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SHORTS
Emilio Adolfo Rivero
DOLLARS
On the evening of the 2nd of May, 1961, while being at a private residence
adjacent to the G-2 headquarters, at 5th Ave. and 14th St., in Miramar, which
house had then been turned into a provisional detention center, a soldier in
came with an officer, a captain, and started looking at the prisoners. I
recognized him as one of those who had arrested me. When the soldier saw me, he
told the officer: "this is the one".
The Captain, a mulato perhaps in his late thirties, looked around for a place
where we could talk. Finally he asked me to go upstairs, where the women were.
Then we went into the bathroom. He closed the door and told me that he knew I
had dollars. Where did I have them? I answered that I didn't have any money. The
soldier interrupted me and told the captain: "He had a 45 caliber Colt, that we
occupied".
"You do have dollars", insisted the captain. "And, by the way, where did you get
that pistol". "I bought it from someone I met by chance", was my answer. "Who
was he?", he demanded. "I don't know, and if I knew I wouldn't tell you", I
replied. Since the very first minute I had seen the captain I detected something
repulsive about the man, hence that last reply, an outburst that
had not been necessary at all.
He looked at me, threatingly, and tapping one of my shoulders, said: "This night
you'll talk to me at La Cabana". With this, he opened the bathroom door, we went
downstairs, and they left the place. Some of the prisoners wanted to know what
had been all the fuss about. I gave vague answers. Through other prisoners whom
I knew, I found out that the captain's name was Silvio Garcia Castillo. Then I
remember talking to two of my fellow prisoners, Antonio Valdes Rodriguez, the
brain surgeon, and Salvador Subira Turro, about what had happened, and that that
could be interpreted as a threat of torture. I wanted them to know so that they
could spread the word in case I became separated from the group. Some two hours
later we were all transfered to La Cabaña prison. The captain didn't go there to
see me.
During my years in prison I found out about Captain Silvio Garcia Castillo. He
had had a reputation of being corrupt. Instances were mentioned to me depicting
him as a man always eager to make some extra pesos, at whatever cost. Years
later I saw that captain, now a prisoner, at La Cabana, sentenced they said,
because of some sordid money matter. And I came then to realize that that night,
when he had threatened me, he had not been motivated at all by reasons
concerning his career as a security officer, but by what he had perceived as an
opportunity to put some dollars into his pocket.
OPPORTUNISTS.
April 23, 1961.
When I was to leave the house where I had been arrested, I asked the G-2 people
to get my coat. They accompanied me to the closet where I had hung it. When I
looked into my wallet I saw that they had already taken the money I had in it.
"You took my money", I said. "What money?", one of them asked. "Oh, forget it",
I retorted. All of them heard this, and no one made further questions. All of
them, wolves of the same pack.
ÑICO GARCIA
Early 1960.
Ñico Garcia was black, tall, good-looking, his traits ressembling more those of
a Sudanese or an Ethiopian, than those of the other African ethnias we were used
to in Cuba. He visited me once in a while to discuss happenings in the
Organización Auténtica (OA), to whose meetings he attended occassionally. He was
highly critical of some of our points of view. He also argued about my going to
Costa Rica with Aureliano, representing the Triple A, during the fall of 1959,
invited by the National Liberation Party, and he rpeatedly questioned the
purposes of that meeting.
I used to side-track him by the simplest of procedures: I always told him
absolutely true stories of what we were doing and aiming at, some of them of a
relatively confidential nature. Most of the times he didn't believe what I told
him. But I knew that, by checking them over through other agents or infiltrated
people, he would find them to be true. Insurrectional plans, or names, of
course, were never mentioned by me. But I was very careful, for he had wide
experience and was a very intelligent man. It was a risky game of which I barely
escaped at the time, late 1959 and early 1960.
But in those visits to my home he usually met my kids, Rubén Adolfo and Irma
Alicia (Ermi), who were, respectively, two and a half and one and a half years
old. Ñico became specially fond of Ermi. Kids can not be deceived about
feelings, and it happened that Ermi became fond of him too. And it was striking,
for though coming to my home as a friend, he in fact was a covert Security
officer, hostile to my ideas and endeavors. But we were both in contact at a
different, silent level. He was tender to my daughter, honestly enjoyed holding
her in his arms, feeling well about her kissing him. And I was touched by that
mutual affection. Ermi was kind of a deterrent factor between Ñico and me. I
don't know how he felt about his visits to my home. I venture to say that he
acted in a rather impersonal way, just trying to do the job he had been assigned
to. As to me, though knowing that he was haunting me, surveilling my activities,
I felt no hostility towards him. Because Ermi liked him and it appeared to me
that he liked Ermi.
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