Saturday, July 26, 2025

Cuba's Dueling Legacies: Moncada July 26, 1953 and Varela May 10, 2002

Moncada vs Varela

July 26, 1953: Moncada Assault. May 10, 2002: MCL turns in Project Varela petitions

 

Today, the Castro regime, its fellow travelers and agents of influence will continue the lie that something positive occurred on July 26, 1953. The only way that they can accomplish this exercise is by rewriting and omitting history.

Here is some of what they won't tell you.

July 26, 1953 was a tragic day when Cubans killed Cubans in a failed attempt to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista with an attack on the Moncada Barracks.

In the early morning hours of July 26, 1953 a group of Cubans led by Fidel Castro assaulted the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Approximately, 18 government officials were killed and 28 wounded in the attack. 27 rebels were killed and 11 wounded. 51 of the surviving 99 rebels were placed on trial. Fidel Castro turned himself in after seeking guarantees for his safety and was also put on trial.

Aftermath of the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada Barracks

This attack turned Fidel Castro into a national figure. He would go on to name his movement, the July 26th Movement.

Between 1902 and 1952 with moments of glory and shame the Cuban Republic transited through 17 democratically elected presidents. One of them, Gerardo Machado elected in 1925, despite constitutional prohibitions, he had the constitution modified and ran for re-election in 1928. He became a despot, and was removed from office by force in 1933. This led to a return to democracy.

Cuban presidents from 1902 to 1952, and dictator Batista 1952-1959.

 

Tragically, this democratic republic was brought to an end on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista. Batista was a military man who had entered the presidency in free and fair elections in 1940 ( in coalition with the communist party) and left office in 1944. He returned to Cuba under the presidency of Cuba's last democratically elected president, Carlos Prio and within days of the next presidential elections, when Batista saw that he could not win at the ballot box, carried out a successful coup against the democratic order that had existed from 1902 - 1952.

Fidel Castro during his trial on October 16, 1953 addressed the court in what became known as the "“History Will Absolve Me” speech:

“Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time there was a Republic. It had its Constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a President, a Congress and Courts of Law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom." …"Public opinion was respected and heeded and all problems of common interest were freely discussed. There were political parties, radio and television debates and forums of public meetings. The whole nation pulsated with enthusiasm.”

The promise made by the July 26th Movement was to restore the preexisting democratic order along with reforms. The Castro brothers ended a seven year authoritarian dictatorship, and replaced it with a communist dictatorship that has ruled over Cuba for 66 years and counting.

#TheyAreContinuity #TheyAreDictators ( #SomosContinuidad #SonDictadores)

The Castro dictatorship was not a break from Batista but a continuity into more profound tyranny that continues to kill Cubans.

Contrast this with what Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) did. In the midst of a totalitarian dictatorship were all media are controlled by the government along with economic life they managed to lead a movement that persuaded more than 35,000 Cubans to identify themselves, demand democratic reforms, and the restoration of human rights knowing that the Varela Project petition they were signing could lead to losing their jobs, having their children denied access to higher education and in the worse case prison.

MCL delivers 11,020 Varela Project petitions to the National Assembly. (J Goitia/AP)

 

The images of the movement, unlike the Castro regime's are nonviolent and inclusive and focus on liberation and reconciliation not violence and killing. They do not seek to destroy or slander anyone but to free a people.

Coordinators of the Varela Project

 

Oswaldo and his movement rejected hatred and violence. They never killed anyone and offered a path to a nonviolent democratic transition.

Oswaldo's nonviolent legacy has continued beyond him and is a positive tradition for Cuba. His nonviolent struggle followed two of the basic principles outlined by nonviolence practitioner Michael N. Nagler: "We are not against other people, only what they are doing. Means are ends in the making; nothing good can finally result from violence."

Oswaldo Payá receives the Sakharov Prize in Strasbourg, France in 2002

In December 2002, thanks to lobbying and pressure from Spain, Oswaldo Payá was able to travel to Strasbourg, France to receive the European Union's Sakharov Prize and address the chamber where he outlined the movement's position to an international audience.

The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: “You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.” This is the liberation which we are proclaiming.

Seventy two years after the tragic events of July 26, 1953 the Castro regime celebrates this shedding of blood between Cubans as "the victory of ideas," but in reality it was the triumph of brute violence and terror in the short term by Batista's forces on that day and in 1959 by Castro's forces.

In Cuba the government has turned it into a day of drinking, parties, parades, speeches and the colors red and black prominently displayed. This all occurs with prominent military displays and propaganda images worshiping violent revolution.

There are two traditions battling for control in Cuba.

One tradition, embodied by the Castro regime, based on violence and the destruction of the other has dominated Cuba's political discourse for over six and a half decades. It views dissent as treason and demands unanimity; the only acceptable ideas are the dictatorship's.

The second tradition built the institutions of Cuban democracy in the 19th Century using nonviolent means. They founded companies with a social conscience such as Bacardi that contributed to the common good until forced out of their homeland in 1960. The Cuban democrats who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Their counterparts are still there in Cuba's nonviolent civic resistance movement.


 

These civic activists were courteous, and respected the dignity of all Cubans. Some were feminists who obtained the right of Cuban women to vote in the old Republic and went on to defend the rights of poor women to a decent education and better opportunities.

They nonviolently resisted the imposition of Castro's totalitarian regime and either went into exile, prison, were killed, or despite great odds are still struggling for Cuban freedom on the streets of Cuba today.

Thirteen years after the July 22, 2012 murders of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante and it remains clear that the future belongs to the nonviolent resistance. The dictatorship may have killed two of its great nonviolent leaders, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, but in doing so exposed its own brutal nature and undermined itself.

What a post-Castro Cuba will look like can already be intimated.

Castroism will be relegated to a sad and cautionary chapter in Cuban history that it deserves to be.

May 10, 2002 will be a day of celebration in Cuba commemorating the day that the first 11,020 signatures of the Varela Project were presented to the National Assembly demanding human rights and democratic reforms.

July 11, 2021 will also be a day of celebration for the day that tens of thousands of Cubans peacefully gathered across the island demanding freedom and an end to dictatorship.

International Human Rights Day will once again become a day to celebrate and observe human rights in Cuba and not a day of repression. The Cuban Republic's human rights tradition and the role it played in the drafting and passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 will be restored and celebrated in Cuba.

Today, Chinese and Cuban dissidents, inspired by Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Vaclav Havel, exchange their visions for a democratic future challenging the totalitarian alternative.


Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Remembering Cuban dissident leaders, Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, both assassinated by the Cuban dictatorship on July 22, 2012.

 We remember, continue to demand justice, and follow their courageous example.

 

The Cuban dictatorship imprisons, forcibly exiles, or kills those who nonviolently advocate for human rights reforms within the existing constitutional framework. The Castro dynasty has also engaged in and sponsored terrorism for 66 years, but before spreading terror around the world, the Castros took power in Cuba through a campaign of terrorism that included bombings, killings, kidnappings, and hijackings in the 1950s.

On July 22, 2012, Havana's secret police murdered Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante, two heroes for democracy in the Americas. The Cuban dictatorship, and its agents of influence have continued to attempt to cover up this crime.

In 2023, following a ten year investigation, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights confirmed that the two human rights defenders were killed by Cuban government agents.

Oswaldo Payá  was sixty years old when he was assassinated by Castro regime agents on this day 13 years ago. 

Oswaldo was a family man and lay Catholic from Havana, an engineer who, in September 1988, founded the Christian Liberation Movement with fellow Catholics in the El Cerro neighborhood, and over the next 23 years would carry out important campaigns to support human rights and a democratic transition in Cuba. 

He would speak out against human rights breaches and demand victims' dignity, even if it meant denouncing the United States for mistreating Al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base prison in 2002.

Oswaldo was a consistent defender of human rights, but not the only one.

Harold Cepero  was 32 years old when he was extrajudicially executed alongside Oswaldo. He was from the town of Chambas in Ciego de Ávila.  Harold began studying at the University of Camaguey when he was 18 years old, and in 2002, he and other students signed the Varela Project. It was a legal measure inside the existing Cuban constitution sponsored by the Christian Liberation Movement.

Despite this, Harold and other students were expelled from the university for signing it and sharing it with others. The secret police would organize a mob to "judge", scream at, insult, threaten and expel the students who had signed the Varela Project. Following his expulsion on November 13, 2002, Harold wrote a letter warning that "those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves." 

Expelled from university for signing the Varela Project with fellow students. He enrolled in a seminary and began studying for the priesthood before leaving to join the Christian Liberation Movement, embracing a new vocation as a human rights defender.

Why did the Cuban dictatorship seek revenge on Oswaldo and Harold? The Varela Project proved to the world that tens of thousands of Cubans were dissatisfied with the status quo and wanted human rights and multiparty democracy restored in Cuba. 

This contradicts the official narrative.


On May 10, 2002, Oswaldo, along with Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez of the Christian Liberation Movement, turned in 11,020 Varela Project petitions, and news of the petition drive was reported worldwide.

Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez were sentenced to long prison sentences in March 2003 following show trials, along with 73 other Cuban dissidents. Many of them had taken part in the Varela Project and, nearly eight years later, were forced into exile as an alternative to completing their prison sentences.

In spite of the crackdown, Oswaldo would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures with Freddy Martini on October 5, 2003. He would spend the next eight years campaigning for the release of his imprisoned compatriots and continuing campaigns to achieve a democratic transition in Cuba.

Ten years, two months and twelve days after turning in the first Varela Project petitions while traveling with two international visitors in Eastern Cuba on a Sunday afternoon on July 22, 2012, Oswaldo and Harold were killed. Cuban state security bumped into the car they were driving, and when the vehicles stopped, with everyone still alive in the car, they approached the driver, striking him in the temple with the butt of a pistol. Within hours, the lifeless bodies of both men would appear.
 
Cuba currently has around 1,158 identified political prisoners, with many more imprisoned under the Orwellian statute known as "precrime." The dictatorship will lock you up simply because you have the potential to become a threat in the future. 
  

Oswaldo Payá, when awarded the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought on December 17, 2002, spoke prophetically when he said: "The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people." "The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized."

 

In the midst of the darkness, it is critical to recall the beams of light that illuminate the path to freedom and the full enjoyment of human rights in Cuba and around the world.

Oswaldo Payá, Harold Cepero, and others, both living and dead, laid the framework for the nonviolent nature of the large nationwide protests that began on July 11, 2021, which established a new before and after in Cuban history.


 

 

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Remembering Liu Xiaobo: Jailed Chinese Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate died on this day in 2017

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defense. Through this we can build, we must build, a defense against repetition. - Simon Wiesenthal 

 

Tragically, Chinese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and human rights defender Liu Xiaobo died eight years ago on July 13, 2017 at the First Hospital of China Medical University, in Shenyang, China after being unjustly imprisoned from December 8, 2008 until his untimely death nearly 10 years later. 

It is likely that he died of a cancer made terminal by politically motivated neglect. July 13 marks seven years since his passing. After eight years in "unofficial detention" his widow Liu Xia was finally allowed to leave China on July 10, 2018.

Liu Xiaobo was one of the authors of Charter 08 and signed it along with more than three hundred Chinese citizens. The Charter is a manifesto that was released on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It calls for more freedom of expression, human rights, more democratic elections, the privatization of state enterprises and economic liberalization and would collect over 10,000 signatures.


Charter 08 is reminiscent of the Varela Project that was initially signed by 11,020 Cubans in May of 2002 calling on the Cuban government to respect international human rights norms and engage in the same kind of reforms. Both were inspired by Vaclav Havel and Charter 77. Lamentably, the author of the Varela Project, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader of the same movement, Harold Cepero Escalante were both extrajudicially executed twelve years ago on July 22, 2012 in a crash engineered by the Cuban dictatorship's agents.

The demand for justice remains unfulfilled in all these cases, but we must not despair.

We bear witness embracing truth and memory in defiance of the attempt to whitewash and forget. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explained the importance of doing this in his 1986 Nobel Lecture on why it is important to remember:

"To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death." ... "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

In 2017, I was present at a candlelight vigil in Washington, DC on July 17th organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to pay my respects for Liu Xiaobo and demonstrate my solidarity with Chinese human rights defenders.


 

 

 

 

Remembering the lives taken July 13, 1994: May their memory be a blessing

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defense. Through this we can build, we must build, a defense against repetition. - Simon Wiesenthal 
 
 
 
Thirty one years ago a great crime was committed that has still not been resolved. 

In the early morning hours of July 13, 1994 thirty seven men, women, and children were killed by government agents as they sought to travel to freedom on board of the “13 de Marzo” tugboat seven miles off the Cuban coast. Eleven of these Cubans were children ranging in age from Helen Martínez Enríquez, just five months old to Mayulis Méndez Tacaronte age seventeen.
 
International human rights bodies and organizations investigated the incident. The United Nations Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur on Cuba made the following observation on October 24, 1995 in his report on the human rights situation in Cuba to the UN General Assembly:
“Although the Government maintains that the authorities bore no responsibility for what was considered to have been an accident, the Special Rapporteur received testimony from some of the survivors indicating that Government launches from the port of Havana tried to stop the 13 de Marzo with pressurized water jets and then deliberately rammed it, causing it to sink. Non-governmental sources informed the Special Rapporteur that the number of persons who died was not 32, as the Government had stated, but at least 37 and that the families have for a year now been asking for an investigation to be initiated.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a report released on October 16, 1996 concluded that what transpired that early morning “was not an accident but rather a premeditated, intentional act” by agents of the Cuban government and held the Cuban State responsible for violating the right to life of all the people who were shipwrecked and perished as a result of the sinking of the tug "13 de Marzo", which events occurred seven miles off the Cuban coast on July 13, 1994.

Thirty one years later, the men responsible for this mass murder remain at large and protected by the Cuban state and the survivors and family members have faced persecution, harassment, death threats, and arbitrary detentions for speaking out.  

In 2009 one of these family members, Jorge Garcia, agreed to address Florida International University students at a panel organized by the Free Cuba Foundation on the fifteenth anniversary of the July 13, 1994 “13 de Marzo” tugboat massacre. Prior to the event we met and he sat down and he explained on camera what had transpired before, during and after the events of July 13, 1994.
 
Jorge Garcia is a man who has suffered a loss few can imagine.

 
In a January 1998 Nightline interview Jorge described how he learned the news. “When I asked my daughter, ‘What about Juan Mario?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ ‘And Joel?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ ‘And Ernesto?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ And then we knew that other members of the family were all lost, 14 in all.” His daughter, Maria Victoria Garcia, had survived but she lost her brother, Joel García Suárez age 24;  her husband, Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro age 25; and her son, Juan Mario Gutiérrez García age 10.
 
Jorge García was detained and interrogated on several occasions. His longest detention was for 15 days. His daughter, María Victoria García, was one of three of his family who survived the massacre but was still in danger:  "They tried on several occasions to kill my daughter, because she was the first to speak out and contradict the regime’s official narrative.”


Father and daughter had spoken on camera to Nightline from Havana, Cuba about the July 13, 1994 attack on the “13 de Marzo” tugboat.  A year later in 1999 they had to go into exile as political refugees fearing for their lives.

Thirty one years later the remains of the thirty seven victims have not been recovered and returned to their families.  Nor has the state provided any compensation to the survivors or the families of the dead.

On July 12, 2014 Jorge Garcia took part in a flotilla organized by the Democracy Movement ( Movimento Democracia ) that got within 12 miles of the coastline of Cuba and five miles from the spot that today still serves as a watery grave for fourteen family members including his son and grandson. This is as close as he was able get to pay his respects to his loved ones.

On Saturday, July 13, 2024 at 6:00pm at Florida International University with members of the Free Cuba Foundation, the Christian Liberation Movement, and other people of good will, I took part in a 13 minute moment of silence to protest 30 years of injustice and pray that a serious investigation finally be conducted, that the remains of the victims be returned to their families, and that the individuals responsible for this atrocity face justice in a fair trial with their rights respected in a court of law.
We also mourned the passing of  Jorge Garcia on June 3, 2024 and that of his daughter, María Victoria García, months earlier on January 2, 2024, without obtaining justice for their murdered family members.
 
In the meanwhile let us pray for the 37 murdered 31 years ago and the eleven children who never had a chance to grow up and live full lives in freedom and that they and their loved ones may one day have justice. May their memory be a blessing.

Helen Martínez Enríquez ( 5 months)
Cindy Rodríguez Fernández (age 2)
José Carlos Nicole Anaya (3)
Angel Rene Abreu Ruiz ( age 3)
Yisel Borges Alvarez (4) 
Caridad Leyva Tacoronte (age 5)
Juan Mario Gutiérrez García (age 10) 
Yousell E. Perez Tacoronte (age 11)
Yasser Perodin Almanza (age 11)
Eliecer Suarez Plasencia ( age 12)
Mayulis Mendez Tacoronte (age 17)
Miladys Sanabria Cabrera ( age 19 )
Odalys Muñoz García (age 21)
Yuliana Enríquez Carrazana (age 22)
Yaltamira Anaya Carrasco (age 22)
Lissett María Álvarez Guerra (age 24)
José Gregorio Balmaceda Castillo (24)
Joel García Suárez (age 24)
Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro (age 25)
María Miralis Fernández Rodríguez (age 27)
Pilar Almanza Romero (age 28)
Leonardo Notario Góngora ( age 28)
Jorge Arquímides Lebrijio Flores (age 28)   
Rigoberto Feut Gonzáles (age 31)
Omar Rodriguez Suarez (age 33)
Lázaro Enrique Borges Briel (age 34)
Julia Caridad Ruiz Blanco (age 35)
Martha Caridad Tacoronte Vega (age 36)
Eduardo Suárez Esquivel ( age 39)
Martha M.Carrasco Sanabria (age 45)  
Augusto Guillermo Guerra Martínez ( age 45)
Rosa María Alcalde Puig (age 47)    
Estrella Suárez Esquivel (age 48)
Reynaldo Joaquín Marrero (age 48)       
Manuel Cayol (age 50)           
Amado Gonzáles Raices (50)
Fidelio Ramel Prieto-Hernández (51)


 

Monday, June 16, 2025

The war on the West is undeclared, but is already being fought in Israel and Ukraine

"The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all. It may have ended in a traditional form as we know it from the 20th century, but new, far more sophisticated ways of controlling society are being born. It requires alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a detached view." - Václav Havel, "Freedom and Its Enemies" November 14, 2009.

On February 20, 2014 Russian troops invaded Ukraine, and seized Crimea. Eight years later, on February 24, 2022, Moscow began a new offensive to seize all of Ukraine, but unlike in Crimea, Russian troops were unable to achieve their new objective due to armed Ukrainian resistance.

The war continues to rage today, and Moscow has brought in troops and soldiers from around the world..

Nearly 20,000 Cubans have joined the Russian army since February 2022, with the complicity of the dictatorship in Havana, to fight for Putin in Ukraine. The Islamic regime in Iran began shipping drones to attack Ukraine in 2022, and first confirmed use of of these Iranian weapons was on September 13, 2022.  North Korean troops engaged in combat, on behalf of Moscow, in Ukraine on November 4, 2024. There are also unverified reports of Chinese troops and weapons being involved in the war backing Moscow in Ukraine.

Equally disturbing are the links between Cuba and Iran, and their decades long hostility against the United States.

In a transmittal letter accompanying the Defense Department’s May 1998 report,The Cuban Threat to U.S. National Security, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen wrote to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: ‘‘I remain concerned about Cuba’s potential to develop and produce biological agents, given its bio-technology infrastructure. In its public Executive Summary, the report stated,"Cuba’s current scientific facilities and expertise could support an offensive BW [bioweapons] program in at least the research and development stage.

Cuba’s biotechnology industry is one of the most advanced in emerging countries and would be capable of producing BW agents.’’In the October 2001 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, Jose de la Fuente,the former director of research and development at Cuba’s premier Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, wrote he was ‘‘profoundly disturbed’’ that Cuba was selling to Iran technology that could be used to produce biochemical weapons. He wrote, ‘‘No one believes that Iran is interested in these technologies for the purpose of protecting all the children in the Middle East from hepatitis, or treating their people with cheap streptokinase when they suffer sudden cardiac arrest . . .."

During a May 2001 visit to Tehran, Fidel Castro proclaimed,"Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, during a speech at the Imam Khomeini Mosque in Tehran in 2015, said Israel "will not see (the end) of these 25 years.”  This was just after the nuclear deal between Iran in which they agreed to cut its uranium stockpile. 

On October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded Israel killing 1,200, and taking hundreds of hostages. Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, began firing rockets into Israel.   

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba are creating an alternative world order hostile to Western democracies and the rule of law.  

There are two options. The first is to recognize the challenge, and develop intelligent strategies to counter it within a framework of Western alliances or secondly, ignore it, and pretend there is no threat and surrender to the new configuration of anti-democratic forces. The first is not without risk, but the latter guarantees servitude to tyranny.

However, with the first, there is an alternative to war. Cuban and Venezuelan freedom activists have made the case for it. Nazanin Boniadi, an Iranian-born human rights activist, actress, and 2023 Sydney Peace Laureate, made the same case in an OpEd published in Time today.

For decades, many of us pleaded with world leaders: reject both appeasement and war with the Islamic Republic. There was another path—to strangle the regime and empower the people. Few chose it. Too many asked the question,Do the people of Iran really want change?” as if they did not hear waves of Iranian protestors chant, “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei” on the streets. Perhaps now—as these cries echo from the rooftops of Tehran, even under the specter of war—they will finally listen.

Ronald Reagan in his 1964 speech "A Time for Choosingmade the case plainly between the options of resistance and appeasement. "There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace - and you can have it in the next second - surrender," said the future 40th President of the United States.