In 1981 I was an Evaluator at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, a center for the relocation of the 7,500 refugees that remained there, who had left Cuba from the Port of Mariel and for that reason were later known as Marielitos. My job there was to interview the refugees and make recommendations regarding their relocation. This was not an easy task because many of these 7,500 refugees had come from prisons or mental institutions. I heard their stories, their struggle to survive in or out of jail.
This is the story of Victor who was taken from Combinado del Este prison in Havana and forced by the Cuban government to leave the country. The book depicts the everyday life in the Cuban prison and the socio-political situation in Cuba in 1980, year of the exodus through the port of Mariel.
In 1980 the Cuban government withdraws the guards surrounding the Peruvian Embassy in Havana. In a few hours, ten thousand people were crowding the Embassy to request political asylum. Soon, hundreds of inmates were being transferred from jails in the Island's Interior to prisons in Havana. The government then announces that everyone who so wanted, could leave the country. When what was later known as the Freedom Flotilla arrived in Cuba, the government compelled the exiled Cubans from Florida who had gone to the Island to fetch their relatives and friends, to also load their vessels with people selected by the government: dissidents, prisoners, the mentally ill, homosexuals. Many of the prisoners had been given false documents by the Cuban government to hide the fact that they had come out of jails.
In less than two months, the waters of the 90 miles of sea converyed, from Cuba to Key West, some 125,000 Marielitos.
Mireya Robles
Mireya Robles nació en Guantánamo, Cuba. Ha publicado tres novelas y dos libros de cuentos, que han sido traducidos al inglés por Susan Griffin; dos poemarios y artículos, narraciones cortas, poemas y cuentos en revistas literarias en unos veinte países. Ha recibido premios en Estados Unidos, México, Francia, Italia y España y ha sido entrevistada en radio y televisión en Miami, New York, Buenos Aires, Madrid y Durban, Sudáfrica, así como en el documental Conducta Impropia/Improper Conduct dirigido por el cinematógrafo Néstor Almendros, ganador del Oscar en 1978. Este documental recibió el Premio de Derechos Humanos en Grenoble, Francia y ha sido televisado en Francia y España y exhibido en cines de New York, Miami, Puerto Rico, Colombia y Venezuela. Mireya Robles ha enseñado en varios colleges en Estados Unidos y durante diez años fue Senior Lecturer en University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, Sudáfrica. En la actualidad es Senior Research Associate de esa universidad.
