Vol. 77/No. 28      July 22, 2013

Reprinted here is one section of an extensive interview with René González by Enrique Ojito and Arelys García that was printed in the June 15 issue of Escambray, a weekly newspaper in Cuba’s Sancti Spíritus province. González is one of five Cuban revolutionaries framed up and jailed by the U.S. government for their work to defend the Cuban people as well as supporters of the revolution in the U.S. and elsewhere from armed attacks and provocations by counterrevolutionary organizations based in the U.S.

The Cuban Five, as they are known around the world, were arrested by the FBI in 1998. A campaign for their release is being waged internationally. Today, all but González remain in prison, with sentences ranging from 17 years and nine months to a double life term plus 15 years. Paroled in October 2011, González won his fight to return to Cuba May 3, about halfway through his term of “supervised release.”

González begins the interview by talking about his early years in Chicago, where he was born in 1956. His parents were active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee there and participated in street demonstrations opposing the U.S.-organized Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. They returned to Cuba six months later.

González covers a number of topics: “stealing” a Cuban crop-duster plane in 1990 and flying to Florida, where he was welcomed as a hero by counterrevolutionaries; leaving family behind and comrades who thought he had betrayed the revolution; being reunited six years later in Miami with his wife Olga and their oldest daughter, Irmita; the 13 years he spent in U.S. prisons; and more.

In one section, González outlines the operations and plans of several Cuban-American paramilitary groups he infiltrated, including how they sought to exploit the economic hardships endured by the people of Cuba in the 1990s following the collapse of most of the island’s foreign trade resulting from the disintegration of the Soviet bloc regimes. Among the major objectives of the rightists, González explains, was to provoke a military confrontation between Havana and Washington.

The excerpt below centers on González’s time in prison; more will be printed in a future issue of the paper. Translation from Spanish is by the Militant. The full interview in Spanish is available at the Escambray website (www.escambray.cu). English translations have been prepared and posted online by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 and the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five.
 

In the United States, “arrest” is a euphemism for assault. They storm your home in a show of force to paralyze you; that’s the first step to try to soften you up. They [the FBI] started beating on the door; in other cases they used a battering ram. We lived down a very narrow hall and the door was made of iron. It seems they couldn’t physically knock it down. They banged on it violently and when I opened, they entered with pistols drawn. They shoved it open, threw me to the floor as they threatened me with the pistol, and immediately cuffed me.

When Olguita came out of the bedroom they threw her against the wall. Then they stood me up, asked me if I was René González, if I belonged to Brothers to the Rescue. That Saturday they took me away to prison.

How would you describe the first days in prison?

The first days are terrible. Besides, our case was different from the common practice in which they take you to an intake area, give you clothing, explain how the prison works and let you make a phone call.

We were given special treatment; in military terms they call it “shock and awe” — they violently arrest you and take you to the FBI to see whether or not you’re the kind of person who will plead guilty, who will cooperate. They immediately put you in the “hole,” alone, to make you start thinking about what lies ahead for you. Those are days when you can’t sleep; they didn’t even give us a sheet, nothing.

At that moment the die is cast. If you didn’t decide to give in then, you’re not going to do it later. From that point on we decided we were not going to give in, and that was that. That’s what I had to confront.

Those were difficult days, right up to Monday. It was all well-staged. They keep you alone with your thoughts on Saturday and Sunday, without shaving or brushing your teeth. On Monday they dress you up like a clown and take you down to the courtroom. They make you walk down an aisle and there’s this mob of people, full of hatred, looking at you shackled, unkempt, with a cadaverous look, and at the same time you’re worrying about your family.

I was lucky. When they brought me out of the elevator and made me face that room full of people, and I was looking for my family, I suddenly heard a shout: “Daddy!!!” I looked around and saw Irmita giving me a big thumbs-up. From that moment on I took a deep breath and told myself: this breath will last me until this is over, and it’s still with me.

What did you hold onto, to keep from selling out, as some other members of the Cuban network did?

Basically, human dignity; I believe in the value of dignity. The trial showed there are some who don’t believe in it, but human values do exist. We all assert them, but under conditions like those, you see who believes in them and who doesn’t. The Five believed in them. If human values exist, I don’t see why a human being must give in to brute force — political convictions aside.

Just because these people have the power to mistreat me, to lock me up, I’m going to give in? No one taught me there is any value to that. In addition, there’s the mission you were carrying out, the understanding of your cause, your awareness of what you were doing — knowing you are right, knowing you were defending human lives, knowing you are being tried unjustly.

All this adds up. And on top of that is the way they act. You see them lying to the judge, blackmailing witnesses, deceiving the court, defying the judge’s orders, lying to the jury, coaching people to lie. As you see the depths to which they will go, you say: just how low can they get? At that point you tell yourself: I can’t give in to these people.

You were locked up in Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Florida. How do you win respect in such a hostile environment?

In the case of the U.S. prison system, just going to trial earns you a lot of respect — almost no one goes to trial. People are afraid to go to trial; the system is rigged in such a way that in a trial you will lose. Your lawyers will talk you out of it and persuade you to cooperate with the prosecutor, and cooperating always ends up meaning you have to finger somebody. What’s involved? When you went to trial, you stood up to the government.

People respect you a lot for that. Besides, they know you won’t finger them.

Your attitude is important, too. If you treat people well, they generally treat you well. You must associate with people who have positive and constructive attitudes; avoid things like gambling and getting into debt; don’t get involved with gangs.

The letters help a lot. People notice you get a lot of letters from different countries, and they come and ask you for stamps. The Cuban postage stamps that were issued helped. They would say: “Daaamn! This guy is on a stamp!” Even the guards asked me to autograph them on the sly.

Were there any cellmates or fellow prisoners in general who made an impression on you?

I had many cellmates. I remember one rapper who was with me [in Marianna, Fla.] who became so involved in the case that one day he got a T-shirt and, together with Roddy [Rodolfo Rodríguez], painted the symbol of the Five on it. They went out to the prison yard and he sang a rap for the Five; they almost caused a disturbance.

Roddy is an interesting case: a Cuban with a criminal record going back to when he was a youth, including some violent incidents. When we met — although he was already in the process of changing his thinking — he had a lot of resentment against Cuba. As a result of our relationship he began to change his views about Cuba, about the revolution, about Fidel. He ended up becoming more communist than me. Sometimes I would laugh — “hey brother, give people a break, you can’t argue with everybody.”*

There was a white supermax [super-maximum-security prison] inmate who also had had a very violent past, a very dysfunctional childhood, who had ended up becoming a skinhead and robbing banks. Little by little he had been rethinking things, and as luck would have it, he shared my cell when he was going through this process. He approached me, we discussed a lot, and he ended up becoming politicized. Generally there’s a lot of respect for us from all the prisoners.

Olga became the pillar of the family, mother and father at the same time. However, you never stopped being the one who made the decisions in the family.

Let’s get real, Olguita was the one who made the decisions in the family. I don’t like directing people from afar. I trusted Olguita; my role was to do my job well where I was. I always thought it was important for them to know that I was OK, just as for me it was very important to know they were doing well.

Olguita knew what she had to do, and she did it well. Within that context, my exchanges with the girls, giving advice. … They have always had a very open relationship with me. I’m not a cranky dad. I think I’m a good father, a good friend.

What did you do to avoid the depression that affects every human being, especially when incarcerated?

That didn’t happen to me. I coined a phrase that people used to laugh about. In the morning when they asked me, “How are you?” I’d say, “I’m always OK.” So people would approach me and say, “I know you’re OK.”

I don’t know; you have to fight to avoid those things. There are days when you wake up more anxious, you do get anxious. There is a certain level of anxiety, and you have to learn to recognize it and tell yourself: relax. There are days when you get up and perhaps you’re a bit more irritable. That’s when you have to tell yourself: don’t go looking for problems.

I took refuge in physical exercise, in reading, in studying. For me it was important not to look at the time. Time won’t kill me, I would say to myself, and it worked. I never ended up depressed.