Ángel Cuadra

A pak když vás pustí ven na ulici, to je také těžko popsatelný pocit. Je to jakoby jste se vrátili do své země, jenže ta už vaše není. Nenajdete tam to, co jste tam zanechali. Je to nová země a vy se tomu musíte přizpůsobit. Jak se to všechno změnilo, jména ulic, trasy autobusů. teď jsou tam jiné autobusy. Nebyl jsem schopný se zorientovat ve svém vlastním městě.

Mnoho nocí jsme slýchali, jak někoho přivážejí takovým vozítkem. Pak zazněli povely, připravte se, zamiřte, a předtím, než zazněly výstřely, slyšeli jsme, jak ten člověk křičí: Ať žije svobodná Kuba! Sláva Ježíši Kristu. Byly to otřesné zážitky. Je strašné to v noci slyšet. Někdy to byl něčí přítel, kterého odvlekli na výslech a už se nevrátil.

Bylo to brzy ráno, tak ve čtyři hodiny, když policie obklíčila celý blok. Ve čtyři ráno vzbudilo bušení na dveře mé rodiče. A tehdy mě odvlekli s pistolemi v rukou na Státní bezpečnost. Státní bezpečnost je neuvěřitelný svět, vskutku to vypadá jako peklo. Připomíná to knihu 1984 od George Orwella. Zavřeli mě do cely, ve které nebylo poznat, zda je noc nebo den. Byla tam taková malá škvíra, kterou vojáci prostrkávali jídlo. Byli jsme tam úplně odříznutí, bez jakéhokoliv kontaktu se světem. Tam jsem byl zavřený dva měsíce. Problém byl, že když mě vyslýchali, hádal jsem se s nimi. To mě pak v noci nechávali v té cele mrznout. Byla tam neskutečná zima a neměl jsem nic, čím bych se mohl přikrýt.

“I was subjected to a process that is well known by those who have lived in countries with totalitarian regimes, fundamentally Communism, and also Nazism. They gave me a 15-year sentence. I kept writing in prison. With many difficulties, because it was very difficult to smuggle the things that one wrote out of prison. But then, I was with the group of the ‘planted’, which means, the prisoners who had decided to reject any kind of committed attitude towards the regime. And we were against all that process, and there in the prison we continued our activities. The process was so interesting that many men who had never thought of creating a painting or writing a poem, in jail, as a form of channeling their angst, began to write. And they became poets. Although they say that one does not become a poet, that one is born as a poet. But really, as the psychologists say, to channel the angst, the loneliness and the repression, as the regime was very repressive, many began to write poetry. Many afterwards discovered in their interior this possibility, or sensitivity that was unknown to them, and they continued to write after that stimulus of being imprisoned.”

“I already explained to you that we wrote in prison and that I never stopped writing and getting my things out of prison. A poem that I admire very much and that I love very much, since I put all my heart in it, was the poem that I wrote in the memory of Jan Palach, the young student who burnt himself in St Wenceslas Square, in protest against the Soviet tanks in the Czechoslovak Republic at that time. I had read in a magazine about the attitude of Jan Palach. He was a young student who suffered the offense that a foreign country was going to dictate guidelines and to usurp his people. I saw him as a symbol of his nation, as he understood that his sacrifice was worthwhile to historically counteract what the Soviet aggression meant to that country. I was moved to such an extent that when the authorities let us calm down and did not torture us in those days, we met in my cell, in the cells of the Guanajay prison, and we did some practice among ourselves. And it occurred to us one day to write a poem, we were five imprisoned poets, and it occurred to me to write something about Jan Palach. And there we premiered it in my cell. I brought with me today the book, the pamphlet with the poem about Jan Palach, the Violent Requiem for Jan Palach. And here it says: A historical poem for the young Czechoslovakian who committed suicide in protest against the Soviet invasion of his homeland. The poem is long, I understand it as one of the best that I could have written. I was lucky to be able to get it out of prison, and to be able to reproduce it, and send it later, translated into English, into the hands of Václav Havel.”

“We sympathized at the beginning with the Revolution when we understood the Revolution to be something other than what it later became. It was originally not a Communist project, it was simply a return to the institutionality, to reestablish the 1940 Constitution, so, to return to the political status that had existed before. When the Revolution or the insurrection triumphed, we felt disappointed because it led to a path that we did not want; so then I started to act against that process and I formed part of a counterrevolutionary group, as they called it, while we really believed that it was actually and really revolutionary, while the counterrevolutionaries were the ones who together with Fidel Castro were usurping power and derailing that process towards an undesired path. In this activity, above all, I was in charge of belonging to the political group of Revolutionary National Unity, with the acronym of UNaRe. There I basically edited a pamphlet, a clandestine periodical called Democratic Cuba, in contrast to the Socialist Cuba. Well, we had men shot there, there were four of our people… I did not have to take part in the action, but in the ideological direction, and in the distribution of the weekly sheet that we made. That led me to not want to leave the country, although they got me an offer of asylum in the Uruguayan embassy, but I understood that I already had the commitment with the other brothers of ours who were in jail or who had been killed, and I rejected that offer made by a magnificent lady, Dr Esperanza Peña, who had offered me that asylum in the embassy of Peru [sic] in Havana. But I did not want that, I stayed until the last possible moment. And the last moment was that they arrested me.”

“Castro was is lucky that the main leaders of the other groups died, and so he practically remained alone with great skill, but he also stayed with the connections we did not know about, with the Communist International. When we realized, it was already late. But before that, we thought that it was worth following him as a leader. Then we realized, as the process progressed, that he had ambitions of a very great dictator, that he was feeling sympathy to totalitarianism, that he was an admirer of Adolf Hitler, that he was an admirer of Benito Mussolini and Stalin. And really, he was like a summary of those dictators, and that's why, when I got disenchanted with the Castro, I had three possibilities. Or I stayed in Cuba, enjoying, like many people, the benefits I could have, because I had a position as a lawyer of an organization, or I was leaving the country, and I did not want to leave, because I wanted to follow the destiny of my people... So or I kept fighting, or I was leaving the country, or I simply joined the regime.”