Interview with Adriana Pérez
I live proud of being a woman and Cuban
By Magaly Cabrales – Cuba | lajiribilla@cubarte.cult.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Adriana Pérez Oconor has been a chemical engineer since 1995. She currently works at the Food Industry Research Institute and holds a master’s degree in that specialty. But it is not precisely her professional performance, nor her outstanding work as a deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power, in the period between 2013 and 2018, that is the essential purpose of this interview.
This woman, with whom we talked a few days before the celebration of March 8, went from despair to the absolute happiness she lives today, in the company of her three children -Gema, Ámbar and Gerardito- and her husband Gerardo Hernández Nordelo. This happiness, however, was preceded by an anguishing road, which she only managed to travel clinging to the courage inherited from Mariana, Celia, Haydée and Vilma, among many other courageous Cuban women.
“As time goes by, you gather strength, willpower, resources and energy to face the new challenges that life imposes on you”. Photos: Courtesy of the interviewee. Taken from the family album
What was your reaction when you learned of Gerardo’s real mission in the United States?
When Gerardo left Cuba for the United States we were already married and just when he was arrested, in 1994, we had been together ten years. I was finishing the last year of my career through a course for workers, since I was working at the Tenería Habana company at the time.
The knowledge of Gerardo’s real mission was really shocking for me, a great surprise. He was doing a master’s degree in a Latin American country linked to his diplomatic career and I never knew about his mission until the whole network was discovered and its members arrested. When he was arrested, he had been in the United States for about four years. When I learned of his arrest, I learned of something that I never even suspected, nor did I imagine that he could be linked to this type of activity, to alleged espionage as initially commented on in the news that the radio stations in Florida were broadcasting. It was the only public information that was given at that time. I confess that literally, my whole world turned upside down. It was actually a mixture of emotions, because at first I had to assimilate the news. And second, how I would face a totally uncertain and unflattering future?
On the other hand, there was the family situation. Gerardo’s mother was alive and completely unaware of the activities of her youngest and only son. In that same year she had lost a daughter and for her this news would be too strong a blow, even much harder. In other words, the news, in addition to having a personal impact, also had an impact from the family point of view. This meant that I had to prepare myself psychologically for the role I had to play from that moment on. This information had to be kept secret and assumed in silence, which demanded from me all my effort, all my creativity, all the sentimental resources I could call upon.
From that moment on, I was obliged to impose myself on a world that I knew from the beginning was very difficult to bear. Many times I have been asked how I managed to do it and I have never been able to give an answer because I still don’t know how I did it. But I think that as time goes by, one gathers strength, will, resources and energy to face the new challenges that life imposes on you. And to face those challenges with emotional balance, I began to create a kind of armor that would allow me to live in tune with what was happening and at the same time assume what was coming. I was always convinced that it would be a very complicated road to walk, especially if we take into account how relations between Cuba and the United States have been historically.
At no time, however, did I stop working and, on the contrary, I was looking for things that would occupy my mind, that would not allow me to worry. I finished my master’s degree and began to study language, studies in which, although I never prospered, kept me mentally busy. At that stage, the most difficult thing for me as a person, as a human being, was the role I had to assume with respect to Gerardo’s family. He always had a very close relationship with his mother. He had inherited her nobility and sense of humor.
For me, it was a great responsibility to try to cover his absence. And I had to lie, lie a lot, something that is an element that was never before part of my personality, that I never before conceived in my behavior. I lied to everybody, I had to evade comments, to remain silent all the time and that was terrible. In fact, I was never able to achieve it and, although half-heartedly, I was revealing some parts of the truth that I kept hidden from people close to me, such as my mother, who from the beginning of our relationship felt great affection for Gerardo.
Of course, all our dreams, illusions, plans, were shattered, shattered. I was left with only two options: I could let the fact of knowing about Gerardo’s activities crush me, or I could start from the new conditions. Either I would feel like dying, giving up everything I had lived, everything I had, everything that had made me happy and that I admired, or I would start to walk this new path, dragging the sack where I had thrown everything that had broken, except love, which was the only thing that remained intact. I decided on the second option and began to adapt my plans in correspondence with the great challenges that the new circumstances brought with them.
And from that decision I set goals. The most important thing was to reach the end, even though I never knew when it would be. But I decided to reach that end with the necessary emotional balance to stay strong and, at the same time, to take care of all the fronts I had open, which were to attend to my work responsibilities and to give emotional support to both families, especially Gerardo’s. I also tried to remain socially active in the community. I also tried to remain socially active and maintain good physical and mental health.
“Gerardo always taught me that: live each day as if it were your last. And that’s what I did.”
During the relentless struggle for the Five’s release, did you ever feel alone?
I always had the extraordinary support of all these people. I also had the valuable support of my family, of the families of the Five, that we became one. I had the same support from my friends -who are many and very valuable- and from my co-workers, who, when Gerardo’s situation became public, helped me even more. It was my colleagues who assumed my absences when I participated in the solidarity campaigns in favor of the Five, in the meetings held inside and outside Cuba. They made an effort to keep the work going, taking care of my image as head of the production department. We became a great team.
Of great importance was also the support I received from Dr. Jesús Llanes Querejeta, who was my boss at the time. Professionally I learned a lot from him, as well as from his intelligence, discipline and optimism.
I cannot hide the fact that I had several moments of weakness. In that first stage of silence, which in my opinion was the most difficult, I experienced very hard, sad and painful moments. This does not mean that when our Government made the information publicly and officially known, my moods become better, but the situation became a little more bearable. There were days, for example, when I did not know how I was going to get up and if I got up I did not know how to walk. In public, I always showed great strength, but when I got home and closed the door, that strength left me, and once again I saw before I felt great despair. All the armor that I had forged, that I kept outside, disappeared. In those moments, loneliness, nostalgia, uncertainty and longing took hold of me. However, I quickly thought: if out there, in the Cuban streets and not a few in the world, there are thousands of people who are not family of the Five, who probably do not even know them and are demanding their freedom, how can I, who am the wife of one of them, be weak?
That thought forced me to get up, to get going again. And so day after day I searched for resources to cling to when I was alone. Publicly I could not, it was not fair for me to show the slightest sign of weakness, when there was, I repeat, an entire people who, moved by their patriotism, humanism, solidarity, demanded the right of their children to be in their homeland. In reality I lived through very, very difficult moments, very sad, even in some international events, which became repetitive and I almost never saw a light as a sign of progress. Many people who participated in those events did not understand that we did not tell a story, but that we lived that story, that we were part of it.
How did you deal with the two life sentences unjustly and arbitrarily imposed on Gerardo?
I learned Gerardo’s sentence immediately because kind people present at the trial informed me of it. I think it was a problem of temperament, of character, or that it was already difficult for me to be surprised by something, that could make me collapse, but the truth is that the judge’s verdict did not alarm me. The trial was held in 2001 and the sentence was pronounced at the end of that same year. I already knew, from the verdict of guilty on all charges initially handed down, that the sentence would be far from lenient and I prepared myself for life imprisonment, but never for the death penalty. And since I always kept that sentence in mind, I began to analyze what could happen next. Without having it written down, I mentally made a kind of chronogram, or goal, where I had programmed: I have the strength to wait until he completed the full sentence, and after it I would have to create new things to stick to for myself. I also had six months between the trial and the final sentence, which allowed me to draw up a strategy and the steps I had to follow.
During that time, some things happened: between June and December, we prepared a video that we respectfully sent to the judge. In that recording we referred, from the humanitarian point of view, who they were, highlighting their values. During that period, the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers also took place. And a letter to the American people had also been made public, acknowledging that the Five had never harmed the people of the United States.
There were two possibilities: one, that they tried to prevent acts like the one that happened in the Twin Towers, and two, that people like them could prepare actions of this type. In the end, we think that the judge leaned toward the second possibility because of the very strict, harsh and arbitrary verdict she issued. The judge’s behavior allowed me to prepare myself for the tougher, more complex scenario. For me, it meant the same for one or two life sentences, because we always agreed that until the last one came out, we would continue our battles, our campaigns.
The conviction was not a surprise to me, it was not shocking like the first news I had received related to Gerardo’s activities. In fact, I did not cry that day. I had already prepared myself sentimentally to endure it. I was fully aware that both Gerardo and his comrades were innocent of the charges against them; but the sentences were not for them, they were simply aimed at punishing the people of Cuba. It was demonstrated that in every conviction, particularly Gerardo’s, there was a political rather than a legal component.
Sustained by the resolution that I had to reach the end, I adapted my actions to the new reality that I had to face. The situation was much more complex and to be up to it, our struggle had to be political and public. That would be the way. I remember that one day I told my mother-in-law: it doesn’t matter that I am 80 years old, I am going to wait for him, I am going to receive him mentally healthy. And that’s what I did after the sentence. There was no way and no matter what happened I could weaken, and I began to be stricter with myself, I had to demand myself in correspondence with the new events that arose after the trial and I think that was what hurt me the most.
My life strategy was to prepare for the future day by day, even though I had no idea when it was going to come. But I still did what I could every day. Gerardo always taught me that: live each day as if it were your last. And that’s what I did, even though I felt that all the sentimental burden I was carrying was hardening me. I got so hard that I reached the last stage of the campaign terribly exhausted from a sentimental point of view. Despite that exhaustion, I found the strength to welcome Gerardo, Ramon and Tony when they finally arrived in their homeland on December 17, 2014.
Even though Gerardo’s case was the most difficult and tangled to resolve judicially, you decided to become a mother. Why?
The truth is that I had no plans to have a child. Within the life strategy that I had outlined for myself since 2001, with the arrest of Gerardo and his companions, and later his two life sentences, with no possibility of visits, meetings, the reinforced intention of the U.S. government to keep him separated, I totally discarded the idea of being a mother, because, in addition to all this, there was a biological clock on my side that had to be taken into account.
Gerardo was the one who supported this dream of being a parent the most. So out of respect, because I thought he really deserved it, I changed my mind. Although it was really more of a mutual agreement. He thought that for me as a woman it would be very sad not to become a mother and he felt responsible for it. While for my part, I was thinking about the happiness that having a child would bring him in the midst of his confinement.
Also, many members of the campaign urged us to have a child, we were a young couple and therefore we had that right. Several people were sensitized to this idea, in Cuba and abroad. Among those who supported us the most were Vilma and Raul, creators of a beautiful family. Also Olguita [Salanueva], René’s wife, a very sensitive person and mother. Meanwhile, my biological clock kept ticking.
It was in those days that Gerardo wrote his letter “To the children who are about to be born”. That made me so sensitive that I decided to undergo an in vitro insemination, which was not even widely performed in Cuba. My eggs were saved so that one day they could be inseminated. In a conversation with U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, who was visiting Havana with his wife, I mentioned to him that Gerardo and I had been deprived of so many rights that we could not even have a child, which is the greatest aspiration of a married couple. He, however, was the father of four children, in addition to having grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Apparently, my words touched him deeply and he became one of the most supportive foreigners. When sometime later I was told that everything was ready to begin the process of assisted reproduction, I thought it was a trick, another mockery of the U.S. government. But no, there she is, our first daughter, our Gema.
“Just because of the perseverance (…) that characterizes Cuban women, I managed to get here with all my dreams turned into a beautiful reality”.
From what you have lived, from your own experiences, what do you think of Cuban women?
In that sense, the first thing I need to say is that I feel tremendously proud to be a woman and a Cuban woman. I very, very proud. In our campaigns in favor of the Five, carried out in Cuba and abroad, we always count on the immense support precisely of the women’s organization. The Federation of Cuban Women, through its eternal president Vilma Espín, opened the doors so that we could proclaim our truth in any scenario, even in the most complex ones. In those events and meetings, through our voices, Cuban women spoke.
I believe that women are the central axis of the family and we have achieved that through our lineage. We have an iron will, unbreakable, brave and determined to face and overcome any obstacle, to reach the proposed goal. Just because of the perseverance and perseverance that characterizes Cuban women, I managed to get here with all my dreams turned into a beautiful reality.
When I speak of Cuban women, the example of world record holder Ana Fidelia Quirot, who was able to overcome her accident and return to competition, immediately comes to mind. In the same way, I think of those scientists, in general of all those women in the health sector, who remain in the danger zones in the confrontation with the COVID. They constantly risk their lives to save the lives of others. A very important role is also played by housewives, who, like all women, with their daily chores, with a simple smile, with that healthy and spontaneous vanity, beautify everything that surrounds us.
“Today, she says excitedly, she is immensely happy because ‘I have Gerardo and my children by my side'”. Photo: Taken from the Facebook profile GEMA – from Cuba.
The first Latin American woman to receive the Silver Dove trophy, awarded by the Russian Federation, Adriana Pérez is also the recipient, like the other wives of the Five Heroes of the Republic of Cuba, of the 23 de Agosto, Ana Betancourt and Mariana Grajales medals. Today, she says with emotion, she is immensely happy because “I have Gerardo and my children by my side. But I would never have been able to reach this moment, which I could not even dream of years ago, if I had not had the support, the great and selfless support of hundreds of thousands of people, who from the most remote corners of Cuba and the world, fought, as much as we did, for the release and return of the Five. To them, to those who unfortunately are no longer with us, to my family, friends, neighbors and co-workers, my sincere and eternal gratitude.
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