The Dec. 22 letter below was received from a worker behind bars in the United States. It refers to his experiences getting to know Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five, when they were incarcerated in the same prison. The five Cuban revolutionaries — Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, René González, Hernández and Ramón Labañino — were arrested in Florida in 1998 and framed by the U.S. government for their actions to protect Cuba from bombings and other deadly attacks launched from U.S. territory by Washington-backed opponents of the revolution.
They were given sentences ranging from 15 years for René González to double life plus 15 years for Hernández. As the result of a growing international campaign, the Five won their freedom after serving up to 16 years in prison with the unwavering support of the Cuban people and an international “jury of millions.”
The Militant’s Dec. 16, 2019, article he mentions was an excerpt from the Pathfinder Press book Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.
‘A great article’
I enjoyed so much your article titled “Peoples of Cuba and the US are Fraternal and Invincible.” It brought a smile to my face when I saw the picture of the five true heroes, especially Gerardo who is an outstanding individual and a credit to his nation.
Over the many decades of my incarceration, I have seen how the majority of individuals who were in our situations lacked a love for their country and could never have kept faith that one day the abuses imposed by the U.S. Justice system could be overcome. Gerardo always stayed focused and never gave in to the many pitfalls of penitentiary life as did so many others.
If you communicate with him, please give him my warmest regards and tell him I will be home in less than a year. After a brief stay here, I plan on traveling to Colombia and hopefully seeing him once again in his beautiful country of Cuba.
Again, thank you for exceptional work and revealing the truth as opposed to the propaganda of the American news media.
A prisoner