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A Prisoner Becomes a Warden By GUSTAVO ARCOS BERGNES |
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Comité Cubano Pro Derechos Humanos |
| Date Posted: |
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Jul 25, 03 - 9:38 AM |
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ccpdh@sigloxxi.org |
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http://www.sigloxxi.org/ |
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July 25, 2003
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR The New York Times
A Prisoner Becomes a Warden
By GUSTAVO ARCOS BERGNES
HAVANA-In steamy July, Cuban television broadcasts nightly shots of an
empty hospital room. It is spacious and clean and has big windows. We
are shown this room because 50 years ago Fidel Castro was held
prisoner there.
After the failed July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada barracks in
Santiago de Cuba, where the troops of the dictator Fulgencio Batista
were stationed, Fidel Castro and some 100 other surviving assailants
(myself among them) were tried for sedition and sentenced to up to 15
years in prison. Fidel Castro's sentence was 15 years, although he was
given amnesty, along with the rest of us, after 21 months. He was
never again jailed. He came to power in the 1959 revolution and has
since become He Who Sends Others to Jail.
For me, 1953 was not the last time: in the mid-1960's, when I was
Cuba's ambassador to Belgium, I expressed frustration with the Castro
government, was recalled and eventually sentenced to 10 years in
prison, of which I served three. Then in the 1980's I planned to
escape from Cuba and was jailed for seven more years, but that is
another story.
Four months ago, 75 brave Cuban dissidents were rounded up and two
weeks later sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years. Unlike us
so-called Moncadistas, today's dissidents did not use violence. Their
"weapons" were typewriters, cameras, radios and tape recorders. They
are writers, doctors, lawyers, economists, teachers, peasants and
human rights activists who believed, naïvely, that their ruler and
former revolutionary leader would at least tolerate the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (of which Cuba is a signatory) instead of
jailing people for possessing and distributing it.
Lately I have been reflecting, after 50 years, on trial and
punishment, on the tragic contrast between Fidel Castro, inmate, and
Fidel Castro, prison warden.
Prisoner Castro, a lawyer, had three months between his arrest and his
October 1953 trial to prepare his own defense (later adapted into his
famous "History Will Absolve Me" speech). Warden Castro allowed
today's dissidents their first glimpses of their lawyers minutes
before their trials, if at all.
Their quarters do not resemble Inmate Castro's bright and spacious
hospital room of 1953: most are in cells full of rats and mosquitoes;
in many, the tap for drinking water juts from the wall just above the
hole in the floor the prisoners are to use as a toilet. When they have
family visits, every three months, they come out in handcuffs, some in
shackles.
Because we used violence, the Moncadistas would not have been
considered prisoners of conscience by today's humanitarian groups like
Amnesty International. Nonetheless, the dictator Batista gave us
special treatment as political prisoners: we were given our own
section of the Isle of Pines prison so that we were not held together
with common criminals.
Today's dissidents, who were declared prisoners of conscience by
Amnesty International, have been tossed in with murderers and rapists.
The poets Raúl Rivero and Manuel Vazquez Portal, to mention the best
documented cases, now share wards with some of the most violent alumni
of what Fidel Castro himself once called "genuine universities of
delinquency."
Back in 1953, two women from our group took their meals at the table
of the prison chief; a relative of one of inmates bought a butchery on
the Isle of Pines and prisoners were allowed cooking facilities. The
food in the jails today is another story: many of the 75 dissidents
are sick (some are denied medicines brought by spouses) and one has
had a heart attack. Family members report frightening weight loss of
30 or 40 pounds for many of the dissidents, after only four months of
detention.
I am an old man now — 76, the same age as Fidel Castro — and there is
not much more harm that the warden can inflict on me for speaking out.
(Although there is no doubt in my mind that my younger brother,
Sebastián, died in prison in 1997 because of deliberate lack of
medical attention.) I have no reason to expect that Fidel Castro will
show his political prisoners the magnanimity that he himself benefited
from 50 years ago, or that he too will give them amnesty. I hope to be
proved wrong. It would be the only fitting way to mark the
anniversary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/25/opinion/25ARCO.html?ex=1059710400&en=c5fd262c1696f4e5&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
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