"Search!" "Search!, " shouted our lookouts. "Search!, " "Search!," shouted everybody. That indescribable, horrible sound that we all consciously or unconsciously feared could reverberate at any time in the middle of any night, between the years 1959 and 1967 in one or another of the buildings or Circulars of the Siberia of the Caribbean. That sound that froze the blood and made the heart beat more rapidly, resonated one more time in Circular No.1 of the famous “Model Prison” of the Isle of Pines.
The searchers were one of the more criminal weapons with which the communist regime humiliated and hurt the Cuban Political Prisoners. The fundamental psychological reason for the searches under the Marxist-Leninist ideology and according to Anton Makarenko was to try to mentally break us . In other words, to try to get us to sever all our ideals, all our political, economic, moral and spiritual principles.
How did they apply this theory? What were the searches in the Cuban Siberia? In my opinion, the implementation of the searches according to the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist philosophy was a Tragicomedy in 5 Acts. The jailers were well trained in looking for, searching and destroying even the most insignificant possession that a prisoner could have. They had to rip apart or burn the books that we had smuggled in; they had to find the little radio made by us that gave us a semblance of being in touch with civilization; they had to stomp over photographs, over letters from home; they had to throw outside the cell our run down underwear or our sneakers full of holes. At the end, everything, absolutely everything that used to belong to everyone was piled up in the central hallway in the ground floor. Everything! The little that we used to have was now in a big pile, dirtied by the mud of boots, broken, ripped apart. It took us days to find a little bit of what used to be ours.
The jailers preferred to come into the building quietly in order to surprise us and to prevent us from hiding anything. Once inside, they shouted, howled, cursed, and hit us with their bayonets, machetes or clubs. They hit us without pity, without exempting the old, the infirm, or the sick. We were all the same. We were all treated like a herd of wild beasts.
In order to try to prevent a totally surprising search, we started to post about 6 lookouts per floor in the Circular in 2-hour shifts. They would keep guard the entire night, looking out the bars of the windows in all directions. It was them, our friends, who were in charge of shouting the first ominous "Search!"
Act I of the Tragicomedy: The Arrival
After the first alerting screams of our lookouts, the guards rushed in, vociferating. They shouted curses, insults. These men went rapidly to all floors and went from cell to cell, pulling us out. When hundreds of men tried to go down at the same time from all five floors using the narrow balconies and stairways, a human jam was of necessity formed... but the guards came at us from above, hurrying us with blows of the bayonets, machetes and clubs. The slow ones, the last to get out of the cells were the ones receiving the heaviest doses of blows. Some of the prisoners, afraid of the edge of the bayonets, elected to dangle from one balcony to the next one below, rather than use the stairs. A slip meant a fall of various floors. The guards hit us on the back, on the legs, on the head. It was a hell, where the threatening howls of the jailers mixed with the laments of the injured and in the background was the grotesque, rhythmic pounding of bayonet blades hitting human flesh. That background beat resonated throughout the entire Circular like a horrifying march. There were more than 100 men wielding machetes and bayonets, always hitting their targets and inflicting wounds, lacerations and hematomas.
Act II of the Tragicomedy: The Exit
Once down, before leaving the building, we had to take off our clothing. There, another group of guards surrounded us and pulled our clothes away. Totally naked bodies had to run towards the "pens," located about 150 yards away. We had to run in the middle of two rows of jailers, again clutching clubs, bayonets and machetes and using them indiscriminately against us. Through that tunnel of blows we had to run until we got to the pens.
Act III of the Tragicomedy: The Wait
The curtain rises and we see the actors in the "pens," without clothes, without water, without any shade under the tropical sun, hurt, bleeding. From dawn to dusk we were kept there, sometimes even later. The sun burned our skins. The throat was dry and the thirst hardly bearable. "Water!," "Water,!" some shouted, and the jailers laughed. Our stomachs growled. It was 4 in the afternoon and on "search" days we would get neither our usual "breakfast" of 1/2 cup of hot water with sugar and a piece of stale bread, nor our usual "lunch" of a watery soup or a plate of boiled spaghetti without sauce, without salt, without spices. At least with the "breakfast" or "lunch" we would not have been so thirsty or weak.
In the pens we talked, we talked a lot. We told ourselves anecdotes of how we had avoided a blow to the head, but got one on the back; we counted number of blows received; we compared this search with the last one to see which one had been the worst. We all tried to use the magic and fantasy of thought to cruise in the marvelous ship of the past or the future, trying to avoid thinking about the immediate future: the return to the Circular.
The topics of conversation were as varied as varied was the group of men that in the Isle of Pines comprised the Cuban Political Prisoners. Colored by all the shades of the skins of Cubans, we were intellectuals and professionals and scientists and writers and musicians and athletes. We were Catholic priests and Protestant reverends and Santeros and Spiritists and atheists. We were businessmen big and small. But the largest mass, the majority of us were simple farmers and laborers. In the "pens" we could hear the most sophisticated philosophical, political or religious discussions as well as practical advice on the planting and care of vegetables or tips for maintaining a diesel engine in good shape. In the pens we could hear the adventures of a professional conspiring against the government in the capital as well as the incredible acts of the farmer who took up arms against the communists in the countryside. It was a kaleidoscope of incredible courage. Oh! So much bravery! so much valor anonymously displaced in the Cuban Political Jails! We have the duty to talk about it. There are too many stories that must be told.
After 12:00 noon, the topics of conversation invariably turned to food. There is no better reminder of the tasty food that one has enjoyed that hunger. When one is hungry one talks about food.
Remember that we were naked and trying to look supremely indifferent to the other naked bodies. Over there one decided to recite a poem that he had composed. Over here, another had decided to sing a song. The hours passed, the sun burnt and the thirst got worst. All of a sudden one man jumps up from the ground with a yell. Everybody looks. What happened? Did he have a breakdown? No. He wipes his butt and curses. He had sat on an aunt hill!
Act IV of the Tragicomedy: The Return
The return to the Circular was a repetition of the horrifying tunnel. The two rows of machete wielding and bayonet wielding guards stood again on either side of us hurrying us with blows. We had to start the insane gallop again, trying to avoid the weapons. The poor soul who was old or too weak or too wounded would receive the most blows. Many times we would grab a person and pull him by the arms, by the hair, to help him run faster at the risk of getting a couple of more blows ourselves.
Act V of the Tragicomedy: The Findings
When we got back to the Circular, we found that lower central section was a gigantic dumping ground where everything was piled up. There were the canvases that served as our mattresses, undershorts, undershirts, pants, shirts, spoons, mugs, sneakers... all the belongings of more than 1300 men. Wet, muddy, mixed-up. Little did we have before. Now, nothing.
The purpose of this final act of the search was to try to provoke fights among us. We had to find one pair of white undershorts among hundreds of white undershorts, one pair of pants among hundreds of pants, one aluminum mug among dozens of others. Some searched desperately, others gave up and did not even look for their things. Oh, God Almighty! What a feeling of angry impotence I felt when I saw that absurd scene at the end of a Search!
This Tragicomedy in 5 acts, with actors made up in the red of their blood and the blue of their hematomas and highlighted by the deforming lines of open wounds was represented many, many times. However, rather than break us, the process would strengthen my rage. In the Isle of Pines the ideologue Makarenko and the Stalinists tactics failed abominably.
See another testimony by Guillermo Estévez