Pedro Luis Boitel (1931-1972), the “anti-communist” whom Fidel Castro “hated” so much, was forced to go thirsty during a hunger strike in prison, because “Castro gave the order to cut off his water until he died,” he told Efe. His cellmate, human rights activist Armando Valladares.
“The history of political prison in Cuba could not be written without naming Pedro Luis,” says Valladares, painter, poet and former United States ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, in an interview with Efe. p>
“Fidel Castro expressly hated Pedro Luis, a leader of the 26th of July (movement) and exiled (of Fulgencio Batista) in Venezuela,” Valladares comments shortly before participating in a colloquium in Miami this Wednesday. ;rcoles for the 50th anniversary of Boitel’s death.
“He was well known and the candidate with the best chance of winning the elections (for president) of the FEU” (University Student Federation) to the triumph of the revolution, adds about his companion of cell 64, of the circular building number 4 in the prison of Isla de Pinos, today in disuse and of where they both fled.
In 1961 Boitel was arrested and charged with conspiracy against the State. He was sentenced in a trial to ten years in prison, a sentence that was later extended. with other charges.
THE ESCAPE FROM A MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON
A kind of maximum security Alcatraz, found in a small island in the south of Cuba, the prison of Isla de Pinos was considered “impossible” of transgressing, recalls Valladares, who turns 85 next Friday.
Valladares, imprisoned at the age of 21 for refusing to hang a plaque that read “I am with Fidel”; and who spent 22 years in prison, during which he suffered torture and punishment of all kinds and made eleven hunger strikes, met I sent Boitel to La Cabaña prison in Havana.
“When my interrogations in the political police ended, they sent me to galley 12 in La Cabaña. At the door was Pedro Luis, thin and wearing very large glasses. Then we were together for years and years and years,” he recalls.
“When we escaped on October 21, 1961 – I remember it because I left released the same day 20-odd years later-, there was a guard who walked around at sunset with a dog and a rifle”, he recalls about this facility in which he was also Fidel Castro was imprisoned before being amnestied by the government of Fulgencio Batista.
“We went inside the barracks dressed as soldiers, greeting the guards. They captured us on the third day because the people who were supposed to pick us up on the coast didn’t go because they thought it impossible for us to escape,” adds Valladares.
“We were the only ones If we manage to escape from the cordon of the circular, it will be left behind. for history, I don’t know why there is a tendency to eliminate this heroic and almost romantic act from the interviews & quot ;, he regrets, and clarifies that the idea of the escape was Boitel’s.
When they were captured, they were taken to the punishment cell where they remained “almost a year,” says Valladares.
“We went on strike to get us out of there, which was the first”, recapitulates the author of the book “Against all hope”, where he related his memories after 22 years in jail.
According to this activist’s account, Boitel was taken to the Military Hospital (in Havana), where he was one of the first to be given civilian clothes.
“He went on strike until the last in (the prison of) the Castle of the Prince. It was a hunger strike, not a thirst strike. Fidel Castro gave the order that his water be cut off until he died,” says Valladares.
Boitel died after his death. at 41 years of age on a hunger strike, on May 25, 1972, in the Castillo del Príncipe prison, in Havana.
The organizers of the tribute to Boitel, among which are Planted to the Freedom of Cuba, the Institute of Cuban Historical Memory against Totalitarianism and the PEN Club of Cuban Writers in exile, today brought a floral offering to the grave of Boitel’s mother, Clara Abraham de Boitel, at the Flagler Memorial Cemetery in Miami.
This afternoon the documentary “Boitel: Dying in Time” , directed by Daniel Urdanivia and produced by Pedro Corzo, where Valladares will speak with the public.
“another great friend of Pedro Luis”, Richard Heredia, also an anti-communist and who was with Boitel “underground.”
“It is a well-deserved tribute. Pedro Luis is a legend for all political prisoners like me. Fortunately, we have groups in Cuba that have even adopted his name, “he stressed.