Remembering Basilio Guzmán Marrero on the one year anniversary of his passing

Basilio Guzmán Marrero April 15,1937- April 13, 2022

 

Today has special significance for Cuban exiles. One year ago today on April 13, 2022 Cuban exile, former prisoner of conscience and Plantado Basilio Guzmán Marrero passed away after a long illness. He was 84 years old.

Basilio Guzmán Marrero, who was jailed for 22 years, and tortured for most of that time in Cuban prisons, refused his whole life to cooperate with evil, and remained committed to a free Cuba. He fought against the dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista, and Fidel Castro.  

Canadian Professor Peter McKenna characterizes most Cuban exiles as being "anti-Cuba" because of their opposition to the Castro dictatorship. Professor McKenna's claim is at best Orwellian, and at worse perverse. 

The pro-Castro crowd repeats a regime narrative about their opponents that is often an exercise in projection. 

Basilio Guzmán Marrero's life is a refutation of the regime narrative. 

On July 11, 2021 despite poor health Basilio Guzman picketed the Cuban Embassy in DC.

 

Basilio was born on April 15, 1937 into a humble family in the countryside of Havana province near Campo Florido. When he was seven years old his family was evicted from their home.

He had fond childhood memories of spending time at Guanabo Beach.

Shortly after Fulgencio Batista overthrew Cuba's democracy on March 10, 1952, Basilio Guzmán joined the resistance against Batista while still a teenager, and joined the Directorio. He was part of the struggle for a free Cuba.

During these years, he also became a carpenter.

Soon after the revolutionary victory in 1959 he joined with Cubans who felt betrayed by Fidel Castro. They had fought for the restoration of democracy and the 1940 Constitution.

Instead they witnessed the Soviet model imposed in Cuba. Press censored and taken over by the new regime. Forced labor camps modeled after the gulags in the Soviet Union, political show trials and firing squads.

Basilio joined the Frente Nacional Democratico (National Democratic Front) , a resistance movement against Castro.

Basilio's movement was infiltrated, and he was identified, arrested, and in 1962 jailed. He would spend the next 22 years in a Cuban prison.

He was an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.

He was a Plantado, a group of prisoners that refused to take part in any re-education plans, or cooperate with the dictatorship in any way.

Basilio Guzman was freed and exiled in 1984, after 22 years in prison, and flown to the United States along with 25 other Cuban political prisoners with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who had petitioned for their release when he visited Cuba.

Basilio Guzman resuming his carpentry career in 1985 (Barbara E. Joe)

Pamela Doty, an Amnesty International volunteer who focused on Cuba, met Basilio when he arrived at the airport in Washington, DC in 1984 and they eventually married, and had a daughter together who grew up to be an art historian.

Over the next 33 years Basilio resumed his vocation in carpentry, and built a successful business in Northern Virginia, but he never forgot Cuba.

Basilio Guzman would take part in public protests against the Castro dictatorship, looked out for other political prisoners, and was a friend to the Center for a Free Cuba board and staff.

Basilio published an autobiography in 2020 “DESPUÉS DE LA NOCHE: Mis 22 años en el Presidio Político de Cuba” [ AFTER THE NIGHT: My 22 years in the Political Prisons of Cuba ] and gave an extensive interview about his life to Voces de Cuba in January 2022. 

Basilio was not "anti-Cuban" but he was profoundly anti-dictatorship and openly hostile to any manifestation of injustice, especially against the Cuban people. 

Frank Calzon, Sirley Ávila León, Basilio Guzmán, Raudel Bringas, & others carried out a vigil for "13 de marzo" tugboat victims.

Thankfully others in the Canadian academy challege the pro-Castro regime false narrative. Professor Yvon Grenier in his OpEd ”Since when are Cuban exiles anti-Cuba?” published in the Saltwire Network on April 15, 2022 sets the record straight.

In his April 5 opinion piece entitled “Sixty years of a misguided U.S. blockade of Cuba,” Prof. Peter McKenna characterizes many of the 1.3 million Cuban-Americans as being “anti-Cuba.” Do we ever say, by way of comparison, that members of Afghan or Guatemalan exile communities are “anti-Afghanistan” or “anti-Guatemala”? No government is its people — especially when the government is not chosen freely by its citizens.

Opposing the Castro dictatorship is thoroughly pro-Cuba. Bishop Agustín Román in a talk he gave on "The importance of the current internal dissident movement in Cuba" on December 16, 2006 argued love is the driving force to seek change in Cuba.

"If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it. If all of us who want the good of the nation, of the important internal dissident movement and the persevering of exile arm ourselves with these virtues, we will be effective. If we are committed to not let personalism, or the passions dilute them, we will have won. If we keep them and transmit them to all our people, we will have secured for Cuba a happy future."

Basilio would protest the new injustices occurring in Cuba after his release and exile in 1984, the massacre of 37 men, women, and children on July 13, 1994 by Castro agents for trying to leave Cuba on the 13 de Marzo tugboat, the killing of four Brothers to the Rescue members on February 24, 1996 shot down in international airspace, and the killing of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante on July 22, 2012. These are three of many examples.

On Feb 20, 2020 outside Cuban Embassy in Wash DC vigil for Orlando Zapata Tamayo & 4 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down martyrs. Basilio Guzmán Marrero held a poster of Mario De La Peña.

Today it is up to the living to continue Basilio's legacy of integrity, love of country, desire for justice and pursuit of freedom for the Cuban homeland.