Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
the search of his house, they had discovered an old .22 rifle. That was all. The Political Police deduced that if he possessed a rifle, it must be that he intended to use it against someone, and since Julio Antonio was well connected in the Revolutionary Government, since he was a professional, he couldn’t intend to use it against some rank-and-file soldier, some simple unknown militiaman. The someone had to be someone important, a leader of the Revolution, and who more important than Fidel Castro? That was the reasoning which led to Julio Antonio’s being accused of possessing a weapon intended for use in an attempt on Fidel Castro’s life. He was sentenced to death.
During the Batista years, Armando Hart, one of the leaders of the 26th of July Movement and current minister of culture in Cuba, had been jailed. So had his wife, Haydée Santamaría, at that time the third-highest-ranking woman in the regime, director of Casa de las Américas. (Years later, on a now-symbolic 26th of July 1982, disillusioned by the system that she had helped to implement, Haydée committed suicide.) Julio Antonio had pulled off a courageous and daring coup by helping to rescue Armando Hart from the hands of Batista’s police when Armando was being tried in the Audiencia building in Havana. Now the situations were reversed Julio Antonio was the one in prison. So Julio Antonio’s mother knocked on Armando Hart’s and Haydée Santamaría’s door. It was a time for loyalty, a time to acknowledge the debts of friendship, but they flatly refused to intercede for the man who had saved their lives. Worse even than that, Haydée wrote a letter alleging that Julio Antonio had participated in anti-Castro demonstrations. The letter went on to say that he had never really been a completely trustworthy person.
Julio Antonio was tried under Article No. 5 of 1961. This law took effect five days after his arrest; they applied the law to him retroactively. His trial began early in the morning. At noon the next day, a two-hour recess was called. Julio returned to his cell and said to one of the men there, “Do me a favor — open that can of pears you’ve been saving and give me a glass of milk. That’s the last thing I’ll ever eat, since tonight I’ll be far away from here, close to God.”
Many of the men tried to reassure him with words of sympathy and comfort, but he merely repeated gently and calmly, “Yes, tonight I’ll be with God.”
He wrote several letters. At two o’clock that afternoon, they took him back to the trial. Julio Antonio didn’t return to the cell this time after he left the trial. He was left in one of the small chapels in the fortress, which were now reserved for prisoners sentenced to death. Men who were there say that he behaved with the same strength and valor during the trial that he had always lived by.
At nine o’clock, we were in the habit of gathering into groups and praying in all the galeras — faith in difficult times. The sound of a motor was heard. Total silence fell. It was the truck carrying the coffin for the corpse. Then we heard the motor of a jeep that was carrying the prisoner, and some voices. There was a long stairway leading down into the moat. A few yards from the wall stood the wooden stake to which the prisoner was tied. Before they tied him up, Julio Antonio shook hands with each one of the soldiers on the firing squad and told them that he forgave them.
“Firing squad ... attention!”
“Ready! ... Aim! ... Fire!”
The discharge was ragged; the platoon fired in disorder, not at all in unison.
“Down with Commun — !” Julio Antonio’s cry was never finished.
Then there came the dry crack of the coup de grâce behind the ear. I will never forget that single mortal sound.
Within the prison, the silence was dense and charged with suspense, until it was broken by the sound of the hammers nailing the lid on the rough pine box. From our galera there was nothing to be seen, but we could hear everything. I imagined the scene: the prisoner tied to the stake, the marksmen, then the fall of the dying body, its breast ripped by the bullets. “May God receive him in His arms,” someone cried, and Ulises, unable to contain himself any longer, began to cry for his cousin.
The next day, Pedro Luis Villanueva and some other prisoners declared a hunger strike to protest the shootings. They were taken out of the yard and carried to the chapels. Clodomiro Miranda, former commander of Fidel Castro’s army, was also being held in that improvised death row. Clodomiro had joined the rebels in the mountains of the province of Pinar del Río, the most westerly province of Cuba. He had fought with great courage defending liberty and finally rose to the rank of commander.2 Though he was not a man of great political consciousness, he could see clearly enough that the Revolution was not taking the course that Fidel had promised for it. So when he realized that the ideals of the Revolution had been betrayed, Clodomiro Miranda took up his weapon again and went off once more into the mountains. Castro ordered him hunted down, and thousands of militia were sent out to find him. He was wounded in a skirmish. When they captured him later, his legs had been completely destroyed by bullets, and there were other shells lodged in one arm and one side of his chest. He was carried into his trial on a stretcher. When they sentenced him to death, he was taken out of the military hospital and locked up in one of those horrific cells without a bed. Clodomiro was unable to stand up, so he had to drag himself along the filthy floor. His unattended wounds became infected; then they filled with maggots. That is how Pedro Luis and Manuel Villanueva found him. They were the last prisoners to speak with him.
It was also on a stretcher that they took Clodomiro down into the moat to the firing squad. The stairway, which descends into the moat, hangs from the wall on one side. On the other side, there is just space — not even a handrail. The two-hundred-year-old stone steps, worn down by generations of slaves and prisoners, can be seen even from the end of the galleries. The file of guards which carried Clodomiro descended unsteadily. Almost at the bottom of the stairs, one of the guards stumbled. He let go of the stretcher as he groped to steady himself, and Clodomiro fell onto his wounded legs and tumbled down the last steps. One of the guards told us that they tried to tie him to the post, but he simply couldn’t stay erect. They had to shoot him as he lay on the ground. When they shot him, he too cried, “Down with Communism!”
Clodomiro was perhaps the only man ever executed who was being devoured by worms even before he died.
3
LIFE AND THE TERRORS OF DEATH AT LA CABAÑA
The first visit we had with our families took place in the morning. Men were not allowed to visit the prisoners; only women were allowed inside. Even so, the searches they performed were humiliating. They stripped all the women, with no respect even for the elderly. Among the women guards who performed the searches, there were two who always caused problems — one was called La China and the other was named Mirta. Both of them were lesbians, and they made the most of the situation. However much my mother and sister tried to hide from me the shame and indignation they suffered when they were searched, I saw through it. I begged them not to come again.
Every night there were firing squads. When I heard the discharges of the rifles, I would be seized with horror, and I embraced Christ in desperation. I had come to prison with some religious feeling; my beliefs were genuine but no doubt superficial at that time, since they had never been submitted to hard trial. I held to the religion I had learned at home and at school, but it was very much like a man who has acquired good manners or who carries along the lessons of the things he first learns to read, without examining them. But very quickly I began to experience a substantial change in the nature of my beliefs. At first no doubt I embraced Christ out of the fear of losing my life — since I was certainly in danger of being shot at any time. But that path I took in approaching Him, however human it was, still seemed unsatisfactory and incomplete, merely utilitarian, to me. There came a moment when, seeing those young men full of courage depart to die before the firing squad and shout “Viva Cristo Rey!” at the fateful instant, I not only understood instantly, as though by a sudden revelation, that Christ was indeed there for me at the moments when I prayed not to be killed, but realized as well that He served to give my life, and my death if it came to that, ethical meaning. Both my life and my death would be dignified by my belief in Him. It was at that moment, I am sure, and not before, that Christianity