[Ppnews] A Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez (Part Three)

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau05112009.html

May 11, 2009


A Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez (Part Three)

Cuba's Biggest "Crime": a Desire to be a Sovereign and Independent State

By SAUL LANDAU

This conversation took place on April 1, 2009. 
Our film crew received Justice Department 
approval to talk with “the prisoner,” with a 
prison official in the room. Before his 1998 
arrest, Gerardo Hernandez directed the operations 
of the other Cuban State Security agents who 
infiltrated violent groups in the Miami area for 
the purposes of stopping them from carrying our 
terrorist attacks on tourist sites in Cuba. We took complete and careful notes.


Saul Landau: Later you went to prison at Lompoc [California]?

Gerardo Hernandez: Yes, we had a legal battle to 
get us out of “the hole” and into the general 
population. Then came the trial, and after the 
trial, another month back in “the hole.” Then, 
after the sentencing, they sent us to different 
penitentiaries. I was sent to Lompoc in 2003, and 
into “the box.” That happened in all 5 prisons on 
the same day. It still isn’t clear why, or who 
gave the order. Lompoc is a very old prison, 
apart from “the hole,” which is where they send 
people who attack guards or set fire to 
mattresses; for the incorrigible, “the box,” a 
basement below “the hole” -- 10 double-doored 
cells. They put me down there, in my underwear, 
barefoot for a month. I didn’t know if it was day 
or night, because you’re inside for 24 hours. 
There’s no hour of recreation or anything. A leak 
dripped from the cell above. Whenever that person 
flushed the toilet, dirty water would run down my cell’s walls.

I complained about health dangers. But they had 
planned to keep us there for one year for 
“special administrative measures.” They had 
warned me I wouldn’t have any contacts, no 
visits, no nothing. To communicate with my 
lawyer, I had to submit a letter. I had to make 
an envelope out of a piece of paper, and seal it 
with toothpaste. Nothing to read, nothing to 
write with, nothing! That was quite a difficult 
month. They [prison authorities] told us we’d be 
there for a year, and at the end of that year 
they’d review our cases; we could be there 
indefinitely. When the guards planned to take me 
for a bath 3 or 4 guards would handcuff me. The 
other cells had their exterior doors open. The 
interior door was like a closed fence, but the 
iron exterior door that isolated you completely, 
was left open, so people wouldn’t go crazy. But 
mine was always closed. When they’d take me to 
shower, they’d close the other doors so no one 
would even see me -- because one of the rules was 
that I could have contact with no one. I was 
there for a month, not knowing if it was day or 
night, dirty water running down my walls, 
barefoot, with the light on 24 hours a day; 
hearing screams of people around me, some of whom 
gone crazy. One day, a Thursday, they brought me 
papers to sign, saying I would be there for one 
year. The following Tuesday, without explanation, 
just as they’d brought me there without knowing 
anything, they took me out. We found out that 
lots of people had protested outside the prison. 
Members of Congress had inquired about us.

Landau: Under what pretext were you thrown in “the box?” How did you keep sane?

Hernandez: Pretext? None. The lieutenant who took 
me to the hole asked me: “Why are you going to 
the hole?” I said, “You’re asking me? You should 
be telling me.” When I asked they’d tell me, 
“Orders from above.” Coincidentally, this took 
place a month before we were to present our 
appeals, when we most needed contact with our 
lawyers on finalizing the appeal documents. We 
[the five] went to “the hole,” a mysterious 
coincidence, right before our appeal.

How could I stand it? We were acutely aware of 
the wide support from people trying to get us 
justice. That really affected us. We knew Cuba 
would protest, but also that friends throughout 
the world, including in this country, would do 
everything possible to free us. We did get out of 
the hole, finally. Indeed, protests took place in 
many countries, and in front of the Bureau of 
Prisons. Such actions really give you hope, 
strength. And you know you can’t turn on your 
comrades
 people who wouldn’t fail you and hope 
you won’t fail them. So, you spend all day 
thinking: “Nothing can happen to me in here, I 
can’t have a panic attack, a nervous breakdown, I 
cannot yield, not even a little bit because too 
many people out there will hold that against me.” That gives you strength.

Landau: Did you think about your family?

Hernandez: The U.S. government won’t give her 
[wife] a visa to visit me -- for 10 years. 
Denying me the chance to see my wife is part of 
this process; the interrogation, incentives to 
betray, months of solitary confinement, The FBI’s 
or Administration’s plans didn’t materialize. 
Initially, they thought: “Arrest these Castro 
agents, threaten them and they’ll grovel, because 
this is the richest and best country in the 
world. Cuba is a poor country, a dictatorship
” 
For the past 50 years, they’ve told Americans, 
“Cuba is hell -- but you can’t go there to see for yourself.”

Americans are free to do many things, but not 
travel 90 miles to visit that country to check 
the government’s claims. They planned for ‘the 5’ 
to switch sides, create this fantastic propaganda 
show: we’d denounce whatever they thought we 
should denounce, condemn the revolution; like 
they do with defecting athletes or musician. All 
you have to say is: “I come here seeking 
freedom.” The government squeezes the maximum 
from them; then they’re forgotten. That was more 
or less the plan for us, but it didn’t work. In 
retaliation they were going to make our lives as 
difficult as possible. For 10 years. Prisoners 
e-mail their families. They don’t let me use e-mail, not even with my wife.

Landau: What did Cuba do to the United States to 
deserve punishment for 50 years?

Hernandez: Cuba’s biggest “crime”: its desire to 
be a sovereign and independent nation. History 
goes back beyond 50 years. Cuba was winning the 
independence war against Spain [1895-98], when 
the United States said: “This is no good for us!” 
Suddenly and mysteriously, the USS Maine explodes 
[in Havana Harbor], the pretext for U.S. 
intervention to defeat Spain. Then they put the 
Platt Amendment in Cuba’s constitution [allowing U.S. intervention].

Go back much further: Cuba, the ripe fruit, would 
fall into U.S. hands; Cuba is in the U.S.’ 
backyard. That little island suffers the 
misfortune of being 90 miles from the most 
powerful country in the world. Cuba refused to be 
the U.S. spa and brothel like in the good old 
days when marines urinated on the Jose Marti 
statue. Those times remain present in the minds 
of Cubans. Cuba’s worst crime is to be free and 
sovereign -- without the U.S. Ambassador 
dictating as he did for about half a century. 
That’s why Cuba cannot be forgiven; for wanting 
to have its own system. Remember they [U.S. 
companies] owned the casinos, industries, best 
land; they practically owned the country. That 
ended in 1959; something for which they can’t forgive us.

Landau: You’re being punished as a symbol of “disrespect?”

Hernandez: Yes, but there’s another fundamental 
element, in my opinion. The FBI was in an 
uncomfortable position, because it became known 
that the FBI had penetrated the Brothers to 
Rescue using Juan Pablo Roque [another Cuban 
intelligence agent]. He was their agent; they 
paid him to give them information. When this came 
out, the FBI looked bad to the extreme right 
wingers in Miami. The FBI looked for a scapegoat, 
so they could say: “We nabbed these five guilty ones.”

Landau: What did Brothers to the Rescue hope to achieve with your trial?

Hernandez: Mainly, an economic goal. Some of them 
have legitimate political views and are patriots 
in their own way, but many are in it for economic 
reasons. The anti-Castro industry is a 
multi-million dollar industry. For 50 years, 
people have lived off it: radio commentators to 
heads of the 3,500 organizations sucking up 
federal money to “achieve freedom in Cuba;” or 
taking donations from the elderly to buy arms for 
the “liberation of Cuba.” It never occurred to 
[Jose] Basulto to fly into Cuban airspace while 
people were giving him money to patrol the waters 
off Florida. He’d bought a few small planes with 
that donated money. When people stopped giving -- 
why would they do so if the Coast Guard would 
send rafters back to Cuba -- he thought, “I 
better invent something else.” That’s when he 
started flying into Cuban airspace
 to keep money coming in.

Also, in my opinion, Basulto, who is intelligent, 
may have wanted to provoke a serious conflict. 
They dream of the day the U.S. Army would wipe 
those revolutionaries off the planet. Upon those 
ashes they’d rebuild their own Cuba; the Cuba 
they had before the revolution. What they haven’t 
been able to do, the U.S. Army would do for them. 
That’s why they call the Bay of Pigs a 
“betrayal.” They thought the U.S. Army would 
support them at the Bay of Pigs. That was 
Kennedy’s betrayal. So, I don’t doubt Basulto 
intended to create an international conflict. It 
didn’t matter how many Cubans or Americans would 
die. All that mattered was getting their country 
back, what they consider to be their country.

Landau: In Miami, there was a rumor: Basulto was 
a Cuban agent. All his missions ended in failure or disaster.

Hernandez: That second part is true, but the 
first part
 I doubt it. It’s a shame that lives 
were lost [after the February 1996 shoot down of 
Brothers’ planes] but I assure you Cuba did 
everything possible to prevent it. They sent 16 
diplomatic notes through official channels, 
asking the U.S. not to allow The Brothers to fly into Cuban airspace.

Saul Landau is currently making (with Jack 
Willis) a film on the Cuban Five. His other films 
are available on DVD from 
<mailto:roundworldproductions at gmail.com>roundworldproductions at gmail.com. 
He is a fellow of the Institute for Policy 
Studies and author of 
<http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html>A 
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD (Counterpunch A/K).




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