On November 19, Plantados will hit theaters in Spain, a story about the prisoners imprisoned at the beginning of the Fidel Castro dictatorship, directed by Lilo Vilaplana , of Cuban origin who, after a successful career as a short filmmaker, makes the leap to directing of feature films. As a reason for its premiere, OKDIARIO has interviewed two of the historic planted to whom the film honors, Maritza Lugo and Ernesto Díaz .
Plantados , is the story of a group of Cuban political prisoners at the beginning of the Castro dictatorship. After having fought against the Batista dictatorship, they ended up in prison at the hands of the communist tyrant. They refused to undergo a re-education plan in exchange for reducing their sentences, for which they were subjected to harassment and torture.
The film intertwines two lines in time: the current one when one of those prisoners, already elderly who lives in Miami, after 25 years in prison, meets one of the henchmen who tortured him. From there, a trip to the past begins, remembering everything that has been experienced as a planted person, a nickname comes, as one of the characters in the film says, from those trees with very strong roots that no one can move from the place where they are.
Ernesto Díaz , 82 years old, does not see any resentment towards the jailers and torturers who subjected him to the worst humiliations for 22 years. “Planted means dignity, honor, reason, perseverance of a man who does not want to give in to evil.” Both he and Maritza Lugo (1963) do not demand revenge but justice: « 62 years later, everything was a lie and a deception. Fidel Castro was king without a crown. It is a pity that he died without having paid for his crimes.
“We have our hope in the youth because democracy can be achieved by fighting for it. We don’t have hatred but we do want justice. We never had lawyers to defend us. There will never be peace where there was no justice, ”says Lugo, who was released in 1999.
“Being separated from my daughters and my husband was very difficult. The prisoner suffers a lot but the family suffers more. They had to look for food to be able to help their relatives in jail where there is nothing to eat. My daughters were my enemies in Cuba because the regime made them believe that I had left them alone because I was crazy and that I was a bad mother who did not behave well. Once they went into exile, they understood the cause for which he was fighting, ”says Maritza.
The film begins with the fortuitous encounter of one of the planted with his torturer. «The Cuban regime is constantly seeking to infiltrate its own into anti-Castroism. You have to be very vigilant because these jailers have a cause for their crimes, ”explains Díaz. «The best revenge is to be different from the enemy. I cannot wish suffering on my jailer and torturer. I only ask for justice », adds Lugo.
«This film took 20 years to make because the scriptwriters did not want to point out anything negative against Fidel Castro, they wanted to make a film in favor of the regime. The Government of Spain must take responsibility for its silence in the face of the communist tyranny of Cuba that has been annihilating our people for 62 years, ”says Díaz.
This planted challenges the Spanish left that has wet dreams of the Cuban dictatorship, so much so that it does not even dare to call it a ‘dictatorship’: one-party regime for 62 years, that’s the key question.
