Sergio Perodín

“I have never thought about returning to Cuba, really... never. I have there all my family, I have there my brothers, my mother, all my family in Cuba. But no... I never went back to Cuba, and it never even passed through my mind to return to Cuba, because they have hurt me so much.”

"So that's how the days went by and on another occasion they came back, he spoke again with the governor Fidel Castro about what we were planning to do. He told him... because they already had more data... it seems that the State Security already had more data of the group that we were going to leave. So according to him, they informed Fidel Castro that many children were going to go. And he said that the order he had given was that everyone should be exterminated, so that he was not interested in children or anyone else. That the boat could not leave Cuba. And then that was the main order that led the assassins who participated in the attack to behave so violent against us and to kill so many people, because 37 people died in that attack."

"Later they drove us... as at seven o'clock at night ... they took us to the organs of the State Security of Villa Marista, where we remained closed up without even seeing the sun, under heavy pressure, during one month I didn’t see the sun. They were taking us a lot to the interrogations, every two or three hours they took us out to interrogation and then they put us back in the cells. So, I endured that month, and after that month they called us together and told us that we were going to be taken to our homes, that we were going to wait for the trial, because we were accused of murder. The killers were accusing us of murder. Then they took us home. With the help of some neighbors and friends, I was able to make a boat, a raft, and I was able to escape from Cuba six days or seven days after being out of prison. There, the US Coast Guard intercepted me and took me to Guantánamo, where I stayed for five and a half months, and then I managed to be taken to the United States."

"We sank with the ship but we were able to get out afloat... some twenty or thirty-something people. The three boats of the Cuban Government began to swirl around creating a huge bubble of water to eliminate those who were surviving in the water. That's how several people died. Between them my wife and the oldest child of mine. There, some of us could endure such a violent aggression for 40 or 50 minutes until the killers decided to stop the attack and pick up those who were surviving at sea. They put us on their boats and took us away from that place. We did not know where we were located, but there was no coast at sight. There they kept us from five in the morning until eleven thirty in the morning, when they took us to the coasts of Cuba, where the army was already waiting for us, and they put us in jails and interrogated us, and took us to the organs of Cuban State Security. When we arrived at the place where they took us... it was a military base of the Cuban Government, they took us on different boats. When we arrived there, we did not know how many people had died because they had picked us up in three or four boats. I asked the general who was waiting for the people when they got off the boats, because they took it militarily, I asked for my family and the answer that the murderer gave me was that if we did not see them in the group, that they had been eaten by the sharks."