Ernesto "Che" Guevara born on this day in 1928. Nothing to celebrate.

 A mass murdering racist, who dined with Mao as millions died of hunger is not someone to celebrate.

"All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." - Matthew 26, 26:52

Some wish to celebrate Ernesto Guevara's birthday today. If he and his comrades had their way the world would have been subjected to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, and they were bitterly disappointed that it did not happen.

Thankfully, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the Castro regime protested it and was unhappy with their Soviet allies not launching their nuclear missiles. 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's essay "Tactics and strategy of the Latin American Revolution (October - November 1962)" was posthumously published by the official publication Verde Olivo on October 9, 1968, and even at this date was not only Guevara's view in 1962 but the official view in 1968: 

"Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice."

In the same essay, the dead Argentine served as a mouthpiece for Fidel Castro declaring: "We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." Castro and Che were so outraged that the regime reached out to Nazis to purchase arms and train the regime's security services.

Castro and Che were not alone in their criticism. Mao Zedong also criticized Khrushchev for backing down in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and this was the last straw in a series of slights between the two communist powers that set the stage for the Sino-Soviet split. 

However Castro eventually backed off and returned to the Soviet camp whereas Che Guevara embraced the Maoists. 

This should not have been a surprise.

Mao Zedong had already been in power in China for a decade when the Castro regime took power in Cuba in 1959.  In September 1960 Havana diplomatically recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Between 1960 and 1964 the two communist dictatorships would collaborate closely together.

Mao's regime in 1958 embarked on the Great Leap Forward, a campaign to reorganize the Chinese populace to improve its agricultural and industrial production along communist ideological lines. The campaign was a disaster that led to mass famine and a death toll of at least 45 million.

In the midst of the famine Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. As millions starved in China the two revolutionaries dined through several courses of traditional Chinese food.

Che and Mao dine in 1960 while millions starved in China.

Finally, on the question of race and sexuality the Argentine revolutionary had retrograde views that some today continue to ignore or excuse.

Unlike Mohandas Gandhi, who truly evolved in his views on race as a young man but is still attacked for them, Che Guevara seems to get a pass despite not showing an equivalent evolution. Politifact on April 17, 2013 quoted from The Motorcycle Diaries, a book based on diaries the Argentine kept while traveling through Latin America in the early 1950s.

"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

 "The Establishment" writing in the publication AfroPunk cited the above quote but dismissed it as something  Guevara wrote when "he was around 24 years old." He then goes on to say that he " went so far as to fight with an all black army," but failed to cite his critical quotes against the Africans he fought alongside.

Politifact in 2013 quoted this comment from Guevara’s writing on his time fighting with black revolutionaries in the Congo that included this line: "Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons and did not want to learn."

It wasn't the Congolese, but Che's failure to train them that led to defeat. The other side that defeated Guevara's forces were also Congolese, but he tried to pass off his own incompetence with a racist excuse. 

However in another area Mr. Guevara has even more to answer for. In the same diary he refers to homosexuality in a negative context:

"The episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us, giving us 10 soles each, bringing our total to 479 for me and 163 1/2 to Alberto."

Fidel Castro in a March 13, 1963 speech was clear in his distaste for the "effeminate" were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places.  The Cuban dictator, and Guevara's comrade, warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”

Two years later in 1965, Fidel Castro spoke explicitly about the Cuban Revolution's views on homosexuals:

“We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.” 

In 1964 the Cuban revolutionaries began rounding up Gays and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with effeminate mannerisms: what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to these camps. 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was in the revolutionary leadership in Castro's Cuba throughout this process and did not leave Cuba until 1965.

Castro put him in charge of La Cabaña prison and in the first half of 1959 presided over the executions of hundreds of Cubans, reported Andres Vargas Llosa in 2005.

Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on December 11, 1964 did not mince words: "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.

Guevara bragged of the executions being carried out in Cuba.

 Between 1959 and 1964 the numbers of Cubans executed was in the thousands. This is nothing to celebrate.  However the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) disagrees with this assessment and celebrated the above speech with an excerpt that ends with "Fatherland or Death!" This is why I protested the United States rejoining UNESCO in 2003, and celebrated leaving it again in 2017.

#OTD in 1928 the mass murderer Ernesto Che Guevara was born. An innocent child who grew into a plague. Shamefully, institutions like @UNESCO, not only pay homage to this brutal, racist & homophobic mass killer. They also spread his toxic and murderous ideas. #BirthOfAMonster pic.twitter.com/ELrwqBFJsJ

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) June 14, 2026

In the video below you can watch the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century meet his Latin American protege.

Note to His Admirers: Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, and his ideas are toxic.

"I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man.

 

Guevara executed for trying to overthrow Bolivian govt on October 9, 1967

Che Guevara was captured during a guerrilla fight to topple the Bolivian government and create a communist dictatorship, similar to what he did in Cuba, and was executed in Bolivia 58 years ago today.

Unfortunately, his ideas did not die with him.

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented in iconic images. This is the case of the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his toxic philosophy of political action that others seek to emulate.  He embraced hatred and dehumanization of the other as the means to carry out what he thought necessary actions.

“Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.”

Guevara's claim to fame was his collaboration with Fidel and Raul Castro in establishing a totalitarian communist dictatorship in Cuba using violent tactics, including terrorism, and then attempting to expand this model throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

His efforts failed while he lived.  

The Castro brothers executed tens of thousands of Cubans, locked up hundreds of thousands of Cubans, built a police state, with the assistance of the KGB, the East German Stasi, former Nazis, and imposed revolutionary terror to consolidate power.

Credible and conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cuban nationals ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace. 

Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on December 11, 1964

Che Guevara, speaking to the United Nations on December 11, 1964, did not mince words: "We must express here something that is a well-known truth and that we have constantly asserted before the entire world: executions? Yes, we have executed individuals; we are currently executing others, and we will continue to do so as long as required. We know what the outcome of a losing struggle would be, and the worms must know what the outcome is today in Cuba." 

In addition to the Hellscape in the Middle East, Ernesto "Che" Guevara laid the groundwork for much of the additional misery in Latin America today.

Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in November 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere.

Guevara meets Mao Ze Dong in November 1960.

Mao Ze Dong caused the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese people in his communist project through famine and mass executions.  He is the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century, and someone Guevara stayed allied to, even after the Castro regime cooled relations with Beijing siding with Moscow.

 

Weeks after the world came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, Che Guevara was disappointed in Moscow’s loss of nerve in launching a first strike, and argued that Cubans were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice in a nuclear conflagration to end Capitalism.

“Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice. We have demonstrated our firm stand, our own position, our decision to fight, even if alone, against all dangers and against the atomic menace of Yankee imperialism.”

The Argentine went further declaring in November 1962 his continued willingness to engage in a nuclear holocaust to achieve the communist utopia which Guevara called “liberation”.

“We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims. In the struggle to death between two systems we cannot think of anything but the final victory of socialism or its relapse as a consequence of the nuclear victory of imperialist aggression.”

Guevara explained it more succinctly to London’s Daily Worker in 1962 after the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he also rejected the possibility of peaceful co-existence.

“If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish a peaceful coexistence.”

Ernesto Guevara was executed  summarily on October 9, 1967 in La Higuera, Bolivia after he and his band of guerrillas were captured trying to overthrow the legitimate government there and install a Castro style dictatorship. His legacy at the time was already one of blood and terror that should be lamented not celebrated.

Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, his ideas are still toxic, and need to be buried along with him. For example, the barbarism visited upon the Israeli people by Hamas and Hezbollah, on October 7th and October 8, 2023 respectively, both receiving support from the Cuban dictatorship, demonstrates how the idea of resistance Guevara promoted remain an obstacle to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Che's so-called "achievement" with the Castro brothers was to replace an authoritarian dictatorship with a totalitarian communist one, all while claiming to be restoring democracy and the 1940 Constitution in Cuba.

The motorcycle diaries do not make up for this bloody legacy that for 66 years and counting continues to rob Cubans of their freedom, and spread totalitarian dictatorship to Nicaragua, and Venezuela, negatively impacting tens of millions of lives.

 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara born on this day in 1928. Nothing to celebrate.

 A mass murdering racist, who dined with Mao as millions died of hunger is not someone to celebrate.

"All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." - Matthew 26, 26:52

 Some wish to celebrate Ernesto Guevara's birthday today. If he and his comrades had their way the world would have been subjected to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, and they were bitterly disappointed that it did not happen.

Thankfully, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the Castro regime protested it and was unhappy with their Soviet allies not launching their nuclear missiles. 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's essay "Tactics and strategy of the Latin American Revolution (October - November 1962)" was posthumously published by the official publication Verde Olivo on October 9, 1968, and even at this date was not only Guevara's view in 1962 but the official view in 1968: 

"Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice."

In the same essay, the dead Argentine served as a mouthpiece for Fidel Castro declaring: "We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." Castro and Che were so outraged that the regime reached out to Nazis to purchase arms and train the regime's security services.

Castro and Che were not alone in their criticism. Mao Zedong also criticized Khrushchev for backing down in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and this was the last straw in a series of slights between the two communist powers that set the stage for the Sino-Soviet split. 

However Castro eventually backed off and returned to the Soviet camp whereas Che Guevara embraced the Maoists. 

This should not have been a surprise.

Mao Zedong had already been in power in China for a decade when the Castro regime took power in Cuba in 1959.  In September 1960 Havana diplomatically recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Between 1960 and 1964 the two communist dictatorships would collaborate closely together.

Mao's regime in 1958 embarked on the Great Leap Forward, a campaign to reorganize the Chinese populace to improve its agricultural and industrial production along communist ideological lines. The campaign was a disaster that led to mass famine and a death toll of at least 45 million.

In the midst of the famine Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. As millions starved in China the two revolutionaries dined through several courses of traditional Chinese food.

Che and Mao dine in 1960 while millions starved in China.

 

Finally, on the question of race and sexuality the Argentine revolutionary had retrograde views that the woke today somehow continue to ignore or excuse.

Unlike Mohandas Gandhi, who truly evolved in his views on race as a young man but is still attacked for them, Che Guevara seems to get a pass despite not showing an equivalent evolution. Politifact on April 17, 2013 quoted from The Motorcycle Diaries, a book based on diaries the Argentine kept while traveling through Latin America in the early 1950s.

"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

 "The Establishment" writing in the publication AfroPunk cited the above quote but dismissed it as something  Guevara wrote when "he was around 24 years old." He then goes on to say that he " went so far as to fight with an all black army," but failed to cite his critical quotes against the Africans he fought alongside.

Politifact in 2013 quoted this comment from Guevara’s writing on his time fighting with black revolutionaries in the Congo that included this line: "Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons and did not want to learn."

It wasn't the Congolese, but Che's failure to train them that led to defeat. The other side that defeated Guevara's forces were also Congolese, but he tried to pass off his own incompetence with a racist excuse. 

However in another area Mr. Guevara has even more to answer for. In the same diary he refers to homosexuality in a negative context:

"The episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us, giving us 10 soles each, bringing our total to 479 for me and 163 1/2 to Alberto."

Fidel Castro in a March 13, 1963 speech was clear in his distaste for the "effeminate" were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places.  The Cuban dictator, and Guevara's comrade, warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”

Two years later in 1965, Fidel Castro spoke explicitly about the Cuban Revolution's views on homosexuals:

“We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.” 

In 1964 the Cuban revolutionaries began rounding up Gays and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with effeminate mannerisms: what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to these camps. 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was in the revolutionary leadership in Castro's Cuba throughout this process and did not leave Cuba until 1965.

Castro put him in charge of La Cabaña prison and in the first half of 1959 presided over the executions of hundreds of Cubans, reported Andres Vargas Llosa in 2005.

Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on December 11, 1964 did not mince words: "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.

Guevara bragged of the executions being carried out in Cuba.

 Between 1959 and 1964 the numbers of Cubans executed was in the thousands. This is nothing to celebrate.  However the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) disagrees with this assessment and celebrated the above speech with an excerpt that ends with "Fatherland or Death!" This is why I protested the U.S. rejoining UNESCO in 2003, and celebrated leaving it again in 2017.

On this day in 1928 the mass murderer Che Guevara was born. Shamefully, institutions like @UNESCO, not only pay homage to this brutal, racist and homophobic mass executioner. They also spread his toxic and murderous ideas. #ChesDead pic.twitter.com/flgs1SOpqh

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) June 14, 2024

In the video below you can watch the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century meet his Latin American protege.

Why are US taxpayer dollars going to UNESCO to advance the ideology of Ernesto "Che" Guevara that inspire Hamas terrorists?

"If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish a peaceful coexistence."  Ernesto "Che" Guevara, London’s Daily Worker (1962) 

Why are US taxpayer dollars going to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to advance the murderous and genocidal ideology of Ernesto "Che" Guevara? His poisonous ideas are being spread in Gaza, and celebrated by communist antisemites. Will the U.S. State Department, Secretary Antony Blinken, or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee address this?

US taxpayers are elevating the “Life and Works of Ernesto Che Guevara: from the originals manuscripts of its adolescence and youth to the campaign Diary in Bolivia” through UNESCO in 2013.

Castro regime spokesman claim Che Guevara as an inspiration for the "resistance" in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel last week.

 

Paragliders were used to murder concert goers in Israel last week.

What are Ernesto "Che" Guevara's secular ideas inspiring Hamas, and promoted by UNESCO with US taxpayer funds? 

Here are a few of them.

"Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)

"When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice." - Che Guevara, Tactics & Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)

"When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice." - Che Guevara, Tactics & Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)

"We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Tactics & Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)

"Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over & beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to & transforming him into an effective, violent, selective & cold killing machine." - Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

"We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967)   

"It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

"Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline. He will even become more beastly, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to appear." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

This is what has been normalized, and is being promoted by UNESCO, and young children are, and have been, reading in Gaza for years. 

Then one asks oneself where did they get the idea to engage in the brutality the world witnessed last week? Ideas have consequences, and not challenging, or worse yet, promoting bad ones can be deadly. 

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The radical left is already using the "paragliding terrorist" as a symbol for the exact same reason they use the picture of Communist leader Che Guevara on t-shirts:

To normalize it's use as a leftist symbol so the idea of it gets absorbed into the edges of the discourse. https://t.co/NzIycb9TMF pic.twitter.com/8T34KjZko9

— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) October 11, 2023

The same crowd that normalized Che Guevara on t-shirts is trying to do the same with images of the para-gliders used to slaughter hundreds of music concert goers last week.

 These communists and Hamas supporters would like us to either normalize, ignore, or deny the mass murder and terrorism committed by Hamas last week, but we have a duty to remember, and denounce this crime. Here are the latest figures from the State of Israel on the over 1,300 murdered and 3,360 injured in the terror attacks in which over 6,300 rockets were launched at the Jewish State..

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.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s principled nonviolent stand and rejection of Che Guevara's guerrilla warfare

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." - Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964

Martin Luther King Jr. marching in Memphis, Tennessee., March 28, 1968.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born 94 years ago tomorrow, on January 15, 1929 and assassinated 55 years ago this year on April 4, 1968. On the eve of his death, he gave a prophetic speech that was also a call to nonviolent action and foreshadowing of his own death hours later. Nevertheless, until the very end, Reverend King advocated for nonviolence, noncooperation and dialogue as instruments to push for positive change. 

"We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, 'God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.' And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -- what is the other bread? -- Wonder Bread."

No one controlled Martin Luther King Jr. and it bothered many 
Reverend King's nonviolent posture was not convenient for those who wanted bloody chaos and violence in the United States.

The world was well aware of the FBI’s wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. on the orders of then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and monitoring of the Civil Rights Movement, but what was only discovered decades later was that a campaign was waged against Martin Luther King Jr. by the Soviet Intelligence agency known as the KGB.

In 1992 a high ranking Russian intelligence officer defected to the United Kingdom and brought with him notes and transcripts compiled over the previous thirty years as he moved entire foreign intelligence archives to a new headquarters just outside of Moscow. The Russian intelligence officer’s name was Vasili Mitrokhin and the information he gathered became known as The Mitrokhin Archive. In the groundbreaking book, The Sword and the The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin published in 1999 details were obtained from The Mitrokhin Archive on Soviet efforts to replace Martin Luther King Jr. with a “more radical and malleable leader” such as Stokely Carmichael to provoke a race war in the United States.

KGB carried out active measures campaign against Martin Luther King Jr.

KGB Campaign to discredit MLK
Pages 237 and 238 of The Sword and the Shield book, partially excerpted below, detail elements of the campaign waged by Soviet intelligence and the active measures arrayed against the civil rights leader:

In August 1967 the Centre approved an operational plan by the deputy head of Service A, Yuri Modin, former controller of the Magnificent Five, to discredit King and his chief lieutenants by placing articles in the African press, which could then be reprinted in American newspapers, portraying King as an “Uncle Tom” who was secretly receiving government subsidies to tame the civil rights movement and prevent it threatening the Johnson administration.

Urban guerilla warfare
Prior to King's death the attempt to ignite urban guerrilla warfare was already underway. The Black Panther Party was founded on October 15, 1966 in Oakland, California and was heavily influenced by Robert F. Williams, a black militant nationalist who fled to Cuba in 1961 and was still there in 1966. Members of the Black Panther Party were also reading Che Guevara's books on Guerrilla Warfare and applying it on the streets of America to deadly effect.  The Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee on November 1, 1967 made public these statistics.

The call for guerrilla warfare in the streets of American cities generated an escalation in violence, lives lost, injuries, and hundreds of millions in material losses in an effort to overthrow the United States government with a violent revolution. The Central Intelligence Agency issued a report "DISSIDENT ACTIVITY: January 1966 through January 1973" that was approved for release on June 19, 2003 that documents the situation in 1967 explaining that "[a]lthough severe racial rioting had occurred in U.S. cities in previous summers, it never had been as widespread or as intense as it became in 1967. In the two cities hardest hit, Newark (26 dead) and Detroit (43 dead), conditions of near-insurrection developed in ghetto areas, and police and National Guardsmen responded with volleys of automatic weapons fire."

KGB wanted to replace MLK Jr. with Stokely Carmichael

Martin Luther King Jr. rejected guerrilla warfare and Che Guevara

Martin Luther King Jr. opposed this approach and advocated for nonviolent, radical change. His nonviolent stance was challenged in 1967 by a black power movement that, rather than accelerating change in areas of social and economic justice, brought it to a halt through political violence. Reverend King cautioned black activists not to follow in the footsteps of Castro and Guevara:

“Riots just don’t pay off,” said King. He pronounced them an objective failure beyond morals or faith. “For if we say that power is the ability to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,” he said, “then it is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that–no matter how loud you are, and no matter how much you burn.” Likewise, he exhorted the staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerrilla warfare in the style of Che Guevara. No “black” version of the Cuban revolution could succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff must “bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic problem,” he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a roof or a meal. “I say all of these things because I want us to know the hardness of the task,” King concluded, breaking off with his most basic plea: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.”

These words are as true today as they were over a half-century ago. Reverend King's legacy continues to inspire activists worldwide. This Baptist minister who risked everything for the freedom of all African Americans and the redemption of the United States by fulfilling the creed that all men are created equal. 

 

2023 Beloved Community Global Summit, with Dr. Bernice A. King, CEO of @TheKingCenter. #BelovedCommunityMindset #TransformUnjustSystems #MLKDay https://t.co/09HrCKtLnf

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 12, 2023