An Interview by Arleen Rodríguez Derivet with photographs by Ismael Francisco for Cubadebate
Hours before his 54th birthday, or “forty and always” as Gerardo Hernández Nordelo likes to define his current age, the man the empire condemned to give up two lives in prison plus 15 years, plays with his three children like another child, very close to the beach. It’s his fifth birthday since freedom and he looks more smiling and serene than ever.
A while ago a great childhood friend told me who could have predicted that you were going to be surrounded by kids, with your wife…having a good time, enjoying your birthday, with so many that you spent behind bars? It was a date I didn’t even want to remember, because paradoxically, when that day came, you didn’t even want to remember your birthday. But my life has changed tremendously, for the better.
Come Hear Eyewitness Reports from Bay Area Activists
We urgently need to raise our voices to prevent more innocent people from dying in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Yet again it its imperial history, the United States has applied a financial blockade to prevent the purchase of food and medicine, a lethal weapon with the objective of making an entire people succumb to hunger and disease; a people whose only crime is a desire for sovereignty and independence.