A partial history of violence in Castro’s Cuba

Remarks prepared for "The Cuban Regime: An International Threat". This panel discussion was co-hosted by Cuba Decide, and the Human Rights Foundation on September 21, 2023 in New York City at The Knickerbocker Hotel.

Diaz-Canel spouts disinformation at the UN General Assembly on Sept 19th.

Miguel Diaz-Canel began his address to the UN General Assembly on September 19, 2023 by quoting Che Guevara in a speech he gave in “this very room almost 60 years ago” referencing the “exploited and the humiliated” of the South. He left out the Argentine guerilla’s more honest appraisal of what the Cuban Revolution was doing on December 11, 1964.

"We must say here something that is a well-known truth and that we have always asserted before the whole world: Executions? Yes, we have executed people; we are executing people and shall continue to execute people as long as it is necessary."

Young Catholics went before the firing squad, and shouted Long Live Christ King! as the volley of bullets were fired. 

 Diaz-Canel rejected Cuba being a State Sponsor of terrorism claiming there were no grounds to the charge. Ignoring the 1966 Tricontinental gathering in Havana bringing terrorists, and guerrillas from around the world to engage in systematic violent attacks against Western democracies over several decades.

Che Guevara at the UN General Assembly on Dec 11, 1964.

Or that Cuba was placed on the list in 1982 because Havana was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democracy.

M-19 members stormed Colombia’s Palace of Justice in November 1985. Eleven of Colombia’s 25 Supreme Court justices were among the hostages killed. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s current president, was an M-19 member in the 1980s. 

Firing squad in Cuba in 1959

 The Castro dictatorship, with decades of experience in terrorism, torture and genocide around the world, is expert in war, terrorism and the use of extrajudicial killings, and executions as methods of control to stay in power. Conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cubans run from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace.

Lorenzo Enrique Copello, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez

Last public executions by firing squad in Cuba took place twenty years ago. Three men, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, were among a group who hijacked a Cuban ferry with passengers on board on April 2, 2003 and tried to force it to the United States. The incident ended without bloodshed, after a standoff with Cuban security forces. Nevertheless, they were executed nine days later, following a summary trial, by firing squad.

However, killings by Cuban officials did not end. 

Extrajudicial killings: more than just a number 

Executions and Extrajudicial killings were common practice beginning in 1959, and continue to the present day. Well documented episodes such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo'' tugboat massacre that claimed the lives of 37 of men, women and children and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down that murdered four human rights defenders are known because of survivors.

Fifteen years after the "13 de Marzo" tugboat incident on July 13, 2009 human rights defender Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement, reflected on what had happened that day:

“Behind the Christ of Havana, about seven miles from the coast, "volunteers" of the Communist regime committed one of the most heinous crimes in the history of our city and of Cuba. 

In the morning, a group of seventy people in all, fled on a tugboat, led by the ship's own crew; none was kidnapped, or there against their will. They came out of the mouth of the Bay of Havana. 

They were pursued by other similar ships. When the runaway ship and its occupants stopped to surrender, the ships that had been chasing them started ramming to sink it. Meanwhile, on the deck, women with children in their arms begging for mercy, but the answer of their captors was to project high pressure water cannons against them.”

The Wasp spy network infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue; and provided information that led to the extrajudicial killings of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996 when Cuban MiGs searched for three civilian planes in international airspace. They fired two air to air missiles destroying two of the civilian planes, while the third fled north.

Like the murders of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, these two events were investigated and reports on the merits released in 1996, and 1999 respectively finding Cuban government agents responsible for these killings.

In 2006 when Fidel Castro became sick and turned power over to his brother Raul, a new and disturbing pattern emerged. In the past well known activists would be jailed for 20 to 30 years, but under Raul Castro they were killed.

On October 7, 2006, independent journalist and librarian Hector Riverón Gonzalez, 48, was found dead near a taxi at the taxi stand in the City of Las Tunas. His body was found dead under a tree, with his shoes clean and dry although it had rained all night, and handcuff marks. The journalist had been threatened several times by State Security.

Manuel Acosta Larena, an activist in the Democracy Movement, died under suspicious circumstances while in detention on June 24, 2007 and appears to have been a victim of police brutality. 

Beginning on February 23, 2010 higher profile figures such as prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo tortured and denied water while on hunger strike died. Oswaldo Payá gave a statement about Orlando Zapata the same day.

 "Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died this afternoon, February 23, 2010, after suffering many indignities, racist slights, beatings and abuse by prison guards and State Security. 

Zapata was killed slowly over many days and many months in every prison in which he was confined. Zapata was imprisoned for denouncing human rights violations and for daring to speak openly of the Varela Project in Havana's Central Park. 

He was not a terrorist, or conspirator, or used violence. Initially he was sentenced to three years in prison, but after successive provocations and maneuvers staged by his executioners, he was sentenced to more than thirty years in prison." 

On January 31, 2011 Mercedes Talavera López died after being run over by a car in the city of Cárdenas in Matanzas. This was followed by the death of human rights defender Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia on May 8, 2011 just three days after a brutal beating by regime agents. 

 The suspicious deaths of Laura Pollan on October 14, 2011 by what an independent doctor described as "purposeful medical neglect", and of prisoner of conscience Wilman Villar Mendoza on January 20, 2012 while on hunger strike are examples that demand a thorough investigation. 

Hansel Ernesto Hernández shot in the back by police in 2020.

On June 24, 2020 in Guanabacoa, Cuba 27 year old unarmed black Cuban, Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano was shot in the back and killed by the police. The official version claims that he was stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop when he was spotted by two Revolutionary National Police (PNR in Spanish). Upon seeing the police Hansel ran away and the officers pursued him nearly two kilometers. PNR claimed that during the pursuit Hansel threw rocks at the officers. Police fired two warning shots and a third in his back killing him. Hansel's body was quickly cremated.

Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros

Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship.

On July 12, 2021 Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back by second lieutenant Yoennis Pelegrín Hernández in the town of La Güinera on the outskirts of Havana. The same officer injured at least five other demonstrators in addition to killing Diubis on day two of nationwide protests in Cuba. The total number killed in the 11J protests remains unknown. Video emerged over Twitter on July 15th of the aftermath of Diubis being shot in the back.

Christian Díaz, age 24, disappeared after joining the 11J protests. Relatives on July 12 reported him missing to the PNR in Cárdenas. Police told his father that Christian was jailed in Matanzas. On Aug. 5, officials informed his family he’d drowned in the sea and was buried in a mass grave. His family is convinced he was beaten to death.

Cuban political prisoner Pablo Moya Delá died on August 26, 2021 at the Clinical Surgical Hospital in Santiago de Cuba. He was jailed on October 23, 2020 for protesting socioeconomic conditions and overall repression. Beaten, mistreated for months, weakened following a hunger strike and released on probation, after destroying his health, earlier in August 2021 near death.

The Cuban military dictatorship's well documented record of killing fleeing Cuban refugees, and this includes the October 28, 2022 purposeful ramming and sinking of a boat carrying Cuban refugees by the Cuban border patrol that killed eight, including a two year old girl, continues to the present day. 

The failure to hold Cuban officials strictly accountable raises the possibility of more mass killings in the future. This is why we need to call on the members of the UN General Assembly to expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council, and why we have called on the Biden Administration to apply Magnitsky Sanctions against Miguel Diaz-Canel for giving the order of combat on July 11, 2021 generating violence and killing of Cubans.

CUBA: The Lost Cause?

“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” - Mohandas Gandhi

Cubans in Havana in August of 1994 chant "Liberty" in an uprising known as the Maleconazo

Over the past six decades Cubans fought for a lost Cause. Their rewards were summary executions, decades suffering torture under inhumane prison conditions, or exile from the land of their birth. This sacrifice was made for the Cause. What is this Cause? It is the return of the republic and the rule of law to Cuba. Cubans fought and died for independence and a republican democracy throughout the second half of the 19th century. This struggle became primarily a political struggle throughout the first half of the 20th century culminating in the Constitution of 1940 and the election of the opposition figure Ramon Grau San Martin in 1944. On March 10, 1952 Fulgencio Batista plunged Cuba back into the anarchy and chaos of dictatorship and the lack of rule of law. This opened the way for violence to triumph and become institutionalized on January 1, 1959 by the Castroite terror. 

Cubans have suffered sixty seven years without democracy and sixty years under a totalitarian communist dictatorship ruled by the Castro brothers. Fidel Castro died two years ago, but his brother Raul Castro remains the head of the Cuban Communist Party, and firmly in control of the dictatorship. There is cause for despair, and the communists have also sought to educate generations of Cubans in the doctrine of despair with the knowledge that it breeds both inaction and acceptance. They have sought to rewrite Cuban history with numerous myths and lies to justify their continued rule.

Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas understood this and rejected the counsel of despair with his Christian faith. He also wrote with admiration how the Polish people, under even more dire circumstances, succeeded in not only rejecting despair, but embracing solidarity and obtaining their freedom. In this September 16, 2005 essay titled "From the battle of Poland to that of Cuba: The path of liberation in the face of totalitarianism," Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas gave a warning to those liberated from communism while at the same time calling to task the double standard of many in the world with regards to Cuba.

With Solidarity, the Polish people carried out a liberation movement because it awoke the hope that renewed the life of the peoples subjected by lies and fear.

Hopefully the youth will know how to tell the true history, hopefully they will not lose their memory, because conquered liberty is not preserved spontaneously; it can be lost if the people lose the faith and the values ​​that sustain liberty.

Cuba still suffers this regime based on fear and lies; not because our people have less value or less values, but because over Cuba has fallen, to summarize, a complete and very complex compilation of the conflicts of humanity and it has been expressed and nurtured the lie of which many of the victims, including even those who live in democracy; and many of those who suffered this same regime, but who perhaps think that our people do not deserve the solidarity that Solidarity had.

Totalitarian regimes are difficult to dislodge from power and they are brutal. The Soviet Union took 74 years to bring to an end in Russia. Communist China has remained in power since 1949 and today poises a threat to the international democratic order.

Oswaldo's warning that conquered liberty required keeping the faith and values to sustain it was proven true in Russia and Nicaragua.  The Soviet Union was peacefully dissolved on Christmas Day in 1991 and for eight years Russia had an imperfect democracy and was no longer totalitarian but wracked with many troubles. In 2000 a former KGB officer Vladimir Putin was democratically elected by a frustrated Russian populace and over the next decade and a half restored totalitarianism to Russia.  In Nicaragua, a corrupt political bargain, altered the constitution, and returned Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas to power in 2007. Over the next decade they would rig elections and dismantle democratic institutions rebuilding their dictatorship.

The Western world cheered the liberation of Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 declaring the end of history and triumph of democracy and free markets. They thought Cuba was no longer a threat and sought to legitimize and reach an accommodation with the dictatorship while loosening sanctions. This strengthened the Castro regime's ability to project power in the region to the detriment of the Venezuelan people. This triumphalism ignored the wise counsel of the past.

This caution can be summed up in the words of the great English poet T.S. Eliott: "If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph."

Over the past sixty seven years in Cuba there has been a resistance to dictatorship, with or without international backing. Cubans fought against both the dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement successfully lobbied Washington to impose an arms embargo on Batista on March 14, 1958, and the old dictator seeing that Washington was siding with the enemy  made the calculated decision to flee on December 31, 1958 and boarded a plane in the early morning hours of January 1, 1959 an fled Cuba.

Castro had to lie and tell Cubans that the 1959 revolution sought to restore the old democratic order. At the same time the Castro brothers proclaimed themselves Jeffersonian democrats, they erected, with the help of the Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi, the totalitarian apparatus that would imprison the Cuban people for six decades and counting.

On December 2, 1961 after consolidating totalitarian control,  Fidel Castro explained the reason for claiming that he was not a communist: "If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."  Communism and the communist party were deeply unpopular in Cuba because of its links to the prior dictatorship.

 

 Millions of Cubans fled the communist dictatorship over the decades that followed and live scattered around the world. An unknown number died fighting in the hills of the Escambray between 1960 and 1966. Hundreds of Soviet counter insurgency experts assisted their Cuban counterparts in wiping them out. Thousands of Cubans were executed by firing squad for resisting the regime, many shouting "Long live Christ King" before the volley of bullets took their lives. Following the collapse of the violent resistance, a non-violent opposition emerged in 1976 and proliferated across the island in the decades that followed.

Tens of thousands of political prisoners would spend decades behind bars. There are still political prisoners in Cuba today and opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas have been murdered by the secret police. Cubans are still killed for trying to leave the island. Cuban Americans were shot out of the sky by Cuban MiGs while searching for rafters in the Florida Straits.

This history demonstrates that Cubans want to be free and have not surrendered despite all the betrayals, lack of solidarity, and brutality of the communist dictatorship on the island over the past six decades.  This is why today they are saying "not one more year."  This is why earlier this year Oswaldo's book, "The night shall not be eternal" was released posthumously defying the dictatorship. This is why his successor Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement, has spent over two years in prison for criticizing the legacy of Fidel Castro and the communist dictatorship.

Free Eduardo Cardet: Prisoner of conscience marks two years (731 days) unjustly imprisoned in Cuba https://t.co/6odZ47fNjB pic.twitter.com/q4WjcbTznz

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) November 30, 2018

We have entire generations of Cubans who are ignorant of their own history. This has generated apathy and a sense of hopelessness and loss. This serves the interests of the Castro regime and runs counter to the interests of the democratic opposition. Robert A. Nisbit states it succinctly that, "a sense of the past is far more basic to the maintenance of freedom than hope for the future. ... Hence the relentless effort by totalitarian governments to destroy memory. And hence the ingenious techniques for abolishing the social allegiances within which individual memory is given strength and power of resistance." If the struggle of the opposition over the past six decades is to be continued and honored, then it must be taught in context along with the rest of Cuban history (which is the collective memory of a nation).

This also includes remembering that thousands of Cubans took to the streets of Havana on August 5, 1994 in protests chanting "Liberty", that Castro's secret police fired on these protesting Cubans, and this led to a rafter exodus of tens of thousands of Cubans.

Christian Liberation Movement activists turn in petitions in 2002

This also includes remembering that eight years later between 2002 and 2003 over 25,000 Cubans signed the Varela Project petition giving their names, home addresses and identity numbers demanding reforms that would bring Cuba's laws into line with international human rights standards.

The Castro regime responded to this legal initiative declaring the constitution unchangeable and locking up the organizers of the initiative in a March 2003 crackdown called the Black Spring. Ten years later on July 22, 2012, the leader of the initiative, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, was killed by the secret police along with a youth leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, Harold Cepero.

Cubans want to be free and continue to struggle for their freedom and have paid and continue to pay a high price in their pursuit of freedom. The free world should be in solidarity with them and not their oppressors.

Religious repression in Cuba: The half century crackdown on Christianity in Cuba

Dedicated to those whose final words before Castro's firing squads were "Long live Christ the King!"

Priests were taken at gun point and forced out of Cuba in 1961

The Cuban dictatorship has had a hostile relationship with religion since the beginning when it officially declared itself an atheist state and expelled scores of priests on September 17, 1961, cancelled Christmas in 1969 under the pretext to prevent work shortages for the 1970 ten million ton sugar harvest but continued the ban until 1997, and sent mobs to intimidate Cubans attending religious services. In the first years 90% of Cuba's Jewish population fled the dictatorship shrinking from 15,000 to 1,500 persons of the Jewish faith.

The Catholic Church in Cuba was attacked; many of its clergy and religious figures exiled or sent to work camps. Being a practicing Catholic would mean being blacklisted from certain professions such as teaching. Christmas was ended as a national holiday in 1970 and replaced with holidays celebrating the 1959 communist revolution. This means that the ability to separate the political from the personal and the religious has been undermined and atrophied under the dictatorship of the Castro brothers. It was not supposed to be this way.

The revolutionaries in Cuba came down from the hills in 1959 wearing rosaries, and the leadership used this image to reject the charge that they were communists. Fidel Castro claimed throughout the 1950s and in the early days of the revolution that their aim was to restore democracy, but the reality was that they had always planned to consolidate their rule and establish a communist regime.
 

The Catholic Church, like others in Cuba took them at their word, and initially supported the revolution against the dictator Fulgencio Batista but by 1960 it was clear that a new and worse dictatorship was taking shape. Show trials and arbitrary executions in 1959 that generated fear in the populace and the regime's takeover of student, labor and professional organizations, along with the placement of communists in key government and military positions, and the elimination of the free press. In August of 1960 the Church, in a pastoral letter, alerted Cubans to the evils that would come if the island turned towards Communism.

The Castro regime continued intensifying its anti-religious actions. In May of 1961 the regime confiscated private schools and most seminaries in an effort to eliminate religion. 

Arnaldo Socorro Sánchez

On September 10, 1961 a catholic youth, Arnaldo Socorro, age 20 , was shot in the back by a member of the communist militia in front of the Church of Our Lady of Charity of Cobre in Havana as he carried an image of the Virgin of Charity. But in order to fool public opinion at the time, the regime buried him with the honors of a communist militant.

On September 17, 1961, the Castro regime at gun point collected 131 priests, brothers and a bishop, Boza Masvidal, placing them on board the Spanish ship Covadonga and deported them from Cuba. Below is the list of names and religious orders.
 

Diocesan clergy
1. S.E.R. Mons. Eduardo Boza Masvidal
2. Mons. Dr. Trinidad Torrebaja Casanova
3. Mons. José Novo Vázquez
4. Mons. Genaro Suárez Muñiz
5. Mons. José Manuel Couce Euchaurren
6. Mons. Angel Valdés Valdés
7. Mons. Salvador Basulto Rodríguez
8. Mons. Víctor Garay Udibiarte
9. Mons. Vicente Jobaní Mas
10. P. Agustín A. Román Rodríguez
11. P. Romeo Rivas Sánchez
12. P. José Cabanas Vila
13. P. Manuel F. Colmena Jiménez
14. P. Francisco Hernández Diez
15. P. Nicanor Valdés y Alvarez de la Campa
16. P. Francisco Quintero Pérez
17. P. José Mocoroa Miranda
18. P. Francisco Oves Fernández
19. P. José Cortina Varona
20. P. Miguel Becerril Blazquez
21. P. Manuel Mendiola Roura
22. P. Orlando Fernández Villar
23. P. Pedro Oriol Miret
24. P. Angel Ribas Cánepa
25. P. Rafael Escala Manday
26. P. Cristóbal Novoa García
27. P. Carlos Comas López
28. P. Ramiro Ribas Pichel
29. P. Fabián Chelala Saravia
30. P. Rolando García Castañeda
31. P. José Lence González
32. P. Mérito González Artigas
33. P. Herculano N. Hernández Caballero
34. P. Carlos E. Madrigal Pentón
35. P. Francisco Parrón López
36. P. Sebastián Marquiegui Sarasqueta
37. P. Teodocio Ylleras Pérez
38. P. Elías Teodoro Olmos
39. P. Regino Alcíbar Guenaga
40. P. Pedro Wong
41. P. Arnaldo Bazán Ventura
42. P. Arnelio Blanco Blanco
43. P. Christián Baguer Chacón  

Capuchins
44. P. Celedonio Fernández del Blanco
45. P. Honorio Hurtado Reyero
46. P. Abraham Pablos Escanciano
47. Hno. Lorenzo Prieto Diez
 
Passionists
48. P. Angel Melitón Alonso Diez
49.P. Anastasio Martínez Aldea  

Jesuits
50. P. Ceferino Ruiz Rodríguez 
51. P. Francisco J. Arnáiz Zarandona
52. P. Félix Feliz Lozada
53. P. Fernando Nova Rodríguez
54. P. Federico Arbesú del Castillo
55. P. Fernando Arango Alvarez
56. P. Teodoro Bercedo García
57. P. Angel Olano Arias
58. P. Esteban Ribas Serna
59. P. Manuel López Rodríguez
60. P. Juan del Río Ratón
61. P. Silvio González Herrero
62. P. José Goberna Costas
63. P. Eutiquio Varona Calle
64. P. Rafael Garrido Vicente
65. P. José Rubinos Ramos
66. P. Juan Manuel Dorta Duque
67. P. Alberto Villaverde Alcalá Galiano
68. P. Francisco Tadeo Herrero
69. P. Severino Hidalgo Juárez
70. P. Francisco Bartolomé Chico
71. Hno. Luciano Cofréces Cea
72. Hno. Estanislao Peláez Nozal
73. Hno. Juan José Muñoz Arriceta
74. Hno. Ramón Pérez Martínez
75. Hno. Esteban Bedoya Gómez

Salesians
76. P. Rafael Mercader Armengol
77. P. José Miguel Hernández López
78. P. Jorge Du Breuil
79. P. Janos Dluztus Boge
80. P. Fernando Perdomo Perdomo
81. P. Nuncio Bordonaro Giulio

 Paules
82. P. Jacinto Ortiz de Zárate
83. P. Amador Méndez Alvarez
84. P. Maximino Bea-Murguía Ochoa
85. P. Demetrio Zúñiga Abadía
86. P. Florentino Villanueva López

Piarists
87. P. Antonio M. Entralgo de la Vallina
88. P. Raúl Arnulfo Palma
89. P. Francisco Botey Vallés

Sacramentines
90. P. Segundo Urquía
91.P. Martin Gorostidi Altuna  

Franciscans
92. P. Guillermo Basterrechea Embeitia
93. P. José María Biain Urrutia
94. P. Basilio Guerra Tellería
95. P. Timoteo Urrutia Garategui
96. P. José María Biain Anduaga
97. P. Eduardo Arsuaga y Altuna
98. P. Francisco Hernández Rodríguez
99. P. Victorio Beain Biain
100.P. Jesús Auzmendi Barandiarán
101.P. Julián Zubizarreta Garay
102.P. Tomás Olazabal Galarraga
103.P. José Miguel Aldaz Rabace
104.P. José Luis Sarragoitia Lazpica
105.P. Francisco García Muiño
106.P. José L. Aguirebeña Leceta
107.P. Felipe Izaguirre Odriozola
108.Hno. Apolinar Echevarría Oyarzabal
109.Hno. José Cobo Fernández
110.Hno. Bautista Maiza Artola
111.Hno. Nicolás Larrañaga Garchonea
112.Hno. Pedro Galdeano García

Carmelites
113.P. Feliciano Guerra Bartolomé
114.P. José Sastre Roncero
115.Hno. Hipólito Sutil Calderón
116.Hno. Francisco Hernández de Miguel
117.Hno. Marcelino Martínez Maestre

Missionaries of Quebec 
118.P. Ivan Labelle Lagarde
119.P. Guy Rivard Chabot
120.P. Harry Smith Dupuis
121.P. Louis Gerard Campagna
122.P. Jacques de Cherrete
123.P. Claude Laquerre
124.P. Horace Gauvin

Brothers of Charity
125.Hno. Luc Nolet
126.Hno.. Roland René

 Dominicans
127.P. Eugenio Pérez Hermida
128.Hno. Patricio Blanco Jiménez
129.Hno. Feliciano del Val Torrijo
 
Saint John of God
130.Hno. Eugenio Yoldi Vidal
 
De La Salle
131.Hno. Augusto Charbonnier Vernet

The Church in Cuba suffered greatly over the 59 years of communism and at key moments has spoken out for the victims of the regime.  The United States Department 2003 International Religious Freedom Report described the next big action by the Castro regime against religion in the 1960s following the forced expulsion of these religious leaders:

From 1965-67 the Government forced many priests, pastors, and others "who made religion a way of life" into forced labor camps called Military Units to Aid Production (UMAPS), alongside homosexuals, vagrants, and others considered by the regime to be "social scum." The UMAP system ended in 1967. However, over the following 30 years, the Government and the Communist Party systematically discriminated against and marginalized persons who openly professed their faith by excluding them from certain jobs (such as teaching). Although the Government abandoned its official atheism in the early 1990s, most churches had been weakened seriously, and active participation in religious services fell drastically.

Sociology professor Juan Clark outlined the mechanisms used by the Castro regime to degrade and destroy religious life in Cuba in his 1998 report on Religious Repression in Cuba.

"The 1960s also saw the dawn of a more subtle, but very effective, indirect repression. This less visible form of repression used education and the work place as its main vehicles. It begun as early as grammar school with simple questions posed to schoolchildren practicing their faith, in an attempt to ridicule them in front of their classmates. Students have a Cumulative Academic Record that supervises "ideological integration" and the religious involvement of students and their parents. This involvement would constitute a "demerit" on their record and would be used to deny access to the university or to careers with social impact to those who had that blotch in their record. This indirect repression followed Castro's religious policy of "making apostates not martyrs," and thus began the slow process of gradually attempting to choke off the religious community."

Priests who remained behind and spoke truth to power sometimes paid a terrible price. The case of Father Miguel Angel Loredo is one example.

Father Miguel Angel Loredo (1998)

Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) published the following brief account of the life of Father Miguel Angel Loredo, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1966, but was released after ten years in 1976 and exiled in 1984:

Fr. Loredo was born in Havana in 1938. When Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959, young Miguel Angel had already decided to become a priest. He traveled to Spain where he was ordained on July 19, 1964.

One month later he returned to Cuba, where the tense relations between the Church and new Communist government resulted in the expulsion of 131 priests in 1961.

Fr. Loredo was sent to the Church of St. Francis in Havana. He was also pastor in the city of Guanabacoa. However, his fiery sermons against atheism and Communism enraged Cuban officials who accused him of being a spy for the CIA, hiding weapons and participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. He was arrested in 1966.

Fr. Loredo always maintained his innocence, but after a fraudulent trial he was sentenced to 15 years. He spent time in numerous prisons, where he underwent forced labor and beatings for not accepting the “re-education” that the government tried to force upon him.

In a letter dated June 11, 1968, Fr. Loredo told Msgr. Cesar Sacchi, at the time the representative of the Apostolic Nunciature in Havana, that he felt “proud to participate in this struggle with thousands of men of great courage and patriotism like those in this Cuban prison. … I also want to tell you that I am sorry to see how the free West has forgotten us, how everyone is silent and indifferent, except for the complaints of helpless loved ones.”

On February 2, 1976, he was released and ordered not to speak in public or give interviews to the press. However, the government would not accept his appointment as professor of theology at the Seminary of Sts. Charles and Ambrose in Havana, and he was exiled to Rome in 1984.

In 1987 he moved to Puerto Rico, where he continued his ministry, with Cuba and the struggle for human rights always present in his work. In 1991 he was sent to the Church of St. Francis in New York.

In 1998, Fr. Loredo was chosen to be part of a group of priests who would travel to Cuba for Pope John Paul II’s visit. However, the Cuban government refused to allow him to enter the country.

Abel Nieves Morales, one of many prisoners who shared a cell with the priest, said Fr. Loredo “was a very courageous man, firm in his principles and in his faith, and who never ceased to raise his voice to denounce the horrors … in the prisons of Cuba.”

Supposedly things changed for the better in 1992 with the abandonment of the goals of an atheist state for a secular one and with Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba in 1998 which led to the restoration of Christmas after a nearly 30-year absence, but despite cosmetic improvements new laws were passed that increased repression against religious practitioners and pastors are being sent to prison for their faith today.

On August 16, 2016 Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reported that the pace of church demolitions in Cuba was increasing. According to CSW in their 2016 report on freedom of belief or religion there were 1,606 separate violations between January and July 2016.  This worsening situation compounded the explosive growth of repression the previous year. In 2015 there was a tenfold increase in religious repression compared to 2014 with 2,300 separate violations recorded in 2015 compared to 220 in 2014.

Rev Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso arrested and taken away March 20, 2016

 Carey Lodge, a journalist for Christian Today reported on March 21, 2016 that a day earlier:

"Rev Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso's home and church were surrounded by police and state security agents early in the morning on March 20, he told Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) ahead of his arrest.  The pastor was then arrested and taken away by officials, while his wife, Yoaxis Marcheco Suarez, was placed under house arrest. She and the couple's two young daughters have been locked inside their home, in Taguayabon, Villa Clara Province, and their phone connection has been cut.
Before being cut off, Marcheco Suarez was able to speak to CSW over the phone. Though the family and church have not been allowed to speak to Barroso directly, she said she'd been told that her husband had been taken to the city of Santa Clara, and was being refused food or drink.

She added that the pastor had already been ill over the weekend, after a stranger pricked him with a pin while he was on public transport last week."

 The March 20, 2016 arrest just hours before the start of President Obama's official visit to Cuba speaks volumes of the nature of the so-called normalized relations between the Obama administration and the Castro regime as does the exponential increase in religious repression since the December 17, 2014 announcement that relations would be normalized. The shift in tone and policy with a new Administration coincided with the threats of demolition against the 2,000 churches made in 2015 and 2016 being rescinded in 2017. However there continued to be 325 new Freedom of Religious Belief violations in 2017. Political prisoners in Cuba today are denied visits from a priest and access to a Bible. 

Over the past 59 years there have been Christian martyrs in Cuba. I will close by highlighting four. Two from 1961 and two from 2012.

Virgilio Campanería Angel, who was born on August 5, 1938, studied at Belén and Baldor, and graduating high school he started studying Law and Journalism at the University of La Salle and the University of Havana. He had aspired to be a member of the University Catholic Association [Agrupacion Católica Universitaria].  Another was Alberto Tapia Ruano, who was born on August 7, 1937, attended high school at La Salle and graduated in 1955. He was a member of the University Catholic Association [Agrupacion Católica Universitaria].

Virgilio Campanería Angel, founded the movement "Salvar a Cuba" [To Save Cuba]. Alberto Tapia Ruano joined To Save Cuba and both later joined the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil [Revolutionary Student Directorate] in an effort to bring an end to the emerging communist tyranny in Cuba.

Virgilio's brother, Néstor Campanería Angel, in an online essay, tells what happened.  Virgilio was arrested along with Tomas Fernandez Travieso and Alberto Tapia Ruano on March 27, 1961. The Cuban secret police [G2] found them with weapons. 

In the span of 23 days they are subjected to a political show trial and condemned to death along with six others.  Tomas Fernandez Travieso, who was under age, had his death sentence commuted to 30 years in prison.  In the early morning of April 18, 1961, while the Bay of Pigs invasion was underway, Virgilio, and Alberto were executed along with six others. Tomas Fernandez Travieso survived and is a living witness of how these young men faced death. Their last words were "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" [Long Live Christ King!] as they faced the volley from the firing squad. 

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante

 Harold Cepero Escalante was born in the town of Chambas, then in the province of Ciego de Ávila ( but had been Camaguey until 1977), on January 29, 1980. He was drawn to his local Catholic Church in Chambas while in High School. In 1998 at age 18 he moved to Cuba's third largest city, Camaguey, and began his studies at the University of Camaguey. He also began, along with other university students, to take part in informal conversations with Father Alberto Reyes Pías.

In 2002 Harold together with other university students signed the Varela Project. The Varela Project, named after the 19th century Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela who resisted Spanish colonialism, was a citizen initiative that gathered signatures to hold a referendum to change existing laws in order to reform the Cuban legal system to bring it in line with international human rights standards. The Christian Liberation Movement (CLM) had followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign.

 On May 10, 2002, after CLM turned in 11,020 signatures exceeding the 10,000 required by the regime,  the dictatorship's response to the nonviolent citizen's initiative was to first coerce Cubans into signing another petition declaring the Constitution unchangeable.

Harold knew that this regime pushed petition drive was a direct reaction to the Varela Project and refused to sign it. He also began to explain this among students at the university in the dormitories and hallways without fear. This is when the threats of expulsion from the university began.
The dictatorship's "petition" quickly passed through the rubber stamp legislature without debating the Varela Project, which according to the Cuban law drafted by the regime meant that it should have been debated by the National Assembly.

On November 13, 2002 State Security organized a mob to judge and expel Harold Cepero and Yoan Columbié, another youth who signed the Varela Project. They were screamed at, insulted, threatened and finally expelled.
 
This is the letter that Harold wrote in protest following his expulsion from the University.

 With all due respect and the sincerity that they deserve, I think the arguments abound for our defense. Apparently the motive for this act, or I do not know how to call it, is our bad attitude towards the politics that prevail in our country today. The other, our approval of the Varela Project.I will start by saying that said project is a project of law signed by over eleven thousand Cubans (electors) and gathers up the fundamental needs of our people. I do not know why they are attempting (you who are now in a privileged situation with respect to us and those who think like us) to repress something that is not motivated by, nor has its origin in the hatred of the people, but rather in  openness, mutual respect, and dialogue.

They from their condition as: students, professors, PCC, UJC, etc., are breaking the law of the Republic. They are trying to trample on our dignity, that is of equal worth to theirs, a recognition and legal status to develop fully. Therefore, I think it totally unfair what they are attempting to do. This is a violation of international law, the Constitution and above all against our people.

The Varela Project is totally legal and recognized publicly by Fidel Castro. Also, if we support it because we believe it is just and so I would like them to consider it. The things we ask for do not exclude anyone, we simply want a space (which belongs to us) in the social life of Cuba.

Expelling us is not the solution neither for them or for us, it would be better to ask yourself why are there young people who are filled with concern and worry for the welfare of the country. It would be good that they explain to the students and to the people what the Varela Project is, what does it ask, and so give everyone the right to think and choose.

Today we are kicked out of the university for this. Tomorrow it could be one of you for just being different, for permitting yourself to think.

They are wanting to perpetuate something that it is not even known if it is fair, and in this manner they are denying the progress of a society that wants something new, something that really guarantees a dignified place for every Cuban. They are pressuring people or preventing them from expressing their true feelings, they are cultivating fear in the nation.

Under the pretext of defending freedom they are attacking it. Martí would say it like this: "The knife that is stabbed in the name of freedom is plunged into the chest of freedom". They should think if at the bottom of this attitude there is a real respect for freedom, because to say freedom, to be free, is not to snatch the freedom of others. I therefore ask that before they expel us ask themselves how long can they keep silent the mourning and the reality of Cuba, and remind them that the damage they can do to us is damage that they do to themselves. And more: it is a direct threat to every Cuban.

Those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves. 

Scores of Varela Project activists were arrested less than a year later in a crackdown that started on March 18, 2003 and became known as the Cuban Black Spring. Within days 75 human rights defenders, independent journalists, and Varela Project organizers were sentenced to long prison terms and recognized as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. Other Varela Project petitioners were threatened with the death penalty.  

In 2003 Harold entered  the Seminary of the City of Camaguey and spent the next two years there. In 2005 he is transferred to the San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary in Havana. In 2009 Harold leaves the seminary and joins the Christian Liberation Movement and begins to coordinate its youth group and became a member of the Coordinating Council of the CLM.  He organized workshops on leadership training.

Three years later on July 22, 2012 Harold Cepero Escalante was killed along with Oswaldo Payá, the founder of the Christian Liberation Movement. 

On February 23, 2016 at the 8th edition of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Rosa María Payá  addressed what happened to her dad Oswaldo Payá and friend Harold Cepero, on July 22, 2012: 

"On July 22, 2012, my father was extrajudicially  executed by agents of the political police, together with my dear friend Harold Cepero, staging a car crash that never took place, in a location of Cuba that remains to be  determined. Not satisfied with this double crime, my family was threatened with death..."In the summer of 2015 a special report was released by Human Rights Foundation, where all  evidences indicate that this was a crime against humanity, with the involvement of Cuban  authorities.  We’ll never give up on justice, because there can be no reconciliation without the recognition  of the whole truth. A nation that pretends to forget the violence against its innocent people  will remain a captive nation. And it will be a nation condemned to suffer such violence over  and over again."

In 2013 Carl Gershman of the National Endowment for the Democracy when posthumously awarding the 2013 Democracy Award addressed the character of Harold Cepero Escalante:

"A friend of Harold’s recalls that on an organizing trip for his Movement, the two of them were once at a bus station when a hungry man asked for money to buy food. Although they themselves had very little, Harold not only gave him his own spending money but also brought the man to the table to sit and eat with them. Such was his compassion and generosity of spirit."

Harold Cepero understood the dangers of advocating for freedom in Cuba under the Castro regime. In 2012, shortly before his death he explained the cost of resistance:"Christians and non-Christians who have the courage and the freedom to consider the peaceful political option for their lives, know they are exposing themselves to slightly less than absolute solitude, to work exclusion, to persecution, to prison or death."