By Rita McInerney

Manuel Echevarria remembers thinking "I don't want to die here" as Cuban detainees broke down the doors leading to the innermost room of the learning center in the Atlanta Federal Prison on Monday morning, Nov. 23. Six days later he was one of four prisoners released by their captors, at 12:35 a.m., Monday, Nov. 29. The remaining 89 hostages regained their freedom early Friday morning, Dec. 4.

Four days after his release, safe at home with his wife, Teresa, and their toddler, Daniel, he said, "I still feel like a hostage." Now with all the hostages freed, the Echevarrias can go ahead with plans for Christmas at the home in Lilburn they had moved into early in November.

Echevarria, who has been teaching English as a second language at the prison since Sept. 24, 1980, had an emotional reunion with Teresa, son Manuel, 9, and daughter Laura, 15, his brothers and his mother, at the hostage family center.

All during the six days he was held hostage, he said he had the feeling he was "quite safe in their hands. I could have made it; God wanted me in there to do something. My concern was Teresa."

He left the prison with a crumpled card printed in Spanish with the well-loved peace prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, and the names of 11 relatives of fellow hostages. He spent the first day home making telephone calls around the country, assuring people their relatives were O.K.

Friday morning after the 89 hostages were out of the prison, Echevarria spoke of his joy at the safe conclusion of the drama for the hostages, and his happiness at seeing Bishop Augustin Roman again. The Miami bishop had visited the prison on Fathers Day, 1981, and had stayed overnight with the Echevarrias. "He blessed us," Echevarria said "and I reminded that he hadn't been down to see my boys in six years."

The fear that Echevarria felt as a hostage was a "direct reaction to outside forces." When they watched the shift change for the SWAT team on television they were "scared to death," he said, that "those crazy people are going to storm the place. Here we were, surrounded by people with big machetes telling us 'If they come in and storm the place, you'll go down with us.'"

"They had TV's all over," he said.

His guards ranged from Cubans who told him "they wanted to protect us, they would put their lives over ours, protecting us from their people," to others who threatened to cut off their heads. There was the detainee the hostages called the "coffee maker" who protected and served them. He got sick, Echevarria said, and was taken to the prison hospital. "As soon as he got better he came back to us."

Echevarria, 37, was 11 when he came with his family to the U.S. on Aug 11, 1961. It was shortly after the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. "I'm Cuban. I don't want to go back to a system that will keep me imprisoned." The detainees, he said, "know better" than to trust the promises of Castro.

The "2,700 excludables" government spokesmen said would be sent back to Cuba translated into "2,700 plus" over Cuba radio, he said. The detainees had radios in their cells and were able to pick up Castro's speeches and news.

His disdain for Castro is clear. "Castro is a criminal who knows how to mock the U.S.," he said bluntly.

After the detainees took over the prison on Nov. 23 some of them seemed surprised he was a hostage and asked if he hadn't been warned about the impending uprising. "If I am here," he said, "it must be for a God-given reason."

That reason, for him, turned out to be serving "night and day as an interpreter. My people (his fellow hostages) needed me. I thought I was there to be a light through my language." For the hostages who didn't speak or understand Spanish it helped to have him there, translating and communicating with the detainees. "Without it, it would have been a worse situation."

"I did my job, with less sleep. I was always there, for the hostages and for the Cubans." He talked to the Cubans, advising them. He warned them that public opinion would turn against them if the situation continued. "There is no need to keep 100 hostages when 10 would do just as well," he urged.

When the uprising began Nov. 23, Echevarria was inside the learning center with three other staff members, two inmates and three detainees. "We stayed. We knew it was inevitable," he said. As the shooting started, they locked all the doors, about 10 in the center, put out the lights and locked themselves into the inner room where the records were kept.

The inmates and detainees "could have overcome us," Echevarria said. They didn't. All nine had a single desire, to get out safely. "We were nine people waiting to find the right time to be running and to be free. We just wanted to get out of that crazy situation."

Smoke began to pour into the room, he said, and the sound of glass shattering and doors being smashed down became louder. "I don't want to die here," he thought to himself. "We knew that they had gained control. Then I heard them bust inside and thought, 'Well, we've had it.'"

A few minutes later an American inmate broke into the room announcing he was "rescuing" them. Then a "calm cool Cuban" told the staff members "Gentlemen, you're our hostages. We won't harm you. Just keep close to us." Two Cubans escorted each hostage to the chapel area.

Prayer was very much a part of the long hours of his captivity. But that first day "it took me three hours to say my Rosary. I always liked to pray the Rosary to and from work."

"We had a support group that was unreal," he said of the hostages confined with him in the chapel area. There were 17 men in the room with him. They helped each other, giving special concern for those who seemed overwhelmed by their plight, who tried to escape reality by sleeping a lot, he said.

"God helped me out, Echevarria said in recounting an instance of prayer when he opened the New Testament and his eyes fell on a passage especially apropos, 2 Corinthians 1:3-12, which offers consolation and hope to captives. Rereading it for The Georgia Bulletin on Dec. 2, he was overcome with emotion, knowing "his people" were still hostage.

The "padres," Father Ray Dowling, Catholic Chaplain, and the Rev. Russ Mabry, Presbyterian chaplain, held prayer services. Once, Echevarria said, he was "very scared. I felt I was going to meet my Lord," and he went to confession.

The hostages were not the only men inside who prayed. The "religious detainees, Catholic, Protestants, Pentecostals," he said, maintained prayer lines. One Cuban told them, "I have my weapon," patting what appeared to be a bulky weapon concealed on his hip. Then he showed them his Bible.

After things were organized, Echevarria said with a grin, detainees in the chapel area gave out Bibles and rosaries to everyone. “You had Mormons with rosaries draped around their necks. Baptists with rosaries.”

Forgiveness sometimes flowed between detainee and hostage. Echevarria recounted the incident of the "huge" detainees assigned to help Father Dowling, who confided to the teacher that he bore a grudge against one guard who had caught him taking a hamburger out of the dining area in his pants' pocket.

Echevarria knew that the guard he spoke of was among the hostages in his area. He went and told him what the detainee had related to him. The shaken guard went and asked pardon of the detainee, who grabbed his former "enemy" and wrapped him "in a bear hug that would have disarmed Gorbachev," Echevarria said.

In the interval between his own release and the dramatic finale to the hostage drama, Manuel and Teresa spent a lot of time at the family hostage center. It was a "horrendous time" for the waiting families, he said, and the Echevarrias tried to give them as much information and encouragement as possible.

Once safe at home, Echevarria was inundated with phone calls from friends in the Cursillo and at Corpus Christi parish in Stone Mountain who had been praying constantly for his safety. Especially touching to him was the large stack of messages from children at St. John Neumann Regional School in Lilburn where his son Manual is in the fourth grade. Laura also had a lot of support from students at St. Pius, the couple said.

Echevarria attended Fordham Prep and Fordham University and taught school in New York City for seven years before coming south in 1980. They visited his brother Miguel, who was living in Lithonia, and found the area to their liking.

He said he was always "really happy at the job, never afraid. They knew I went by the book while trying to be humane and understanding. They (the detainees) are trusting." Although he considered himself a "good, businesslike teacher" he became concerned with the detainees situation.

When he started working at the prison in 1980 there were about 100 detainees. "We have a system with a lot of criminal elements. We all know what drug trafficking and free sex is doing to our society. But there is a double standard of justice. The American will be sentenced to ten years and be paroled in seven … The Cuban will serve his term and then the INS will detain him. With these people, they're throwing away the key," he said.