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Vol. 73/No. 21      June 1, 2009

 
Cuban revolutionary speaks from U.S. jail
Interview with Gerardo Hernández,
one of Cuban Five: first of five parts
(feature article)
 
The following is the first installment of an interview with Gerardo Hernández, one of five Cuban revolutionaries who have been held in U.S. prisons on frame-up charges for more than 10 years. The April 1 interview was conducted by Saul Landau, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., who is making a documentary on the case. It first appeared in the online magazine Progreso Weekly, published in five parts in both the original Spanish and in English. The Militant will be reprinting all five parts in the coming weeks.

The U.S. Justice Department approved the request of the film crew headed by Landau to interview Hernández by phone with a prison official listening in. They were not allowed inside the prison, but were not required to submit written questions in advance and were given permission to conduct the interview in Spanish. The interview lasted well over an hour, with the film crew taking complete and careful notes.

Known internationally as the Cuban Five, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González have been in prison since September 1998. They had been gathering information on counterrevolutionary Cuban American groups that operate from south Florida with Washington’s complicity and have a history of violent attacks on Cuba.

The five were framed and convicted in 2001 on charges ranging from failing to register as agents of a foreign government to “conspiracy to commit espionage” and were given sentences ranging from 15 years to life. Hernández, who was also falsely accused of “conspiracy to commit murder,” was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years, and is currently being held in the federal penitentiary in Victorville, California.

A 2005 federal appeals court ruling that the five had not received a fair trial because of the hostile political atmosphere in Miami was reversed a year later by the same court on review. In 2008 the court ruled that the sentences against Guerrero, Labañino, and Fernando González were excessive and sent those cases back for resentencing.

The five have appealed their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court. A decision by the Supreme Court on whether it will hear the appeal is expected in June.

Comments in brackets are by Landau. Footnotes are by the Militant.
 

*****

Saul Landau: What was your mission and why?

Gerardo Hernández: In the U.S. in general and Florida specifically, many groups contemplated and carried out acts of terrorism in Cuba. We were collecting information on Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue. Many years have passed and I hope that nothing has escaped me but I think those were the principal groups in which we were working.

Landau: What did you learn through your infiltration?

Hernández: The first thing that struck me was the impunity with which these groups operated, violating the laws of the U.S.: The Neutrality Acts [of the 1790s] that supposedly means no organization can use American soil to commit terrorism against another country.

In the case of Alpha 66, the operatives would take a fast boat and shoot at targets along Cuba’s coast. When they would return to Miami, they would hold a press conference and openly say what they had done.

And when someone would ask, “Hey, doesn’t that violate the neutrality laws,” they would reply: “Not really, because first we went to one of the Keys somewhere in the Caribbean and then we went to Cuba. So technically, we didn’t leave from the U.S.” They did this openly and no U.S. agency took responsibility.

Landau: In what years?

Hernández: This has been going on since 1959.1 I personally began dealing with this in the 1990s. Since I’ve been here in prison in Victorville [California], about 3 years ago, I think in 2005, they arrested a Cuban right here in this country with an arsenal, all kinds of weapons in his house. And the first thing he said was, “Well, I am a member of Alpha 66 and I’m using these weapons in the struggle for Cuban freedom.” That was his defense.

Landau: Were the Cuban Five all volunteers? How does one prepare to infiltrate an enemy group in an enemy country? And then act as if you were enemies of your country and friends of them?

Hernández: Yes, all volunteers. In my case, I’m not a career military man. I studied to be a diplomat. It took me 6 years to complete my degree in International and Political Relations. Afterwards, I went to Angola,2 as part of a voluntary international mission.

And while I was in Angola it seems I sparked the attention of the Cuban intelligence services, and when I got back, they approached me with this mission. They said, “We know you studied to be a diplomat, but you know our country has a certain situation with these terrorist groups that are coming from Florida to commit all kinds of crimes and we need someone to go and fulfill these tasks.”

I could have said, “No, I studied diplomacy, I want to be a diplomat,” but Cubans, those who were raised with the Revolution, know that during the past 50 years our country has faced almost a war environment.

In Cuba, he who doesn’t know personally a victim of terrorism, at least knows about the plane that exploded over Barbados, killing 73 people. Who doesn’t know about the bomb that killed Fabio di Celmo, just to mention a few acts?3 There was a pre-school where the counterrevolutionaries set a gas tank on fire. These actions are part of the Cuban consciousness. So, I told the Intelligence officers, “Yes, I am prepared to fulfill this mission.”

Landau: How did you manage to infiltrate these groups? How did you convince them, people like José Basulto [head of Brothers to the Rescue4], for example?

Hernández: For Cubans in this country, everything is connected. Cubans in the United States have enormous privileges, ones that no other citizens of the world have. Cubans arrive by any route, including with false passports, and the only thing they have to say is, “I come seeking freedom,” and right away the U.S. gives them all the documents they need.

So, in the case of Basulto, for example, one of our comrades who infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue had originally “stolen” a plane from Cuba. René [González, another of the Cuban Five] flew his plane here and, as is the custom, he was received as a hero. He got lots of attention and, later joined the Brothers. His job was collecting information about that organization.

So, if you ask me how, I say that we used as our foundation for infiltration the very privileges all Cubans receive when they arrive in this country; even those who took others with them, and have hijacked airplanes, or have put a gun up to a pilot’s head. Look at people like Leonel Matías, who killed someone on a boat, arrived here on that boat, with his gun—and the body was even discovered.5 But despite all of that, he didn’t have to face any trial in the U.S. justice system. Those people are automatically pardoned. So using exactly that kind of advantage, we were able to penetrate these organizations to a certain level.

When I mention Brothers to the Rescue, some might think, “This is a humanitarian organization that rescued balseros [Cubans trying to cross the Florida Straits on rafts].” On the contrary, while their activities were limited to rescuing rafters, they had no problems with the Cuban authorities.

What people generally don’t know is that José Basulto, the head of that organization, has a long record. He trained with the CIA, and infiltrated Cuba in the 1960s. In 1962, he came to Cuba on a fast boat and fired shells at the Cuban coast, including targeting a hotel. Even Basulto, with all his known history, had no problems while he limited his actions to rescuing rafters.

In 1995, however, the United States and Cuba signed migratory agreements specifying that boats intercepted at sea would no longer be brought to the United States; rather they would be returned to Cuba. At that point, people stopped contributing money to Basulto and his organization because, they said: “Why are we going to give money to Basulto’s organization? When he calls the Coast Guard, are they just going to return those rafters to Cuba?”

So, when Basulto saw his business in danger, he invented this invasion of Cuban airspace [in 1995] as a way to keep people donating money. We presented this evidence in our case. If the press hasn’t wanted to pay much attention to this … well, they don’t want to touch such material. It doesn’t behoove them. I am referring to the major press. The documents are all there showing how Basulto and the Brothers to the Rescue were trying out handmade weapons in order to introduce them in Cuba.

When Basulto testified at our trial [in 2001], our attorneys asked him what he intended to do with all those weapons. All this is in the trial record, though no one seems to want to pay attention to it. People tend to talk about the Brothers to the Rescue as if they were a humanitarian organization, omitting the part about terrorism; like they omit the fact that the FBI also had penetrated that organization. The FBI had someone inside the group giving them information on the Brothers’ activities. Why would the FBI penetrate a humanitarian organization?

(To be continued)


1. The revolutionary struggle in Cuba led by the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959.

2. Between November 1975 and May 1991, more than 375,000 Cuban volunteers responded to a request for assistance from the newly independent government of Angola and helped defend that country against invasions by the South African apartheid regime’s armed forces. Among them were three of the Cuban Five: Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, and René González.

3. Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, and other counterrevolutionaries were implicated in an October 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane over Barbados. Fabio di Celmo, an Italian tourist, was killed in 1997 at Havana’s Hotel Copacabana, by a bomb detonated by a Salvadoran who said he was hired by Posada Carriles.

4. On Feb. 4, 1996, Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces shot down two planes flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a U.S.-based rightist group, after they provocatively entered Cuban airspace. The group had repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and ignored warnings to cease their hostile actions. The U.S. government charged Hernández with conspiracy to commit murder, claiming he bore responsibility for the Cuban government’s action in shooting down the planes.

5. In 1994 Leonel Matías hijacked a boat in Cuba and killed a naval officer in the process.
 
 
Related articles:
Int’l youth conference: free Cuban Five now!
Free the Cuban Five now!  
 
 
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