Promises, Promises

By Ed Magnuson

The eleven-day siege at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary was one of the longest in the nation's history, and its nonviolent ending was a tribute to the tenacity of federal negotiators. Day after day they put the safety of the 89 hostages above any impatience in dealing with the balky, shifting factions of 1,100 Cuban detainees who had seized control of the prison. Not a single hostage was injured, and when the ordeal finally came to an end at 1 a.m. last Friday, an unusual scene occurred. As the released prison guards began rushing out of the prison, many stopped to embrace their inmate captors. Each group wished the other well. Then the hostages ran into the arms of their waiting families.

Five days earlier a parallel siege ended at the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, La., where 998 Cuban detainees held 26 prison employees. Standing in the back of a pickup truck, Miami's Cuban-born Auxiliary Bishop Agustin Roman was driven slowly past the center's wire fences. "My brothers, give me your weapons," pleaded the frail Roman Catholic clergyman. "Give me the hostages. No man can ask for freedom while denying it to others." One by one, the detainees placed machetes, pipes, handmade spears and nail-studded sticks in a pile amid the ruins of the administration building. Said a tearful detainee to the bishop: "We knew you wouldn't abandon us."

The uprisings were sparked by the Administration's announcement that Cuba's Fidel Castro had agreed to take back 2,545 criminals and mental patients who $ had come to the U.S. among the 125,000 Cubans in the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Some 7,600 Cubans are being held in 100 locations because they committed crimes or were found ineligible for U.S. residence. Those at Oakdale and Atlanta rioted, torching buildings and seizing hostages to show that they would rather stay in jail than go back to Cuba.

Although authorities had massed overwhelming firepower to use if the Cubans began harming hostages at either facility, their best weapons proved to be mediators trusted by the Cubans, who worked with federal officials in tedious, often frustrating negotiations. In the Atlanta prison, the Cubans voted to accept a two-page, eight-point pact. When some 200 hard-liners still rejected the deal as inadequate, the majority needed "all of our effort and all of our force," as one detainee put it, to overcome their resistance. Approved in advance by Attorney General Edwin Meese, the agreement will apply to all the Marielitos under detention.

The main point the Cubans won was a pledge that they will not be returned to Cuba before their cases are speedily and fairly reviewed, but there was no guarantee that many will not be deported after that. Any detainee may apply for a visa to a country other than Cuba or the U.S. All were granted amnesty for damaging property during the rioting, which virtually gutted both institutions. Those detainees who had finished sentences for various offenses, some as minor as possessing marijuana, were promised their release by next June 30 at the latest. Any such deadline was a vast improvement over the indefinite confinement that had been inflicted on the Cubans.

At week's end Meese insisted the Government had not "yielded to the demands of the hostage takers." As the detainees were strip-searched, handcuffed and shipped to other prisons, they and their families worried about whether even the limited agreement would be kept. Said Carmen Linares, wife of Detainee Pablo Gonzalez: "We have heard so many things before and been through so much. Everybody has doubts." This time, however, the promises are in writing.

With reporting by Rodman Griffin/Oakdale and Don Winbush/Atlanta