Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
frigate began to move, to take evasive action; the plane released its first rocket, and a huge spout of water rose before the frigate’s bow. The boat began to speed away.
Then the B-26 banked to the left. The guns began to fire at it from the hills again, and again it sailed peacefully, as though with Olympian detachment, through the artillery shells furiously hurled at it. That pilot must have had icewater in his veins. The plane’s blithe flight seemed to mock that curtain of fire aimed at bringing it down. The pilot headed the plane once more toward the ship, which was now firing on him again, and this time his aim was sure. The explosion of his rocket made the ship’s stern leap out of the water and wrapped it in a whirlwind of black smoke. The plane then, flew off toward the northwest.
The Bay of Pigs invasion had begun. It was April 17, 1961.
The scene we had witnessed produced incredible excitement among the prisoners. We immediately took the little radio out of hiding and set it up. Every imaginable theory of what was happening was vehemently expounded by one or another prisoner. Suddenly, military trucks lined up at battle stations around the Circulars, and the troops they were transporting, largely militia, jumped out, firing up at the windows.
A group of them ran to the main gate. There was no one in the prison yard or on the lower floor. They stuck the barrels of their machine guns through the bars and fired off several bursts, which whined off the tower and went on ricocheting off bars and railings. I threw myself headfirst onto the floor, and though I didn’t have time to look to see, I imagine everyone else did the same.
They completely surrounded the Circular. They then called Major Lorenzo to the main gate. Even up to the sixth floor, we could hear the officers shouting at the top of their lungs; we heard every word of the orders our comrade was to pass along to us. “Listen, tell the men that we have orders from General Headquarters to fire on anyone who comes to the windows. If anyone has clothing hung outside, it’s to be brought in immediately. We’ll give you three minutes to do so. After three minutes, nobody comes to the windows for any reason. Anyone that does will be shot immediately.”
Lorenzo was on his way up, but we intercepted him on the third floor. We surrounded him and shouted questions at him. Had they said anything else? Did we miss anything? A prisoner always does that — he pesters you to find out whether there wasn’t something left out, whether there wasn’t some meaningful gesture that might have been overlooked. But this time there was absolutely nothing left out. The officers’ shouts had been heard throughout the Circular and there was really no need at all for Lorenzo to repeat what they had said.
What followed was a very tense situation. If anybody overly curious, and there are always some, got too close to the window, the soldiers fired off a burst of machine-gun fire. Out there, gazing up vigilantly, the guards looked like hunting dogs with treed quarry, and as though to make this image even more convincing, some of them were wearing those caps with earflaps that hang down like hounds’ ears. In cells 46 and 47, which were the bathrooms, things were even more difficult. It was hard to use the bathrooms because you had to be close to the window to get to the toilet. Those who tried to go to the bathroom at first got scares they never forgot. The guards shot without the least hesitation.
That afternoon after lunch a tarpaulin-covered truck with several armed soldiers aboard, escorted by two vehicles, screeched to a stop in front of the main gate. Now during this period the prison authorities often delivered packs of cigarettes, cans of milk and sugar, and cookies or crackers acquired by prisoners’ family members in the prison canteen. The family member purchased the items, which he could not even touch, paying exorbitant prices, and then the purchase was sent in to the prisoner. A garrison truck was used for the deliveries. We had a friend, Sánchez, who was in charge of receiving the packages, putting them out in order in the prison yard, and then calling the men to pick them up. So when we saw the military truck pull up, someone as a joke called out, “Sánchez, the packages!” But it wasn’t the packages, at least not for our consumption — although they were in fact in a way destined for us.
They were boxes of Canadian-made dynamite.
The soldiers, led by Commander William Gálvez, began to unload the frightening cargo. An officer called Major Lorenzo out to tell him that the whole front part of the Circular had to be cleared, that the prisoners were to move to the back until the truck had been completely unloaded. The dynamite was to be deposited underneath the Circular, in the tunnel to the central tower and along the foundations.
That event completely changed the psychological climate of the Circular. Men speculated endlessly about the reason for the explosives. Some thought they had been deposited there to have them in a safe place, protected from attacks like that morning’s — planes would never bomb the Circulars since it was known there were prisoners inside.
About nightfall we got the first hard information through the clandestine radio. There had been fighting in the swamps of Zapata, at the Bay of Pigs, since very early that morning. The communiqués were very encouraging, and the prisoners’ euphoria knew no bounds. There were those who shouted at the top of their lungs, jumped around, and embraced their friends, possessed by a joy the reader can easily imagine — our situation had finally begun to look hopeful: And those bulletins continued.
Very early the next day, soldiers supplied with jackhammers went to work inside the tunnel leading to the central tower. They were opening niches to store the dynamite in, drilling through the thick foundations of the enormous structure. This operation now took on a macabre significance for us — the explosives could blow us sky-high.
Demolition experts arrived with the soldiers who were drilling, and we watched them unload boxes of detonators, rolls of fuse, and other equipment used for setting off explosions.
Meanwhile the communiqués from the international press kept coming in. The inmates who handled the radio never stopped to rest. They hardly slept for two days. Very early the next morning, Radio Swan, the station that transmitted to Cuba, issued a call for help from the internal resistance underground in support of the invasion:
People of Havana! Attention! People of Havana! The brave patriots of the Army of Liberation need your cooperation. Electric plants must be kept from furnishing electricity to the few industrial facilities the regime is attempting to keep in operation. This morning at seven forty-five a.m., when this station gives the signal, we ask that you turn on all the lights in your homes and connect all electrical appliances. This concerted action will increase the load on the generators in the electric plants and overload the system.
Other cables reported that the invading forces, sweeping down everything in their path, were triumphantly approaching Havana. This was false, of course; the invasion had failed.
Castro, the very man who had declared a thousand times that he was not a Communist and that “the Revolution is greener than palm trees,” had stripped off the disguise that had fooled so many people and now had proclaimed the true nature of the Revolution, the nature it had from the beginning: “This is a socialist revolution,” he said. “And we will defend it with these rifles!” And he ended his proclamation with an unmistakably Communist finale: “Long live the working class! Long live the farmers! Long live the humble! Long live the Socialist Revolution! Patria o muerte! We shall overcome!” — the demagogic phrases of a system which promises the worker, the poor, the humble his freedom, and then enchains him.
From the moment of the first attack, on the l5th, when the B-26s began bombing airports and various other places throughout the Island, the government unleashed fierce repression against everyone considered unsympathetic to the regime. Roughly half a million people were arrested throughout the country. Priests, workers, the elderly, women, soldiers, students, people from all walks of life were confined in public buildings of every sort imaginable — theaters, stadiums, government buildings, police stations, schools, and other locations — and the jails were packed to the rafters. The wholesale roundup brought into the jails hundreds of Cubans who were working in the underground, infiltrators who, once identified, were shot immediately without any trial whatsoever. Ironically, it also brought in government functionaries such as several members of the board of governors of the Banco Nacional, a Marxist elite who had been detained