Writing Resistance and Heroism: Guerilla Strategies From Castro's Gulag

Abstract

With contemporary political debates centering on the possibility of closing the Guantánamo Bay military installation, attention is once again being focused on prisons in Cuba. This provides an opportunity to interrogate the modern history of prisons in Cuba, particularly following the Cuban Revolution. As such, this essay considers the use of Cuban prisons for the detention of political prisoners by examining Diary of a Survivor: Nineteen Years in a Cuban Women's Prison, the prison memoir of guerilla activist Ana Rodríguez to understand the resistance to Castro's revolution and the ways in which female prisoners reimagined themselves and wrote the brutal history of the Revolution.

Keywords:

• Autobiography
• Castro
• Cuba
• Prison
• Rhetoric

Notes

For representative examples of this criticism, see Catherine Davies's (1997) work, A Place in the Sun? Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba; Denis Jorge Berenschot's (2005), Performing Cuba: (Re)Writing Gender Identity and Exile Across Genres; and Eduardo González's (2006), Cuba and the Tempest: Literature & Cinema in the Time of Diaspora.

We may attribute this oversight to the heartfelt gratitude and hope of peoples and nations trying to gain independence, to the glamorization of Castro by the Left, to the extreme censorship and brutal conditions that made it nearly impossible for the stories of Cuban political prisoners to be told, and for many other reasons (see Infante 1994, xvi).

A list of these Cuban political prison writings should include, in English, the following: Jorge Valls (1986), Twenty Years and Forty Days: Life in a Cuban Prison (New York: America's Watch); Armando Valladares (1986), Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag (New York: Knopf); Angel Cuadra (1994), Angel Cuadra: The Poet in Socialist Cuba (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press); and Enrique G. Encinosa (1988), Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution (Austin, TX: Eakin). In Spanish, these prison memoirs and writings include the following: Alberto Fibla González (1993), El 84 (Miami, FL: San Lázaro); Pierre Golendorf (1977), 7 Años en Cuba (Barcelona, Spain: Plaza & Janes); Reinol González (1987), Y Fidel Creó el Punto X (Miami, FL: Saeta Ediciones); Ariel Hidalgo (1994), Disidencia: Segunda Revolución Cubana? (Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal); Eduardo de Juan (1997), Jardín de Héroes: Presidio Político—Relato Autobiográfico del Horror en Las Prisiones Castristas (Miami, FL: D'Fana Editions); Angel Pardo (1992), Cuba: Memorias de un Prisionero Politico (Miami, FL: Ahora); Mario Pombo Matamoros (1997), Conversando con un Mártir Cubano: Carlos González Vidal (Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal); Miguel Sales (1976), Desde las Rajas (Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal); Nerín Sánchez (1999), Mis 6440 Días de Prisión en Cuba Roja: Los Plantados Solos, Desafiando al Tirano con los Brazos Abiertos Cual Cruz Clavada en un Desierto: Testimonio (Miami, FL: Ediciones Vals); and Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores (1982), El Presidio Político en Cuba Comunista: Testimonio (Caracas, Venezuela: ICOSOCV Ediciones).

See Corrigan (2005, 148–49).

In the case of Cuba, prison writings by authors like Armando Valladares, Alberto Fibla González, Angel Cuadro, and Angel Pardo have underscored the abuses of the Castro regime, as well as the resistance of many Cuban writers to the revolutionary government.

The narrative is written with the help of Miami Herald reporter, Glenn Garvin.

See, for example, the accounts of military officers convicted after the Revolution and sentenced to imprisonment in the Isla de Pinos (Isle of Pines). These accounts can be found in Encinosa (1988).

Emphasis in original.

Ironically, Castro served his sentence from 1953 to 1955 in Isla de Pinos for his first failed attempt at overthrowing the Batista government.

Bentham (1995) argued at the end of the 1780s for a new conception of the inspection house or prison that embraced the centrality of architecture to the project of disciplining rogue elements in society. He imagined a circular structure with inspectors or prison wardens in the center where they could see the prisoners, but the prisoners could not see them. He suggested that this would be an advantageous model for the modern penitentiary because it would be more humane; prison wardens would have less contact with prisoners since the prisoners would never know when they were watching and monitoring their behavior, so they would monitor themselves. For the original treatises on what Bentham termed “the panopticon,” see Jeremy Bentham (1791), Panopticon; or The Inspection-House; Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in which Persons of Any Description are to be Kept Under Inspection; and in Particular to Penitentiary-Houses, Prisons, Houses of industry, Work-Houses, Poor-Houses, Manufactories, Mad-Houses, Lazarettos, Hospitals, and Schools; with a Plan of Management Adapted to the Principle: in a Series of Letters, Written in the Year 1787, from Crecheff in White Russia, to a Friend in England (London: Payne). These are reprinted in Miran Božovič (1995), The Panopticon Writings (New York: Verso).

See also Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (1963, 11–19).

Emphasis in original.

See Davis (2003, 77–78) and Karlene Faith (1993, 229–54).

Ultimately, Ana Rodríguez was released as part of the negotiations between the Carter Administration and the Castro regime.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa M. Corrigan

Lisa M. Corrigan (Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2006) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Arkansas.