The Double Life of Fidel Castro (30 page)

I did not know that the police harassment was not finished. I was immediately placed under close surveillance by G2, and agents from State Security were posted in front of my house twenty-four hours a day, following me wherever I went, whether driving to see my mother or just walking to the end of the road to get a bit of fresh air.

I didn’t do much the first year. Now expelled from the Cuban Communist Party, it was difficult, even impossible, for me to get a job. Living off my retirement pension of three hundred pesos (about sixteen dollars)—because I had received the pension payment that had been approved before my arrest, which again shows the absurdity of my trial—I spent much time in the house doing nothing, with my wife, catching up on the time that had been stolen from me in prison.

Wherever I went and whoever I spoke to, I refrained from criticizing Fidel Castro or from formulating the least opinion about the political or social situation in Cuba. As a result, the intelligence services had no way of knowing my state of mind toward the Revolution. After a year, two officers came to offer me a job. Knowing the Castrist system like the back of my hand, I knew that this was in order to put me under closer surveillance, for State Security has informers and agents in every factory in the country as well as in schools, government offices, hotels, restaurants, markets, and so on. And so I became first the manager of an operations center for trucks transporting wheat and flour, then administrative manager and night manager for Café TV, a downtown cabaret, and finally an executive in a surveillance unit belonging to the minister of public works.

Having studied counterespionage, I put into practice all the disinformation techniques I had learned in college or on the ground. Far from criticizing Fidel, I pretended to worry about his security: “The Commander in Chief should be careful when he goes to such and such a country because the enemies of the Revolution are everywhere there,” I would slip into a conversation with my colleagues, knowing that my words would be repeated. I also took part in all the revolutionary activities, whether it was attending neighborhood meetings or going to mass demonstrations ordered by the
Comandante
.

At the same time, however, I was discreetly finding out about clandestine emigration networks, which had proliferated in Cuba since 1990. I found out that the services of people smugglers cost at least ten thousand dollars and so I began selling various objects—trinkets, electrical goods, and such—so as to get part of the sum together to be able one day to get on a speedboat that would take me to freedom. My father and my uncle, already settled in the United States, sent me money via clandestine channels and via my daughter, who had left Venezuela for Florida and came to see us in Cuba every two or three years. In addition, I began getting documents (photos, qualification certificates, medals, and so on) out of the country so that, when the time came, I would be able to show without fear of contradiction that I had really worked as Fidel’s bodyguard for seventeen years.

Released from prison in 1996, it took me twelve years to succeed in leaving the island, in 2008, after ten unsuccessful attempts to escape. Each time, there was a problem: the boat of the people smugglers was not at the appointed place; a coastguard was patrolling in the area; or, quite simply, I sensed I was being followed. Of course, I systematically applied the techniques of countershadowing I had learned at the MININT college so as to lose the G2 agents. I would lose myself in the crowd at a very busy place; turn off suddenly into a public bathroom to change my hat and T-shirt; and then, after several minutes, retrace my steps after having turned at the corner of a street to make sure I was alone. But all this song and dance was exhausting and I wondered if I would ever manage to get out of the country.

In 2008, my luck changed. My wife had obtained authorization to go and see her sister in the United States. She was supposed to stay in Florida a month unless I finally managed to escape. A week after she had left, I received a message via the smugglers’ network that a “passage” to Mexico was planned over the next few days. This time, the rendezvous was fixed for the province of Pinar del Río, the most westerly of the island. I had a bad premonition as two of my previous attempts had failed in Pinar del Río—once, the border guards had even fired warning shots into the night. I had got away, though the experience had left me terrified. In addition, I had the mistaken impression that “my” smugglers, to whom I had paid twelve thousand dollars, were in the pay of State Security. If that were the case and they “ratted” on me to the authorities, I knew that I would return behind bars for a long time, a very long time. . . . In short, I felt the net tightening around me. Recently, G2 police had come to question my neighbors to find out why I traveled to the other side of the country, for example to Santiago de Cuba, where I had no family.

Despite everything, I decided to run the risk. My contact had told me that the rendezvous was arranged near Los Palacios, sixty miles west of Havana. By an irony of history, I therefore found myself, on the due date, stuck in a swampy zone just 650 yards from a house that I knew very well because I had been there dozens of times with Fidel: La Deseada, the wooden chalet where he stayed when he went duck hunting. I stayed in the mangrove for two days, not moving and not eating, waiting for the people smugglers to arrive. I was beginning to lose all hope when, finally, the boat loomed up in the darkness, all its lights extinguished.

Forty-five of us fugitives boarded the boat, but the captain told us that he had received the order to take only thirty people. He therefore suggested that fifteen volunteers leave the vessel; of course, nobody was willing. After fruitless negotiations, he decided to turn on the engines around three in the morning with all his cargo! Now, with the weight of the passengers, the boat was floating so low in the water that a propeller knocked against something and broke. Fortunately, three engines remained and that was how we went out into international territorial waters. Halfway to Yucatán (Mexico), another boat came to meet us and, in mid-ocean, a section of the passengers boarded onto it. The two vessels then continued their route.

As night was falling the following day, we finally arrived off the coast of Cancún, the Mexican vacation resort town situated around 150 miles from the extreme west of Cuba. The smugglers waited until dark to off-load us onto a beach where a truck was waiting for us, which took us to a house inland.

For a week, the smugglers took us out in groups of four or five to accompany us discreetly to the airport where we were to get onto flights for Nuevo Laredo, a town near the frontier with Texas, nine hundred miles from Cancún. I was one of the last to leave. Before departing, the smugglers gave me some advice: “Speak as little as possible, so as not to be recognized by your accent.”
*
Then they wished us good luck.

In Nuevo Laredo, the plan was simple: assume a nonchalant air and cross the border on foot, along with the tide of border inhabitants who cross the Rio Bravo bridge each day to go and work on the other side, thereby avoiding border checks. Afterward, it would be easy: once Cubans place a single toe on American soil they—unlike all other Latin Americans—have since 1996 benefited from the Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants them automatic political asylum.

Just before crossing the bridge frontier of Nuevo Laredo, our little group of five people had a moment of panic: what if, so close to the goal, we were arrested by the border guards? I breathed deeply, collected myself, and said to my comrades, none of whom knew that I was a soldier, “Follow me, I’ll go in front!” I explained to them that if the Mexican frontier guards approached us, we had to run for the United States because the Latin American officials would never be so unwise as to shoot in the direction of Americans. We started out, the three hundred yards or so that separated us from the United States seeming to us interminable. However, once we reached the last Mexican customs official, spontaneously and without reflecting I tapped him on the shoulder, smiled, and said to him joyously, “Have a nice day!” The instant after, I was in the United States, along with my fellow passengers.

_______________

*
Any Latin American can easily distinguish between Cuban and Mexican accents, very different from each other.

To the first policeman I encountered, a tall black man, I uttered the two magic words that acted as open sesame:
“¡Asilo político!”
But he did not understand Spanish. So I turned to one of his colleagues, a Colombian by origin, who immediately realized we were Cubans. Seeing from our exhausted faces that we had not eaten in a long time, this Colombian gave us sodas as well as a meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken, which we devoured on the spot. That was my first introduction to American cuisine: nothing extraordinary, but it was still ten times better than the usual Cuban fare! Then we were taken, separately, to immigration officers who all spoke Spanish.

Like all Cubans who turn up in the United States, the official asked me the obligatory question: “Have you, closely or from afar, collaborated with the government of Cuba?”

“Yes,” I replied. “What did you do?”

“Bodyguard of
Comandante en Jefe
Fidel Castro for seventeen years!”

My interlocutor stopped speaking, looked at me over his glasses, and then asked me if I was serious. When I confirmed that I was, his jaw dropped. It has to be said that until now, I remain the only member of Fidel’s escort to have defected. The official gave me a huge smile, got up, and said, “Don’t move, I’m coming back.” He then disappeared for an hour, coming back with a huge file that he placed on the desk. Written on a white label on the top could be read: JUAN REINALDO SANCHEZ. It was
my
file, which he had had sent to him by the FBI! I remember that the officer spent the next hour filling in my application for asylum while asking me the most anecdotal, amusing questions. For example, he wanted at all costs to know how Fidel managed to eat with such a long, bushy beard! Finally he wanted to know whether I would agree to a debriefing interview with an FBI agent, to which I replied, “You bet! With great pleasure!”

I then telephoned my uncle, whom I had always thought of as my dad. On the other end of the line, in his house in Miami, I heard him shouting and dancing for joy: “Really? You’ve done it? I love you, my son! Come quickly, we want to see you
ahora
[right away]!” We all felt like we were living the happy ending in a film. He bought a plane ticket for me and, eight hours later, I landed in Miami, to be met by the finest of welcoming committees: my whole family! Well, almost. My mother was still in Cuba and my son, too—but both later managed to leave the island, in 2012. The others were mad with joy: my wife, my daughter, my son-in-law, my grandchildren, and my uncle/dad!

When we got to my daughter’s, where a fine meal and new clothes awaited me (I had left Cuba with nothing other than what I was wearing), I began by slipping into a hot bath, shaving, and making myself presentable to celebrate that unhopedfor event: my freedom. For the first time in years, I could relax, finally letting go of the feeling of oppression I had from being permanently followed by State Security agents. The sword of Damocles, which had been hanging over me for so long, had disappeared.

For a Cuban, meeting up with family is the most wonderful experience there is. Never again would I have to go through that separation that causes suffering to so many families. We sat down to eat
camarones al ajillo
, a typically Cuban dish of shrimp in garlic, with rice and black beans, and we spent the evening laughing and kissing each other.

The following day, after not much sleep, I visited the neighborhood of Little Havana and realized that the architecture in no way resembled that of Havana, even if hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles played dominos there in the public parks, drinking
café cubano
all day long and re-creating that warm atmosphere characteristic of my people.

After a year, I was able to find work as an independent consultant in security and also as a political analyst of Cuba. I am convinced that nothing will improve on the island as long as the Castro brothers are in power. From afar, I see my former boss Fidel slipping into old age and sickness. He is gradually fading away, less and less capable of reigning over people or events. . . . I know how much he must suffer when he looks in a mirror to see himself diminished in that way. I know him.

When I think of him, I feel no hatred, resentment, or grudge. Those are negative sentiments that would prevent me from living. I have always been optimistic, convinced that tomorrow will be better than today. If I resent anyone, it is more his henchmen who dragged me before the court, the prosecutor, the judges, the Military Counterintelligence officers, certain former colleagues who gave false testimonies, and other informants. They are the ones who implement the dirty work and who keep the system going.

I simply made a mistake. I committed the error of having devoted the first part of my life to protecting a man whose fight for the freedom of his country and revolutionary ideals I had admired before seeing him become gripped by the fever of absolute power and contempt for the people. More than his limitless ingratitude toward those who had served him, I reproach him for his betrayal—for he has betrayed the hopes of millions of Cubans. Until the end of my days, two questions will turn in my mind: why do revolutions always go wrong and why do their heroes systematically transform into tyrants who are even worse than the dictators they overthrew?