Nadie escuchaba

I have seen this documentary several times and still touches my heart. For some of my American friends it's not easy to understand the full dimension of Castro's dictatorship and the constant violation of human rights in Cuba. While Hitler and Stalin have been considered cruel dictators, Castro is still called the "president" of Cuba even though he refuses to have elections and those who dare to express their opinion against the Communist regime have only three options: jail, death or exile. If someone can tell me how I can buy this documentary, I will appreciate it. My respect to late Nestor Almendros and to Jorge Ulla for this testimony of the suffering of my people.

As a young child I remember being fascinated by the news stories about the brave and dashing bearded leader fighting a ruthless dictator in the Cuban jungle to establish a democracy for the people. I was in my Errol Flynn period and Fidel Castro was a lot cooler than Ike and even JFK. His victorious entrance into Havana with his rag tag army of revolutionaries was a magnificent spectacle. In my early teens I read the revolutionary diary and put up a poster of the even more charismatic Che Guevara. Then the dream soured. Castro installed himself as Premier (ie.Dictator) for life and for nearly half a century has ruled with an iron fist that brooks no dissent. He even sold out Che (a great career move for both) by getting him out of town to foment revolution in Bolivia then left him hanging. Che was soon captured and shot.

In Nobody Listened acclaimed cinematographer Nestor Almendros presents an endless misery marathon of testimony from one time allies and eventual victims of Castro's human rights abuses. Comrades who rode into Havana on the same vehicle with Castro in 59 were sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, hard labor and torture. Some of the graphic testimony paints as clear a picture of Fidel's Stalinist form of Communism as Almendros impressive day job work and it is damning.

Left-wingers and admirers of "strong" dictators still caught up in the romance of the Cuban Revolution might complain the films damning slant does not give a balanced viewpoint. The litmus test for me are the words of Castro's fellow comrades who fought beside him with the same revolutionary fervor in 59 then found themselves arrested, tortured and sentenced to long prison stretches for questioning his method of rule. That and the fact that human rights abuse continues to be documented by objective observers bringing about a migration of thousands of people who over the years took to boat and risked their lives (many drowned) to escape this "Socialist Paradise". We may never know all the facts about Castro's Cuba but this film is a start. Until that day Che fashionistas can feel wholly justified in complaining about the human rights abuse at next door neighbor Guantanamo and proudly wear their trendy T emblazoned with the saintly visage of Castro's most famous executioner.

Any documentary about Cuba shot in 1987 could have been used either by USA or USSR as a propaganda tool. Although at that time, USSR was on the path of liberalization already. US did not like the idea of having a Communist country in the backyard and trained many of the Cuban refugees, planning the overthrow of the Castro regime. As a consequence, Cuba was the site where the Third World War almost broke out in October 1962. The propaganda criticism is unfair given the fact that Castro and the directors of the prisons are questioned about the prisons, but they obviously deny everything trying to cover the Communist reality. So, I don't think propaganda is the point of the movie. People are escaping Castro's Cuba and that's a hard fact.

As someone who comes from a region which was for five decades under Communism (i.e. Eastern Europe), I see a lot of similarities between the post-revolutionary Cuba and the attempt to create the Homo Sovieticus. Once again I am convinced that Communists are afraid of ideas, despite their claim that ideas don't matter so much in history. The plight of the Soviet and East European dissidents in labor camps is strikingly similar to that of the current Cuban dissidents. The former were escaping to Western Europe, while the last - to USA. China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba are of the same kind. However, sooner or later, they will have to change, same as Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union and failed. Although Castro's Cuba was probably closer to the sultanistic regimes of Eastern Europe, most notably Romania. I think once the Castro family loses its grip on power, the whole regime might collapse. Overall, I consider that this is an excellent movie about the prison system in Cuba, but I admit that I might be biased because of my Eastern European background.

An impassioned documentary by Nestor Almendros, this documentary features Fidel Castro, Francois Mitterand, former Castro guerrilla comrade Huber Mattos, one of the only surviving original guerrillas, besides Castro's two brothers, dissident black writer Esteban Cardenas, and who would become an Honorary US Ambassador Armando Valladares. This documentary largely focuses on his well-known best-selling saga, published in North America in 1986 as AGAINST ALL HOPE, known in Spanish as Contra Toda Esperanza, 1984. He was released in 1982 after 22 years of torturous jail time, after exhaustive efforts by European Human Rights groups. The film shows that only after France's Socialist President Francois Mitterand's personal pleas to Castro, Socialist to "Socialist" was Valladares finally released. His historic and highly emotional arrival in Europe after 22 years in unspeakable conditions and separated from his wife, is a highlight of the documentary. If more people saw this documentary, eventually the title "Nobody Listened" will have to be changed to Nobody Listened for.... years. A must-see for human rights activists, and actually for all. The images captured in the footage shown here cannot be expressed in words.

This is a two-hour doc about some of the lucky (and not-so-lucky) survivors of Cuba's prisons after the revolution of 1959.

Unfortunately, the necessary 'bite' required for such a doc is watered down in sheer redundancy: there are 30 -- count 'em -- 30 different witnesses to the post-revolution days in Cuba. Many of these stories, sad to say, become repetitive.

This is, whether you like it or not, a propaganda film, a thoroughly one-sided view of Castro and the revolution.

I'm an old man and I well remember Cuban fascist dictator Fulgencio Batista, an American puppet hell-bent on destroying Cuba through Mafia infiltration, unrestricted gambling, prostitution, drug smuggling and distribution, systemic corruption and non-existent economic development. Billions of dollars were bleeding back into America under Batista, whose army routinely killed many thousands (nobody knows how many). Most were dissenters and peasants, whose land was stolen from them.

Lest we get too lathered and foamy about the evils of Castro, let's not forget the relatively recent (the 1980s, in the same period as this doc) Death Squads in El Salvador, Somoza's private army in Nicaragua, the generals in Argentina who made 30,000 people conveniently 'dissapear,' the CIA-backed destabilization and overthrow of democratically elected Salvador Allende's Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, followed by his murderous reign of terror, for which he was never really punished.

All of these 'activities' were sponsored and sustained by the United States, the same country that has been screaming about Castro's 'terrible' human rights abuses for almost 50 years. Depending on your point of view, this hypocrisy can make you sick to your stomach.

Something is really missing in this doc. Life is a process of opposites: there is always another side to every story. You won't find another side in 'Nobody Listened': the Castro regime is evil; end of story. That just isn't good enough.