Hombre del Silencio: The Prison Diary of Ramon Labanino Part 11: UNICOR; Commissary; Telephone; The Prison School; The Library; Art in Prison; We Won the Appeal

UNICOR

UNICOR is a company that hires inmates to work inside the prison, it is the exquisite business of the millionaires of the 21st century, the slave labor of the century. Every prison has a UNICOR factory. Companies, including military companies, use prisons to make uniforms and other items. If they produce it outside they have to pay the minimum wage, which was then $7.50 an hour, now they raised it to $10.50. In prison they pay $0.12 an hour. They manufacture antennas, backpacks, tents, everything. There is UNICOR of wood to make furniture, another to destroy compact discs, and also for other productions.

They are companies that are even listed on the stock exchange, and because UNICOR has a stock exchange price that was sky high, it is a lucrative business, because the prisoner can go to work, the work force is guaranteed, and it is honest money that is earned, without the need to sell drugs or other things. At the beginning when I arrived, the salary at UNICOR was high, there were people who worked all day long, starting at $0.12, but you started to climb and you could earn $0.87 an hour, $1.20 and more. At the beginning there were people who earned $1,000 a month, because they did extra work, and they worked themselves to death. But on top of the fact that it was slave labor, later they made it even worse, because they lowered the maximum wage ceiling, and it was much more difficult to earn more than $500 a month.

I never worked at UNICOR, my job was always as an orderly, in or out of the units, or teaching at the prison school.

Commissary

In American prisons there is a commissary, which is like a store where you can buy many things. Some people buy from the commissary and put their store in their cell. You go and spend $100 on merchandise, and with that you make the store. A case of soda is $5.90, but the thing is that a soda is only 25 cents, but inside the cell it gets cold and then it sells for 75 cents. They get 50 cents for each soft drink, that is, 12 dollars per case.

In that business the prisoner makes money, and that is illegal but allowed. The guards turn a blind eye because it is the prisoners’ way of making money. There are those who do not have money to go to the commissary, and they buy it with stamps. The way to buy there is with stamps. There was a time when it was with cigarettes, people would sneak them in, and they paid with cigarettes, which are very valuable because they are not sold at the commissary. One of those sodas costs you three stamps, because each stamp is worth 25 cents.

That is an underworld, but that’s how people solve, you are hungry and at any time you go there and buy a cold soda and a jar of chips. That person made money, and with that money he went and bought more things.

The telephone

To talk on the phone you were allotted 300 minutes a month, that was the maximum. The call to Cuba cost 99 cents a minute, and to use the public phone you had to enter a series of long codes that included your prison number: 58734-004. It was a long and tedious process, which sometimes you had to repeat five or ten times a day to make a call. I paid for the calls with the money sent to me by the embassy.

Prison school

The possibilities of gaining knowledge in the prisons were many, especially in Ashland, Kentucky, the last prison I was in, minimum security, Low Security. There were many more opportunities there than in the other prisons.

Generally in the prisons there is an area called the school, where classes are given, especially English classes, to obtain the GED, which is like finishing a pre-university degree, especially classes in mathematics, elementary sciences, tables, derivatives, Spanish, English, history, natural sciences, which is very useful for the prison population, because with the GED in hand you can get many good jobs. Sometimes they give history classes, even accounting, there are many prisoners who have skills, and teach classes. To learn typing, languages in general, can be learned using only the computer. Typing was one of the courses I took. To graduate you had to type forty words per minute, and in English.

For example, in the last period, a broker of the New York Stock Exchange went to prison, who was in jail for stealing money in a pyramid scheme they made. In the pyramid, only those at the top win, those at the bottom don’t, so he stole a good amount of millions from the rich, and that is why he was in prison. This character began to teach us how to run a stock exchange, how to make a portfolio in the stock exchange, and how to invest, with a mathematical formula, following a mathematical form, following the study of the behavior of the different accounts, that when they are going to grow, when reaching 15% you have to sell in order not to lose, it is a system that has its logic. I found its logic, even the professor did diagnostic tests, and in all the stocks I won. One chooses the stocks by a mathematical formula, stocks that are gaining at that moment, that are up, and within that you buy in the period in which they are at their lowest moment and they are going to start to grow. Now you buy, and when you think they are going to start decreasing, you sell. Because the logic of financial capital is to buy low and sell high.

So I took classes on that subject, I also took classes as a personal trainer, as a dietician, as a real estate broker in terms of houses, buildings, etc. I even took classes on how to write with style, in English and Spanish.

The library

In all prisons there is a library that is more or less large, there are books of all kinds. You find fiction books, a lot of novels, but also history, geography, legal books. There were even books by García Márquez. Once I found a book by José Martí. And a book on The Five that I had not seen. Many of the libraries are augmented by the prisoners themselves, to whom they send books and after they read them they donate them to the libraries.

There is a loan system and you can take up to five books. They give you a period of time to read them, and when the time is up you have to return them, if you don’t return them they start looking for you to pay for them. But they don’t just lend you books to take and read, you can also go and read them right there.

There are newspapers that are only two or three days old, sometimes a week. There are fashion magazines, of all styles.

It depends on the type of prison it is, because there are some that are better stocked, but in general they are quite spacious. You can sit there for a whole afternoon and get away from the problems of the prison, sit down to read books and magazines, and change the atmosphere, which I also used to do.

There are typewriters, computers, and after they put in computers you could even look up the legal records of your own case. You could check out your case and see what was written about it, and what was made public. There are many inmates who worked on their legal cases in the libraries. It’s also worth noting that there were classes on current legislation, they taught you how to make motions, legal remedies to get back to freedom.

Sometimes a prisoner would arrive who had a special ability and they would have him give classes in that subject. I had a time when I taught classes myself. I organized a course to teach Spanish to those who spoke English, and that was good, but they also paid you sixty cents a month, or forty cents, but more than anything else the great advantage was that it kept you entertained. Also working in the library you could get materials like writing paper, eraser, ink, those things.
Another important issue is that libraries also have history videos, National Geographic, and sometimes good movies. That depends on the place. In the last video library I was in, I found some very good stuff, and you could sit there all day watching movies. What happens is that everything enters into a kind of competition. The inmates would sometimes give money to get priority seating and choose the videos and films that suited them best, so the inmates complicate everything. Then the fights would start for this reason as well.

Art in prison

In some prisons there are musical groups. I was learning to play guitar, but I’m terrible, because I have very fat fingers. I got two or three tones, but it’s very difficult. There are also percussion and singing classes, bands are organized, drawing and painting classes. I wanted to paint, but I didn’t take the courses. It really depends on the spirit of each person, but if you are interested you make the time and participate in these activities.

We won the appeal

On August 9, 2005, the same day that my daughter Laura had her birthday, and that my family was visiting, because we made the visit coincide with her birthday, which also coincided with the school vacations; I receive a call from the embassy and they informed me that the judges had decided that we had won the appeal, that they said the trial was a mistrial. The perfect storm had been created with the bias of the court, plus the negative atmosphere in Miami, and they declared that it had been impossible for us to have a fair trial. And because of all the lies of the prosecutor, it was a mistrial. They also said that if we wanted to, we could ask for a new trial, which was unusual.

The lawyers agreed that we were leaving for Cuba. It was 2005. Everyone was euphoric, because it was not normal for us to remain under arrest. In our case, legal things happened, talking about jurisprudence issues, which had never happened in the history of the United States, that is why our case was a little more attended to, because when that happens, the next step is to release the detainee, when you no longer have a sentence you go free, if they annulled your sentence you have no reason to be imprisoned.

They not only kept us imprisoned, but they left us there, and nothing happened. What the government did, which never happens, is that they appealed the decision.

I do not forget that I celebrated that victory, which in the end never was, with the visit of the girls and Elizabeth. The next day was Laura’s birthday, and when they arrived I gave them the victory sign, and the joy of the girls was tremendous, everyone was laughing, everyone thought we were on our way to Cuba.

The prosecution appealed the decision and just a year later, it was revoked, with the decision that the sentence was reduced for Fernando, Antonio and me. Gerardo was not even given that opportunity.