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 president smacked down by Uruguayan president at international summit in Mexico

Bad day for the Castro regime

 

President Luis Lacalle Pou smacks down the Castro regime

 President Luis Lacalle Pou, the chief executive of Uruguay on September 18th at the VI Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) smacked down the Castro regime's Miguel Diaz-Canel. The Summit was held in Mexico and hosted by Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Castro ally. 

 

 

Furthermore, CELAC was created by Hugo Chavez to counter the Organization of American States. In this hostile environment President Lacalle Pou defended democracy, human rights, and called out the bad actors in the hemisphere:

“When one sees that in certain countries there is no full democracy, when the separation of powers is not respected, when the repressive apparatus is used to silence protests, when opponents are imprisoned, when human rights are not respected, we in a calm but firm voice must say with concern that we look seriously at what is happening in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”

Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel, appointed by Raul Castro, responded to the critique citing Uruguayans gathering signatures against a law being proposed in Uruguay, and claimed that

“The courage of the Cuban people was demonstrated for six decades. Listen to your people who collected more than 700,000 signatures against the LUC (Law of Urgent Consideration). Monroism and the OAS is what you have just defended.”

Castro regime officials are not accustomed to critical voices being able to respond to their attacks.  President Lacalle Pou's response was devastating because it underscored the reality of the existing dictatorship in Cuba, contrasting it with Uruguay's democracy.

“If there is something that is true in my country, luckily, it is that the opposition can gather signatures, in my country, luckily, the opposition has democratic resources to lodge complaints, that is the great difference with the Cuban regime.” 

The Uruguayan president then crushed it by quoting the song Patria y Vida.

 “I just want to quote, and they are not my words, it is a very beautiful song and those who sing it feel oppressed by the Government: ’No longer shall flow the blood / Of those who dare to think differently / Who told you Cuba is yours? / Indeed, Cuba is for all my people’.”  

Below is the video of the response.

 14ymedio, September 18, 2021

Uruguay’s President Denounces the Imprisonment of Opponents in Cuba

Uruguay’s president Lacalle Pou speaking at the VI Summit of the  Celac. (@PPT_CELAC)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 18 September 2021 — The president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, and the Cuban leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, staged an exchange of accusations this Saturday at the VI Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), in Mexico. The discussion began when the Uruguayan showed his concern because on the island, and in Venezuela and Nicaragua “there is not a full democracy” and opponents are imprisoned.

Lacalle’s speech began by recognizing that two principles promoted by Celac are “self-determination and non-intervention” but he also described democracy as “the best system that individuals have to be free” and that, for that reason, “participating in this forum does not mean being complacent.”

After that introduction, his criticisms were even more direct: “When one sees that in certain countries there is no full democracy, when the separation of powers is not respected, when the repressive apparatus is used to silence protests, when opponents are imprisoned, when human rights are not respected, we in a calm but firm voice must say with concern that we look seriously at what is happening in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”

Lacalle’s statements gave rise to a strong exchange of words between the two leaders, which was only partially broadcast on Cuban television, but which is already generating comments in support of the Uruguayan on social networks for his direct comments to the President and First Secretary of the Communist Party on the island.

Visibly annoyed, Díaz-Canel responded to Lacalle saying that with his words he was showing a lack of knowledge of the Cuban reality. “The courage of the Cuban people was demonstrated for six decades. Listen to your people who collected more than 700,000 signatures against the LUC (Law of Urgent Consideration). Monroism and the OAS is what you have just defended,” he said.

The Uruguayan asked for the floor again and addressed Díaz-Canel: “If there is something that is true in my country, luckily, it is that the opposition can gather signatures, in my country, luckily, the opposition has democratic resources to lodge complaints, that is the great difference with the Cuban regime,” he added.

Lacalle went further and added: “I just want to quote, and they are not my words, it is a very beautiful song and those who sing it feel oppressed by the Government: ’No longer shall flow the blood / Of those who dare to think differently / Who told you Cuba is yours? / Indeed, Cuba is for all my people’,” he added, quoting the song Patria y Vida.

Source: https://translatingcuba.com/uruguays-president-denounces-the-imprisonment-of-opponents-in-cuba/

11J Two Months Later: A reflection and a look back

Down with the dictatorship. Homeland and Life.

Cubans on the streets of Cuba July 11, 2021

Today marks two months since Cubans across the island took to the streets in over 50 cities and towns calling for freedom and an end to the Castro dictatorship on July 11, 2021.

A protester from San Antonio de los Baños told BBC Mundo that the initial protest was organized on Saturday[July 10, 2021] through social networks for Sunday [July 11, 2021] at 11:30 AM (local time). Reuters on August 9th reported in more detail on the social network used, and its background confirming the initial reporting by the BBC. On Sunday July 11, 2021 in the late morning hundreds of Cubans took to the streets of San Antonio de los Baños and were soon joined by thousands more.

Thinking that this would be a replay of the August 5, 1994 Maleconazo the Castro regime sent out its repressive forces to quell the protest in in San Antonio de los Baños, and President Diaz-Canel arrived to the protest site to claim that all had been returned to normal, but it was too late the protests had been seen through social media and multiplied across Cuba.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in San Antonio de los Baños , Cuba, on July 11, 2021. [ YAMIL LAGE/AFP | AFP ]

The non-violent protests continued and spread across Cuba with Cubans chanting "the streets belong to the people", "Homeland and Life", "Freedom", "We are not afraid", and "Down with Communism". Tens of thousands of Cubans marched in over 50 cities and towns in the island nation beginning on July 11, 2021 and were met with threats, violence, mass arrests, and deadly force.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel, in a public address the same day threatened: "They [protesters] would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything.  What did Cuba's top official mean by this? Diaz-Canel did not mince words: "We are calling on all the revolutionaries of the country, all the communists, to take to the streets and go to the places where these provocations are going to take place today from now on, and in all these days and face it decisively, firmly, with courage." The Castro regime's president concluded declaring "the order of combat is given, revolutionaries take to the streets."

 

Videos emerged of Cuban officials firing on fleeing unarmed protesters in Cuban neighborhoods, and other footage emerged of Cuban protesters showing where the bullets had passed through their bodies.

Regime officials went into work places and required workers to agree to get on buses to go and beat up demonstrators. Images emerged of buses filled with workers handed sticks and baseball bats before being sent into the fray. 

Following the start of the protests on July 11th the military presence increased across the island, along with paramilitaries carrying out house to house searches for protesters, and beating them down in the street.

A Cuban priest was beaten up, and arrested by secret police on July 11th for peacefully assembling, but lived to tell his story. Others were not so lucky. 

Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) shot in the back by regime officials on July 12, 2021.

Havana officially recognized one Cuban killed during on July 12th during the protests, Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36). He was shot in the back by regime officials on day two of nationwide protests in Cuba. NGOs placed the number at five, but the total number remains unknown. Reports have been received that family members of those killed have been threatened to remain silent. This coincided with press reports that Laurencio Tejeda's mother, distraught over her son's death, had committed suicide. Video emerged on July 15th of the aftermath of Diubis being shot in the back and posted over Twitter.

#SosCuba | Nos llegan estas estremecedoras imágenes desde la isla. Así es la terrible represión del llamado “Carnicero de Cuba” @DiazCanelB ¡El pueblo no olvidará lo que mandaste a hacer! pic.twitter.com/beJhdneUCn

— Mario J. Pentón (@MarioJPenton) July 15, 2021

Massive protests would continue through July 13th. Many Cubans in the island and the diaspora remember and observe the sinking of the "13 de marzo" tugboat on July 13, 1994 by Cuban government agents killing 37 men, women, and children. July 13th holds a great resonance for many Cubans on the criminal nature of the Castro regime.

On July 14, 2021 the Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero appeared on television and announced that the dictatorship would "temporarily lift restrictions on the quantity of food and medicine incoming travelers could bring into Cuba."

Summary trials began to be carried out jailing hundreds of protesters. In many of the trials lawyers were not provided. Independent media sources in the island estimated that over 5,000 Cubans had been detained or disappeared.

On July 16th, Maria Ferreiro expressed concern that “her son, Henry Constantin Ferreiro, was among those taken into custody. ‘They are journalists, not criminals,’ she said. Ferreiro said her son has been charged with public disorder and incitement, and she hasn’t been able to speak to him,” reported WSVN .

Diaz-Canel and General Raul Castro at pro-regime rally on July 17. (EFE)

General Raul Castro reappeared in the official media when the protests erupted, and was reported attending high level meetings and was present at the pro-regime rally organized on July 17, 2021 where anti-government protester briefly appeared, was beaten down, and taken away. 

On July 21, 2021, CFC invited media to listen to and ask questions of Katiuska Mustelier, sister of detained Cuban protester Enrique Mustelier.  Her brother was brutally beaten and arrested in the city of Guantanamo during the July protests in Cuba and remains jailed in isolation.

On July 27th the Christian Liberation Movement announced a campaign to isolate the Castro regime internationally with eleven concrete measures, including economic sanctions.

Castro's PM Marrero tried to scapegoat Cuban doctors, but they pushed back

Journalist Frances Robles reporting in The New York Times on August 17th described how "after Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, said that Cubans were complaining more about doctors and their poor service than they were about the shortages ... nearly two dozen young physicians and medical students took to social media to state, one by one: “I am publicly declaring that doctors are not to blame for the collapse of the public health system.”

On August 18, 2021 the Cuban dictatorship brought Decree-Law 35 into force to stop dissenters from harming "the prestige of the country", and in practice trying to silence Cubans. One of the first to be targeted was Yoel Acosta, of PalenqueVision, was fined more than a months wages (2000 pesos), and threatened with prison if he didn't pay.

On August 19, 2021 Amnesty International named six new Cuban prisoners of conscience. They are jailed for their political beliefs. This was a symbolic act, because there are many more such as Virgillio Mantilla Arango, and Yandier García Labrada who have yet to be recognized as prisoners of conscience. 

Cuban human rights defenders attempting to document the situation on the island face threats not only against themselves, but against their families. On August 23, 2021 it was also demonstrated that living in the diaspora does not protect you from these threats. State Security visited the mother of exiled Cubalex executive director Laritza Diversent and telling her "that she could end paying for her daughter’s work."  Her daughter has been compiling information on Cubans detained and disappeared during the July 2021 protests, and has worked on these human rights issues for years in Cuba, but was forced to seek refuge abroad in 2017.

Laritza Diversent, exiled in Philadelphia, continues to receive threats from Castro secret police.

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 after destroying his health released on probation earlier this month near death. This is a practice the dictatorship has used in the past. 

Pablo Moya Delá died after months of mistreatment by regime officials on August 26th

68-year-old Felix Navarro Rodriguez was arrested and charged with public disorder while inquiring about detainees the day after the protests in the city of Matanzas, 55 miles east of Havana. Full disclosure, Mr. Navarro Rodriguez is a Cuban human rights defender, and the Castro regime does not recognize that category as legal. Protesting his unjust imprisonment,  Felix initiated a hunger strike on August 23rd and has maintained it to the present day. He is currently weighing in at 132 pounds. We fear for his life.

 

Felix Navarro Rodriguez (age 68) jailed for inquiring about detainees

Hundreds, arrested during and after the July 2021 protests remain behind bars.  Human rights defender Sebastian Arcos Cazabon wrote an important article published in 14ymedio today that analyzes the present moment the dictatorship finds itself in.

"The academic literature identifies an evolutionary course that most totalitarian regimes followed (Mark R. Thompson, Totalitarian and post-totalitarian regimes in transition and non-transition from communism, 2002). According to this model, Cuba could be moving from a "frozen post-totalitarianism" to a "decomposing post-totalitarianism" right now. The characteristics of this last stage include: intransigent and paralyzed leadership, total ideological decadence, lack of political and economic legitimacy, generalized cynicism in the population and a repression that is beginning to be counterproductive. Sound familiar?"

Succession Watch: Castro's new Prime Minister and remembering Cuba's last PM not named Castro

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
 

Raul Castro celebrates selection of his new prime minister Manuel Marrero Cruz

Manuel Marrero Cruz is the new prime minister of Cuba. Fidel Castro had named Mr Marrero  tourism minister in 2004 and since then overseen tourism to the island. Now Raul Castro has promoted him to prime minister.

Once again many in the news media are claiming that the Castro regime is decentralizing with the re-emergence of the prime minister's post. They are repeating the dictatorship's talking points, and ignoring the facts on the ground recognized by officials. Raul Castro, 86, remains Cuba's ultimate political power as head of the Communist Party. 

The post of prime minister in Cuba had existed from 1940 through 1976, and the position was initially created with the ratification of the 1940 Constitution during Cuba's democratic era. The prime minister's position continued during the Batista dictatorship (1952 - 1959) and during the Castro dictatorship (1959 - 1976).  During the Castro era, the prime minister for the first 39 days was José Miró Cardona. 

Miró Cardona embracing Fidel Castro in 1959

This is the only prime minister under the Castro era who was an independent actor, not named Castro.
Therefore, it is important to take a closer look at his trajectory in Cuban politics.

Miró Cardona was a lawyer and professor at the University of Havana, who led the civic opposition to dictator Fulgencio Batista, and was selected prime minister on January 5, 1959.  Fidel Castro took over the post of Prime Minister on February 16, 1959 and designated Miró Cardona ambassador to Spain in May 1960. However two months later he had resigned his post and fled to the Argentine Embassy. Miró Cardona entered the United States as an exile in 1960 and  within months became the head of Cuban Revolutionary Council which became a principal exile committee working to invade Cuba in 1961. On the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion José Miró Cardona issued a call to action that correctly predicted the cost of failure.

To arms, Cubans! We must conquer or we shall die choked by slavery. In the name of God we assure you all that after the victory we will have peace, human solidarity, general well-being and absolute respect for the dignity of all Cubans without exception.

The Bay of Pigs was a fiasco that consolidated the Castro regime, and Miró Cardona lived out the rest of his life in exile, dying in Puerto Rico in 1974.

Fidel Castro would hold the post of Prime Minister from February 16, 1959 until the 1976 Constitution abolished the position and Fidel Castro took the role of president from Osvaldo Dorticos. The position has now been restored in a new Constitution that was drafted in 2018 with Raul Castro presiding over the process and ratified in 2019.
 
For the record: Raul Castro handed over the office of the presidency to his hand picked successor Miguel Díaz-Canel on April 19, 2018. The Castro regime used this to give the impression that there is a transition underway in Cuba. This is not the case. General Raul Castro remains head of the communist party and controls the military. General Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, Raul's son-in-law, runs the Cuban economy. Raul Castro's son, Colonel Alexandro Castro, who negotiated the normalization of relations with the Obama Administration is an intelligence officer with close ties to the secret police. 

Diaz-Canel, like Osvaldo Dorticos who was president of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, is a puppet controlled by Raul Castro. The same holds true for Manuel Marrero Cruz as prime minister.

The succession is not to make Miguel Díaz-Canel or Manuel Marrero Cruz the new dictator, but to maintain the Castro dynasty in control of Cuba.

Lamentably, Cuba will have to wait for another with the courage and audacity of a José Miró Cardona to be prime minister of the island nation. 

Not one more year of dictatorship in Cuba: Let this be the year of liberation

Let them be heard

In English it reads "not one more year for Cuba

Over different social media platforms the campaign Not 1 More year of dictatorship in Cuba was launched. Cubans inside and outside of the island are calling for an end to dictatorship in Cuba.


At the same time the lackeys of the dictatorship are clear. Sixty and more years of dictatorship is what they desire, while insulting those who dissent as ill born. This is what the "president"of Cuba Miguel Diaz Canel tweeted on December 28, 2018.

"60 and more [years] of Cuban Revolution even if it hurts and troubles you. I vote yes."

Yesterday morning the tweet included an attack claiming that there is no lack of the "ill born by error in Cuba, who can be worse than the enemy that attacks her." Ironically, it better describes the last sixty years of the Castro regime attacking a free Cuba.

Let the voices of the democratic resistance and the communist dictatorship be heard, and in the battle of ideas the Castro regime will lose. This is why they outlaw all speech that dissents from the official line, and lock up those who exercise their fundamental human rights.

Those who think that the regime will gradually democratize should wake up. The words of Diaz-Canel are clear and so are the actions of the Castro regime over the past 60 years.

São Paulo Forum in Havana backs Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas despite their mass slaughter of civilians.

The communist network that transformed the Americas.

How the São Paulo Forum sees itself.

The São Paulo Forum celebrated the victory at the ballot box of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, defended Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the midst of the regime's wave of repression and extrajudicial killings against its own populace. This past weekend, pro-regime gunmen in civilian dress fired automatic weapons to clear student protesters from a church and university in Nicaragua.

Raul Castro with Nicolas Maduro, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Miguel Díaz-Canel 

The 24th edition of the Foro de São Paulo (São Paulo Forum — FSP) is being held in Havana, Cuba from July 15-17. This the third time that the Forum has been held in Cuba and it has also been hosted in Managua, Nicaragua on four occasions and São Paulo three times. The Forum is named after the Brazilian city where it was founded in 1990 by Fidel Castro, the Sandinistas and Brazil's Lula Da Silva.

First gathering of the São Paulo Forum in 1990

In 1990 following a request made by Fidel Castro to Lula Da Silva the Sao Paulo Forum was established with the goal: “To reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe.”  The FSP is a communist network comprised of over 100 left wing political parties, various social movements, and guerrilla terrorist organizations such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Chilean Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR).

Fourth gathering of the Sao Paolo Forum was in Havana in 1993

This network helped set the course for the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela that was a game changer both regionally and internationally. Food riots have broken out in what was once one of the richest countries in South America and democracy there has been dismantled.

With the help of Venezuela's riches and the corruption of some of Nicaragua's politicians Daniel Ortega was able to return to power in Nicaragua in 2007 through the ballot box with a minority of the popular vote.  


Daniel Ortega first came to power in 1979 thanks to the active assistance of Cuban troops, and the Castro regime's intelligence service. Ortega was voted out of office after a long and bloody war in 1990.  However it is no longer just Cuba but a hemisphere wide totalitarian network that defends mass murder, and torture both in word and in action.

Today the Nicaraguan strong man is engaged in an existential struggle murdering hundreds of his countrymen and torturing thousands more, but the Sandinista's are not alone. The members of the São Paulo Forum go beyond words and take action. Nicaraguan student leader Victor Cuadras on July 13, 2018 explained that "there are many people who, while being tortured, heard the accents of Venezuela and Cuba in the clandestine prisons.”

Four years ago it was Venezuelan students who heard Cuban accents in Caracas while being tortured. The oppressors have made progress, now there are more diverse accents heard in the torture chambers of Nicaragua.

It is important to remember that the hunger, the suffering, and deaths of thousands of Venezuelans should be laid at the feet of the Castro regime that prepared and backed Hugo Chavez with the assistance of the Cuban military and intelligence services and that are keeping Nicolas Maduro in power today. 

The Maduro regime and the Castro regime belong to the São Paulo Forum and both are actively assisting the Sandinista regime in Managua hang on to power by whatever means necessary at a terrible cost to Nicaraguans.

#Nicaragua government must put an end to appalling violence & protect population— some 280 dead & 1830 injured in 3 months of protests.

Serious violations reported as police & armed elements carried out “clean-up operations” across the country.

📰 https://t.co/Mj9DX8EfA4 pic.twitter.com/trcHqKtOjZ

— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) July 17, 2018

In 1990 many believed that the Cold War was over. Fidel Castro and a handful of radical left wing political parties and terrorist organizations believed otherwise and began plotting their comeback. Twenty eight years later the hemisphere hangs in the balance as bloody conflicts play out in a background of hunger and scarcity, but the misery is not caused by the capitalist imperialists but by the communist revolutionaries.  This should not be a surprise to anyone who has studied history. Revolutionary violence and provoked famines were instruments used in Russia, Ukraine, China, Cambodia, Ethiopia, North Korea and many other places to consolidate totalitarian control.

The members of  the Sao Paolo Forum see themselves as a bloody fist emerging out of South America with its tendrils spreading everywhere. The best way to battle this threat is to recognize it and educate others on the consequences of members of this network taking power and the great difficulty in removing them once they are entrenched.