Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
Miramar section of the city, but they were shut up there as though they were in jails. Several families would be packed into those houses. Still not satisfied with this, the authorities informed the women that they had to go into the country to do farm labor. The old women among them would stay behind to take care of the children. The situation lasted for years, and in all that time they never saw their husbands or brothers. The children of school age were separated from their mothers and sent off on “scholarships” to government schools for indoctrination in Marxist thought, to wipe out the “harmful” effects and influences of the adults.
The men were taken to the Guanajacabibes peninsula, the most westerly part of Cuba, and one of the most inhospitable, hundreds of miles from the theater of war, and even farther from their families in Havana. These campesinos were never brought before a tribunal, but they were prisoners all the same. They were threatened with execution if they tried to escape, and they were told that reprisals would be taken against their relatives. Those poor wretches did not even know where they were. They were put to hard farm labor and the construction of Sandino Concentration Camps l, 2, and 3, which still exist.
When these three concentration camps were finished, the government told the campesinos that they were going to build a little town. When they were finished with it, they were told, they could go and live in it with their families. Before they began the construction they would be allowed to go and visit their families in Havana. And after that meeting, the campesinos would be allowed to send and receive one letter a month.
So with the dream of building a town for themselves and their families, the men worked day and night and raised the blocks of buildings. When they had finished, the women and children were brought there. And they did live there together, but they were forbidden to travel outside the borders of the province. That way, the authorities kept them from trying to return to the mountains. This strategic hamlet, Ciudad Sandino, still exists.
Very little is known abroad about these hamlets and the terrible tragedy of those families. The men were prisoners, separated from their wives and families, forced to do hard labor. Nonetheless, there is not a piece of paper, not a document — nothing, even for form’s sake — which speaks of that spoliation and exile and what happened in the years afterward.
10
ON TOP OF A POWDER KEG
The presidio was located so near the north coast of Isla de Pinos that you could see the waters of the Caribbean from it. There was a cay offshore called Monkey Key (Cayo de Monos); it had gotten its name, so the story goes, because years before, monkeys used in research and laboratory experiments had been kept there. Some natives of Isla de Pinos swore that monkeys still lived out on the cay. To the west of the prison complex were the Sierra Caballo mountains; to the south there were extensive fields used for Army and militia exercises, tank practice, and a firing range; to the east were green pine groves, from which the island had no doubt gotten its name, and some low hills. Besides the garrison for the prison there were several military encampments, especially militia posts, scattered all around the area.
From the fifth floor of the Circular, you had an uninterrupted view for several miles around. Firing practices were held regularly, and whenever there were night exercises the artillery officers in the Circulars would stay up and watch. They could classify the guns and other weapons used and locate the nearby emplacements with considerable exactness. You could easily see the flares of the cannon blasts on the peaks of the nearby mountain range.
At night, from my cell, overlooking those mountains, I could sometimes make out the yellowish flicker and glow of matches the soldiers struck for their cigarettes. Toward the south, tanks shot their guns and machine guns stuttered. The orange trail of tracer shells would often sear through the dark night.
For some men, the firing was exciting — they’d hurrah and shout, even though they knew it was the enemy out there practicing. Those were always the men of action, men who had fought with the guerrillas, men for whom the memory of the roar of combat against the Communist militia was still fresh. They still seemed to yearn for those difficult and trying times, the privations, the thrills and the anguish — they had been free, then, at least, and brave, and they had been fighting for others’ freedom as well. But there were other men who grew nervous, some almost hysterical. You could see that the very sound of the firing affected them.
Ernesto Piñango and Armando Rodríguez, with the help of some technicians jailed with us, managed to put a radio together. Later, Rafael del Pino joined them in taking charge of the radio operation. Del Pino had been an early supporter of Castro, but had abandoned the cause and now was in prison for it.
The radio they made was very crude but it could pick up international news reports. The sixth floor was the ideal place for picking up those broadcasts, which sometimes mentioned the situation on the island. Piñango and Viscaya, as everybody called Armando, even put up an antenna at night, when the darkness and height made it safe. They would unscrew one of the roof tiles, slide it to one side, and stick the antenna up through the opening.
Batteries for the radio were made right there in the Circular. I don’t know all the details of the process, but I do know that once in a while somebody had to urinate into some jars because the technicians needed the urine. They used pencil lead, too; it seems several sticks of graphite bundled together could replace that core batteries have running down the middle. And through a contact in the hospital they got copper sulfate, another of the substances necessary to the recipe.
We heard the news over earphones made out of intravenous tubes. There were three sets of earphones. Men would copy out the news in shorthand, then write it out in longhand afterward. We made several copies, and then next morning each floor would get its morning newspaper.
The radio lasted for several years, partly because Piñango and Viscaya developed a hiding place that was practically discovery-proof. Actually, I should say hiding places, because they’d take the radio completely apart and hide it all over the Circular. The guards might have a piece of it in their hands and not know it had anything in the world to do with a radio. The two men would have to take special care in hiding the pieces, though, in case some spy was watching. Sometimes Piñango would leave the cell with a little package, apparently casually and equally apparently sneakily, and stuff the package into a hiding place. But that wasn’t the radio, or even a piece of it. That was a red herring he was dragging through the Circular. Meanwhile, somebody else would scurry off and hide the parts.
Carrión slept on the upper bunk. He slept so heavily you had to shake him if you wanted to wake him up. One morning just at dawn, I heard machine-gun rattle and the boom of cannons. I jumped to the window. On the peak of the hills the red-orange blaze of the batteries installed there lit up the early morning. Tracer shells scored the dark-blue sky; I couldn’t see or imagine their target. It didn’t seem like the usual firing practice, though.
I shook Carrión by one foot and rushed upstairs to the sixth floor to see if I could tell any better what it was all about.
In the Circular there was already a general alarm, and the confusion was incredible.
“They’re attacking us!” people were shouting. “They’re aiming right at us!”
But the Circular couldn’t have been the target of those projectiles; we’d have been blown to bits immediately if it had been. I came to the sixth floor. Men were standing on cans, on cots, or just on tiptoe, looking frantically, worriedly, out the windows. Some men had pulled themselves up to the window bars by the strength of their arms.
Just to the east of the presidio, almost directly above us, anti-aircraft shells were blooming into black popcorn clouds, and through them floated a B-26 bomber, its silver fuselage gleaming in the morning sun as the explosions peppered and sputtered all along its path.
I watched it fly into the distance, toward the mouth of the Las Casas River. From there a Cuban Marine emplacement began to shoot at it. The frigate Baire began to fire on it now.
The pilot of the B-26 suddenly saw the Baire and dived at it, machine guns