Vol. 78/No. 6      February 17, 2014

The following excerpt from an interview Gerardo Hernández gave filmmaker Saul Landau on April 1, 2009, appeared in the Miami-based online magazine Progreso Semanal/Weekly. The translation is by the Militant, where it was published in the June 8, 2009, issue.

❖

SAUL LANDAU: Can you describe in detail what happened the day the FBI arrested you?

GERARDO HERNÁNDEZ: It was a Saturday [September 12, 1998]. I was sleeping. It was about 6:00 a.m. I lived in a small, one-room apartment. My bed was pretty close to the door because the apartment was small. I remember hearing in my sleep someone trying to force open the lock. I barely had time to react because I heard a loud sound as they knocked the door down. It was a SWAT team. They didn’t even give me time to sit up in bed.

I was surrounded by people with machine guns and helmets, like you see in the movies. They arrested me, lifted me out of bed, handcuffed me, and looked in my mouth. I guess they had seen a lot of James Bond movies and thought I might have cyanide in my mouth. So, they checked to make sure that I wouldn’t poison myself. I asked why I was being arrested. They said, “You know why.”

They put me in a car and took me to the main headquarters of the FBI in south Florida, on 163rd Avenue in Miami. There, the interrogation began. But the arrest is the way I described.

LANDAU: They put you in the “box”?

HERNÁNDEZ: At the FBI headquarters we were each put in separate offices. They sat me in an office, handcuffed me to the wall, and interrogated me.

I had the “honor” of having Héctor Pesquera come to see me. He was the director of the FBI in south Florida, and he was Puerto Rican. My assumed identity, Manuel Viramontes, was Puerto Rican, too. I told him I was from Puerto Rico and so he started to ask me questions about Puerto Rico. All kinds of questions. Who was the governor that year? Where did I live? What bus did I take to get to school? Where did I catch it?

When he saw that I was able to answer these questions, he got really upset. He slammed his fist into the table and said, “I know you’re Cuban. You’re going to rot in prison, because Cuba isn’t going to do anything for you.”

Then, not him specifically, but the others who took part in the interrogation started to make all kinds of offers. They said, “You know how this business works. You know that you’re an illegal agent. And what they say is that Cuba isn’t going to admit that they sent you here with a fake passport. Cuba won’t do that, so you’ll rot in prison. The best thing you can do is to cooperate with us. We’ll give you whatever you want. We’ll change your identity, give you bank accounts.”

Whatever I wanted, if I became a traitor.

“Here’s the phone,” they said. “Call your consulate.” Strategies designed to get me to be a turncoat. This is what happened to all five of us separately. Later, they took us to the prison, the Federal Detention Center in Miami, and put us in what is called “the hole.”

LANDAU: For how long?

HERNÁNDEZ: Seventeen months. The first five months were hard for the five, of course. Those of us with false identities didn’t have anyone to write to, no one to write to us, nor anyone to phone. Every so often it was our turn to make a phone call. The guards would open the little window in the door, and put the phone there. “Aren’t you going to call anyone? Your family in Puerto Rico?”

“No,” I would say, “I’m not going to call anyone.”

“But why don’t you make a call?” they’d say to annoy me, because they knew I wasn’t Puerto Rican and wouldn’t use the phone. Those were difficult months.

LANDAU: Describe “the hole.”

HERNÁNDEZ: It’s an area that every prison has, for disciplining prisoners, or for protective purposes if they can’t be with the rest of the population. In Miami it was a floor, the twelfth floor. The cells are for two people, but there are some people there by themselves.

For the first six months, we were alone, each in an individual cell — with no contact. Later, our lawyers took legal measures so that we could meet in pairs. But the first six months we were in “solitary confinement,” with a shower inside the cell so you can bathe whenever you want. But that way you get everything in the cell wet when you take a shower.

You’re in the cell twenty-three hours a day. And there’s one hour a day of recreation when they take you out to another place. In Miami, it was basically just another cell, but a little bigger, with a grate that let you see a little piece of the sky. You could tell if it was day or night and fresh air would come through. That was what they called “recreation.” But often we didn’t go because they’d take too long, handcuffing you, searching you, your cell, taking you and bringing you back. Sometimes, they’d put us all together in the same cell and we could talk.

The regimen was very strict. It’s used to discipline prisoners, as punishment for having committed a serious infraction. We were inside those four quite small walls twenty-three, sometimes twenty-four, hours a day, with nothing to do. It’s very difficult from the human point of view. And many people couldn’t take it. You would see them lose their minds, screaming.

LANDAU: Had you done something bad?

HERNÁNDEZ: No, we were sent there from the beginning. They told us it was to protect us from the general population. But in my opinion, it had to do with their attempt to get us to change “sides” and become traitors.

After fear and intimidation didn’t work they thought, “Well let’s put them in solitary for a few months and see if they change their minds.”

The only thing to read was the Bible, and you had to submit a written request to the chaplain. I made the request. To have something to read, I asked for a Bible.

When they brought it to me — I don’t know if it was a big coincidence or what — it had some cards inside, including ones with the telephone numbers of the FBI. Just in case I had forgotten, right? As if, “Well, this communist guy is asking for the Bible …he must be about to turn.” I imagine that’s what was going through their minds, given their way of thinking, their prejudices.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Voices From Prison’ shows who Cuban 5 are, give workers
reason to admire them
Prisoners’ accounts reflect on revolutionary integrity of Five
The Cuban Five: Who they are
Showings of paintings by Antonio Guerrero [exhibit.pdf]  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home