POLITICAL PRISON IN CUBA
CHAPTER II
In 1869, teenagers José Martí and Fermín Valdés Domínguez composed a disparaging letter to a classmate by the name of Carlos de Castro y Castro who had just enlisted in a Spanish regiment. The letter was discovered in a search of Valdés Domínguez house and the two youngsters were arrested. For the “crime” of insulting the regiment of Spanish Volunteers, Valdés Domínguez is sentenced to six months and José Martí to six years in jail. Martí served close to six months of forced labor in the quarries of Havana and was eventually deported to Spain. Soon thereafter he published a booklet describing the horrible conditions of the political prison ion Cuba from which the excerpt below is taken.
What’s this?
Nothing.
To be beaten, to be kicked, to be dragged, to be slapped in the same street, by the same house, under the same window that last month we were receiving our mother’s blessing, What is it?
Nothing.
To spend hours with water up to the waist, with shovel in hand, with shackles in the legs... hours that, a few days ago, we spent at home because the sun bothered our pupils and the heat altered our health,
What is it?
Nothing.
To return blind, limping, wounded, bloody, subjugated by clubs and by blasphemies, by blows and by affronts in the same streets that a few months ago had seen me walk calmly, serenely, with love in my arms and the peace of happiness in my heart;
What’s this?
Nothing either.
Horrible, terrible, dreadful nothing!
And you, Spaniards, made it.
And you approved it.
And you applauded it.