Ramón Labañino, center, in July 2012 at Federal Correction Institution in Jesup, Georgia, poses with fellow Cuban prisoners he met there. He and the other four revolutionaries who made up the “Cuban Five” spent up to 16 years in U.S. prisons, where they experienced firsthand the reality of millions who live behind bars in the U.S.
In a book published by Pathfinder Press titled, “It’s the Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System”: The Cuban Five Talk About Their Lives Within the US Working Class, the five revolutionaries describe the brutality of capitalist “justice.” This includes the use of the death penalty against working people, the torture of solitary confinement and the pervasive plea-bargain system that denies 97% of those charged with federal crimes their constitutional right to a trial.
Most importantly, the Cuban Five describe how they reached out with respect and solidarity to fellow human beings with whom they shared their daily lives and struggles inside prison. The values that guided them are “the consequence of a revolution that overturned the cutthroat social order of capitalism, and of a leadership that for decades has maintained that course against all odds,” they explain.