed especially serious, because of a deep bayonet wound, for example, the guards on post would be notified so that they in their turn would inform their superior officer. The object of this long process was simply to get the wounded man taken to the little hospital where the authorities held the prisoners who were doctors. In subsequent weeks, more doctors came into the prison, and they usually came to the Circulars.
Among the common prisoners in that prison could be found the most dangerous kinds of criminals. Early in 1961, the authorities began several programs of indoctrination talks for those prisoners. They told them that the Revolution would give them the opportunity to become heroes, liberators of other countries laboring under the weight of dictators. They explained to them that the unjust society they had lived in before had forced them to become criminals, but, they told them, the future could be different. Then these prisoners were put through military training and sent off on an invasion of the Dominican Republic to topple Trujillo. But the Dominican dictator had his air force waiting for them. Not a single soldier managed to land; their ships were sunk many miles from the coast, and no one survived. Castro had notified Trujillo’s Intelligence Corps, giving them all the information they needed to intercept the military contingent.
Among the mass of common prisoners on Isla de Pinos at that time, however, were many men who sympathized with the political prisoners; they too loathed the system. These men helped us in many valuable ways and risked the danger of reprisals by doing so. Communication with them was not easy, since they were under absolute prohibition to speak to us. If he were caught at it, a common prisoner would be identified with us, with what we represented, and he would rot in the punishment cells.
Through the window of one of the cells on the first floor, right above the little road, Boitel and I managed to establish contact with one of those common prisoners. It was a labor of many days’ duration. The prisoner worked in the bakery, and at evening as he returned to Building 5, where the common prisoners then lived, he would pass three or four yards from the cell window, but he couldn’t stop. We would sit there next to the window and every day we would softly call one or two phrases to him. We had written them down and we would repeat them day after day. We asked him to find a newspaper for us; we asked him about the possibility, a little farther on, of smuggling, some correspondence in and out for us, a relatively easy thing for prisoners held for ordinary crimes to do, at least at that time. Finally, we managed to win him over. He agreed to collaborate with us in spite of the fact that we had warned him about the risks he was exposing himself to. And he didn’t do it for money — it was his way of undermining the regime.
We figured out a way to get the newspaper through. It had to be smuggled in not directly in front of the cell but several yards away from the Circular, so that anyone who saw him from a distance couldn’t possibly suspect anything. You had to take care not only against the militia, but also against the other common prisoners, among whom there were informers, collaborators with the garrison; they might easily denounce him.
That afternoon Boitel and I were posted at the window and Carrión was standing watch at the door when our man appeared at the end of the walkway coming toward us. We got our equipment ready.
We were going to snare the newspaper using a piece of green-dyed cord with a lead weight tied to the end of it. We would shoot the string through the bars of the window with a slingshot. I shot, and the string looped out to the edge of the little road. Then we let out enough slack so that it hung down right against the green wall; that way no observer could make it out.
Our friend was coming closer, looking surreptitiously at the edge of the road. Boitel gave a little tug on the string, which ruffled the grass. That was enough for the man to see the thread. He squatted down as though he were tying his shoelace and quickly took a small flat package out of his sock, made a lightning-quick gesture, and continued his walk. It took only a few seconds. We waited five very long minutes to give our friend time to get to his building, then Boitel very slowly pulled in the cord. Suddenly a guard jeep appeared turning in from behind the pavilion. Hurriedly, we played out a little string to keep it from being seen and jumped away from the window. It was getting dark now and that helped us. The jeep passed, and we breathed a little easier. We hauled up the package. What came into our hands was a copy of the newspaper Revolución, wrapped into a tight little bundle with a piece of thread.
From that day on, we had newspapers