It was my turn to talk on the phone one day and I am talking to my wife. I was able to use the phone and I heard, as my uncle was listening to the news in Radio Martí that the Cuban Catholic Church said that I would be released in the next few hours. I could hear my uncle running towards the phone saying to my wife: “Listen, listen! He is going to be released!” And my wife says: “How will he be released?” “Yes, yes I heard that he is being released!” And they held the phone to the radio so that I could listen to the news. But I could not listen very well because the news had already started so I continued talking on the phone and they repeated the report. José Luis Ramos, a journalist, colleague, and friend from Radio Martí also listened to this report.
My wife says: “Oh, maybe you will be here tonight!” The poor thing. “Tonight you will be here.” So that was the news but it was very ambiguous. I said that the next hours could mean even the next thousand hours. And my wife said: “Oh, why are you such a pessimist?” But you cannot believe the Cuban government and she argued that it was not the Cuban government, but the Catholic Church saying it. I said to them: “Look, they are not the same. The Cuban government lies. The Catholic Church lies to itself.” It all can be a lie, a false statement. Also, “within the next hours”, who knows what that means. Remain calm is what I advised her. It was like if I had thrown a bucket of cold water on them. She said: “Oh, how can you be a pessimist now?” And I said: “No, it is not pessimism but being realistic.” Two days or a week after that, I cannot recall when exactly, I am called in.
I was vomiting, as meals were not suiting me since I had just had surgery. I was in a permanent crisis. I was called outside, to the offices. When I get there colonel Ernesto is there and says to me: “Look Normando, there is a phone call for you. They want to talk to you. I really thought it was my family. I said, challenging him: “What happened with my wife? What did you do to her? What did you do to my daughter, to my mother?” He said: “No, no, no calm down, calm down. Everybody is ok. They are all right. Take the phone and we will talk afterwards.” And then it was the cardinal’s spokesperson to tell me that there were agreements between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government. That we were going to be free if we decided to go to Spain; that a group of 5 people were going first.
But I was not in that group of 5 people; that if I accepted I would be in the second group of people. I told him: “My health is very bad.” At that moment my body could not digest foods. I lived on fruit juices and preserves that my wife brought. My body did not digest food. And look, if it’s with my family, I’ll go. Without my family, I will not go. Then he told me I would go with my family. I ask him: Do you hear what you’re telling me?” Sorry, what actually occurred was the spokesperson passed me to the Cardinal. The Cardinal is the one who tells me all these things. The spokesperson is the one who called me. “I will pass you to the Cardinal.” And the Cardinal tells me all these things about the first group of 5 people, that I was going in the second group, to think about my health, which is not very good.
The Cardinal said all this. I thank the Cardinal. And I tell him, “Listen Mr. Cardinal, your eminence – if it is with my family I go, without my family, I will not go. “He tells me: “Yes, Normando, it is with your family.” I tell him: “Cardinal, with my family. I do not want deceit.” “With your family, Normando.” And we finished the conversation with the Cardinal and I was with the officer. “So?” “Yes, with my family.” “Good, Normando.” “Yes with my family.” My uncle is my family too. He brought me up, he was there when I was kidnapped from my home and they didn’t want to include my uncle or my cousins. They were the people who supported my wife and my daughter. And they didn’t want to consider my wife, my uncle or my cousins as family. I told him: “Look, Ernesto. You know how I am. If my wife doesn’t go, if my daughter doesn’t go and my cousins or my uncles don’t go, just keep on killing me slowly.” “Sure, I’ll let them know, but it is very likely it will not be approved.” “That is your problem and I don’t care about it.
All the people that I mentioned are my family. If not, there is no deal.” That’s what I told them. And so the days passed and they went to my cell and I was in very bad shape. I was lying on the bed. And they told me to pack up everything. There is always big secrecy with everything that they do. They never say I’m sorry or where are they taking you or at what time are they picking you up or anything. It was noontime. I packed up everything, they put me in another patrol car and they took me to Ciego de Ávila. In Ciego de Ávila, a lot of my colleagues were there. They had gathered them there to be transferred to Havana.
I had to be transferred in the car of a state official because I would not be able to withstand the conditions in which they transferred my colleagues. Because they packed them in a car sitting knee against knee with their belongings and a terrible lack of ventilation. And I was constantly fainting due to my poor health since I recently had surgery and because my health was worsening. They transferred me in the car with him, this guy. They took us to the Inmate National Hospital located in Havana in the Condenado del Este prison. There, they put us in a ward where they didn’t let anybody in. In the 3 or 4 days we were there before they told us anything, they gave us what they had never given us in prison.
It was a totally different kind of food: fried chicken, yogurt, milkshakes. Whatever you wanted, they gave it to you. They gave us access to the telephone. All the time we wanted to talk. This never happened before. It is like they were trying to erase all the mistreatment, all the torture that I suffered for more than 7 years in only 1 or 2 days. The first group left, as the Cardinal had told us, there was a big group with more than 7 or 8 people.
Unfortunately they told my wife and my family that they only had half an hour to pack up their essentials to emigrate. They didn’t give them more time, they arrived at the house, and unfortunately my wife was not there, she was at her parents’ house. My wife’s parents lived more than 100 kilometers away from my house. There is no car, there was nothing to inform her. And when she arrives to the house, the state officials were there to pick up her up. Half an hour to pack up a lifetime to leave a whole lifetime behind. She only had time to pack up the essentials, things for the girl and her underwear. The same happened with my uncle. They put them in a car and they took them to Havana. They put them in a state military school. They were isolated also, but they took care of them, lodged them there until the day the first flight left.
They let me dress and they told me they will not let me leave in this flight. They also told my girl and my wife who were shocked because they thought they were going to see me. “No, there is no room in the plane. You leave tomorrow.” As with everything, it was lie after lie, and uncertainty settled in. Am I leaving tomorrow or not? Were they going to send me into exile or not? Can I see my family or not? And there’s always an endless uneasiness. There was total mistrust. I wanted see my wife and daughter before boarding the airplane. It was a special terminal that belonged to the government in Havana, the military section.
We were not in the passenger terminal. We got onto the airplane from the rear. First, all of the pilots boarded and later, the flight crew boarded. And it was like I was in a dream that I could not see nor believe. And my daughter looked at me and said: “Mom, I will lend him to you tomorrow, but today, he is mine.” She would be with me, kiss me, look at me, scrutinize every single inch of me. And I had a very good experience that I will never forget and I will always regret for the rest of my life that I didn’t catch the name of the Iberia Airlines captain. He was the first one to welcome us to liberty in the airplane when we departed, and the flight crew applauded, and the flight attendants came to us and greeted us.
They were very friendly and very kind to us. To be honest, it is an experience that I will never forget. When we reached Spain, there were people from Jose Luis Zapatero´s government waiting for us and from the foreign affairs office of King Juan Carlos. We had a meeting there in the airport and there was a lot of mystery and nobody knew where we were going. Where we were going directly from the airport, where we were going to stay after the airport? And these people told us that there were a lot of people from the press but since we were going to be tired, they were going to take us to the hotel and then, we were going to go out because we stayed at the airport for 2 or 3 hours. But something inside of me told me that we were being manipulated. Why was this person wanting me to rest? Why did they want me to see the press? It was only 3 or 4 hours after my arrival that I began to sense something fishy.
It was the day after the first group of exiles arrived. I think the first group also complained in the airport and they did not give many interviews. But the press was thirsty for information. When I arrived at the hotel from the bus, the first person that I see is my mother. I did not expect it. I had not seen her for more than 9 years.
Normando Hernández is an independent journalist who has dedicated his career to providing alternative sources of news and information in Cuba. In 1999, he co-founded the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights, and in 2000, he established the Camaguey Association of Journalists, the first independent organization in Camaguey province since 1959. Declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International following Cuba’s “Black Spring” (2003–2010), during which dozens of dissidents and journalists were imprisoned for their activism, Mr. Hernández was exiled to Spain in 2010 and has since resettled in the United States.
The author of numerous articles and publications, including the book El Arte de la Tortura: Memorias de un Ex Prisionero de Conciencia Cubano (The Art of Torture: Memories of a Former Cuban Prisoner of Conscience, 2010), he has received several journalism and human rights awards, including the Norwegian Writers Association’s Freedom of Expression Award (2009), the PEN American Center’s PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (2007), and a special mention by the Inter-American Press Association for excellence in journalism (2003). Mr. Hernández is currently a Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he is examining the Cuban communications monopoly and considering strategies by which independent journalists may combat totalitarianism.
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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