EXITO, Oct. 1997
By
Santiago Aroca
Accused of smuggling explosives into Cuba, Hialeah supermarket worker Ileana Iraeta spent a harrowing 158 days in a cell at Cuban State Security Headquarters in Havana. Then as suddenly as her nightmare began, it ended when she was taken to the airport and put on a plane for Miami. As she took her seat, the guards who had taken her into the plane asked her when she planned to return to Cuba. Home in Hialeah, Iraeta said ''I don't have the slightest intention of returning to Cuba, and if I may, I'd like to advise everyone not to travel to Cuba because anything can happen there.'' Iraeta travelled to Cuba in May, her fourth visit to the island since she came to the United States in the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
''Someone said on the radio I was a mule who travelled frequently to Cuba, but that's not true,'' said Iraeta. ''In 17 years, I went there four times to visit my family. I took them medicines, some presents and clothes. That's all.'' In Cuban exile parlance, a mule is someone who travels frequently to Cuba to take money and goods to people there for a fee. On this trip, she had trouble from the start, said Iraeta. A customs official asked for her handbag to ''make a special inspection.'' The official later told her he was confiscating the bag because it had given a ''positive result'' on a test but didn't tell her what kind of test. Iraeta then left the airport and went to her relatives' home. A few days later, dozens of State Security agents with police dogs burst into the house.
Iraeta was taken to the Villa Marista State Security Headquarters, where she was photographed, fingerprinted and issued the number 997 before she was placed in a cell with another woman. The other woman turned out to be Marta Beatriz Roque. At first Iraeta was suspicious of Roque, but then she remembered that she had heard about her on Miami's Cuban radio. Roque explained that she was in prison for ''propaganda against Cuba'' because she and three others had written a manifesto called The Fatherland Belongs to All, which says the communists have ruined Cuba and calls for free elections.
''Marta Beatriz is an exceptional person. Brave, cultured, educated. A marvellous person. She's in prison facing a long sentence for saying what she thinks, for saying Cuba is a mess,'' said Iraeta, her tears flowing. ''Marta helped me a lot because she taught me how to keep my dignity, to not surrender, to not sign the statements they wanted me to sign.'' Iraeta's jailers wanted her to confess to smuggling C-4 explosivesinto Cuba. ''I told them over and over that I didn't know what they were talking about, that I didn't have the slightest idea what C-4 was or any other explosive,'' said Iraeta. ''They not only wanted me to confess. They also wanted me to lure my husband to Cuba so they could interrogate him.''
Iraeta's husband, who works as a mailman, paid $7,000 to a Havana lawyer to try to get his wife out of jail. ''They told us we needed to get a lawyer who worked with foreigners. She charged $200 an hour and didn't do much good because the jailers there do whatever they want,'' said Mr. Iraeta. ''I don't know why they arrest so many foreigners, whether it's to get money out of them or what.''
Iraeta's captors showed a great deal of interest in her husband, asked a lot of questions about him and even allowed her to phone him and recorded the conversation. ''They wanted me to help them to get my husband to go to Cuba. I kept telling them he was just a mailman, but they kept asking about him and the rest of my family. They were also very interested in his state of health. I never understood why. Everything is a mystery.''
What Iraeta came to understand is that Villa Marista is a place where it is easy to arrive and hard to leave. According to Iraeta, some 10 new prisoners arrive at Villa Marista every day. ''There were Americans, Germans, Italians and of course the Salvadoran who's been accused of placing the bombs (in several Havana hotels). I wasn't able to speak to him but I could see from my cell that they never left him alone, that there was always a guard with him. Somebody told me it was so he wouldn't commit suicide.''
Judging by Iraeta's story, the regime at Villa Marista seems designed to instigate suicide. ''They altered our sleep patterns so we would lose track of whether it was day or night. They would let you sleep for an hour and then tell you 8 hours had passed... As soon as you go in there, you feel gnawed by a tremendous feeling of anxiety and insecurity. You are in their hands. You don't know if you are going to be there for a day or for 20 years. Everything is a mystery,'' said Iraeta. ''The gurads keep you off-balance by saying you're going to be tried for kiling a bunch of people one moment and saying you are being released the next,'' Iraeta said. ''You never know.''
There are people at Villa Marista who say they don't know why they have been arrested. ''I met some women who said they didn't know why they were there and when they would ask, the guards would say: Confess. You know your crimes better than anyone else,'' Iraeta said. ''That place is compIetely absurd.'' The guards also play games with the prisoners food and medicine, Iraeta said. ''There were periods during which they would give me a little plate of rice. I lost a lot of weight. Then suddenly I would get meat and vegetables. It was the same with the medicines. I started to feel bad because I caught an infection and they refused to give me any treatment. Then, suddenly one day, someone came to give me a penicillin injection...''
But often at Villa Marista, things happened by accident rather than design, Iraeta said. ''Villa Marista is as chaotic as the rest of Cuba,'' she said. ''The guards go hungry, the same as a lot of Cubans, and they steal the prisoners' food. They also steal the medicines. That place is a chaos. If Dante were alive, he could go to Villa Marista to write another Inferno.'' After much pleading, Iraeta was allowed to have a Bible, which she shared with Roque. ''It helped us to pass the time,'' she said. ''Of course, we had nothing to write with. They only give you pen and paper if you agree to write a confession or if they want you to write a letter to try to get someone to fall into their trap, very special occasions.''
One morning as she sat bored in her cell, one of the guards opened the door and told her she would be leaving the country. Moments later, Iraeta was taken to a car and to José Martí International Airport. On the way, they warned her against talking to the press in Miami and made veiled threats against the relatives she was leaving behind in Cuba. The guards walked into the plane with Iraeta and as they turned to go, they asked her when she was planning to return to Cuba. Iraeta said nothing. She sank into her seat, put her head in her hands and started to cry.
Copyright 1997, Exito Online, South Florida Interactive, Inc. and Sun-Sentinel Co.