The Forgotten Ones

The women, many dressed in mourning, sobbed; the men cheered defiantly. At Miami's International Airport last week, 1,000 Cuban exiles bade farewell to the prisoners-for-tractors team, returning fruitlessly to their Cuban jails. As the eight men* walked to the Pan American DC-6B, the crowd sang La Bayamesa, Cuba's national anthem ("Hurry to the battle . . . "), and one prisoner, refusing to give up hope, declared: "I'll be back soon." The team stood waving at the foot of the ramp until a Miami policeman snapped: "O.K.. c'mon. C'mon. Get aboard."

The ill-fated tractor negotiations were at least a reminder of the 1,200 men captured in the disastrous Bay of Pigs landing, but the men are only a tiny fraction of those jammed into jails from one end of Castro's island to the other. After the April attack, some 250,000 political prisoners were herded into jails and makeshift concentration camps. More than 40,000 are still there, waiting and withering in deplorable conditions.

Harangues & Ice Water. In most cases the prisoners lack adequate water for drinking and sanitation. The men get no medical attention, often sleep on wet dungeon floors, are lucky to get one meal a day. There seems to be little physical torture. Castro uses the Communists' more subtle psychological methods. Loudspeakers din the dictator's speeches over and over; uncooperative prisoners are plunged into ice water, shifted back and forth from brightly lit cells to black solitary confinement, questioned for endless hours. The VIPs (very important prisoners) are sometimes forced, Chinese-style, to dig their own graves before "firing squads'' of jeering. Tommy-gun-toting militiamen; at the last instant, "reprieve'' comes and the shattered prisoner is herded indoors for more questions.

Another 1,000 or more helpless Cubans are holed up at the various embassies in Havana. Since Castro refused to honor the Latin American tradition of safe-conduct out of the country, many have been in asylum for five months or more. The Venezuelan embassy holds 205 people; Brazil has 195. Costa Rica 95, Argentina 70. Colombia 50. Though European embassies do not officially grant asylum, several have taken in fleeing Cubans as "guests." The political "asylees" have escaped Castro's police, but many of them are little better off than those in his dungeons.

Medicine & Food. Medical supplies are scarce, and Cuban doctors hesitate to visit the embassies for fear of Castro's reprisals. Food, growing short throughout the new Cuba, is doubly hard for embassy personnel to buy. In Miami last week, one man who had spent three months in the Brazilian embassy reported that 97 people were living in the garage and two small servants' rooms. "We received one meal daily, composed of a big spoonful of rice and one of some pottage." Outside, militia patrols delight in firing shots to fray the asylees' nerves. Friends or relatives who come by to wave are roughed up; those who try to bring food are searched and insulted. Every so often the embassy's water is cut off for two or three days at a time.

On the rare occasions when the Communists grant a safe-conduct pass to someone in an embassy, there is often a cruel twist. An asylee of only a few days will be freed, to frustrate those who have been waiting for months. The Cuban Foreign Ministry recently approved a pass for a man at the Venezuelan embassy, but refused safe-conduct for his pregnant wife and four-month-old son.

*Two others--Mirto Collazo, 27, and Reinaldo Pico, 27--refused to return. Explained Pico: "My return would not help my comrades and would hurt me." Exiles called them "cowards."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.