Hurtado Camacho

This episode has to do with Hurtado Camacho, my personal friend. His story is a peculiar case. Hurtado was imprisoned as a young man in Cuba. He was quite mischievous, he specialized in stealing from the rooftops, he was imprisoned at the age of eighteen during the Mariel period, when some inmates decided to leave for the United States, then he got into prison and left, thinking he was going to live the great American dream.

When he arrived, in the interview with the immigration officers, upon learning that he came from a prison in Cuba, they decided to send him to the Atlanta prison, in the state of Georgia. There he began to file the paperwork to be released, because his crime was petty theft, he was almost released; but while he was waiting for the Court’s decision, he had an altercation with another prisoner.

He was working as an orderly in the hole. While he was cleaning the corridor between the cells, one of the prisoners began to offend him, this happened for several days, each time with more aggressiveness, until one day, when he was delivering the food to this character, he threw feces and urine on his face and body, and the offense was the worst, telling him that he was a coward. This action hurt Hurtado deeply, it had created a great issue for him in front of the other men in the prison, so he decided to take revenge. He prepared a knife and watched over the inmate until they took him out for recreation, he outwitted the guards’ vigilance and stabbed him with a knife that turned out to be mortal, according to him, it went straight to the liver.

Obviously he was taken to the hole, and the next day the captain came to see him with the news that he had been released that same day, but that the man he had stabbed had just died. He then went into a deep depressive state.

For this reason he went to trial and was sentenced to thirty years in prison, and could only be released after that on parole, which stipulates that after serving thirty years, the person has to go to a parole commission, a group of three people, who decide whether or not to release you, and if you are not ready, you go back to prison and every two years the same process is repeated. Or they can also decide that you never get out.
When I found him he became a close friend of mine, he was a gentleman, but also very dangerous in prison. With this story you could make a movie. He was always very simple, but also very handsome.

He had to spend ten years in a hole that was underground, in a maximum security prison, Supermax, in Fremont, near Florence, Colorado. A special program that is for prisoners who have life sentences or many years of sentence. This situation makes them very depressed, and he spent ten years in that condition. I have a picture from prison underground where I was alone with a TV in a cell… ten years!

Camacho was still a very cursed guy, he would play cards without money, and when he lost he had to pay, he would say that he had no money and that he was not going to pay, always wielding the same argument: you were the fools who did not ask me if I had money, and the living live off the fools in prison, and prison is not for fools.

That is how he swindled the prisoners who had great respect for him. He was my friend, he was a Fidelista, a revolutionary, he defended Cuba and we had a good and respectful friendship.

He was a correct, polite guy, he didn’t mess with anyone, but he didn’t allow any offense or disrespect. He greeted everyone correctly, good morning, how are you, but turned into someone else when he was disrespected.

He carried a razor blade between his teeth which he used with great dexterity. On one occasion a newly arrived inmate disrespected him, he asked him to calm down, that he did not want trouble, not to raise his voice, but the other did not understand and continued escalating his aggression, at the least expected moment, he grabbed him by the neck and pulled out the blade, cut his face, cleaned the blade and put it back in place. Everything happened so fast, that almost nobody noticed what happened, until the victim started screaming, but nobody saw anything.
It should be noted that he did not allow any offense about Cuba, and even less about Fidel, that is why he was my friend and we respected each other very much.

The Yoruba

In the prison there is a day that belongs to the Yoruba religion, I think it is the thirteenth of June. On that day many prisoners, even though they did not belong to that religion, would sign up as if they were believers, because they made a special meal: pork, beans, congrí [black beans and rice], tostones [fried plantains], yucca, ripe plantains, whatever the prison allowed them to buy. That day became more cultural than religious.

I signed up as if I were a believer to share with the Cubans, out of respect for the culture.

The process starts early in the morning. You go to the church, where everyone sits down and gives tobacco to the Yoruba leader. First he makes an explanation of the Yoruba deities, who is Oshún, Changó, the warriors, who is who, talks about the dances and their meaning, explains what the Yoruba protections are, tells stories of how the warriors fought, how they danced, their loves and their relationships with each other. At the end of the ceremony, they crush eggshells and cleanse everyone present with eggshells, sprinkle holy water, pour tobacco smoke, cleanse you with some branches, and strip you to remove all the bad things.

They also clean your feet. I liked that, I found it nice because it is cultural, and they teach you typical things: the maracas, the whip, the clothes, everything, they explain the meaning of everything. There were many Jamaicans, Haitians, we were not only Cubans, there were people from all over the Caribbean, all Caribbean, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, etc.

The religious prisoners themselves are the ones who cook the food. On that day the warden allows the whole ritual, including their cooking. After the morning meeting, at about three or four o’clock in the afternoon, food is served for all tastes, it is the only day of the year that one could go and find a roast pork.

Ariel Hernandez

Ariel Hernandez was the colleague from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington who visited us. A person who became a great friend of mine, I always jokingly told him that he was going to be the last one to attend to us in the United States, the one who was going to take us back to Cuba. That is why he became a symbol of the return. He was very much loved at the embassy, where he served as first secretary, and he would visit me once a month.

Pedro Pagés

Pagés is a Cuban, brown and abakuá [The Abakuá is a secret society and a religion of African origin that arrived in Cuba in the early 19^th century. Brought by slaves from the Calabar region, in Nigeria.] He was the one who received me when I arrived at Jesup, the prison where they send me when I get out of McCreary for the sentence reduction. Jessup is a medium security prison.

Pagés, who is now about sixty-eight years old, is a character who achieved certain renown because in the eighties he became a music agent, he had contracts to take Cuban orchestras to the United States. He arranged tours, took them to bars, restaurants, etc., everything was very good.

As he had a lot of renown in Miami, he also earned the hatred of the extreme right, they did not want any of that to happen. Unfortunately, he started doing business with drugs, especially in Puerto Rico. They caught him, put him in prison and gave him life imprisonment.

Anyway, he was a good person, he was the one who received me. Pedro Pagés is my brother.

When I arrived at Jesup, where nobody knew me, he was already there and recognized me immediately. We had met in 2001 during the trial, we became friends with him, especially Gerardo, who knew a lot of show business people.

He told me not to worry, that he was going to introduce me to all the Cubans, there were about ninety of them, and everything worked out very well. Pagés told them that I was good people, that they had to respect me, that I was a friend of his, something more or less similar to what happened with Alejandro Maíz. He lent me his clothes, because when you arrive at a prison they take a long time to give you your property, and in that period, fifteen days or almost a month, I wore his clothes.

He was a man, tall, more or less like me, very nice people, kind, a good person, he helped me with everything, he explained to me how the prison was, he helped me with food, in short, everything.

In Beaumont with a Mexican and Alberto Sust, 2004.

Diosdado Suarez, the guajiro, with photo of Che on his chest, Lazaro Veliz in the center and me. M.C.I. Jesup, Georgia, August 2012.

Lazaro Veliz

When I arrived in Jesup, and some time after I had already established myself, another Cuban arrived who became one of my best friends: Lázaro Veliz. He told me that he admired Los Cinco, Fidel, and the Cuban Revolution, and that he had left our country by mistake, something he deeply regretted, only because of the deceit of an uncle and relatives in Miami, for following the lying “American dream”.

By deceit and even deceit of that same relative, he committed serious errors that led him to prison, and he is serving a sentence of one hundred and seven years of imprisonment.

Over time he became my brother for all the chores, for a handball game, for meetings and chats, for meals, in short, he always accompanied me everywhere. He has a special talent for painting, in fact he has painted several paintings dedicated to each of the Five.

Sometimes we would coincide in the visits with one of his brothers, and we would share a while, always pleasant and very respectful.

Today I maintain contact with Lázaro, with Pagés, and Diosdado, of whom I will speak to you later, through their relatives in Cuba, and when we can by email in messages sent to the prison where they are still in Jesup.

Since my return to Cuba I keep in touch with the relatives of the three of them, especially the mother, daughters and grandchildren. From time to time I invite them over, we spend time together, take pictures and send them to them. Of course, whatever we can do to help them, we are there for them. It is our way of reciprocating as brothers and sisters in difficult times and in all times, which is what they represented for me.

Diosdado Suárez, the Guajiro

He was another of my good brothers in Jessup. Similar to the other two, he was a man in everything, brave, fidelista and defender of Cuba in every way. He even got into fights to defend our homeland and our commander.

We were always together, actually there were four of us, together with Lázaro Veliz and Pedro Pagés. On weekends we would get together to play handball, and then we would make up something to eat, talk, and make plans for the week. They became my trusted brothers for everything.

He was caught in a trap set by the Miami FBI, taking him out of his own house and when he arrived at a place, he was charged with attempted robbery in a warehouse. Things that happen in the United States. For that crime he got a fifteen year sentence. He must be about to be released, and I know that one of these days I will see him in the streets of Cuba. That is what we have commented with his relatives every time we see each other, because he always told me that the first thing he would do when he got out of prison is to return to Cuba with his family, and die here in his homeland.

Lockdowns

Every time there was a big fight in the prisons, a murder, or they discovered a big load of drugs coming into the camp out, the guards would lock us in. Those were the famous Lockdowns. They happened when the prison assumed for security reasons because of one of these abnormal situations. They would lock you in the cell.

You are in the population, locked up without being able to get out. It’s like being in the hole, but inside your own cell. There is no bathroom inside the room. Prison Bureau policy is that after the third day of confinement you must be provided with hot food, either at lunch or lunch, or both, and not doing so violates your human rights, because it weakens you. Also after the fifth day of confinement you must be guaranteed a toilet to wash yourself, at least one day, and every two or three if the confinement is prolonged.

When you are in the conditions of confinement, the steel door, which has a slot that allows you to observe the outside, also has another horizontal slot with a latch that opens to the inside, through which food is delivered to you, and when you go to take a bath, you take the towel and put it on you, the soap in the pocket of your pants or shorts, and you take your hands out and they put the handcuffs on you, take you to the common bathroom, which is outside, two by two, or three by three, according to the number of bathrooms available. You have five minutes to bathe,  they take off your handcuffs, you bathe, and after five minutes they take you out, you have to be dry, they put the handcuffs on you again, and they return you to the cell. You enter and they take off your handcuffs through the slot, and you are a free man again, a prisoner in your cell. A clean man, although you are still a prisoner.

The typewriter

In Beaumont Prison, Texas, I had a typewriter, but that was a luxury. It was not conceived that anyone would have a typewriter inside the cell. What happened was that Alejandro Maíz, my Cuban friend, had a lot of contacts.

Since I was a good typist, I talked to counselor Bienvenido León, a good person, Puerto Rican, who understood my case, who realized that I was a quiet guy, a political prisoner. For all those things he allowed me to have a typewriter inside the cell.

But when there was a Shakedown, which is the checking of the cell, operations carried out by the officers, the institution personnel, who go cell by cell taking things from you, they throw everything out and throw things away. It is a search, but to offend you; and since they really did not allow me to have the machine, I had to take it out and put it outside. I had it for a long time, even to write the answers to the letters of solidarity, poems, things like that that I wrote, but I was forced to hand it in.

The shakedowns

There is a limit on property. The guards would take a garbage bag and only what would fit in it was yours, this included clothes, shoes, food, etc. Anything that didn’t fit had to be left out and confiscated.

You could only have five books, one hundred photos organized in an album, because if they were loose they were taken away, you could keep fifty letters, but not cards, magazines, newspapers. Only five t-shirts, five shorts, five pants, five shirts, other than that, everything else was taken away. The towels were five as well, five small towels, everything that exceeded that number went in the garbage. Not to mention the stamps, whoever had a lot of stamps was considered to be doing business with them. The most you could have in stamp books was five books of twenty stamps, if you had more they could make a case against you, accusing you of belonging to a mafia or something like that. There were inmates who had three, four hundred stamp books, because they were selling things, drugs, whatever. So a sign that you were in an illicit business was that you had in your cell three hundred stamp books.