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BY DECEIT
Emilio Adolfo Rivero
Conversation is a noble thing—the child of discourse, the mother of
knowledge, a balm for the soul, a byway for the affections, a bond of
friendship, the food of happiness, the pastime of everyone.
Baltasar Gracián
The major concern of
prisoners—apart from getting out, of course—was to make the best possible
use of this trying time. In my case, I read books, practiced hatha yoga,
played chess—and what especially helped me was to find good conversation.
Many a time the search was worthwhile. I remember one talk especially
because my interlocutor, an unlettered man, rendered what I thought to be a
very subtle observation about Fidel Castro.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Isle of Pines
Early 1964.
We were alone in the cell, near the window, a barred rectangle opened in the
wall. It was dusk, usually the most unbearable hour in prison.
He was a small town worker, blondish, lean, stern, a young man in his early
twenties. Unassuming, rather calm in his way of talking and gesturing, it was
easy to detect that honesty was a given in him. At the same time, perhaps due to
his recollections, to all he had left behind, to the circumstances that led to
his imprisonment, or who knows for whatever reasons, it was noticeable that
there was always an inner struggle going on in his mind, kept at bay, but there.
"I never liked Fidel Castro", he said, "Of course", I thought, perhaps in a
false generalization, "why should you be here if it were otherwise?". But there
was something in the way he had uttered those words, that prompted me to dig
into the subject.
"Why not?", I asked. By now he had sat, side-ways, on the window sill, looking
outside, at the landscape, which included other prison buildings. He turned his
head to me and, without the slightest tinge of emotion, answered: "Because he
got to power on his knees".
His answer puzzled me. Why was he saying that? Castro had come to power leading
an armed insurrection. Afterwards, he had consolidated his position by steadily
adding, multiplying, the armed forces under his control. How could that be
reconciled with his coming or staying in power on his knees?
I stared at him, waiting for his further comments, but he made none. Looking
away, beyond the window bars, he seemed lost in reveries. Curious, I interrupted
his silence, and asked him: "Why do you say that he got to power on his knees?"
"Porque llegó engañando" [because he got there (to power) by deceiving others],
was his reply.
One can always profit from
the company of well-educated people, because the vastness of their horizons
is instructive. But one may also learn from the ignorant, since, in Herman
Hesse’s phrase, “the human is a marvelous possibility.”
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