Combinado del Este

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