The biggest story out the US-Cuba prisoner trade last week wasn’t that it is the beginning to the end of decades-long Cuban embargo. It was the sight of one of the 5 Cuban prisoners released in the deal with his 8-month pregnant wife the prisoner hadn’t seen in a decade!
What? How?
It turns out the American government obliged the prisoner’s request to have a baby with his wife by arranging for the man’s sperm to be collected, preserved and transferred down to the wife so she could be inseminated with it.
While in her 40s, Adriana Perez realized with her husband Gerardo Hernandez imprisoned for two consecutive years in an American prison for spying and attempted murder, her chances of having a baby were close to extinct.
After the insemination plan was approved, the US government admitted to helping facilitate the pregnancy. Hernandez got released this week with four other men in exchange for American internet contractor Alan Gross.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy orchestrated the swap on the plea of Gross family that he was failing in health and on the verge of death if forced to remain in a Cuban prison. Gross spoke to a press conference upon his release through 5 missing teeth, but was still in good spirits and seemed grateful for the release.
News about the pregnancy further angered anti-Castro Cuban Americans who were exiled from the small communist island nation during the 1960s, and those who braved treacherous conditions to escape and land in America. They dislike any embargo lifting without more guarantees of change from the Castro government that has ruled the country for over 50 years.
h/t NY Post