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.

Castro regime officials jump on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon, but their crimes against Black Cubans may boomerang

 Black Lives Matter Everywhere


Currently jailed and victims of beatings by prison officials.

Today in Cuba, Black Cuban men and women are being brutalized for their independence of thought, and refusal to obey the dictates of a white minority government that has ruled the island for 61 years.
Please let others know of their plight and raise your voice in solidarity with them.

Prisoner of Conscience: Silverio Portal Contreras

Silverio Portal Contreras is an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, a former activist with the Ladies in White, who is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder." Amnesty provided the following description of his plight.

"According to a court document, Silverio was arrested on the 20 June 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a tourist area. The document further describes the accused as having “bad social and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in pro-government activities. According to Silverio’s wife, before his arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of  dilapidated buildings in Havana."  

Silverio was the victim of a sever beating in mid-May 2020 that has cost him his sight in one eye, according to a report from his wife. 

Political prisoner in Cuba today: Aymara Nieto Muñoz

Aymara Nieto Muñoz is a black woman, a dissident, and today a political prisoner. She was beaten up by prison officials two days ago. Aymara's family fears for her life, and they have every reason to be concerned. She is also being denied contact with her family.

Black Cubans killed by Castro regime agents
The stakes are life and death, and other Black Cubans did not survive the encounter with the Castro regime. Here is a very partial listing of some recent high profile cases. Sadly, there are many more that stretch back over the decades to 1959.

 It was ten years ago at 3:00pm on February 23, 2010 that it was announced that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died. This humble bricklayer who became a human rights defender, spent nearly seven years being mistreated and tortured by the Castro regime.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was arbitrarily detained by the secret police on December 6, 2002 together with other activists, including Dr. Biscet, to stop them participating in a human rights workshop at the home of human rights defender Raúl Arencibia Fajardo. Three months later on March 8, 2003 Orlando was released.

Orlando Zapata photographed with prominent dissidents

Twelve days later on March 20, 2003 Orlando Zapata was re-arrested in the midst of the Black Cuban Spring when over 75 activists and independent journalists were jailed during a crackdown and sentenced to long prison terms. He had been taken part in a fast and vigil demanding the freedom of Dr. Biscet, who had remained jailed since the December 6, 2002 arrest.

Amnesty International reported that on October 20, 2003 Orlando was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations. Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out that was published in April of 2004:

"My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*

 This did not silence him. When prison officials chose to attack his human dignity, and engaged in acts of physical and psychological torture, Orlando Zapata would respond with nonviolent defiance. He carried out hunger strikes within the prisons he was transferred to. The regime's response to his nonviolent defiance was to pile on prison years to his sentence. Between May 2004 and December 2009 they carried out nine trials without due process guarantees for a total sentence of 25 years and six months.

Reina Luisa Tamayo, with her son's blood stained shirt

What we know is a partial accounting of what he suffered. On July 26, 2008 in the Holguin Provincial Prison he was brutally beaten, on the orders of the prison director, Major Orelvis Miraldea, and Orlando's body was covered in bruises, but especially suffered blows to the head that caused a intracranial hematoma in the lower part of his brain, and a year later he needed to be operated on for this brain injury. 

Despite this, because of his refusal to be re-educated and silenced, the beatings continued on August 29, 2009, September 24, 2009, and a more severe beating on November 26, 2009.

On December 3, 2009 he is transferred to Kilo 8 in Camaguey, a maximum security prison. Upon his arrival the food that his mother had turned into him the day before was confiscated, and they wanted to force him to wear the uniform  of a common prisoner. Orlando refused and begins his last hunger strike.

Major Filiberto Hernandez Luis, director of Kilo 8 prison, retaliates placing him in isolation without clothes and sleeping on the floor. Over 18 days they deny him water in an effort force him to end his hunger strike, and break his spirit.  On January 3rd and again on January 6th he is taken to Amalia Simoni Hospital  and undergoes intravenous rehydration and is returned to his isolation cell.

On January 21, 2010 he is transferred to the Amalia Simoni Hospital prison ward where he is kept under strong air conditioning unit with a thin blanket that causes him to develop pneumonia, aggravating his health situation. At the same time on several occasions members of the political police film Orlando Zapata in his hospital bed.

On February 16, 2010 he is transferred to Havana in a military operation, and his mother is not allowed to accompany him in the ambulance. This is the last time that she sees her sons conscious.

On February 20, 2010 after strong protests by his mother to the secret police, she is able to see Orlando at the Combinado del Este prison ward, but he unconscious and intubated.

On February 22, 2010 she is called to a late night meeting with doctors, where she is filmed without her knowledge. There she is told for the first and only time that her son is alive thanks to an artificial  respirator.  ( However, in a later article in the official newspaper Granma it is reported that he had been on a respirator for days.)

On February 23, 2010 around mid-day, the secret police and military doctors in form Reina Luisa Tamayo, Orlando's mother, that he is being transferred to Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in a critical state. He dies three hours later at 3:00pm according to the information by the political police to his mother.

Castro regime book “The Dissidents” mentioned OZT as an opponent.

Following his death the Castro regime sought to destroy Orlando's reputation and went as far as to deny that he had been a dissident. This campaign failed, because even the dictatorship's own propaganda had recognized his activism, published a picture of him with other activists and attacked him years earlier.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Before and after Castro's imprisonment

They killed his body, but they did not obtain his obedience, and his spirit of defiance lives on.

However, one need not be a black political opponent to be killed.

Angel Izquierdo Medina, a 14-year old child was shot and killed by Amado Interian, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from State Security, in Mantilla, Cuba in 2011 because he stole some mamoncillos. When 400 friends, family members and neighbors decided to attend the dead child's wake they were subjected to Cuban state security agents laying siege to the dead child's wake.

Mother, Raiza Medina, and Ismael Suarez Herc, cousin of the victim

 Raiza Medina demanded justice for her son Ángel Izquierdo Medina, who was killed on July 15, 2011. Pictured with Ángel's cousin, Ismael Suarez Herc, 17, who was an eyewitness to the crime.

The reaction by the dictatorship's security forces no longer made this a simple indictment of one retired state security agent but of an unjust system with a total disregard for human life. 

14 year old shot and killed in Cuba for stealing Mamoncillos in 2011

Three Black Cubans were shot by firing squad following a speedy "trial" in 2003 for trying to flee Cuba. On April 2, 2003 eleven Cubans hijacked a ferry traveling to Regla from Havana with 40 people on board with the intention of traveling to the United States of America but ran out of fuel 28 miles off the Cuban coast and were towed back to the island.  

Despite verbal threats made against the safety of the passengers to maintain control of the vessel, the situation, according to the authorities, ended without violence and that “all of those who had been on board were rescued and saved without so much as a shot or a scratch.”

The hijackers were tried by the "Court for Crimes against State Security of the People’s Court of Havana. The Court had applied the specially expedited summary proceeding contemplated in Articles 479 and 480 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The petitioners add that the trials took place from April 5 to 8, 2003." At the "end of the expedited summary trial, the alleged victims were sentenced to death for violating the 'Cuban Law against Acts of Terrorism,' of December 2001. 

Lorenzo Enrique Copello, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez

Although the legally defined offenses committed by the hijackers, the law prescribes imprisonment, not the death penalty.  The three Black Cubans sentenced to death, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, appealed against their death sentences to the Supreme People’s Court. The Court ratified the sentences in less than a day. In keeping with current laws in Cuba, these death sentences were submitted for consideration by the Council of State, which proceeded to ratify them, condemning them to death.

In the early morning of April 11, 2003, following the decision handed down by the Council of State, the sentences were carried out and Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac were executed by firing squad. Nine days after the hijacking and three days after the trial.

How were family members informed of their loved ones' summary executions? "Ramona Copello, Mother of Lorenzo Enrique Copello interviewed by the Associated Press:

 "They came to my home at 6 in the morning and knocked on the door and told me to go to the cemetery at 10:00. He was already dead and buried. Go to the cemetery at 10 (am) so we can tell you where your relative is buried." 

"That was it. He was already buried, he was covered. I asked and implored and even kneeled so they would let me see his face. Since they are liars, I couldn't believe it was him. I uncovered the crypt. I uncovered it because I wanted to see if it was really him, but I couldn't see his face because the security and police arrived and so I didn't get to see his face. I'm not sure if it's my son or a dog buried there."

Lorenzo Enrique Copello

Lorenzo Enrique Copello had a daughter, Yanisleydis Copello, she was 11 when her dad was killed, but she is now a dissident and demands justice for her father:

They executed her dad by firing squad when she was 11.

 "I was only 11 years old when my father was shot, because he tried to leave Cuba in a boat, at all times we were deceived, I say we, because my dad was also deceived, my father was a worker at the Reina Polyclinic, he had no criminal record." 

"At that time they told us that they guaranteed his life, however he was shot at dawn on April 11, 2003. After being buried they informed the relatives; I suffered a trauma from which I never recovered, with medical treatment and when I became an adult I demanded JUSTICE for my father's murderers."  

  
The executions created a firestorm of international criticism in quarters that usually backed Castro's  regime. The dictatorship demanded tacit support in a statement titled "LETTER OF CUBAN INTELLECTUALS AGAINST THE ATTACKS TO THE REVOLUTION" signed by prominent Cuban figures asking their usual allies on the Left criticizing the summary executions  of these three young black men to be silent. The list of signers are a who's who of Cuban arts and culture: Alicia Alonso, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Miguel Barnet, Julio García Espinosa, Leo Brouwer, Fina García Marruz, Abelardo Estorino, Harold Gramatges, Roberto Fabelo, Alfredo Guevara, Pablo Armando Fernández, Eusebio Leal, Octavio Cortázar, José Loyola, Carlos Martí, Raquel Revuelta, Nancy Morejón, Silvio Rodríguez, Senel Paz, Humberto Solás, Amaury Pérez, Marta Valdés, Graziella Pogolotti, Chucho Valdés, César Portillo de la Luz, Cintio Vitier, and Omara Portuondo. 

Some of them, like Cuban singer and dancer Omara Portuondo, and Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Chucho Valdés were Black Cubans themselves, but had to sign off on three young black men, who had not physically harmed anyone, being tried and executed by firing squad in the space of nine days for reasons of national security, despite it not being punishment that should have been applied by the laws on the books.

The question of anti-black racism was raised because of the executions. “By executing [three young black Cubans], Castro was sending a clear message to the Afro-Cuban population” that dissent will not be tolerated, observed Dr. Jaime Suchlicki, director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami, in a report on Cuban racism in June of 2003. 


Systemic racism under the Castro regime documented, despite dictatorship's denials

The New York Times on January 25, 2020 published an opinion piece by French journalist and essayist Jean François Fogel that reports that Cuba under the Castro dictatorship is "a segregated society: 70 percent of black and mixed-race Cubans said they didn’t have access to the internet, compared with 25 percent of white Cubans. The racial wealth gap was also vast: While 50 percent of white Cubans had a banking account, only 11 percent of black Cubans said they had one. Moreover, white Cubans received 78 percent of remittances to Cuba, and they controlled 98 percent of private companies."

The Cuban government has denied there is a problem before the United Nations in what was supposed to have been an examination on how it was combating racism in Cuba. This should not be surprising when one considers that the inner leadership circle is uniformly white, and outer circles have black representation well below what is found in the general population.

Image taken from the Cuban Studies Institute.

On August 16, 2018 the Castro regime "categorically denied the existence of racial discrimination in Cuba to the group of independent experts of the United Nations (UN) that form the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) during the review of Cuba under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination," reported the non-governmental organization Race and Equality.

The purpose of the review was for the Castro regime to present information on how it had implemented action plans to combat racial discrimination in Cuba.

Juan Antonio Madrazo barred by Castro regime from talking about racism in Cuba

Voices from the island with a different point of view, that could have attended the gathering, were barred by the dictatorship from traveling. Juan Antonio Madrazo, Coordinator of the Citizen’s Committee for Racial Integration (Comité Ciudadano por la Integración Racial), was prevented from leaving Cuba to participate in the review, and Roberto Mesa, Coordinator of the Black Brotherhood (Cofradia de la Negritud) was arbitrarily detained a few days before he was scheduled to travel.

Roberto Mesa blocked by Castro regime from testifying on racism in Cuba.

In 2015 when a group of black Cuban human rights defenders were protesting for human rights that was video recorded, a woman was shouting about them in racist terms:"They’re a bunch of blacks who had no rights before and now want everything handed to them!"

Dissatisfaction by Black Cubans with the Castro regime became self-evident in 1980 when about half of the Mariel Exodus was made up of Cubans of African descent.

Cuba has a complicated history with regards to race relations that involves centuries of brutal slavery, and a plantation system centered around sugar and tobacco production. While at the same time long wars of independence from Spain that brought together slave owners and slaves in wars of liberation that changed relations, but following independence led to profound tensions in society that in the early days of the Republic led to blood shed, but in later years forged a new national identity.

Despite this history Castro regime officials try to jump on Black Lives Matter bandwagon

Castro regime officials, Comandante Ramiro Valdes Menendez and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez are both playing a dangerous game highlighting the problems of racism in the United States.  

Bruno Rodriguez tweeted a 44 second excerpt of the video of the killing of George Floyd, and wrote: "George Floyd did not "pass away". He was brutally murdered. Unfortunately it's a story that African Americans know. He was unarmed. He shouted "I can't breath", but it was not enough to prevent an injustice. The color of the skin should not define us. #BlackLivesMatter"


 Ramiro Valdes Menendez  retweeted the Cuban Foreign Minister adding the observation: "That is the democracy and human rights that the empire defends: The oppression of the powerful, the hatred between the races. The most basic human right, life, is trampled on in the United States and its president remains silent in the face of such injustice."

They are inviting an examination of their own record, which has its own horrors, but highlighting what is happening in the United States in official Cuban media may boomerang as Black Cubans reflect on their own plight, and take matters into their own hands.

On Friday, June 5, 2020 news broke that a police station may have been assaulted and two policemen killed and a third seriously injured by assailants that had grievances with the police over poor treatment when making a complaint and harassment. We are still waiting to get additional confirmation.