****ANA BELEN MONTES****
"THE FEELING OF HAVING FULFILLED THAT MOST SACRED OF DUTIES; FIGHTING
IMPERIALISM WHEREVER IT IS MANIFEST"
- Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara
A Presentation on Ana Belén Montes to the 8th Continental Solidarity
with Cuba Meeting.
By Miriam Montes Mock (Translated by Sean Joseph Clancy)
Ana Belén Montes made a decision to obey her conscience rather than
obey the law.
And acting according to her conscience resulted in a 25 year sentence
to a high security federal prison.
From outside, the buildings look like a concrete tomb colored compound.
Their perimeter is surrounded by a strip of vibrant green grass,
seemingly intent on highlighting sensations stimulated by the desolate
spaces behind.
From within, there is no way to interact with the world without.
There are almost no windows to look out from and momentarily escape the
stench of urine and excrement within.
The dull, white monotonous walls of the Carswell Federal Medical Center
hold a prisoner unique amongst those of the general population.
Women here scream, scratch, bite, kick, destroy and go increasingly
insane, until they surrender to crave a release than can only ever be
realized in death.
By contrast, this prisoner has found refuge in a protective cocoon,
within which she does not need to die and from which everything can be
seen, heard and felt.
To shatter the shelter provided by this shell would result in a life
lived in this tempestuous enclosure.
Ana Belen Montes has somewhow managed to preserve the soul that always
defined her.
Or at least, that essential part of it that shuddered in the face of
injustice and opted to show solidarity with its victims.
She still has her vibrant eyes and her open heart.
For more than fourteen years Ana has had to survive this hell called Carswell.
She awakens to face a new day replicating exactly every one that went
before: bereft of any contact with nature, any loving family or
friendly embrace, any meaningful dialogue or the slightest trace of
anything that might make life seem worthwhile.
Thankfully, her conscience respires serenity, assured that it could not
be still had she decided not to defend the people of Cuba, a nation she
knew was being grossly abused by another.
A nation all powerful and dominant, provoked by Cuba -- the other – for
having decided to construct its own system of government.
Back in 1985, Ana Belen Montes had a job with the Defense Intelligence
Agency, better known by its DIA initials.
Having completed a masters degree in International Relations at the
John Hopkins University, she herself had applied for the job.
Ana had been an outstanding scholar. A few short years previously, she
had been awarded her bachelors degree in Foreign Relations from the
University of Virginia.
Her intelligence, capacity for analytical thought and strong sense of
responsibility ensured promotions to ever more important posts.
She was assigned to the Boiling Air Force Base in Washington, where she
worked as an intelligence research specialist.
By 1992 Ana was working at the Pentagon as an analyst and at the time
of her arrest in 2001 she was a high ranking expert Cuba anaylst.
Ana Belen Montes understood what drives the ideological motor of the
most powerful nation on earth.
She knew the lengths they go to impose their interests on foreign
shores.
US interventions in Latin American countries go back as far as the
nation itself does.
Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, México, Chile, the Dominican
Republic, Puerto Rico and others have suffered the illicit interference
of North American administrations.
Ana kept all this history filed in the archives of her mind as she
worked deep within what Jose Marti described as the entrails of a
monster, at a time when the US had been inflicting punishments on the
Cuban people for more than thirty years.
Today, Cuba has endured more than fifty years of that same aggression
and hostility.
Ana could have decided to take a longer view of things.
After all, she was not even Cuban.
She could have remained as indifferent as others had, she might have
stayed silent and kept to just doing her job.
She might have decided not to involve herself with something seemingly
impossible to change.
But her gut tightened every time she became aware of the crimes her
state was perpetrating against Cuba.
One criminal act on top of another.
Ana valiently chose to take the road less traveled.
She knowingly took a terrible risk and gambled with her liberty and
with her life.
She was moved by that same craving for righteous justice that had moved
Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Simón Bolívar, Nelson Mandela and
countless other heroic men and women throughout history.
Ana Belen Montes knowingly chose the unique path she took and gave of
herself with that same unbreakable moral committment in the face of
wrong, as they had also done.
Deep within, they were motivated by the same humanitarian desires that
obliged them to raise their voices and clench their fists. Principles
that define us as human and neighborly, resonated in their hearts.
These also evoked a profound sense of dignity in defense of the right
to self determination, in resistance to overwhelming political odds and
in undoing injustices committed by the hand of an opressor.
Ana was perhaps then unaware that she had become part of a tradition of
regional liberation struggle, dating back more than a century to the
times of Ramón Emeterio Betances.
The Antillian Confederation was then endeavoring to bring European
colonialism in the region to an end by uniting the Greater Antilles in
a body that would preserve the sovereignty of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
Dominican Republic.
Amongst the ranks of patriots who had embraced the same ideals of
solidarity as Betances were, Eugenio María de Hostos, José Martí,
Gregorio Luperón, Juan Rius Rivera, Pedro Albizu Campos, Juan Antonio
Corretjer Montes, Juan Mari Brás and Rubén Berríos.
Their struggle is ongoing.
On July 16 1867 the Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Ricio issued the
following proclamation:
"Cubans and Puerto Ricans, let us unite our forces and work together,
we are brothers joined by a common misfortune. We are also one in
Revolution for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico! From this the
Confederation of the Antilles will be formed tomorrow ".
Born in Germany to Puerto Rican parents, and brought up in the United
States, it may have been the revolutionary DNA of her forbearers that
inspired Ana Belen Montes to risk her life in defense of Cuba's
inalienable right to self determination, in the face of threats
imposed by North American imperialism.
Ana found that she encountered an opportunity in her very own hands.
The US establishment was planning further outrages against Cuba and Ana
had to decide between taking action or holding her tongue.
She could be part of these planned aggressions or she could act to
impede such criminal acts.
She was frightened and fully aware of the consequences of what she was
going to do.
If discovered, she new she faced a life – and quite possibly a death
-- sentence.
And Ana would not get any material reward in return for taking such a risk.
No money, no privileges, no favors and no recognition.
Only the lonliness that is an essential element of clandestine duties
that demand the utmost discretion and the fear of being caught.
In the end it was the voice of Ana's own conscience that was the most
compelling and she found the courage to act accordingly.
She did whatever she could to protect Cuba from state terrorism
organized and financed by the US.
This was her crime.
Ana Belen Montes was arrested at her place of work on September 21, 2001.
Security agents had brought a wheelchair with them in case it would be needed.
Stoic and silent, Ana walked erect and held her head high.
She was brought before a U.S. Federal Court one year later, on October 16, 2002.
Having entered a guilty plea on charges of spying for Cuba's
Intelligence Directorate, she was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum
security federal penitentary.
In her own dignified manner she read into the Federal Court record the
principles and values that had obliged her to protect the Cuban people
from hostile US policy.
The following is from her declaration from the dock, "Your honor, I
engaged in the activities for which I have been brought before you
today because I obeyed my conscience before I obeyed the law.
I consider our governments policy on Cuba to be unjust, cruel and
profoundly unfriendly. I felt morally obliged to help the Island
defend itself against efforts to impose our values and political system
on it".
Ana Belén is a cousin of mine and even though we lived in different
countries – she in the US and I in Puerto Rico – we have always kept
in touch and often spent summertimes together.
I have admired Ana ever since I was a little girl.
I remember as studious, as having a reflexive attitude and for being discreet.
She was affectionate to her parents, her siblings, her grandmother and
her aunts.
Her kindness and sensitivity always touched me, as did her
thoughtfulness and consideration for her family.
At twelve year of age, I envied her long, shining hair.
My respect for my cousin grew with time.
I could perceive her sense of ethics, her abilty to show solidarity
with those less fortunate and an innate favorable disposition towards
others.
One summer, when Ana must only have been sixteen or seventeen, she was
inspired while staying at our home to give some of her own money to a
young engaged couple who were not well off .
She didn't know them and she hadn't been invited to the wedding, but
she was nonetheless moved by kindheartedness to anonymously ease their
financial burden as best she could.
I could see that such acts reflected an attitude to life very different
to those promoted by consumerist societies that focus on the ephemeral,
on the importance of self and on hedonism.
During another summer that Ana had come to stay, I noticed that one
day she was dressed all in black.
When I asked why, Ana answered that her best friend's father had died
and that she "wanted to be with her".
Through anonymous gestures like these, Ana showed solidarity with those
who suffered. Ana's friend's name was Terry, a name I would never
forget.
When Ana came to Puerto Rico, the beach was a compulsary destination.
She loved swimming in the sea, sunbathing, eating fresh pineapple and
drinking coconut water.
She loved the company of her cousins, especially the most light hearted
and funny of them.
She made sure to call on her aunts, her grandmother and her grandaunts.
She brought them gifts and she was always affectionate.
Since her imprisonment more than 14 years ago, we write to each other
as often as we can.
We have, I confess, become even closer to each other than we previously were.
Our letters are embraces from afar, written words that become a
luxurious way to share the ups and downs of life with each other.
Ana, from the confines of an oppressive physcal underworld, and I from
a vast and unlocked openess.
But the human spirit cannot be confined by walls, and the words that we
exchange are understood.
My dreams and hers find each other and connect, as do Ana's thoughts
and loves; loves that have been truely tested under fire.
She did not know that the strength of her solidarity had always
inspired and excited me.
It is as though the conscience of someone else, different but equally
strong and valued as a human being, had somehow been etched into Ana's
own cell structure.
Her ability to listen attentively, to give life and feeling to words,
to respond to the pain of others and to become part of the solution
have enriched my life.
But Ana has given me something even greater still.
Her conduct has been an example of courage and humility.
She has bestowed upon me the true privilege of being her companion, of
also "dressing in black to be with her", behind the bars of her
Carswell cell.
Ana Belen will overcome.
She lives by those same principals that have defined her life .
So, when on the 17 December 2014 President Barack Obama said that
"These past 50 years have shown us that isolation does not workand that
now it is time for a new strategy," Ana's heart leapt.
She is by no means naive and knows that the US will try to realize
their same old objectives, but, for now with sprinkles of honey rather
than of vinegar.
She nonetheless considers Obama's moves to be the first towards a
possible reconciliation between two neighboring states.
This, for Ana is nothing more than a sign that her vision of friendship
between two the countries may have recently started to come true.
It is loyalty to her own ideals that helps Ana resist.
This is something that cannot be denied.
I believe that Ana's conscience offers her solace in her isolation.
I am certain that, despite the infernal world surrounding her, it fills
her with an infinite sense of serenity.
The words that Ana read help her to resist.
She is an avid reader of what others write.
She learns, analyzes and forms and expresses opinions.
She knows books are an antedote to friviality and are a refuge.
She reads history, politics, spirituality and universal truths in words
written for children.
She has recently been charmed by both the former Uruguayan president
José Mujica and Pope Francis, whose depth, simplicity and
indentification with the most unfortunate have moved her.
Ana resists through contemplation and an apprecciation of the natural
beauty in the David Attenborough narrated and National Geographic
documentaries she can see in prison.
Such things remind her that a harmonious world exists beyond the walls
of Carswell and she finds space in her soul for this wonderful world.
She knows that despite the injustices she has borne witness to, that
human kindness is also a reality.
And she has suddenly become aware that she is loved by a growing
community of brothers and sisters from Cuba, Puerto Rico, France ,
Brazil, Italy, Ireland, the U.S, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Chile,
Argentina and other countries who support and identify with the
principles she defended.
It is with certainty I can say that this has lifted her spirits.
Ana can be emotional and she sheds tears when she feels the forces
behind such emotional embraces.
She is moved by the knowledge that her cause is that of a much broader
and transcedental ideal than that of her own liberation.
Ana's cause is that of a reconciliation process between two nations,
two peoples and all citizens of the world, even in the face of their
diverse ways of life.
As she, inspired by an old Italian proverb, said, "The world is just
one country".
Ana loves Cuba, but loves just causes above all else.
She protected Cuba because it happened to be the country being harassed
by the more powerful and hostile one.
If things had been the other way around, if Cuba or Puerto Rico had
been the powerful and abusive countries, Ana would have then defended
the U.S.
Ana does not want fame nor notoriety.
She is uncomfortable being hailed a heroine or being branded as exceptional.
In her own mind, she acted as she was personally obliged to do and
could not have done otherwise.
She did as Cuban doctors did when, in spite of the risks, they felt
obliged to offer their services to ebola sufferers in West Africa.
They did not seek to be remebered as heroes by history.
In assuming such risks, they simply obeyed their consciences.
The nature of their committment, like that which inspired Ana, is not
and never can become negotiable.
This is how Ana still feels and why she does not wish nor wait for praise.
It is what gets her through her unending nightmare.
It is what inspired her to struggle and what sustains in her prison hell.
In her eyes, support for her cause is support for the cause of Cuban
sovereignty in the face of US hostility.
Or better said, the right that every nation on earth should enjoy to
decide their own destinies.
Ana still supports this universal principle, and I feel sure would
offer her life again so that Cuba would not have to abandon this ideal
of liberation.
This is who Ana Belen Montes is.
An Internationalist with an unbreakable sense of solidarity and respect
of all humanity, with an affinity to the noble principles of peace and
justice as defended by heroes and heroines throughout the ages.
And with the same modesty that is typical of those who have
historically upheld such high ideals..
Free Ana Belen Montes !
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