Friday, February 12, 2010

'Cuba 10 years later' written 40 years ago in Jerusalem

Suppose this is what Sarah would want me to 'post' on Blog:

JERUSALEM--On April 22, 1961, two officers of the Cuban Rebel Army led me out of the military intelligence headquarters (G-2) in the Marianao suburb of Havana across a gravel path toward a guarded gate where the Brazilian ambassador's black limousine was waiting to take me to the safety of the embassy residence.  Shouts of 'Paredon! Paredon! (the execution wall) were still in my ears as I sank into the spacious back seat, wondering if I was finally returning to reality after the nightmaere that begtan with my arrest six days earlier, the night of the Bay of Pigs landing.

The shouts, which sometimes had an eerily good-natured quality about it, came from the young militiamen with tousseled hair loafing on the stoops of the squat, bile-green stone building, and playfully pointing their  submachine guns at me.  It was also a refrain I had heard each time I was taken from my cell across a courtyard to the grimy officers quarter for another interrogation and it has remained with me with the persistence of a chorus of an often-heard Greek tragedy, partly theater, partly gthe poignant memory or even symbol of a pervasive human condition:  the breakdown of social order.

I had heard the popular revolutionary chant resounding in the vast Plaza Marti from hundreds of thousand voices each time Fidel Castro invoked the names of Cuba's enemies in the same cadence and seemingly as cheerfully and without a trace of malice as when they intoned "Fidel, Fidel,"--and I had heard it from the young militiamen guarding prisoners at the revolutionary tribunals in the lugubrious La Cabana prison where the words became a dreaded reality when the bullets of the firing squad crashed into the bodies of prisoners only hours after their death sentences were pronounced.

(will look for the rest--I know there's more for it is the introduction to a talk I gave at Hebrew University)

1 comment:

  1. I just watched Charlie Wilson's War, did you ever see it. What do you remember of Charlie Wilson?
    I'd always heard of your arrest in Cuba...now I know more.
    En route to Mexico...sun and sand...leaving a house surrounded by snow.
    Love.
    Jennie

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