Original subtitles

Vermin get out!

We're in the Champs-Elysees Theatre to see the Cuban National Ballet.

It's starring a dancer admired by ballet lovers all over the world, Alicia Alonso.

IMPROPER CONDUCT

Did you plan this in advance?

Plan? No.

We thought about it, maybe.

Why did you choose to defect here?

Certain things are happening in Cuba.

Art is politically committed.

And then ...

You can't express things freely.

What do you think of Castro?

Tell me, what do you think of him?

I don't agree with his ideas.

Why not?

Because.

We were sorry for the ballet company.

But otherwise we were very pleased.

Very happy, because...

It led to a lot of things,

to statements we could make so that people didn't believe

that everything in Cuba was a dream,

a golden island in the sun with palm trees,

it wasn't like that at all.

CESAR BERMUDEZ NEW YORK

I was on the executive staff

of the Cuban Revolutionary Government.

I worked on documentation and technical data

for the ruling class, the group in power,

about 300 people.

I kept them abreast of progress in technology

and in the consumer society,

so that our leaders could appear informed abroad.

Starting in 1965 in Havana University,

and in other schools,

a number of "moral purges" were carried out.

Not political purges.

The assumption was that political purges no longer existed.

That everyone was delighted with the revolutionary government.

A Communist Youth assembly was held.

All students were summoned to it.

The Communist Youth Union brought a list

of those to be purged.

Some who knew they were on the list didn't attend.

Others only found out at the assembly.

The humiliation during these meetings

consisted in forcing

all those present

to hurl every imaginable insult

to each person being purged.

No one could escape it.

Everyone was warned

that if he sided with a person being purged,

he too would immediately be purged.

This moral persecution in Cuba

has never been a matter of substance as people suppose.

It is purely formal, the simplest way to keep people

distracted.

It's easy to persecute someone

for the way he dresses or wears his hair. Nothing easier.

No ideology is needed, no logical buildup.

A lot of people left the university because of this.

Others couldn't.

People had to stand up and say

"What do you think of so-and-so?"

The person named stood there like a dunce.

Then someone would say

"He talked and looked suspicious the other day."

Or "He shook my hand a little too long."

Absolutely idiotic things.

There were people who couldn't bear it,

who were shocked and killed themselves.

Not only because of the public humiliation,

but they were ashamed before their families, too

They had to go home and say

"I was expelled because I was accused of being homosexual."

Some killed themselves.

Now in Madrid, I edit

this little literary magazine.

I'm revising my books of poetry.

Were you interrogated when you were arrested?

Yes, by a soldier

who told me with a sneer

that I was in the Writers and Artists Union,

and that artists, intellectuals, writers,

are all faggots.

You're a faggot because you're a writer?

All fags!

I didn't say a word.

When you're in a repressive country,

what can you say?

The man told me to walk,

to walk around the room.

I was surprised, but I obeyed

and walked around the room.

He said to walk with my back to him.

Then, with a lot of irony, he said

"You see? We're going to make a man of you."

I suppose he meant that by changing my walk,

they'd make a man of me.

Walking in a different way.

from the way I walked ...

he could see ...

Something dangerous in me!

RAFAEL DE PALET MIAMI

They thought dyed hair was homosexual.

I reported

for so-called military service.

That was a trick.

JORGE ROMET NEW YORK

UMAP stands for Miltary Units Aiding Production.

The government called people up as if for the army.

Those listed by the police

as opposing the government

or as homosexuals or Jehovah's Witnesses, or whatever,

were sent to these camps.

Nobody knew exactly what the camps were.

People thought it was for the army,

some said they were concentration camps, but no-one was sure.

HECTOR ALDAO NEW YORK

We were called to the Botanical Gardens in Havana.

At dusk, we left by bus for Camaguey province.

We didn't know where we were going.

The trip took 8 or 10 hours.

We couldn't stop to phone our families

or give our destination. We were prisoners.

Some of the mothers and families

were hysterical.

When the buses left

people threw themselves on them.

One woman held on to a bus

until she fell off.

The summons surprised me, I didn't have a record,

no arrests, no trouble.

Later I learned that in the boarding house where I lived

there was a man,

now also in exile in New York,

who denounced me to get my room!

He had a brother, a soldier,

who was high up in the secret police.

He sent me to the UMAP so he could have my room!

As soon as we got in, the buses were sealed.

We couldn't get out to attend to our needs

People had to piss, shit,

and everything in the rear of the buses.

It stank horribly all night.

When we stopped, we'd call to the villagers

for water, because we were given nothing.

From the start, we were mistreated.

Even in the stadium

where we arrived at 4 a.m.

The way people were treated was typical

of a fascist regime.

There were 12,000 to 15,000 people.

Searchlights surrounded the stadium.

Pinochet copied this from Cuba.

We were the first to do this.

It was called rehabilitation for opponents of the regime

and other social undesirables.

Vagrants, homosexuals, prostitutes...

The camps were enclosed

with barbed wire. At first, it was electrified.

But this aroused such protest,

that they sometimes cut the current by day and restored it at night.

No-one was sure if it was on all the time.

That's what they wanted us to think.

So we never knew if it was on or off.

At the gate you read "Military Unit 2269"

And there was a huge sign that said

"Work will make you men."

That quote of Lenin

recalled the line that Salvatore Quasimodo said

was at the entrance to the camp at Auschwitz.

"Work will make you free."

The food was really horrible.

There was no rice. They said the boat hadn't come from China.

We rose at 6 a.m. for drill and gymnastics.

The idea was to make us produce,

as if we were slaves, unskilled labourers.

They assigned quotas we had to fill.

If we didn't,

we were subject to reprisals.

They said the aim was to make us communists.

We got daily political indoctrination.

It was laughable.

The speaker knew nothing of politics or anything else.

He used Konstantinov's Marxist-Leninist manual, which is an abomination.

It was issued by the Soviet Academy of Science, and says

everyone's a fascist.

From T.S. Eliot to Plato: all fascists!

Their alphabetical system's just as bad.

"M" as in Marxism.

"R" as in Raul. "C" as in Castro.

The language was very elementary,

like a catechism.

We got no clothes, no shoes, people were barefoot.

Fidel Castro, with typical bravado,

came to inspect the camps.

We were ripping out grass with our hands.

Around 5 p.m.

we saw a convoy of jeeps.

Behind them, oddly, were two trucks,

full of chickens.

They say he eats a lot of chicken.

Then the prisoners

began to shout insults at him.

As usual, he didn't come near us.

He went by in his jeep like a grand duchess

inspecting her serfs.

But I've seen him go near people.

Not near UMAP people.

He loves to stick labels on people, as he did on the Mariel exiles.

He saw us as social plague-bearers.

So he went by like the grand duchess he thinks he is.

There was a group of Jehovah's Witnesses.

The military command

tried everything to make them join

in working in the fields.

Their religion barred any compromise.

I saw the soldiers

cut a boy with a bayonet.

Slashing his chest.

The bayonet hadn't entered his body,

but gave him a wound.

From then on,

I grew more and more furious

and deeply upset.

My experiences in the UMAP

were very bitter.

Full of ...

I'd rather not remember those days.

I doubt if it's better now.

Nothing ever improves there.

All you get are variations on the same theme.

We were in line in front of a restaurant.

A State Security police car arrived,

we were forced to get in.

They didn't want to look at our ID papers.

They took us 150 metres, to a spot alongside the Hotel Capri.

It looked like a movie set, searchlights everywhere

and dozens of cops

blocking the sidewalks,

arresting people.

Many passersby were arrested

violently.

If they tried to resist, they were clubbed.

Others ran away and escaped.

We were taken to buses hidden in a nearby park,

ten or twelve of them, I'd say.

We were crammed into the buses

and taken to State Security HQ.

There, we were classified into three groups.

One was the "hippies",

this included those who

liked pop music, the Beatles

and had parties, like all kids.

If their hair was long, that was the style then,

or if they wore loud shirts

they were considered "hippies".

Then came the homosexuals.

Others couldn't be classifed in either group.

A term was invented for them, "Improper Conduct".

This was indefinable. It could fit anyone.

The work was exhausting.

We had to get up before sunrise.

Usually, we got back to camp at dusk.

We worked in the fields,

planting tobacco,

cutting sugar cane.

One of the worst chores came later,

when we were sent to the Zenea sector.

We had to cut aroma bushes. They're full of thorns.

There were huge fields of them

that we had to uproot.

When I got back to camp, I had to pick thorns

out of my ankles and feet.

Here are some drawings

that show, roughly,

what the camp was like.

Here's the barbed wire

surrounding the camp.

The watchtowers.

One at every corner.

There's the entrance.

These were the sheds used as dormitories.

Here are the punishment cells, when someone did something considered wrong.

They were small.

About twenty of them.

There were no beds. You slept on the floor.

The imperialists can't forgive

the dignity, the integrity, the courage,

the ideological firmness,

the spirit of sacrifice,

the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people.

They can't forgive us

for staging a socialist revolution

under the very nose of the United States!

After the death of soldier Pedro Ortiz Cabrera,

Cuban guards were withdrawn from the Peruvian embassy.

As expected,

the embassy filled up with 'special guests'.

They're like wild animals. I've never seen anything like it.

To think we'd see this in our country.

Like wild animals, I tell you.

Out with them!

NOW

Get rid of the parasites!

Antisocial scum!

IT'S TIME FOR ACTION

BY THE PEOPLE

You've waited 20 years for this, what's 20 minutes more?

How many more?

Five?

We've wanted to come for 21 years.

We couldn't, with the terror there.

You can't get out.

How long were you at El Mariel?

Eleven days, with no food.

They took our money, our cigarettes,

set dogs on us.

German shepherds?

Police dogs.

In a concentration camp called "El Mosquito".

Is that near El Mariel?

3 kilometres away.

The homosexuals I knew in Fort Chaffee,

spoke of themselves as men 'with a flaw'.

A 'weakness'.

They criticized themselves, put themselves down.

The way a Jew

in Arthur Miller's "Incident in Vichy" said:

"I would like not to be guilty"

instead of "I wish I weren't a Jew."

Society imposes a negative criterion

on a human element

that we accept

to the point where we live as others want us to.

Cuban homosexuals brought

this self-image with them

Some were very strong, very muscular,

like truck drivers or boxers ...

Having this concept of machismo they brought from Cuba.

they tried to deny their homosexuality.

Sometimes, to attract attention,

and to reinforce

assumed identities,

they acted out various versions

of their self-image.

For example, they used

very histrionic gestures.

LUIS LAZO

Sometimes I'm ashamed to say it:

I was in jail 17 times in Cuba.

Why?

For no reason.

Because I wore pants

they thought were too tight.

For nothing, really.

In Cuba, being dressed

as I am now.

was impossible.

I couldn't, because they thought

it was shocking, a public display.

That could cost me

3 to 6 months in jail.

Were you given a trial?

Sure, always.

In cuba, with people like me,

they always found a reason to hit us.

They wanted us to disappear.

Tell us about the makeup.

It happened to a lot of people,

and often to me.

I hung around the theatres and places

in the Prado district.

A lieutenant - a woman -

made it her business

to hound people like me.

She'd pick up a scrap of paper,

rub our faces with it,

put it in a folder,

and give the folder to a judge,

With no other proof, he'd give us 6 months to a year.

What was on the paper?

Face powder.

CARACOL

There they'd say, "We've just come to search".

Who can object?

Everyone opens the door.

It's not like here, where they need a warrant.

They flash a card and act like they own the place.

All Cubans are scared.

You wear new clothes and a neighbour says,

"He's not working, how can he afford it?"

Or, "New furniture - how'd he pay for it?"

You buy a chickent to raise it.

"He must be doing black magic."

You live in fear of rumours,

of sudden panics.

We went to an Afro-Cuban religious ceremony,

a group of us on a bus.

There was a married couple.

that ogled us and sneered,

"Look, he's plucked his eyebrows."

I was wearing jeans

and a low-cut sweater.

She had it in for me, so we were arrested.

If they arrest their quota,

they can buy a TV, a refrigerator.

You can imagine how they act on patrol. "That one - slug him!"

"El Combinado" is a prison made up

how to say ... "A building" ... I can't find the word ...

with several floors.

I was there.

Killers on one floor,

gays on another, thieves on another ...

Were criminals and political prisoners put together?

Politicals were in another building.

Were you treated like the politicals?

No, it was different.

With us it was a little more...you know

We had cosmetics.

We made dresses out of sheets

knowing that if we were caught

it meant another month inside.

But you know how we are.

We'd tear sheets and mattresses

to dress up for a party.

We had parties in jail

and took our beatings.

Could you get favours from the guards?

I managed only once.

What happened?

A guard fell in love with me.

He got me out cleaning the corridor.

"Stay out," he said, "and be a nurse", so I looked after people.

"Tomorrow you'll clean the place."

He always got me out when he was on duty.

He sent me love letters.

Did you take refuge in the Peruvian embassy?

No, I was taking food to a friend there.

I was arrested on the way.

I spent two weeks in jail.

Around 4:30 or 5:00 one morning,

the warden called us together.

He said that under a new law,

all those caught near the embassy had to go to the USA.

Did you resist leaving?

I was scared.

Why?

I didn't know anyone here, what would I do alone?

I couldn't speak English.

But they made us go.

I kept saying "I don't want to go!".

A guard who called me Fifi

told me:

"Get out, Fifi, it's going to get worse for you people."

He insisted so much that I went, no matter how much I cried.

I was OK on the boat,

But landing terrified me. I said, "Fidel was right!"

I saw all those cops in Key West.

They were there to protect us, but I didn't know that then.

Seeing them terrifed me.

"Fidel was right, it's an island, they'll kill us!"

There's a saying:

"If you don't love your country, you don't love your mother. "

I may not love Cuba. I don't miss it.

My name is Reinaldo Arenas, I was born in Cuba 40 years ago.

My family and I aren't middle class, not even lower class.

We're peasants.

Very poor peasants. My family never saw a city.

We were poor before the revolution.

That's why I helped Castro in the guerrilla war.

I spent almost a full year in El Morro.

The prison was closed in 1979.

It was too shocking,

that one of Cuba's most sordid prisons

was in Havana at the entrance of the port where all the ships passed it.

It was even a tourist attraction.

But near it was La Cabana,

another prison,

built by the Spanish in the 16th or 17th century.

It's one of the most sinister political prisons in Cuba,

because there, they shoot people.

No-one was shot in El Morro then.

When anyone was sent to La Cabana

we felt we'd never see them again.

If they were transferred there, they'd be shot.

Cuba's biggest prison is the Combinado del Este.

It's kind of a prison-city.

with many multi-story buildings.

It can hold 100,000 prisoners.

We built it ourselves

as prison labourers.

After I finished my term,

I was subject to a "rehabilitation program".

This means having to disavow

the life you lived before prison,

swearing you won't defy the system in any way.

You're even sexually "reeducated".

To complete my "rehabilitation",

I was put to work

at several building sites as a mason's assistant.

These were buildings in the Flores district,

where Soviet technicians lived.

When I got out of prison

I went home to get my manuscripts.

I couldn't get in.

When you're sent to prison,

your home and everything in it,

is confiscated by the government.

I was homeless.

The door was sealed so I couldn't get in.

One manuscript, the last,

I'd salvaged before my arrest.

I'd hidden it under the roof, wrapped in nylon

How was I going to reach it?

I no longer had access to the house.

One night, while some friends stood watch,

I climbed on to the roof.

The manuscript was gone.

They'd even searched under the roof.

When I got out of prison,

my reputation abroad was at its peak.

My books had been translated into many languages.

Yet in Cuba, I was a non-person.

I didn't have a typewriter, or a room to write in.

I lived like a bum,

sleeping in a different friend's house every night.

People who asked for me were told I didn't exist.

I became a character out of Orwell, an 'unperson'.

The novelist J.N. Oropeza,

has published in Spain and Venezuela.

On a visit to Cuba, he saw the Union of Writers and Artists

He told Nicolas Guillen and other officials

that he wanted to meet me.

They said there was no such writer.

They showed him their list of writers, I wasn't on it.

He went to Casa de las Americas.

An official said, "You're wrong. There's no writer in Cuba named Reinaldo Arenas."

Finally, he saw Lezama Lima, who fearfully

took him outside and said,

"Don't ask questions about Arenas."

"He's in jail or just getting out."

When Fidel Castro speaks,

even to proclaim laws

that condemn people,

those people must go to the Plaza de la Revolucion

and applaud those laws.

The very laws that will sentence us to hard labour.

We have to approve and applaud.

Everyone has to pretend. We all depend on the State.

The State gives us work.

The State can put us in jail,

or send us to college,

or get us promotions in our job.

All those insane laws

drive a person to paranoia.

Laws like the ones against "extravagance" or "vagrancy",

or "ideological diversionism."

Laws for the sexual protection and development of the family.

If you try to leave Cuba,

you run into another law

covering "illegal" exits.

If you try to swim to freedom,

or stow away on a plane,

you're leaving the country illegally

and you get 4 or 5 or 6 years in jail.

It's a wig and a woman's dress.

You stand there.

I must get rid of all this.

If Fidel had seen you in Cuba

he'd have sent you to Miami as a public menace.

If only it had been that easy.

It took me 15 years of tomato picking to get out.

Aren't you exaggerating?

That's inflation for you.

Sit down, make yourself at home.

This meeting is so important, even French TV

came to film it.

How are things at the White House?

Too many problems.

He only holds on to his job because of me.

I defended him in the Politburo.

I said "Okay, he's mongoloid."

"Retarded, fat, and ugly."

"But he's not a bad guy."

The Committees for the Defence of the Revolution

have proven to be very effective

in fighting

the revolutionary enemy,

I mean, counter-revolutionary,

on every front

of the Revolution.

They are groups of repression, one for each block,

and they play a precise role in the repressive apparatus.

There are neighbourhood committees,

that are one level higher.

They're all interconnected.

Still higher, there are national committees.

It's all geared into the machine.

I see it as a way of making people police themselves,

without the regime brass having to intervene.

Imagine your life controlled.

programmed from 9 to 5.

And then from 5 to 7 you do this, 7 to 9, this, then to bed,

If you're not on committee duty.

It starts in the cradle.

You sing "1, 2, 3, like Che we will be."

In grade school your whole education is political.

In high school too.

At 14 they test your political aptitude.

To enter the Communist Youth Unions, then the Party.

That's the route.

It's all laid out for you.

Did any of you belong to the Communist Youth Union?

Yes, I did.

I was 14.

My name was put forward.

My father and mother,

had never discussed politics with me.

Later, I understood why.

If I had to grow up under that system,

it was better for me to be part of it,

than to become a dissident.

That's how Cuban families protect their kids.

"You can't fight the course of things."

"It's better for the kid to become a Communist than to be in jail."

At the time I was 14,

they made it sound like a gift.

something important,

my first achievement in life.

That's how it seemed to me.

The Cuban social system is racist,

Social equality is non-existent.

A cop on a lonely street who sees a black guy,

doesn't react as he would to a white guy.

He'll arrest him.

Cops have a fascist mentality.

To them, blacks are criminals.

In most of the world

having long hair means you're a leftist

In Cuba, long hair meant you're pro-American!

One day, coming out of the movies,

I saw the police arresting people.

For no particular reason. "Grab that one!"

When they arrest you they never tell you why.

El Principe still existed then.

"The Prince's Castle"

One of the oldest prisons in Havana.

I spent a week there. First, my hair was shorn off.

It was done in front of hundreds of people.

To humiliate me.

I did have rather long hair.

I stayed there a week.

I wasn't told why.

My family couldn't find out, either.

When I got out, I was summoned by the judge.

I think I was accused of "extravagant behaviour".

On the day of my hearing

there were no witnesses,

no jury, only one military judge.

I didn't deserve a week in jail

just because I had long hair.

When those people took refuge in the Peruvian embassy,

the regime mixed in common criminals

so it looked like those who wanted to leave

were all delinquents and drug addicts.

So people wouldn't know that everyone wanted to leave Cuba.

It's the only country in the world

where in less than 24 hours

10,000 people asked for political asylum!

Another first: the only country in the world

where a man tried to flee

hiding in the wheel of an airliner.

They were trying to humiliate the people who wanted to leave

by saying they were prostitutes and so on,

You had to take it and shut up.

What does it mean, anyway?

If after 20 years of revolution, of "exemplary politics",

of what they call "the defense of man",

of "culture" and "morality",

If after 20 years of that regime,

you open the door a crack

and 100,000 people leave in a few months,

And if all those people are delinquents,

then it's your fault: you created them.

I'm the same age as the Revolution.

We were all born around then.

If we're all delinquents, who's to blame?

That system creates delinquents.

It's obvious, you have to be blind not to see it.

To the founder,

who rendered powerful

and invincible

this army of organised people,

the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution.

To our beloved Fidel!

FELIX HERNANDEZ I worked 10 years for Cuba-Tours

from 1970 to 1980,

as a tourist guide,

especially for Italians.

For Italian group tours sent by agencies.

Most of them returned to Italy impressed

by what they had seen.

A tourist coming to Cuba

is shown a false view,

a prefabricated image of Cuban reality.

From the moment he lands at the airport,

and takes a luxury bus

to a large Havana hotel,

a tourist gets to see only well-kept streets.

Then he visits the cathedral,

the heart of the old town of Havana,

with its convents and churches.

But if he strays even 200 metres

from the planned route, he'll see that Havana

is a disaster area.

Tourists are under surveillance by guides, taxi drivers,

and other employees

the moment they reach their hotel.

A tourist is welcomed

by the official of Cuba-Tours.

He is told this official will take care of his needs

if he wants an address or phone number,

or to meet anyone.

This official will help him.

In this manner, the official controls what the tourists do.

They're told to use the hotel's taxis

because they're cheaper and give better service

and not to use just any taxi.

When a tourist gets into a hotel taxi,

the driver asks him for his hotel card and room number.

He takes him to the desired address.

But later, the driver

informs the Cuba-Tour official where the tourist went.

That's how all unscheduled visits are monitored.

On the way to Jibacoa Beach,

about 75km from Havana,

you visit the Jibacoa collective farm.

Tourists are shown how the peasants live.

It's embarrassing!

People like myself had to do it many times.

You say: "This is how peasants live now".

"Here are their apartments, here's the school, the child-care centre".

"Now you can visit any home you want and see their living conditions".

The bus

always stops in front of the same building.

The tourists are told they can go in.

They're a bit embarrassed to burst in,

but they're told it's OK.

There are make-believe peasant women,

who invite them in.

They do this for every group.

In these well-furnished apartments,

They offer the tourists coffee and fruit,

things that are rationed and scarce in Cuba.

All over Cuba, near tourist centres and hotels,

you find people walking around,

mostly very young men and women,

who offer the tourists

black market currency rates,

or offer sex,

in exchange for a pair of jeans, a sweater,

a pair of nylons, or a scarf.

And all of this is tolerated by the police.

Or it wouldn't be possible.

I knew these people by sight. All of us guides did.

We knew where they hung out

to do their trading,

but the police never cracked down on them.

So you wonder who they were?

ELAINE DEL CASTILLO

When the new regime came in,

many women took advantage of

the great power of the new leaders,

to obtain

housing and jobs.

What it amounted to

was a form of prostitution, "Give me this and I'll pay you for it."

Many of these women later recycled themselves

into the 'new prostitution',

living in good neighbourhoods,

protected by powerful friends.

It was a short step to become full time prostitutes.

This was the top level of prostitution restricted to the diplomatic corps

and visiting VIPs.

There's another level of prostitution: young girls

who cater to foreign technicians in Cuba,

and to tourists around the hotels.

Many of these girls are controlled by the secret police.

In a way, the State has become the new pimp.

in these new types of prostitution

for diplomats, technicians and tourists.

It's undeniable, it's pimping

These women can only ply their trade,

because the state, i.e. the police, allows it.

There's yet another level of prostitution,

the most pathetic in Cuba.

It involves very young girls

and is the most degrading.

Little value is placed on Cuban women.

Her price is

a pair of nylons,

or three packs of foreign cigarettes.

A pack of cigarettes now costs 20 pesos in Cuba.

So three packets is 60 pesos.

But the real value of three packs is nothing.

No woman in the world, outside of the communist countries,

would sell herself so cheaply.

It's the lowest form of prostitution.

The State can't benefit from it.

So it's repressed.

These women are very independent.

And the police aren't interested

in the information they provide

so they're harrassed.

They get arrested, just as punishment.

There's no pretence of "rehabilitation".

Nothing's done to help them.

They go to jail, the sentence is always the same.

Six months and one day.

They get out and after a while they're back inside.

GARCIA RAMOS REINALDO

During a trip to Bulgaria, Raul Castro, Fidel's brother,

said he found that the streets very "clean".

i.e. free of "antisocial elements".

He asked how they'd done it.

He was particularly concerned about homosexuality.

He was given a reply instantly.

"We have a special camp"

"for antisocial elements"

"Especially the homosexuals you're so concerned about".

He decided to set up such camps in Cuba.

Were they only for homosexuals?

Not solely.

But they were the main target.

They suffered the most,

because in Cuba they were easy to spot.

Anyone who displayed "extravagant attitudes"

was immediately sent to a UMAP.

What was meant by "extravagant attitudes"?

Effeminate mannerisms.

Only 'manly' homosexuals were tolerated.

Many Cuban political leaders are such people.

They speak with deep voices.

They manage to hide the truth.

It's a serious problem in a macho country like Cuba.

That's how many gay men saved their skins

and now hold important political positions.

Especially in the police, where there are many

'manly' homosexuals.

It started with Raul Castro's trip

to Bulgaria.

Later came a Czech came to Cuba,

who wanted to turn homosexuals into men,

and lesbians into women.

With rather complicated tests, no?

It was right out of Pavlov!

They tried to stimulate their libidos

by showing them pictures of naked women,

On the other hand,

when they were shown pictures of a man with an erection,

they were induced to vomit.

Cuban homosexuals soon got wise to the system.

They pretended to be excited by the women.

"What sexy broads!"

And when the man with the erection appeared,

"How could I ever look at that!"

Meanwhile, they had sexual adventures

with the camp's military personnel!

This Cuban trait of laughing at serious matters,

that we in Cuba call "jodedor",

and which in English,

could be translated

as a gift for mockery,

this trait

enabled Cubans to endure some of the misery.

But the misery was real.

What really irritated Cuba's new masters

were these men.

Lesbians excited them.

Nothing so appeals to the primitive Cuban mind

as two women in bed.

And they seem innocent, as they have no 'weapons'.

The 'scientific' aspect reminds one of Hitler's Germany, no?

Sartre once said to us,

"In Cuba, there are no Jews,"

"but there are homosexuals."

Those in power

always find some element of society that antagonizes them.

Furthermore, homosexuals

- this is my own unscientific opinion -

are people who always question the world they live in.

They're by nature active,

they're never sad.

On the other hand,

heterosexuals

tend to be melancholic,

they get over-attached to things,

say, a landscape, an old shoe.

It's strange, but true!

I don't know why.

They can't really adapt to new ways of life.

Like going into exile.

Were you scared of being mistaken for a homosexual?

I couldn't care less.

It would have added another human dimension.

It might be an enrichment.

Virgilio Pinera said to me:

"You lack the imagination to be homosexual".

"Maybe one day ..."

It doesn't bother me, it's not my problem.

They even arrested

on Guanabo Beach, far from Havana,

the writer Virgilio Pinera,

just because of his outward appearance.

Because he looked effeminate.

The "Night of the Three P's" had serious consequences.

Virgilio Pinera,

thanks to the influence of Franqui

and Edith G. Buchaca, who was a Communist official then,

was released the same day he was arrested.

But he couldn't get back into his house.

I took him there. Seals had been placed on the door,

by the Ministry of Interior, as if the house had been

inhabited by an enemy of the Revolution.

How did it happen?

He was denounced

by the Defence Committee opposite his house.

Virgilio told me that, in fact, the head of the Committee

wanted to get his hands on his house.

That's nothing new.

It's happened often before.

German Jews, who had mansions,

that the Nazis wanted,

ended up in Auschwitz.

During the Spanish Inquisition,

Jews and Moors who had desirable houses,

were denounced as heretics.

But in this case, the victim

was an important writer: Virgilio Pinera.

He was very well known,

a writer of importance,

not only in Cuban literature,

but in all Spanish-American literature.

Many weren't as lucky as he was.

They didn't have influential friends.

They weren't at the centre of Cuban culture.

I remember the night he was freed.

He was brought to your place, I remember a frail man who was crying.

Virgilio never got over it.

That night he insisted on sleeping at my place.

Miriam Gomez and I had only one bed.

We put the mattress in the next room

so he could sleep on the boxspring.

The strangest thing is that

soon our apartment was filled with homosexuals

who were afraid to go home.

Next morning, to reach the kitchen,

I had to step over lots of our friends sleeping on the floor.

You worked at the paper "Revolution". That protected them?

It was like being in the government.

So they found temporary asylum in my apartment.

One evening, at the paper "Revolution",

I got a phone call advising me

that Virgilio Pinera had been arrested.

I called the Presidential Palace.

They said not to worry.

It was Operation P.

I went straight there.

The cabinet was in session.

Ramiro Valdes, the Security Chief,

said to me,

"You've come about your friend Pinera?"

I said, "Not just about him."

"About the thousands of people you've arrested unjustly"

"Throughout the country."

Then Valdes said:

"Look, a defender of gays."

Knowing Cuban prejudices, I think

if I've ever acted with courage, it was then.

I answered "If you'd read about Hitler,"

"and others who peresecuted homosexuals"

"You'd realise the worst persecutors were homosexuals themselves."

Ramiro Valdes reacted furiously.

Escalante, the Party secretary, told me

that they'd consulted other socialist countries and followed

their advice.

In China, homosexuals were shot.

Elsewhere, they got long jail terms.

In 1964,

the UMAP concentration camps were opened.

My Italian friends Valerio Riva and Giangiacomo Feltrinell,

with whom I was writing a book on Castro,

spoke of the problem to Fidel.

It was a heated discussion.

At one point, I asked Fidel,

"What would you do with your beloved Julius Caesar?"

Fidel greatly admires Julius Caesar.

"You'd shoot him, too?"

JUAN GOYTISOLO, SPANISH WRITER IN PARIS

I went to Cuba with a French delegation.

During the first two trips, I didn't realise there was this persecution.

Although I was told later on.

That there were already isolated cases.

But in 1967,

in Havana, I found out what was happening.

I received a visit from a great Cuban writer.

Virgilio Pinera.

A writer as important as Alejo Carpentier and Lexama Lima.

He'd written stories, novels, plays, etc.

Virgilio told me what was going on.

He told me about the UMAP.

He said there were over 60,000 homosexuals in those camps.

That he lived in fear of denunciation and arrest by the defence committees.

I realised he was terrified.

because he refused to talk in the hotel room or in the lobby.

He made us walk in the garden because we were safe there.

He struck me as being so lonely, of being a man at bay.

I must say that when I saw him leave,

so frail, so aged,

so marked by his experience,

I was overwhelmed.

It made me think of how the revolution had changed,

and raised doubts about it in my mind.

In fact, Fidel's defence of his beloved Julius Caesar

wasn't very brilliant.

Caught off his guard, Fidel argued

that he was creating a new country,

that he needed virile men, warriors, athletes,

with no mental flaws.

Homosexuals could be blackmailed.

They also set a bad example for youth.

He admitted people were being persecuted.

that UMAP camps had not only gay men,

but also dissidents and religious sect members,

and that they'd been physically maltreated.

During this discussion,

its sole consequence,

was that we had to abandon our book on Fidel.

He agreed to disband the UMAP.

It's true, the UMAP was disbanded.

But just as UMAP had a forerunner in Operation P,

it also had sequels.

Like the 1971 law against vagrancy

and other persecutions.

These were but crude beginnings.

They realised their mistake.

It wasn't that they'd arrested innocent people,

because the others were innocent too,

the mistake was in not arresting all of them.

Padilla told us

that the methods of repression used by the Cuban Revolution

were patterned on Bulgarian methods

that Raul Castro had learned during a visit there.

Maybe it was a Bulgarian virus!

They were all obsessed with homosexuality

when visiting communist bloc countries.

Ramiro Valdes, Minister of the Interior,

went to China

and asked to meet the Mayor of Shanghai.

Why did Valdes want to meet him?

Shanghai had always had a large homosexual population.

dating back to imperial China, even under Chiang Kai-shek.

It was the capital of westernized China,

it had very free morals.

As opposed to Peking, the cloistered capital.

So he met the Mayor of Shanghai,

He asked him

how they had solved the homosexual problem.

The mayor replied through an interpreter.

"There are no homosexuals here."

"You no longer have any here?"

"We took advantage of a traditional festival"

"Where homosexuals gathered in a park,"

"on the bank of a river."

"Party officials went there carrying clubs to eliminate the problem once and for all."

"They clubbed them and threw them into the water."

"The bodies were carried downstream"

"as a grim warning. It was the end of homosexuality in Shanghai."

Valdes reported this on his return from China in 1963.

He found it a brutal solution, but the Cubans

were looking for a solution to the problem, too.

It's all tied up with Spanish machismo,

so apparent in Castro.

Everything he does is aimed at showing how macho he is.

A superman, a supermacho.

He doesn't cross a room like most mortals.

He has to do it in three strides.

Where most people would need eight.

But that's not all of it.

The persecution of gays and lesbians,

and those who lived the good life in Havana

was persecution of dissidents.

Homosexuals deviate from the bourgeois norms.

Communists endorse conventional couples.

Marriage between a man and a woman.

Homosexuality threatens all that,

Hence totalitarian states fear it.

Homosexuals were persecuted

in Russia and in Hitler's Germany.

This bourgeois ideal of family, of marriage,

wasn't practiced by Castro himself.

He didn't feel obligated to get married.

He always kept to himself.

The Cuban army is full of generals and colonels.

Castro is neither.

He's the "maximum leader".

He has about eight other titles but never appears as General Castro.

He's a leader who is married to the Revolution.

Married to Cuba.

So he didn't have to marry a woman.

Bye! Study hard!

HAVANA, 1971 I led an army in the war,

and in a war, an army must be commanded,

with rigid discipline,

and total authority.

We won the war.

At the end of the war, I had great personal power.

I didn't use our victory

or the Revolution to acquire more power.

SUSAN SONTAG, NEW YORK

Is it the militarisation of Cuba? Maybe that, too.

If homosexuals

in such countries are identified with women, i.e. as weak elements,

and the country's ideology is focused on strength,

and force is associated with virility,

then male homosexuals are viewed as a subversive element.

It's an element that in itself implies

that power isn't the only goal of adult life.

It's true,

the militarisation of a culture is common in many countries,

especially in communist countries.

I think we're seeing an evolution in communist culture,

towards a military ideal.

And this is totally at odds with the basic principles

that good leftists thought for years was the communist ideal.

What about the silence of certain left-wing groups?

I think one of the left's weaknesses,

has always been a difficulty in dealing with questions

bearing on the moral and political aspects of sex.

First it had to do with the question of women, for example,

a revolutionary of such intelligence and moral propriety,

like Rosa Luxembourg,

always refused to admit that feminist questions had any place

within the framework of Marxist concerns over justice.

And as questions about women

or other sexual identities were tangential,

and were treated superficially.

It's a heritage,

in a way, a puritan one,

that is deeply embedded in the morals of the left.

The discovery that homosexuals were being persecuted in Cuba,

shows, I think, how much the Left needs to evolve.

It's not just a serious case of injustice that must be exposed,

but something that compels people

to take note of

a lapse in attitude of the so-called left,

that goes back a long way.

I've worked tirelessly,

from the start, to form a leadership team,

a collective leadership,

to create a party,

and institutions

in which I placed all my personal influence,

all my power.

I analyse and discuss collectively

with comrades who command respect,

and authority

and revolutionary fame, the problems of the party and the country.

The delegates who agree with the nominations

to the presidency,

and for other labour-committee officers,

raise your credentials.

Against?

Abstentions?

22 years spent in Fidel Castro's jails.

Poet Armando Valladares, 45, comes to Paris,

freed on a personal appeal by President Mitterrand.

This footage was shot on his arrival at Paris airport.

Amnesty International, the humanitarian group,

and the Vatican had urged his release,

but it was Francois Mitterrand personally,

who convinced Fidel Castro to free Valladares,

seen here with his wife, who he hadn't met for 13 years.

The Cuban authorities allowed the foreign press

into the airport to show it was an act of clemency.

I'm happy to be here.

I want to thank President Mitterrand,

for having obtained my freedom.

I'm happy to see my wife who I hadn't seen for so many years.

The change has been very abrupt very violent, I'm very moved.

After spending 22 years in a cell where I still was only hours ago.

I'm very tired, so please excuse me.

It's in the jails

that people are the best informed about what's going on in Cuba.

Every day, people land in there

from all over the island,

from all social classes.

Cubans you meet on the street,

live in constant and obsessive fear

of going to jail.

When they get there,

they say the things they're scared of saying outside.

While I was in a punishment cell

in the Combinado del Este prison,

they brought in a kid aged 12,

called Robertico.

He told me his story.

He was a kid like any other.

One day in the street,

he saw a gun on the seat of an open car.

For a gag, he aimed it at the sky

and fired a shot.

The owner of the car showed up,

an officer of the Ministry of Interior.

He beat up Robertico

and took him to a police station.

He was sentenced to jail until his majority.

They sent him to Combinado del Este.

Despite his youth, he was put with common criminals

who'd been years in jail,

men who were morally and mentally sick.

A few days later, five of them raped the kid.

He was so maimed physically that his life was in danger.

He was sent to the prison hospital.

When he was discharged a few weeks later,

Robertico's file was stamped:

"Homosexual".

So he was moved into the homosexual wing.

He was so small, he could slip

between the bars.

One day he escaped to watch cartoons

on the guards' TV set.

To punish him,

they put him in solitary, in the cell

next to mine

and that's how I heard his story.

In the evenings, the breeze

made the light bulb sway in the corridor,

and cast a shadow in his cell.

That scared him.

At the same time, every day,

he'd start crying for his mother.

I still hear his voice:

"Get me out of here, I want to see my mama".

The guards, annoyed by his crying,

threw buckets of water at him.

One of the soldiers bayonetted him.

Lieutenant Mejias, who was in charge of the wing,

forbade using the bayonet,

because the boy was so frail.

After that they beat him with a braided rope.

That this kid was sent to jail

seems incredible,

but in Cuba it's common.

There are prisons for minors throughout the island.

In Havana, the Guines and Jaruco prisons,

plus two concentration camps for minors,

"New Life" and "Rainbow",

as well as the Batabano prison,

and one in the Mulgoba district.

But in some cases,

kids are placed in adult jails.

I was beaten on the head.

The scars are still there.

You can still see on my hands where I was tortured.

For years I was in solitary, like so many others,

in cells where there was no sunlight,

and no electric light.

We got routine beatings twice a day.

They'd go from cell to cell.

For years, I got no mail from my family, or visits,

or medical care.

I was under constant pressure.

and was mentally and physically maltreated by the guards.

This is common practice in Cuba.

The Revolution

can't be accused of having killed one citizen,

or having tortured a single prisoner.

Tell me

of any other examples of this in history.

My name is Ana Maria Simo.

In Havana, I wrote stories.

In New York, I wrote plays from 1976 on.

I left Cuba in December 1967,

for Paris, where I studied sociology at Vincennes University.

I was involved in the May '68 events,

and later in feminist movements.

In Havana, I was a Communist Youth activist,

and before that in the July 26 youth movement.

I was an idealist.

I think I still am.

Despite the government's cultural policies,

despite ...

the conventional morality

that they had enforced.

I considered myself to be a true communist.

The true heir to Marx, Engels and the others.

The party chiefs were ignorant bourgeois to me.

That's why I kept on being a revolutionary,

despite my disagreement.

I thought there was a struggle

between the more radical people like myself,

and the petty-bourgeois like Castro.

and that, eventually, the Cuban revolution would be radicalized.

Then one day,

there was a knock on my door at 4 a.m.

I lived with my grandmother, she opened the door

and three men came in.

They said they were State Security

and that I had to go with them.

So I did.

I was put in a room.

with 30 other women.

where there wasn't even a toilet.

They claimed these women were lesbian.

Most were naked,

ate with their hands,

had to defecate on the floor, and screamed all night.

The place was roughly

one third the size of this room.

And there were close to forty women in it.

I spent the night clinging to the bars of the cell,

crying, terrified

of what might happen to me in there.

A luckily, a black woman of around 50,

who'd been in there for 25 years,

for killing her husband,

consoled and protected me.

She told me that like all the other women,

I was in there by mistake.

A mistake! How often I heard that!

After five days,

I was taken at night to some man's office.

This was Miguel Fernandez,

the director of all prisons

and penitentiaries in the Havana area.

He questioned me every night for a week,

with a .45 pistol on his desk.

His first words:

"You won't get out of here alive if you don't tell me everything you know."

He tried to make me feel guilty

by asking how I, a Communist Youth activist,

who wasn't a lesbian,

who had led an exemplary life,

could get involved with such trash.

He questioned me about Retamar and Guillen,

of the Writer's Union.

I realised why I'd been arrested,

Though he never made any specific charges,

he said I was in there because I associated

with people who were "individualists",

"degenerates" who had no proletarian zeal,

and were "antisocial".

I was really shocked.

This agent of repression scorned not only

vaguely dissident young people like me,

but also Cuban cultural bigwigs.

During my last questioning he tried to break me,

since I was so naive, by saying,

"Shit, don't you realise what those men you frequent are?"

"Ever thought of what two men do together in bed?"

I hadn't, and told him so.

With his .45 in hand,

he gave me a detailed description

of just what two men can do in bed.

I was so embarrassed that I couldn't look at him.

I realised that Guanabacoa prison

a hidden city located beneath Havana.

A sewer of spies,

agents and soldiers,

an underworld of repression in Cuba.

I, who was pro-Revolution, had no idea of it.

We had been followed for months.

There were huge files on us.

People like Nicolas Guillen,

who were above reproach,

were viewed by the Ministry of the Interior

as little better than criminals.

After two weeks, I was returned to my parents.

This is signed by Miguel Fernandez.

It says that as I was a minor

I could go home

provided that my parents delivered me, the next day at 2 p.m.

to a psychiatric hospital

where I would remain the time necessary

to eliminate the effects for which I'd been placed there.

I'd be in a mental ward.

Incommunicado.

I couldn't tell my friends.

No-one in Havana knew what had happened to me.

Not even Nicolas Guillen could find out.

I disappeared.

And then I reappeared four months later.

In 20 years of Revolution there have been no disappearances.

People guilty of counter-revolutionary crimes

were judged by the courts,

after being tried.

True, there was a period

when we had more than

15,000 counter-revolutionaries in our prisons.

I insist in description and defence

of so many women were that jailed as "common criminals".

This large population of women in prison

seems to be to be symbolic

of the revolutionary process

This was a product of the Revolution.

I saw these common criminals

beaten so savagely

on their breasts, kicked, dragged.

Even if they did behave badly,

this was inhuman treatment.

They were isolated in the last cell block,

known as the punishment block,

on concrete beds,

with almost no light.

You'd see mulatto women,

whose skin was quite dark.

They'd be confined to that block

for 25, 30, 45 days,

depending on the sentence that was given them by the wardens.

When they came out, their skin was white.

They were so pale and skinny,

As if they'd been in a concentration camp.

That's what "New Dawn" was like.

At night you'd hear the wailing, the cursing,

the despair.

In the end, we, the political prisoners,

the few of us left there,

were put in a small cell block

only about 200 metres from the punishment block.

And in the still of the night,

it was real torment to hear the women in there.

Tell me if that's any way to treat people.

They call it rehabilitation,

That's what those women's prisons are supposed to be.

I could tell you hundreds of stories

about things that happened in jail.

But even though I remember it all clearly,

what saved me was that I felt no hatred.

I remember, but I don't hate.

Unquestionably,

individuals have a lot of scope.

Under the conditions brought about by the Revolution

all kinds of talents, characters,

and personalities can thrive.

I assure you that socialism

offers human beings

an incredible number

of possibilities they didn't have under the previous regime.

You'd better

go to sleep.

It is true, not much is known about it.

But what seems to me most significant

isn't really

what happens, but why it happens.

To be different, to be strange,

to have "improper conduct",

isn't just forbidden, but totally repressed.

It can land you in jail.

It's part of the Cuban character,

and has been for ages.

It's not unique to Castro. There are many Castros.

There must restrain the Castro that's in all of us.

It's an attitude we drag around with us.

We've dragged around a whole series of reflexes,

of long-standing behaviour patterns.

and they condition us.

It's a vicious circle.

We're all trapped in paranoia,

and we all feed that paranoia.

persecutors and persecuted alike,

because at times the persecuted

seem to be the persecutors.

Everyone suspects everyone else.

And this paranoia leads us to ...

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