Enrique Encinosa

“I was making contacts, and even got several connections in Cuba, and began to meet up with those, who could leave Cuba, like diplomats, artists, or writers, who could occasionally leave Cuba. When my contact travelled to Mexico, I travelled there too. At that time, I developed a specific code system. I bought a Spanish-English, English-Spanish or French-Spanish dictionary, whatever type of dictionary, but every time two totally equal. One stayed in the USA with me and the other one I handed to the collaborator I met up with. We established cipher code for writing. When I received a letter from Aramis, who was one of the contacts in Cuba, and there was mentioned 31560, meaning page 315, word number 60.”

“At this time of protest, the Abdala group [organization with activities against the communist regime in Cuba] decided. The United Nations had ignored the cause of Cuban political prisoners for years and they were suffering greatly, under inhuman conditions, and we decided to occupy the United Nations symbolically, as an act of protest. On March 13, 1971, sixteen members of Abdala entered to the United Nations and another thirty stayed outside in the park in front of the United Nations protesting. Frank Calzón was one of those who fell prisoner. I have pictures of Frank when the police dragged him and arrested him. Those sixteen got in; at that time there were no high levels of security at the United Nations, and they entered the security room, took out the handcuffs and began to chain themselves to the seats.”

“On January 1, 1959 the Cuban Revolution triumphed. After the victory, my whole life has changed completely. Suddenly, at the age of nine or ten years, I was watching executions, men being shot on television screens, something that was a public event at that time. In particular I saw execution of Colonel Cornelio Rojas and also when Raúl Castro had sixty members of Batista's government executed and buried in a mass grave on 8 January 1959. That shocked me, even though I was only nine or ten years old, I already knew that there was something wrong, that it was not correct, this kind of situations.”