Vol. 78/No. 6      February 17, 2014

José Luis Palacio
Havana, February 2013

José Luis Palacio’s words give voice to the verdict of millions in Cuba and around the world who are fighting for the freedom of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and René González — known internationally as the Cuban Five.

Palacio, today a refrigeration systems mechanic in Pinar del Río, was one of the young Cuban volunteers who fought as part of the scouting platoon led by Lieutenant Gerardo Hernández Nordelo in the north Angolan province of Cabinda a quarter century ago. The platoon was engaged in mop-up operations following the 1988 defeat of the military forces of the white-supremacist regime of South Africa at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola.

In 1991 Nelson Mandela told the people of Cuba and the world, the “crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale,” won by the combined forces of Cuba’s internationalist volunteers and Angolan and Namibian troops, all under Cuban command, not only “broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors.” It was “a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!”

Three of the Cuban Five — René González and Fernando González, as well as Gerardo Hernández — were among the more than 425,000 Cuban volunteers who made that victory possible.

Today, Gerardo Hernández is incarcerated in the Victorville, California, maximum-security penitentiary. Framed up on charges of conspiracy to engage in espionage and conspiracy to commit murder, he is serving two concurrent sentences of life without parole.

Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González have now spent more than fifteen years in US federal prisons. René González, who served his entire sentence — fourteen and a half years in US custody — returned to Cuba in May 2013. His tireless efforts since then have brought renewed energy to the worldwide fight to win freedom for the Five.

The 1998 arrest and frame-up of the Cuban Five; their trial in Miami, Florida, and summary conviction on all counts, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary; the exorbitant sentences they were given; the vindictive punishments and inhuman conditions they have faced, especially during the first year and a half of pretrial detention; the respect they have won from fellow inmates for their principled conduct, and the helping hand they have extended to others — all touch a deep chord with millions of working people in the United States. Because millions themselves have had similar experiences with the system of capitalist “justice,” or know of the ordeals faced by family members, friends, and fellow workers.

With more than 2.2 million men and women behind bars today, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. Moreover, according to the US Supreme Court itself, 97 percent of those held in federal prisons have never gone to trial. Instead — threatened with life in prison or worse if they insist on their innocence and their right to the trial guaranteed by the US Constitution — they have been blackmailed into copping a plea to crimes they never committed. That each of the Five refused to even consider such a course has gained them enormous respect among fellow prisoners.

The fifteen-year battle waged by the Cuban Five to win their freedom, and most importantly who they are, come to life in the accounts that follow.

This is a companion volume to the graphic eloquence of Antonio Guerrero’s fifteen watercolor paintings for fifteen years, I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived. It builds on two other titles — The Cuban Five: Who They Are; Why They Were Framed; Why They Should Be Free, and Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own.

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The interviews, articles, poems, paintings, photographs, and speeches in the pages of Voices From Prison: The Cuban Five have one thing in common. Through them we come to know the revolutionary integrity, resilience, stature, and humanity of each of the Cuban Five. We’re offered a revealing insight into their lives these last fifteen years as revolutionary fighters within a large segment of the working class in the United States — those behind bars.

Who the Five are emerges in sharp relief.

Some of the words published here are tributes by fellow inmates whose lives were transformed by friendship with one or another of the Five during their time together in prison.

Some are articles, poems, and messages written by one or another of the Cuban Five themselves. Some are interviews with them, spreading the truth about their prison experiences the world over.

An interview with Elizabeth Palmeiro, who is married to Ramón Labañino, takes us inside the lives of the families of the Five and the ways in which prison officials routinely use visiting privileges as a weapon to try to break both prisoners and their loved ones. And, more important, not only how the authorities have failed to accomplish this but how the Five and their families have fought back.

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Three Voices here deserve to be singled out. They are by or about others who have themselves known many years of imprisonment for their actions in defense of the sovereignty and independence of their own people.

Nelson Mandela, leader of the decades-long revolutionary struggle that brought down the white supremacist regime of South Africa, and the first popularly elected president of that country, served more than twenty-seven years in the prisons of apartheid between 1962 and 1990, many of them under conditions of hard labor.

Mandela’s example of resistance and strength has been a lodestar for Gerardo Hernández. He managed to keep with him a photo of Mandela throughout the many months of pretrial isolation in the punishment cells of the Miami Federal Detention Center. His salute to Nelson Mandela reproduced here was written upon learning of the South African leader’s death on December 5, 2013, and phoned out to friends during a brief window of opportunity between two extended lockdowns at the Victorville penitentiary.

“The Cuban Five will continue facing every day our unjust imprisonment, until the end, inspired by his example of unwavering loyalty and resistance.” No more deeply felt tribute — no more deserving tribute — could be paid to Nelson Mandela.

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Two other Voices are those of fighters for the independence of Puerto Rico who, like the Five, have known decades in the prisons of Puerto Rico’s colonial master. Carlos Alberto Torres, released after thirty years in US prisons, pays tribute to the Fernando González he came to know and deeply respect during the five years they shared at the federal prison in Oxford, Wisconsin.

And Rafael Cancel Miranda, who likewise spent twenty-seven and a half years in Washington’s prisons for his pro-independence actions, closes these pages with the most profound revolutionary truth for the toiling mass of humanity worldwide:

“Why do we fight for the Five? Because we are fighting for ourselves. We’re not doing them a favor. We’re doing ourselves a favor. We are fighting for our own freedom.”

January 2014