Vol. 78/No. 5      February 10, 2014

The moments of prison life recorded—and transformed—by his art will touch a deep chord with millions of working people in the US who have themselves lived similar experiences, or known them through the ordeals of their loved ones, friends, and neighbors. The United States, with more than 2.2 million men and women behind bars today, has the highest incarceration rate of any state in the world. That system of capitalist “justice,” organized to dehumanize and break both inmates and their families, is portrayed in these works.

Above all, however, what comes through in these paintings by Antonio Guerrero and the accompanying commentary of his brothers-in-struggle, Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino, is the creativity and humor with which they and others resist.

Antonio, Gerardo, and Ramón, together with Fernando González and René González, are known to millions worldwide as The Cuban Five. In 1998, when each of them was arrested by US federal police in coordinated predawn raids, they were living and working in southern Florida.

What were their allegedly criminal activities?

They were gathering information on the plans and actions of counterrevolutionary Cuban-American organizations, including paramilitary outfits that operate with impunity on US soil. These groups and the individuals who belong to them have a half-century-long record of carrying out bombings, assassinations, and other assaults on Cubans and other supporters of the Cuban Revolution—on the island, in the United States, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Panama, and elsewhere. Since 1959, nearly 3,500 Cubans have been killed in such attacks, most originating in the United States. The task of the Five was to keep the Cuban government informed of deadly operations being prepared in order to prevent as many as possible from coming to fruition.

The Five were brought to trial and convicted by a federal court in Miami on frame-up charges that included conspiracy to commit espionage and, in the case of Gerardo Hernández, conspiracy to commit murder. Each proudly acknowledged before the court and to the world that they were working for the Cuban government to prevent future murderous acts from taking place—and they would gladly do so again if asked.

On their unbowed heads, the judge imposed maximum sentences, ranging from fifteen years for René González, to life without parole for Guerrero and Labañino, and a double life sentence for Hernández, who led the effort. A federal appeals court overturned the convictions in 2005, then reinstated them a year later.

Following a 2008 ruling that the sentences imposed on three of the five—Guerrero, Labañino, and Fernando González—exceeded federal guidelines, Guerrero’s time was reduced from life without parole to twenty-one years and ten months. Were he to serve his full sentence, he would not be released until September 2017.

The sentence reductions registered the pressure on the US government from growing international condemnation of the trial and the unconscionable length of the prison terms imposed on the Cuban Five. At the 2009 court hearing where Guerrero was resentenced, federal prosecutors acknowledged they were seeking to “quiet the waters of contentiousness” and “noise” swirling around the case worldwide.

In May 2013 René González was the first of the Five to return to Cuba, after serving his entire sentence—more than fourteen and a half years in US custody. Fernando González will complete his prison sentence in February 2014. As long as even one of their brothers remains behind bars, however, none of them is “free.”

Why are the Cuban Five in prison for even a day? Because they are exemplary sons of the Cuban Revolution, of the men and women who brought into being and defend “the first free territory of the Americas.” They are held hostage as punishment for the audacity of the Cuban toilers who dared to make a socialist revolution in what was once a virtual US colonial protectorate—men and women who to this day refuse to bow to the dictates of Washington.

The unbending integrity, dignity, courage, truthfulness—and humor—of each of the Five, and growing knowledge of the consistency of their revolutionary conduct from Cuba and Angola to US prison cells, is winning them ever-increasing support. It is winning them the admiration and backing of artists, parliamentary deputies, and religious leaders, of workers, farmers, and young people on every continent, and of fellow prisoners by the thousands.

For those who want to know “Who are the Cuban Five?” there is no better place to start than with the eloquent testimony of I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived. It is a short step from there to becoming part of what Gerardo Hernández has called the “jury of millions” that will set them free.

January 2014
 
 
Related articles:
‘I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived’: A new book for fighters to free Cuban 5
15 watercolors for 15 years
Monthlong exhibit of paintings opens in Minnesota
Showings of paintings by Antonio Guerrero
Che: Build socialism through consciousness and discipline
 
 
 
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