Salanueva has been active here in the international campaign for the release of her husband, René González, and four other Cuban revolutionaries serving long sentences in U.S. prisons on frame-up conspiracy and espionage charges. Before their arrest and frame-up, the five—González, Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramón Labañino—had been carrying out an international mission on behalf of Cuba to obtain information on counterrevolutionary Cuban-American groups that have a long record of conducting violent attacks on Cuba from U.S. territory with Washington’s knowledge and complicity.

Salanueva spoke on a panel July 30 with Irma Sehwerert, René González’s mother; Rosa Aurora Freijanes, the wife of Fernando González; and Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly.

In the audience were Yadira Pérez, Hernández’s niece, and Irmita and Ivette González, daughters of Olga Salanueva and René González. The first two were part of the delegation of some 30 Cuban students and other youth accompanying the U.S. visitors throughout their weeklong trip.

The meeting was part of the Third Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, which was held July 23-31 and hosted by the Federation of University Students, the Union of Young Communists, and other Cuban youth organizations (see article on the Youth Exchange in the September 8 Militant).

Noting the virtual media blackout in the United States on the case of these five Cuban internationalists, Alarcón reviewed some of the basic facts. He appealed to the youth from the United States to join in the campaign to publicize these facts and win their release.

The five revolutionaries were arrested by FBI agents in 1998 and tried and convicted in a federal court in Miami in 2001. They were charged with conspiracy to act as unregistered agents of a foreign power, conspiracy to commit espionage for Cuba, and—in the case of Hernández—conspiracy to commit murder.

The latter charge was based on the far-fetched allegation that Hernández was responsible for the deaths of four members of the ultraright group Brothers to the Rescue whose planes were shot down in February 1996 after they conducted provocative actions inside Cuban airspace. Falsely depicting the outfit as a “humanitarian” group shot down over international waters—despite testimony during the trial to the contrary—federal prosecutors claimed Hernández had alerted Cuban authorities to the group’s plans and was therefore guilty of murder.

The trial was riddled with violations of constitutional rights. Before arresting the five men, FBI agents repeatedly broke into their homes and raided their computer files, in violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against arbitrary search and seizure. For months before the trial, the defendants were tried and convicted in the big-business media. The judge refused a defense motion to move the trial to a city outside Miami, despite statements by some prospective jurors, especially Cuban-Americans, that they feared reprisals if they voted “not guilty.”

U.S. officials accused the defendants of trying to obtain military secrets, but no such evidence was presented during the trial. The prosecution was unable to prove that they carried out a single illegal act, so they were convicted on “conspiracy” charges.

The federal judge gave Hernández two consecutive life sentences plus 15 years; Ramón Labañino, a life sentence plus 18 years; Guerrero, a life sentence plus 10 years; Fernando González, a jail term of 19 years; and René González, 15 years.

Alarcón explained that the five men have been subjected to brutal conditions in an unsuccessful effort to break them. “They have been transferred to five separate prisons, far from each other and from their defense lawyers,” he noted.  
 
U.S. denial of visas to relatives in Cuba
“The Cuban diplomatic staff in Washington has been sharply limited in its ability to accompany family members who travel from Cuba to visit their imprisoned relatives,” Alarcón said. “Our staff has been reduced to seven because of recent unjust expulsions of our personnel by the U.S. government. And in a new restriction, Cuban consular officials are authorized to leave Washington, D.C., to accompany relatives only during prison visitation days.” This means family members—who have been permitted only one or two visits a year—will come on weekend visitation days, then wait alone till the next weekend to see their loved ones, while Cuban officials are forced to return to Washington and then go back.

“On top of these obstacles,” Alarcón said, “Olga, the wife of René, and Adriana [Pérez], the wife of Gerardo, have repeatedly been denied visas to see their husbands.”

Olga Salanueva, a U.S. legal resident who after her husband’s arrest in 1998 was locked up in an immigration jail for three months and then deported to Cuba, has so far been denied a visa three times. Adriana Pérez has not seen her husband in five years. This includes the 17-month period after the arrests during which the five men were thrown into solitary confinement and kept incommunicado at the Miami federal detention center, with their families denied word of their fate.

“This denial of the right of the families to visit their relatives in prison is a form of cruel and unusual punishment,” Alarcón stressed. He urged those in the audience to join in the demand that the U.S. government immediately grant visas to Salanueva and Pérez.

In a further attempt to isolate them, on February 28 U.S. officials put all five in the “hole,” a move that sparked a flood of protest messages from defenders of the Cuban patriots. They were released a month later.

During the discussion period, several of the Youth Exchange participants asked questions about the five men, two of whom were born in the United States, who are all part of a generation that grew up in Cuba since the victory of the 1959 revolution. Freijanes, Salanueva, and Sehwerert painted a vivid portrait of their lives.

They explained that Hernández, Fernando González, and René González were among the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who served as volunteer combatants in Angola between 1975 and 1990, helping defeat invasions by the South African army under the racist apartheid regime.  
 
How René González got to Angola
Irma Sehwerert told the story of how in 1977 her son managed to be included in the list of internationalist volunteers to be sent to Angola. “René wanted to go, but was turned down because he had just completed his military service. He said, ‘I have to go to Angola.’ So he hopped on his bike on a Friday afternoon, pedaled several kilometers to find the two officials who could give him the necessary forms and signatures. He got the signatures. And early on Monday he left for Angola,” she said with a grin.

The panelists also explained how the five internationalists have continued to carry out political work behind bars, sharing books and discussing politics with fellow prisoners. Sehwerert told how, when René González was transferred to the federal penitentiary in Edgefield, South Carolina, many of his fellow inmates were happy to learn that he had fought in the liberation struggle in Angola.

“Some of René’s African-American cell mates invited him to attend one of their cultural celebrations,” she said. “When he walked in, one prisoner asked, ‘What is someone with blonde hair and green eyes doing here?’ Another prisoner responded, ‘He fought in Africa.’ When the others heard this they welcomed him to take part in their celebration.”

Alarcón and other panelists noted that they realize the fight to free the framed-up revolutionaries will be long and hard. “We will consider it a final victory when all five are freed. However, we have been winning small victories along the way,” said Salanueva, pointing to successful efforts such as the campaign of protest messages that was organized after they were put in the “hole.”

The unbreakable stand of the five jailed revolutionaries has given their supporters greater determination to keep fighting for their release, she said. When two of the five Cubans were given lesser charges of conspiracy, they could have opted to pursue separate trials in hopes of getting shorter sentences. “Instead, they all asked that the trials be done together, because the only victory will be freedom for all five,” she said.

“It’s a victory when the world knows that the Cuban people cannot be intimidated and cannot be bought,” Salanueva added. “It is by chance that we have been placed in this situation, but I am sure there are millions of Cubans who are ready to take their place. It is much harder when people abandon their principles. Despite the hardships, it was a source of pride when we learned why they had been imprisoned and what they had been doing.”

At the conclusion of the July 30 meeting, members of the youth delegation from Los Angeles presented the delighted families of the five prisoners, on behalf of the entire U.S. group, with a large, colorfully painted banner with portraits of the five and the slogan “Free the Cuban Five.” The banner, painted by student Alicia Siu, had been signed by dozens of the participants in the Youth Exchange.

Many of the youth in the audience left the meeting expressing their eagerness to return to the United States to spread the facts they had learned about the case of the Cuban Five and campaign for their freedom.  
 
 
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