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The letter Emilio Adolfo Rivero
Isle of Pines. Near Christmas 1965. By then I had been in solitary confinement for more than a year, being the Dean, so to speak, of those quarters, followed by Alfredito*, who came in four days after me. My only communication with the outside world consisted of the news and comments brought by prisoners who were punished and sent into the confinenment cells, called as a whole "Pabellones de Castigo" (Punishment Pavillions). In Isle of Pines there were around six thousand prisoners at the time, living mainly in the four "Circulares", as the circular shaped buildings were called. Even inside the building where a prisoner lived, it was difficult to know all the inmates, because of their being so many. So it was only due to the most favorable circumstances that I could get any news from anyone that might have news from my family, which at the time was already living in the United States. Brutality was rampant at the time. The garrison was decided to submit the prisoners to forced labor and when the prisoners dragged their feet too ostensibly during the time they spent in the fields, as members of the "work brigades", or when they were surprised commiting sabotage, besides being beaten they were sent to the "punishment pavillions". When they were approaching our building, the guards shouted to each other: "¡carne fresca!" (fresh meat!) and also "¿el rojo o el amarillo?" (the red or the yellow one?) referring to the plastic covers of the electricity cables with which they beat the prisoners. Repression was at its toughest, combined with bad food, sparse communication with the families by visits or mail, no medical attention and all kinds of contradictory rumours, aimed at breaking the prisoners' morale. Prisoners were sent to the Punishment Pavillion for one or two weeks. A month was considered a severe case. But as time went by, a few other prisoners, perhaps five or six in mumber, stayed there for four or five months, while Odilo Alonso, a Spaniard, and Nerin Sanchez, an ex-Rebel Army Officer, had acquired status of permanent guests, adding their number to Alfredito and me. By then Alfredito and I had become a kind of tourists' attraction. Whenever G-2 officers or military people from the Soviet Union or Soviet Bloc countries came from Havana, to inspect or just visit the Penitentiary, they were taken to the Pavillion, walked along the four corridors, and at times stopped at the barred door of the cells and asked questions of the prisoners. I became accustomed to the fact that they always stopped at my cell, and the guard on duty, or the officer guiding the visitors, would most of the times look at me and say the same phrase "éste es la mierda de presidio" (this one is the prison's shit). On leaving, most of them would also repeat the same phrase "te vas a podrir ahi" (you are going to rot there). Unless it happened in a moment when I was in bad temper, something very unusual in me, I always smiled or laughed at that, which infuriated them, for they took it as an act of bravado. In fact it was nothing of the sort, it was just that I always have had a good sense of humor. It was part of the Penitentiary's regulations at the time that the order for silence was given at 9 p. m. It was the hour when those who wanted to do it, looked into themselves, trying to see what was there. It was the hour for memories, for longings, for building castles in the air, and also, alas, the hour for battling or surrendering, the hour for reppressing or giving free rein to sexual phantasies, the force of life claiming its due. Once, about 9:30 p.m., suddendly, a voice broke into the silence of the night: "¡Emiliooo Adolfooo...! ¡Emiliooo Adolfooo!! ¡Tus viejos estan bieeen!" ¡Tus viejos estan bieeen! (Your old ones are well!). Someone was shouting to me from one of the "Circulares"! Under the repression and beatings all of them were suffering! Risking immediate an brutal retaliation from the sadistic garrison, not only for the one who was shouting, but for all the inmates in the building! And just for the sake of giving me the comfort of knowing about my family! And the yelling again: "¡Tus hijos estan bieeen! "Tus hijos estan bieeen!" (Your kids are well!). There was some more yelling, but I could not understand what they were saying, for the guard at the entrance of the pavillion understood what was going on and he started clanging his bayonet against the bars that closed one of the corridors. The noise he made drowned the end of the message. Among the thousand things that prisoners used to talk about, there were topics that recurred once and again, among them reincarnation, metempsychosis-the transmigration of souls. By this time I had expressed my wish that, if things of the sort existed, I would rather come back to earth as a fish, a plant, a snake, a bird, anything but a human being. I had seen and heard so many things coming to light and sound from the dark recesses of the human spirit, that I abhorred my participating of the human condition. But that idea of mine was not deep rooted, it didn't endure. And perhaps a turning point in time, a bend in the road to pride about being a man, was that night when, through terror, solitude, despair and hopelessness, a letter, a short, moving, beautiful letter was voiced to me.**
*Alfredo Izaguirre de la Riva **In an annual meeting of ex-political prisoners that took place on June 29-July the 1st, 1990, in Miami, Fl., I found out, by chance, that it had been Alberto Muller the friend who had shouted that message to me.
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