Hombre del Silencio: The Prison Diary of Ramon Labanino [one of the Cuban 5 heroes] Part 5: Crazy American Indian; Drug Trafficking; The Diary; The Chess Game; The First Murder and Prison Violence

Crazy American Indian

One day a new inmate arrived, an American Indian. He was a monster, huge, much taller than me, weighed almost five hundred pounds, strong and very corpulent. He entered the cell at almost twelve o’clock at night and the guard said to me:

Medina, whether you want him to sleep with you or not, we have nowhere to put this man.

I received him well. I gave him food. I remember he was cutting his nails, he had a nail in his foot that was bleeding. From his attitude I realized that he was not well, I thought he was mentally ill, he was reacting as if he had some kind of mental retardation. It was when I began to inquire about who he was and what crime he had committed, and he told me that he had life imprisonment for killing his stepfather, I was shocked, and when he told me that the reason for the murder was because of abuse, I didn’t even ask him what kind of abuse, and that was the end of my interrogation, I didn’t want to continue getting into problems that were not mine.

We went to bed as usual around one o’clock in the morning, but around three o’clock that savage started shouting: “I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch!”

I jumped out of bed worried and alert, thinking it was with me, ready to defend myself any way I could, imagine taking down such a big guy. He was sitting on the bed and then I said: “Hey, what’s wrong with you? Calm down!” 

It seems that it was a nightmare, because when he listened to me he calmed down and so did I in part, because it was a big scare. At dawn, I went straight to see the counselor, Bienvenido León, who always behaved with me in an honest, responsible and cooperative manner, to tell him what had happened in the early morning and ask him to change my new cellmate, I told him:

“Look Bienvenido, get that man out of my cell, because we are going to kill each other. If the guy says he wants to kill me, I will defend myself, and one of us will end badly.” Fortunately for me they took him away, they moved him to another cell right away. That man was not well, he had serious mental problems.

Drug Trafficking

It is interesting to explain what happened with drugs in the prisions. The prisoners made wine with juices, fruits, sugar and a little yeast, which was available at the bakery, sometimes even without yeast. They would prepare all the ingredients in a nylon garbage bag, which, being airtight, allowed fermentation, and after two or three weeks they would make a pure wine.

They made rum with high degrees of alcohol, since there are some inmates who know chemistry, and in those places there is a lot of time to think and generate ideas, so, with a rubber band and a small motor they made a filter for the wine, which when heated distilled pure alcohol, this was also achieved with a coil, and they packaged it in little honey grapefruits, which cost twenty dollars each. One of the ways that the mafias make money is with the production of alcohol.

Drug trafficking in prison is a dangerous and delicate issue, almost always the guards are involved, who bring drugs into the unit, sometimes because they are corrupt, and other times because they are blackmailed by the mafias, who have a lot of power inside and outside the prison, and there are guards who fear for their lives and the lives of their families, and give in to blackmail and manipulation. Also the salary they earned was not enough to live adequately, because life in the United States is very expensive.

Another way is through family visits, especially women who use their body in a thousand ways as a container for any kind of drug, and the delivery was through kissing. It works as follows:

They arrive with the drug somewhere in their body, they go to the bathroom, take out the bag and put it in their mouth, when they kiss the prisoner they pass it to him, he swallows it and then defecates it in the cell. One time they caught one and gave him purgatives so that he would give up all the drugs.

In Beaumont, the FBI conducted an investigation in which eight officers were arrested for drug trafficking and for providing cell phones to prisoners. There were a lot of drugs, the prisoners consumed them anywhere without hiding, in the yard, in the bathroom, in the common area, wherever they smoked marijuana or injected anything.

Having just arrived at the prison, I went to the area where we practiced sports, and upon entering the bathroom to wash my hands, I witnessed a scene in which two white Americans were injecting themselves with some kind of substance that, due to my lack of knowledge on the subject, I could not identify, and I almost spilled it in the sink where the liquid was placed in a plastic spoon. Imagine the trouble I would have been in if that had happened.

Beaumont Prison was the worst of all the prisons I was in, and I had the most difficult experiences there. One day several people were assaulted. It all happened at the same time led by the D.C. mob, which in one day killed seven people in different parts of the prison, in different units, and in the recreation area. It was a big fight for control of territory inside the prison and the sale of drugs. It should be noted that the Washington D.C. mafia was feared for being very violent, organized, and extremely aggressive.

At a certain time, the prison management decided to give a hard blow to this matter, dismantling all the mafias that made a living out of it. It is usual when there is a brawl of this type that the Bureau of Prisons locks up all the people, and they take out the members and leaders of the mafias by bus, and transfer them to different correctional facilities. In this way they disarticulated the structure of the different gangs, and with this decision they also reduced the danger and internal fights within the penitentiary system.

I had the opportunity to watch a television program in which some prison wardens explained that they allowed a certain degree of drug distribution in their prisons, in order to keep the population calm, especially those drug addicts who were already regulars, who needed the narcotic, because in the absence of it they could die.

In prison slang they call “tecatos” those who cannot live without supplying themselves with drugs. They are very dangerous, capable of robbery and assault in order to have money to buy their hallucinogens.

Because of those circumstances, the most important thing of all was the training you had to have to survive inside, I think even cultural, because you have the political and ideological preparation, but also the will that you do not want to ruin yourself, you do not want to corrupt yourself, that is always imposed, and you learn how to live in prison without becoming a “convict”.

To get out of the environment, what I did was to practice sports. I also went to school to take classes in everything. I learned to knit with a needle, to crochet, I learned to work with Indian beads, beading, the little tiny seeds that you weave with a thread, and you can make necklaces, bracelets, everything. I took all kinds of courses, I learned to work with leather, saddlery, I even made several leather wallets for my daughters and my wife. You learn a lot of crafts, you do it as a way to get out of prison, to use your time in a useful way, and of course you always learn things.

There are inmates who learn to make beading, and then they sell them inside the prison, and they make money with that, they sell them for ten, fifteen dollars, and that is a little money that people make with honesty. I also gave Spanish classes to people who spoke English. I played chess, I wrote poems, I was in the process of learning to paint, I took a guitar course, more or less I know how to play something, but it is very difficult and it is hard work. Those are the ways one sought to survive.

The hardest thing to learn is everyday politics, dealing with the mafias, the internal situations that are very complex. For example, if you have an altercation with a person, you can’t go and have a fight with him, the leader of your group has to talk to the leader of the other group, and ask permission, to discipline the other person, that is, there are a lot of rules that you have to know in order to avoid problems.

After Alejandro introduced me to the Cubans and when I settled in, I got a job, that was something important. For example, if it is a prison located in a place where it snows, they send you to shovel snow at two or three in the morning, they take you out to clean the grounds at four in the morning, so that it is clean and the people can go to the dining room; or go to work in the kitchen which is also hard work, because it is scrubbing the pots and pans. The prisoners really like to go to work in the kitchen, to steal and eat. Those who work there have access to food, they steal to sell it outside, and from that they make money, but we don’t, I didn’t like the kitchen, besides I don’t gamble, I have never stolen, I don’t have that mess of wanting to eat like that, but that was a type of work that people looked for, in short, It is convenient to get a job, and what I most liked to do was be an orderly, which is the person who organizes everything, who orders methodically, I held that position for quite a long time, because it was a job that was done quickly, and then I could devote myself to my activities and my legal preparation. I was in charge of the area of the room where the washing machines were, which were there for a while and then they were removed, because the prisoners kept knives and wine inside the machines. Eventually they were removed in all the prisons, but when the washing machine room existed, my job was to wipe it down every day when I got up, and clean it inside and outside, sweep the area, and clean that part. Or if you were orderly of the unit in general, you had to clean it and organize it.

Then I got a cell, which is another important thing, how to get a cell with a person who can more or less get along with you, almost always the biggest problems you have with the same dungeon mate, because living together is the hardest thing there is.

The first hard scene I experienced in prison, which was the most grotesque, I still close my eyes and dream about it today. It was a murder, the first one I saw.

THE DIARY

My love:

I will begin this diary on the day we completed 4 years of political imprisonment in the United States, today September 12, 2002.

Sometimes I wonder why I did not start it earlier, from the first day of our arrest; but it happened that then other more urgent and definitive tasks required all our energies. Now, however, I have more peace of mind and control over things, and there could not be a better date to start it.

Anyway, you can go all the way back here, in the letters/journals I wrote to you before, which you keep there. I will be brief, I do not intend to bore you, but I want to detail, reliably, the real life of this unjust prison. No, you already know that. Crucial moments are approaching in this process: The appeal, and the final outcome, until the return to the homeland. Until that day will be this diary.

It serves, perhaps, as a modest tribute that the lives of five men dedicate to the good of Cuba and HUMANITY; and a noble bastion of Love and Hope.

With all my love; Your daddy.

The chess game

I’m already in danger of giving my life every day for my country and for my duty – since I understand it and I have the courage to carry it out- José Martí, Letter to Manuel Mercado, May 18, 1895.

I started writing a diary just four years after I was imprisoned, on September 12, 2002. I arrived at Beau-Mont prison on February 12, and from that date until September it took me to settle down, to create the conditions to be able to write, and that’s what I did.

That day I was playing chess in the unit, even a game became a problem. I was playing with the prison champion; a very seasoned brown American, with whom, upon arrival, I had my first game and a big loss. The man beat me outright five games to one. So I told him to give me some time to cool off and then we would play again. This character liked to gamble and I didn’t, besides bringing problems, I don’t like to play for interest, I prefer a healthy game. I took the time to prepare myself, I read books on Capablanca, I studied well his openings and the precision of his endgame, and when I felt ready we sat down to play. He insisted on betting and I continued in my position of a clean game, but I know that other Cubans bet, at five dollars a game. We started and I began to win, by the end I had beaten him ten to zero! That man got angry and began to insult me, telling me that I was a low player, that I played garbage, because I started very methodically, very carefully, winning positions and pieces, and playing strategy games. He did not like it, and his insults were rising, to the point that I had to stand up to him and tell him not to disrespect me. We almost came to blows, and I decided not to play with him anymore. But you can imagine that afterwards the players came to challenge me, I really like chess, and in the prison they had tournaments every so often to keep the inmates entertained. I always participated and almost always won the tournaments, and the handball tournament too. At the beginning I played very good handball, with both hands, and I still play. I see a ball and I go up to it, I love the sport, and that led me to be challenged a lot.

At the beginning, the winners were given soft drinks. Later, as time went by, the prizes were smaller. At the beginning they gave you a bag with candy, candy bars, a soft drink, but at the end they gave you packets of Gatorade, which is an energy drink that you drink when you are doing sports.

The first murder and prison violence

One day when I was playing chess in the unit, I witnessed a scene that stuck in my mind, and it went like this:

I was sitting in front of the staircase on the lower floor, when at the top I felt accelerated footsteps and saw a white American running away from three black Americans who were stabbing him as they ran, I could clearly see how the white sweater the man was wearing was bloody, and the marks of the knives, which were enormous, were clearly visible. On descending the stairs the man fell faint, overcome by heavy bleeding, and there, on the floor, dying, the assailants continued stabbing him relentlessly. They stabbed him a total of about eighty times. When they sensed guards, they threw the knives on the floor towards the bathrooms, and ran away to hide, I suppose.

The video cameras captured it all. I had never seen anything like it, I could not believe such violence and perversity, I could not imagine that a knife could enter a man’s body in such a way.

It was later commented that the reason for this aggression was that this target along with two or three others were forming a new group called “Garbage Tanks”, which was formed by prisoners who had been expelled from other mafias, and which began to grow and gain territory. The killers were from Washington D.C., which I already talked about how violent they were, and how they defend their supremacy at all costs and without scruples.

Without much thought I got up from the gaming table, and put my back to the wall, in order to face anything that might affect me.

In those situations the guards leave, lock themselves in the offices, press a red button and call others who arrive like the SWAT team, just like in the movies, with a parapet, handing out blows to anyone, throwing tear gas everywhere. The inmates go to their cells, and what follows is a month of confinement, which is used to investigate the murder.

Thanks to the security cameras, the guards had already identified the three killers and took them away immediately. This fact is very representative of what a prison is, because I saw a few scenes like that.

On another occasion I witnessed a man being kicked to death. I was doing exercises in the yard when I saw three white men talking, and suddenly one of them was hit in the head with a padlock wrapped in a sock, he collapsed, and on the ground they started kicking him in the face with boots with a metal toe cap, something wild. The man, unconscious, blood was coming out of his ear. Upon realizing this, the guards from the towers began firing blanks, but the aggressors did not cease.

There was a rush, confusion, gunshots, smoke bombs, and everyone on the ground with their hands on their heads, there on the ground it could be two or three hours until the incident is solved and those involved are taken away, and worse if there are dead or seriously injured. I could not believe that I was living with something so violent. I do not know what would happen to me, I think it is a psychological resource, but every time I was facing such situations, I thought I was not present in the problem, I saw myself from the outside, as an observer, as if I were watching a movie, and that allowed me to be critical, objective, and analyze all response options to an extreme situation to which I had never been exposed, as I saw how they killed a man and I could not do anything, because nothing can be done, because if you meddle you may be killed or become a murderer.

Then came the long process of investigating everyone present in the yard at the time of the incident. We were left shirtless, our torso and hands were searched for traces of violence while they filmed everything that happened. For the cameras we had to say our name, inmate number, the unit where we lived, and what we saw. Almost always, no one had seen anything!