In 1959, when Castro’s so-called “revolution” triumphed, I had just finished high school and I registered in the university of Havana to study Law. My family was composed of my father (he was a shoe salesman), mother , two sisters and myself. We lived in the town of Placetas, province of Las Villas
At that point, I looked at the new state of affairs in Cuba with optimism, as a development with very hopeful possibilities for the country. Soon, however, I began to realize that what was taking shape in the newly installed government was not the answer to Cuba’s problems. We were students of the law; we held the principles of law very highly. At that point I had excellent professors in Law School who had been very much connected with the movements that culminated in Castro’s ascendancy to power. However, very soon, they took steps against what was going on.
My professor of Criminal Law was Andres Valdespino. He started to publicly debate against some of the long-time adherents of communism and Marxist doctrine, such as Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, another one of my professors. We, the students, carried out the debate inside and outside the classroom. Sometimes we expressed our opinions by just not attending the class taught by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez because it became a forum for the unquestioning defense of the government’s actions. Sometimes we made a point to go to his class and voice our disagreement with what he was saying. I remember a day that a classmate of my mine (Salvat) point blank asked Carlos Rafael whether he was in there to teach Economics or to propagandize for the government. When the professor answered that his political ideas had to be a part of all his lectures, we all got up and walked out of the classroom and left him alone.
By the middle of 1960, when still nobody could fathom that things could get to the point they finally did, there was a so-called “university reform.” In the School of Law there was a massive resignation of professors. The students protested. We left classes and the university, and the School of Law was closed for some time.
I went back to my hometown in Placetas. There I found many who had actually fought on the side of Castro who were voicing their disillusionment with and opposition to the new government and its dictates.
In the outskirts of my hometown of Placetas there was an uprising against the government. Many of my friends were part of it. The government responded by rounding up lots of people in town: the friends, relatives and acquaintances of the participants in the uprising. I was 19 years old then, and I was arrested.
I was taken first to the Provincial Jail in Santa Clara and later to Topes de Collantes, a place that used to be a hospital for respiratory diseases that was precipitously converted into a prison where hundreds of us were massed. Anybody who was remotely suspected of cooperating with the uprising was rounded up and taken there.
On April 17, 1961, when the Bay of Pigs invasion started, we were all shipped to the Isle of Pines Prison.. There had been no trial, no formal charges filed against us. We were simply taken away and incarcerated for years.
After about three and a half years, 21 of those who had been arrested with me were brought back, subjected to a brief trial and 19 of them were condemned to death and shot by firing squad.
For the rest of us, a so-called trial took place as an afterthought. One day about 600 of us were taken to a theater to face a Military Tribunal seen from a distance. There was no defense lawyer, just somebody who stood up and voiced an accusation. Afterwards, we went back to forced labor in prison. I never received any formal notification of what were the charges against me, or even, what was my sentence.
My father, of the same name, was also imprisoned with me. Informally, we learned that one of us had been sentenced to 10 years and the other one to 12, but we did not know who was who.
I spent 6 and 1/2 years in the Isle of Pines, about 2 years in La Cabaña in Havana and the rest in Manacas prison in Las Villas. I served a total of 10 years.