Glover’s encounter with Gerardo Hernández, who he visited on many occasions while the decorated Hero of the Republic of Cuba was unjustly imprisoned in a California penitentiary, was a jovial one.

Today is a beautiful day, noted Glover, who joined the international campaign to secure the release of the Five and their return to the island and denounced the media silence surrounding the case.

When I joined the Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five and saw how these men were conscious of their responsibility to humanity, I saw in them the bridge toward that world of justice and equality we wish to build, stated Glover.

The actor recalled that a short time ago, while shooting scenes for a film in Spain, he met people familiar with the cause of the Cuban Five, something he also experienced in other countries around the world.

Glover also highlighted the work of the island’s internationalist collaborators, who bring light and solidarity to the remotest areas, and whose work he witnessed first hand in several Latin American countries.

His committed efforts to truth and justice have led him to meet leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro, and former President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez.

On one of his visits to Havana, Glover received the Tomás Gutiérrez Alea International Film Prize, awarded by the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac).

(Prensa Latina)

(Progreso Weekly)

2:30 PM – Departure time, the most excruciating part of visiting Gerardo Hernandez. A prison guard announced: “Visiting hours are over.” Gerardo lined up against the wall with the other inmates. We stood with wives, children and mothers. Finally, the electronically controlled, heavy metal door opened. Gerardo held up a triumphant fist. We did the same. He stayed in Hell (13 years now). We left.

We drove from the Victorville Penitentiary to the Ontario California airport, discussing the absurdity of five Cubans (one on precarious parole) who helped the United States fight terrorism but remain locked in federal penitentiaries while Luis Posada Carriles, who orchestrated the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane (73 died), dines in Miami’s finest restaurants? In between visits to his proctologist Posada and fellow geezers continue plotting anti-Cuba violence.

Miami Federal Court judges will decide on Gerardo’s appeal, which presents new facts and evidence: Gerardo’s trial lawyer now admits he inadequately represented him; new documents show payment by the U.S. government to Miami-based “journalists” who offered negative stories about the accused Cubans, thus tainting the trial atmosphere. Finally, the U.S. government has still refused to deliver its “secret” map showing the exact point where on February 24, 1996, Cuban MIGs shot down two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes. The Cubans claim the incidents occurred over Cuban airspace, i.e., no crime took place. Washington insisted the planes got hit in international air space, but the NSA said they could not release their crucial diagram: “national security.” Gerardo played no part in the drama – no matter where the shoot down occurred.

We agreed U.S. Cuba policy bordered on the absurd. For example, the State Department placed Cuba on its terrorist list although the U.S. has made Cuba a victim of terrorist attacks; Cuba has not reciprocated. But Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued: “The United States should not negotiate with a state sponsor of terrorism.”

This related to her objection to any U.S. humanitarian approach to get Alan Gross released. Convicted in Cuba for activities related to a USAID regime change policy, Gross must either serve his fifteen year sentence or wait until the U.S. military “liberates” the island. Ros-Lehtinen called on people to assassinate Fidel Castro (see Landau’s WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP).

This rhetoric hardly serves Gross’ interests. Thanks to Ileana he might stay in prison until age 75. He misses his family, as do the Cubans in U.S. prisons. Like Alan, they also have close relatives with serious illnesses. When my mother died in 2009, “I wasn’t in Cuba to bury her.”

Gerardo told us he and Adriana, now 42, want children. So does another member of the five, Fernando Gonzalez and his wife. The U.S. denies visas to their wives. Time is running out. Gerardo’s face showed a flash of anguish.

The Five’s cause gets little publicity. Not so the case of Alan Gross, an American contractor sentenced to 15 years in Cuba for activities designed to undermine Cuba’s government. The Gross and Cuban Five cases, however, are different. Gerardo received two consecutive life sentences plus fifteen years for conspiring to co

He wondered how to preserve ourselves and the planet and said this is the greatest test we must pass.

Invited to the First Meeting of Moviemakers from Africa, the Caribbean and their Diasporas in Havana, Glover, 65, urged this Wednesday participants to work from culture to promote a new vision of mankind that allow us to imagine again the ideas of what we really are.

He said that the great revolutions that changed the world over 200 years ago questioned the right to exist, and in this era of technology, when we go from agricultural societies to the big industry, we already are an almost dispensable species.

Resources become exhausted and mother Earth suffers, he said.

In his opinion, in this process of evolution and historical transition, the cultural expressions and diversity bring magnificent opportunities for our transformation.

“It is time to find a way so that these UNESCO-promoted ideas about cultural diversity unite us and allow us to elevate our thinking; we must support political projects needed to make the process of salvation, our salvation, advance,” he said.

Regarding Africa, Glover said that it must find new productive relations t o promote the spread of its cultural expressions.

He urged all Caribbean, African and Afrodescendant artists in Europe and the United States to unite. “Wherever we are, we are one; we are that what had been waiting for so long,” he concluded.

(Prensa Latina)

The National Association of Cuban Writers and Artists granted the U.S. actor the Tomas Gutierrez Alea Award. Glover is also honorary president of the Traveling Caribbean Film Festival.

The meeting will foster a dialogue among international artists on co-production alternatives and the role of cultural industries in panel and round tables with figures such as Malian Moussa Ouane.

The event, included in the International Year of African Descent, will conclude its academic year on Friday with a Final Declaration.

(Prensa Latina)

6:50 a.m. Plane leaves Oakland California airport.

8:05 a.m. Plane lands in Ontario, California, wait for the rent-a-car bus, pick up the rental and drive northeast toward Las Vegas (how else to explain heavy traffic on Saturday morning?).

9:30 a.m. We step from the air-conditioned rent-a-car into the burning sun of the Mojave Desert, the landscape for the U.S. Correction Complex in Victorville, California.

The guard at the desk gives us forms. We fill out forms and wait with several women in the waiting room. There’s a sign missing in the gray metal room: “Unfriendly.”

10:30.a.m. Saul asks the desk guard how much longer we’ll have to wait. “They’re counting the prisoners,” he replies.

11:30 a.m. A guard calls our numbers. We pass metal detector and pat-down tests. A guard stamps our forearms. We are only permitted to carry quarters in our pockets; nothing else – the coin accepted by the venomous food machines in the visiting room.

A handle-less door opens. Danny, Saul and five women enter another chamber. An unseen prison guard inside a heavily sealed, thick glass office electronically closes the heavy metal door; another guard passes an ultra violet light machine over the invisible stamp on our arms. We wait. Moments later the invisible guard electronically opens another solid metal door.

The visitors stand outside in a naked passageway between grey concrete bunkers and enough barbed wire to seal some national borders. The scorching desert sun alerts us to the surroundings and the contrast between what the prison architect has done and the landscape on which the immense concrete bunkers got built: brooding mountains, desert, cactus, and unseen bones of dead pioneers and Indians.

One electronically sealed chamber later, we enter the visiting room – and wait.

NOON

We sit on miniature plastic chairs even Kmart wouldn’t sell. A door opens; Gerardo Hernandez emerges. In the 1990s, Cuban intelligence sent him to run an infiltration group in south Florida.

Bombs in hotels and restaurants don’t exactly draw vacationers and Cuba’s economy depended on expanding its tourist sector. In 1997, in order to stop the wave of Havana hotel and restaurant bombings, Gerardo’s group penetrated violent exile groups.

Gerardo’s predecessors began infiltrating such groups before he was born. In 1959, former Batista officials and other anti-revolutionary exiles started their Florida-based air attacks against Cuba.

Cuba complained to Washington. President Eisenhower quipped: “Why don’t the Cubans just shoot the planes down?” asked Ike. But Washington didn’t stop the over flights.

Three plus decades later, Jose Basulto formed Brothers to the Rescue to spot rafters miles between Cuba and the Florida Keys. After the 1994-5 Migration Accords eliminated the need for such an operation, Basulto changed his mission. He convinced wealthy right wing exiles to fund the Brothers to enter Cuban air space and drop provocative leaflets.

The Cuban infiltrators also discovered that Basulto had developed some weapons he planned to drop. Gerardo, Havana’s control agent, helped one agent, Juan Pablo Roque, slip out of Miami. Back in Cuba, Roque held a press conference and revealed he had also doubled as an FBI informer. He offered eyewitness details of Basulto’s plans for violence against Cuba.

This dashing young pilot had fooled the Brothers to the Rescue and the Bureau. He also became the darling of ultra right Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtenin (a photo shows her slightly more than casual interest in Roque). Shortly after Roque’s press conference, Basulto announced his intention to fly over Cuban territory. A White House official and the FAA knew of the plans, but the government eventually charged Gerardo as Havana’s source of the Brothers’ flight plans – three planes – that allowed Cuban MiGs to shoot down two of them on February 24, 1996. Basulto’s plane returned to Miami.

After Roque had revealed his true identity, Miami’s right wing radio commentators began claiming Castro had taken over the FBI. In 1998, partly to undo that image, Gerardo thinks, the FBI busted him and other Cuban agents (The Cuban Five), despite the fact they had provided the Bureau with details of hidden explosive and arms caches and other relevant information to stop terrorism.

The U.S. case relied on the supposition that the MiGs fired missiles over international airspace. Cuban vectors indicated the action occurred over Cuban airspace. The U.S. government has not released its satellite images on “national security” grounds. Gerardo’s trial lawyer did not demand them as evidence for the defense.

“Why,” asked Gerardo, “would the U.S. government not use these images available if they validated the prosecutor’s argument?” If the shoot downs occurred over Cuban air space, he emphasizes, there would have been no crime. An impending appeal – a motion to set aside the conviction – will make this point.

During the trial extremist exiles had photographed Miami jury members’ license plates. An acquittal, the jurors feared, might have resulted in their homes getting torched, or worse. The jury thus paid little attention to facts like Gerardo didn’t know the Brothers’ flight schedule, nor have access to Fidel’s decision to shoot down intruding aircraft. “An American Dreyfus case,” one lawyer called the judgment against the Cuban Five.

2:54 p.m. The loudspeaker declares visiting hours have ended. For three hours, guards had observed the visiting process. One inmate with his back to Danny had complimented him on his acting. Danny turned his head to thank him. A guard appeared. “Sorry, sir, you’re not allowed to turn around and talk to other inmates.”

Gerardo shrugged. A sign in one sealed chamber called the Victorville Prison a “humane, correctional” institution. At least the sign didn’t claim pigs could fly.

Gerardo wanted to see Saul’s new film, “Will The Real Terrorist Please Stand Up.” His voice, recorded during a phone conversation, appears in the documentary, as does Danny. The prison does not permit him to receive DVDs; he can see DVDs from the prison library, which is unlikely to acquire it.

Each day the guards go home. Gerardo stays. The sun sets over desert mountains, and mountains of concrete, steel and barbed wire. Danny and Saul sigh. Gerardo, smiling, holds his fist high in a triumphal salute.

Danny Glover is an activist and actor. Saul Landau’s WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP premieres at the Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, July 26, 7 p.m. and at Washington DC’s West End Cinema (23rd and “M” NW) at 7:30.