Imagine what would Cuba and the world be like today if Fidel Castro had never been born.

 Today, supporters of totalitarianism celebrate Fidel Castro's birth, and the cult of personality that the dictatorship claims does not exist is on display in Revolutionary Square this year.

Some commemorating Fidel Castro's birthday, such as the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom, assert that "For more than 65 years the Cuban Revolution has been an inspiration to people around the world for its achievements in health, education, internationalism and more. Hasta Siempre, Comandante." Debated one of their leaders in 2017, and exposed his totalitarian orientation when he claimed North Korea was also a democracy.

 
This brings up a thought-provoking exercise. What would have happened if the 65-year old communist dictatorship in Cuba had never come to be? If Fidel Castro had never been born? Let us look at Cuba's pre-1959 and post-1959 and imagine "what might have been?"

The economy

 

 

In 1959 in terms of per-capita GDP Cuba was second to Chile and was doing better than Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. Under communism. Cuba lagged well behind the other four countries. It would be fair to say that in economic terms, despite billions in Soviet and Venezuelan subsidies that the past six and a half decades have been a disaster for Cuba.  

Death count in Cuba

 

Firing squad in Cuba.

 

Tens of thousands of Cubans would still be alive today if Fidel Castro had never been born. In 1987, historian R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii reported that credible estimates of the Castro regime's death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000." Rummel made a career out of studying what he termed "democide," the killing of people by their own government.

Democracy restored in a post-Batista Cuba

 

  Cuban diplomats pushed for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948

 

Many of the July 26th movement's leaders, who put in a lot of hard work fighting in the field and persuading Washington to impose an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in the spring of 1958, really desired the restoration of democracy in Cuba. Much like the vast majority of Cubans did. For this reason, Fidel Castro lied systematically throughout the 1950s and into 1960, insisting he respected democracy and civil freedoms while denying being a communist.

Fidel Castro carried out the consolidation of power and established a communist totalitarian dictatorship as he paid lip service to civil rights and imprisoned his fellow countrymen who had warned that communists were infiltrating the revolution as traitors. 

 

Without Fidel Castro, the old democratic regime that had pioneered work on international human rights would have been restored and the democratic transition in a post-Batista Cuba would not have been sidelined.

Killing Americans through the drug trade and terrorism

 

In an attempt to strike at the sensitive underbelly of the United States, Fidel Castro teamed up with drug traffickers, hired Nazis to train his repressive apparatus in the middle of the 1960s, and converted Cuba's diplomatic corps into a tool of violence and subversion.

The Castro dictatorship early on began, with the assistance of the KGB, assisting drug trafficking networks improve their ability to get more drugs into the United States to strike at American youth. The Havana Cartel documentary provides an overview of these practices to the present day.

Havana hosted terrorists from Africa, the Americas, and Asia at the Tri-Continental Conference on January 3rd through 16th in 1966.At the Conference, Fidel “Castro insisted that ‘bullets not ballots’ was the way to achieve power.”  He maintained “‘conditions exist[ed] for an armed revolutionary struggle.’

The Cuban dictatorship created the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL) to coordinate terrorist groups worldwide. 

Havana then established terrorist training facilities in Algeria, Libya, and Cuba.
 

This had devastating effects on Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America; the United States was not immune.

Terrorists attack on U.S. soil killing Americans

The Puerto Rican terrorist group, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña, (FALN), from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, carried out more than 130 bombings, including in the United States. 

This group was started in the mid-1960s and received advanced training in Cuba. This information is taken from Zach Dorfman’s article “How Fidel Castro Supported Terrorism in America: ‘FALN was started in the mid-1960’s with a nucleus . . . that received advanced training in Cuba,’” published in The Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2017.

The FALN was responsible for the January 24, 1975 bombing of the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York City which killed Alejandro Berger (28), James Gezork (32), Frank Connor (33), Harold H. Sherburne (66) and wounded 63 others.

The same Puerto Rican terrorists were also responsible for a bombing spree in New York City in August 1977 that killed Charles Steinberg, (age 26), injured six, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 office workers; and the purposeful targeting and maiming of four police officers, among many other crimes. 

Without Fidel Castro this terrorism international most likely would not have been brought into existence.

Installing  and maintaining tyranny in Venezuela

 

Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro

If Fidel Castro had never been born then Hugo Chavez would not have had a mentor and the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Venezuela and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Chavez's successor Nicolas Maduro, a Cuban mole, and tens of thousands of Cuban "advisers" torturing, jailing, and killing Venezuelans who want to live in freedom, and the ongoing crisis threatening the region.

 

Human rights in Cuba

 

If Fidel Castro had never been born then Cubans would not be going to prison for not sufficiently mourning the dictator's death in 2016, or worse yet providing a negative assessment of the regime he created. Thousands of men and women would not have spent decades in Cuban prisons for their political beliefs, and over 1,100 today.

 

Opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante would not have been assassinated on July 22, 2012 by Castro's state security agents. Nor the games played by Castro to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in order to get positive media coverage but then not follow through. There would not have been the massacre of refugees by Castro regime agents slaughtered for trying to flee Cuba.

 

 

Education politicized and degraded

Students entering the University of Havana

 

Cuba in 1953 had the fourth lowest illiteracy rate in Latin America with an illiteracy rate that was 23.6%. Costa Rica's at the time was 20.6%, Chile's was 19.6%. and Argentina's was the lowest at 13.6%.  The rest of Latin America showed similar or greater gains without sacrificing civil liberties. 

There are also great concerns about the Cuban educational system today. First the issue of a system of education being transformed by the Castro dictatorship into a system of indoctrination and secondly following the collapse of Soviet subsidies the material decline of the entire system along with shortages of teachers. 

Without Fidel Castro intervention Cuba was on track to having a first class education system without sacrificing civil liberties. Now it has neither.

 

Healthcare

The Castro regime in the past failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera (2012) outbreaks in Cuba. Jailing those who warned the world of the threat.  In 2017 the Cuban dictatorship failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases.

On November 29, 2018 The New York Times reported that the  Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO) "made about $75 million off the work of up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." A group of these Cuban medical doctors are now suing PAHO for the organization's alleged role in human trafficking.

 

Cuba's Covid-19 pandemic response was one of the worse, in the Americas, even the United States carried out a better response.

This also raised questions on the relationship between PAHO, Cuba and reporting not only on outbreaks but the healthcare statistics that present the regime in a positive light.

Without Fidel Castro, Cuba would be another normal country that would be reporting health statistics that were accurate because there would be both an independent press and civil society to keep the government honest. Both were destroyed by Fidel Castro and his regime.

 

Cholera patients in Cuba (CNN)

 

Remembering Gustavo Arcos: Eighteen Years Later

 The Cuban Revolutionary who broke with Fidel Castro and became a Human Rights Defender

 

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (1926- 2006)

On this day eighteen years ago, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who was 79 years old, passed away in Havana, Cuba, due to a heart attack. His birthplace was Caibarién, a small village in central Cuba. He studied diplomatic law at the University of Havana when he was a young man. However, on March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista's coup interrupted his academic career.

This is where he met Fidel Castro and later joined him on the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada military barracks. Gustavo was shot in the back, touching his spine and damaging the sciatic nerve, and left partly paralyzed by the wound suffered in the assault. [ Anita Snow reported in the Associated Press on Wednesday, May. 18, 2005 that "His sciatic nerve was damaged and has deteriorated over the years, making walking difficult, especially up the one flight of stairs from the street."]

Luis Arcos Bergnes killed in 1956

 Brother Luis killed by Fulgencio Batista's forces 
Gustavo was sentenced to ten years in prison but was pardoned and released 22 months later in 1955 and went with the rest of the group to organize a rebel army in Mexico. He traveled through Latin America and the United States gathering money and munitions. His brother Luis Arcos Bergnes was killed when the Granma expedition landed in Cuba in 1956 and were met by Batista's forces.

Gustavo Arcos was appointed Cuba's ambassador to Belgium following Castro's arrival to power in 1959. Wounded in the Moncada assault with a martyred brother, he could have easily remained a privileged member of the revolutionary elite, but that was not why he had taken up arms against Fulgencio Batista. He had fought for an end to dictatorship and the restoration of a democratic Cuba. When he returned to Cuba in 1964 he saw not only that the government had turned communist but that Fidel Castro was another dictator.  At the time Raul Castro personally offered Gustavo a position in the regime leadership. Gustavo rejected the offer. He was already disenchanted and preferred to remain in the diplomatic corps, away from Havana.Gustavo expressed his dissent privately.

"They shot a lot of people," Mr. Arcos told the Associated Press in 2005 during the summary trials held after the revolutionaries took power. "They shot people who could have easily been imprisoned." 

 On March 15, 1966 he was detained and in 1967 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. for alleged counterrevolutionary activity. He served three years in prison before being released after a long hunger strike in 1969, but was not allowed to leave the country.

Logo of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

 Joining the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

He and his younger brother, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, joined the 1976-founded Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1982 while incarcerated at the Combinado de Este. In 1981, the brothers were imprisoned for attempting to leave the country. Not long after, the Committee started issuing declarations criticizing the deplorable conditions under which political detainees were housed.

In 1986, international pressure compelled the Cuban government to grant a few concessions, including visits from several international human rights organizations and the release of several political prisoners, who subsequently carried out the Committee's activities in Havana's streets. Gustavo Arcos succeeded the committee's exiled executive director, Dr. Ricardo Bofill, shortly after his release from prison in 1988.

In 1990, Gustavo Arcos sent a message to Castro, defying the objections of many Cuban exiles, requesting that he call a "National Dialogue" that would involve all facets of Cuban society, both on the island and in exile. On January 28, 1990, Castro responded by saying that "the Cuban people" will take care of those activists during his speech to the Worker's Congress.

Sebastian Arcos's home was stormed by government-sponsored rioters on March 5, 1990. Gustavo's house was stormed on March 8 by a different mob that was led by future foreign minister Roberto Robaina. Many old acquaintances from exile persuaded Gustavo to dissolve the Committee in order to preserve the lives of the activists. Gustavo stated that "The Cuban Committee for Human Rights will continue its work, even if it costs us our own lives...no terror, nor propaganda will be able to deter the development of humanistic ideas in our country."

On January 13, 1992 the executive board of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights again issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to nonviolence and calling for dialogue:   "Violence is not and cannot be the solution to our problems... We will not tire from insisting that the only possible solution is civilized discussion of our differences. This is an appeal to Cubans for wisdom and common sense... No act of violence is justified... Let us say no to violence and learn to live in peace."

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes and Jesús Yanes Pelletier were arrested at their homes in Havana on the evening of 15 January 1992. Both Gustavo and Yanes Pelletier were released after approximately 24 hours. However, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was charged with "enemy propaganda" and "inciting rebellion," he was sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. He was transferred to Ariza Prison in  Cienfuegos Province, more than 130 miles from Havana, where Sebastian was imprisoned alongside dangerous criminals and was systematically denied medical attention. In 1993 the regime offered him a deal: Sebastian would be released immediately if he only agreed to leave the island for good. Sebastian rejected the deal, becoming the first documented case of a political prisoner choosing prison in Cuba over freedom in exile.

Brother Sebastian killed by medical neglect while arbitrarily imprisoned

After an international campaign that included his designation as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and a request by France Libertés, the organization founded by former French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, Sebastian Arcos was released in 1995. 

A few weeks after his release, Arcos was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in the rectum, for which he had previously been denied medical care in prison. After a Cuban doctor was fired from his post for treating Arcos, he traveled to Miami for further care.

In 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes testified before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Sebastian Arcos Bergnes died in Miami surrounded by relatives on December 22, 1997.

Due to his worsening health in his last years he lowered his profile and ceded much of the work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Nevertheless, he met with US Senators visiting Cuba in 2000, with former President Carter in 2002 and signed a letter in 2003 denouncing the unjust imprisonment of 75 Cuban dissidents imprisoned in the Black Cuban Spring.

As his health deteriorated in his latter years, he reduced his public presence and gave up a large portion of his work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Still, in 2000 he met with US senators traveling to Cuba, with former President Carter in 2002, and he signed a letter protesting the unfair detention of seventy-five Cuban dissidents during the March 2003 crackdown.

In the 2005, Associated Press article, Anita Snow reported that he stayed in touch with other dissidents and spoke "frequently with Oswaldo Paya, a devout fellow Roman Catholic who led a signature-gathering effort called the Varela Project, which sought a referendum asking voters if they favored civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to business ownership." The article concluded with Gustavo's concern that he would not live to see the return of democracy saying : "I do hope I will see the end of this, but I'm not sure if I will.

In response to a question regarding Gustavo Arcos' legacy that I received from the news agency EFE on August 8, 2006, I said, "It is with great sadness that Arcos will not be able to be there the day that we expect a democratic transition in Cuba. We will always remember that he was one of the founders of the Cuban dissidence, of great courage, coming from a family that sacrificed much and that fought so much against dictatorship both Fulgencio Batista's and Fidel Castro's." Also noted that he left a "strong legacy that will continue to grow" while "in these moments that a giant of the Cuban dissidence has died we have projects that he basically initiated." Compared the call in 1990 by the Arcos brothers to a national dialogue so that "all segments both inside the island and in exile could analyze the Cuban problem and have proposals for the future" with "how presently one sees, 16 years later how  Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas following that example of a national dialogue was able to elaborate a document for transition designed by Cubans in the island and the exiles, in a process of nearly three years."  I also addressed his principled stand and how he entered the dissident movement outlined above and concluded: "We are talking about a man with courage and who is an example of  non-cooperation with the Castro regime."

Michael N. Nagler, an expert in principled non-violence, has noted that nonviolence always bears fruit and leaves seeds for positive outcomes, even when it is not immediately obvious. For instance, pro-democracy activists from around the world continue to be inspired by Gustavo's tenets of nonviolence and have recalled his life and example by posting a remembrance of him on his death anniversary on X today.

#MemoriaCuba
🗓️ El 8 de agosto de 2006 muere en La Habana Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Presidente del Comité Cubano Pro Derechos Humanos (CCPDH) y de la Fundación Hispano Cubana 🇨🇺

💻 Para más información pueden visitar nuestra página: https://t.co/lSGoPpxYQ9#Efemerides pic.twitter.com/RjI0hzjdal

— Cultura Democrática (@CultDemocratica) August 8, 2024

Ten months after October 7th: Know your enemy

Communist intersectionality: Celebrating terror attack on Israel; burning U.S. flags outside of Union Station while flying Cuban and Palestinian flags; and advancing antisemitic tropes to back Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

Hostages taken by Hamas in October 7, 2023 terror attacks.

Ten months ago on October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded and attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostages. This strike ignited a Middle East war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, which has its base of operations in Gaza. This was the largest mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Friends of the Jewish people condemned the attack, and mourned the dead. International communist networks took a different approach.

 In the midst of this barbarism and evil, Castro Regime spokesman "El Necio" cited Che Guevara's visit to Gaza as inflection point that turned Palestine into a world cause, and posts photos of the Argentine guerilla with Middle East leaders during a visit there at the start of the Cuban dictatorship. He lies about Israel calling it a "Zionist colonization" without recognizing Jewish people as indigenous to this their ancestral lands. He claims that Guevara is the inspiration for the "resistance" i.e. terrorist barbarism taking place today, and concludes his rant with "Che Lives." 

 

The Cuban government, and their agents of influence did not limit themselves to cyberspace.

Celebrating terror attack on Israel

Manolo de los Santos with Diaz-Canel in Sept 2023 |Oct 8, 2023 celebrating Hamas attacks.

On October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel, militant leftists organized a protest in Times Square to celebrate the killings as an act of resistance and waved signs with anti-Semitic slogans and images. The Center for a Free Cuba took notice of this protest at the time, and how official Cuban media was promoting it. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) issued a statement defending their October 8th rally in Times Square, doubling down on their support for the terrorist attack.

The group’s co-executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, is a longtime researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and was “based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations,” according to his biography at the anti-Israel group Black Alliance for Peace. In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of “elaborating a new consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”

Advancing antisemitic tropes, and the destruction of Israel

On January 24, 2024 Manolo De Los Santos spoke the quiet part out loud at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

De Los Santos is echoing Karl Marx’s early formulation of communism which is antisemitic and offers a “solution” to the “Jewish Problem.”

“Money is the Jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities. The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of the world. In emancipating itself from hucksterism and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself…by destroying the empirical essence of Judaism, the Jew will become impossible.” Source Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff),vol. iii, pp146-74

“The People’s Forum” (TPF) is funded through Goldman Sachs and linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). Both its executive directors Manolo De Los Santos and Claudia De La Cruz are PSL members, and active supporters of the Cuban communist dictatorship. TPF put out an advertisement in The New York Times in October 2022 that repeated numerous propaganda claims by the Cuban dictatorship, and was rebutted by the Center for a Free Cuba. 

 

Burning U.S. flags outside of Union Station while flying Cuban and Palestinian flags 

 

Protesters outside Union Station.

On July 24, 2024, protesters carrying Hezbollah, and Hamas flags sprayed graffiti, burned American flags, and beat up police officers in Washington DC.  One protester carried a poster with  mushroom cloud over an Israeli flag that said "Allah is gathering all the Zionists for a final solution."

Protesters pulled down American flags from three poles outside Union Station while demonstrating, replaced them with Palestinian flags then burned the U.S. flags. However the publication Spiked captured an image of a Cuban flag flying among the Palestinian flags at the protests in Washington DC in their article, “A fascist rally in Washington, DC.”

Just seen on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/dGiGxpQufz

— Christina Hoff Sommers (@CHSommers) July 24, 2024

Islamist terrorist group celebrates anniversary of the founding of the July 26 Movement.

On July 26, 2024, the Samidoun,  a terrorist organization and “a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),” published a revealing statement celebrating the “71st anniversary of the July 26th Movement.”  Their statement repeats a number of the Cuba dictatorship’s talking points, but reveal some things Havana would prefer were dealt with more discretion.

On the 71st anniversary of the launch of the great Cuban revolution, the storming of the Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes the Cuban people, their continuing revolution, and the ongoing alliance between the people of Cuba and of Palestine to confront Zionism, imperialism and reaction.

Samidoun’s argument for Cuba not belonging on the state terror sponsor list does not help Havana. It exposes the role the Cuban dictatorship in inspiring Palestinian terrorism in the 1960s.

“Havana, Cuba, launched the Tricontinental Conference in 1966, which led to the development of OSPAAAL (Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America), whose posters for the Palestinian revolution — and other anti-imperialist struggles — have remained indelible symbols of the common cause of justice. Through this revolutionary struggle, the deep alliance between the Cuban and Palestinian revolutions was born. Cuba has consistently supported the Palestinian liberation struggle on multiple levels, and the Palestinian and Cuban flags have risen as twin banners of liberation everywhere in the world, reflecting the common confrontation of imperialism, Zionism and their reactionary agents everywhere.

In Palestine, the Cuban revolution has always had particular resonance. Che Guevara visited Gaza in 1959, shortly after the victory of the revolution, as part of the Non-Aligned Movement and the alliance of anti-colonial forces. According to Palestinian scholar Salman Abu Sitta, Guevara urged the Palestinians to develop their training camps, weapons production and people’s mobilization centres.”

They go further in equating the Cuban government with Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups they euphemistically call “resistance forces,” and claim they are not terrorists while also acknowledging that they view “all means” as legitimate.

Cuba, reminiscent of Hamas, Hezbollah

“Cuba is also currently labeled as a “state sponsor of terrorism” by the United States, being designated in a clear attempt to impose political, economic and military pressure on Cuba to give up their sovereign and socialist path of development. This is reminiscent of the case of Palestine, where Palestinian resistance organizations, including Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Hezbollah, and many other resistance forces, are labeled as “terrorist organizations” by the US, Britain, European Union and Canada in an attempt to undermine the Palestinian people’s justified and legitimate struggle by all means, including and especially armed struggle, to achieve their liberation.”

This confirms that the Cuban dictatorship has a problem with Jewish people, the state of Israel, and  in the 2024 documentary, Terrorism: the Cuban Connection demonstrates that Cuba is a state terror sponsor. It also confirms that the dictatorship in Cuba has a serious problem with Jews. July 26th should not be a day of celebration, but of somber reflection on the darkness that began to envelop Cuba in 1953, and has endured to the present day on that island.

Advancing antisemitic tropes to back Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.  

The Washington Post on August 4, 2024 reported they had independently reviewed "23,000 precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition, a sample that represents nearly 80 percent of voting machines nationwide." They found that González had beaten Maduro by over two to one.

The Post extracted and analyzed data from 23,720 of the tally sheets that were scanned and posted online by the opposition. Of those, González earned 67 percent of the vote to Maduro’s 30 percent.

Those tally sheets represent 79 percent of the voting tables used on July 28. Even if Maduro won every vote on the remaining 21 percent, assuming a similar turnout, he would still fall more than 1.5 million votes shy of González.

 A day earlier, Nicolas Maduro claimed that the protests in Venezuela are "financed" and "supported by international Zionism." The People's Forum posted on X the lie that "U.S.-backed Zionists who are unleashing violence in an attempt to overthrow President Nicholas Maduro and the Venezuelan people’s socialist project."

None of this should be a surprise. First, communist lie in the service of their political project, and two communists allied with Nazis in the past, and rounded up Jewish people for the death camps during the first two years of World War 2.

Manolo De Los Santos went from celebrating Hamas's massacre of Israelis on October 8, 2023 in Times Square, to hanging out with the Cuban dictatorship's inner circle in Havana, and today is in Venezuela backing Maduro's theft of the election, and crackdown on Venezuelans.   

 

 

#5A Maleconazo at 30: When Castro's secret police shot into crowds of non-violent Cuban protesters with live ammunition

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." - Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

 

Secret police in plain clothes fired live ammunition at protesters on August 5, 1994

 On August 5, 1994, a thousand Cubans marched through Havana's streets, yelling "Freedom!" and "Down With Castro!" They were greeted with violent repression, with government operatives dressed in civilian clothes firing live bullets at unarmed Cubans.

It happened again three years ago, on July 11, 2021, but this time it was not only in Havana, but across the island, with tens of thousands of Cubans taking part in over 50 cities and towns. The dictatorship's response was the same as in 1994, but this time the photographs reached the world almost instantly.

It is happening again now in Venezuela.

Cubans chant "Freedom" and "Down with Castro" on August 5, 1994 in Havana

Karel Poort, a Dutch visitor, took photos during the 1994 protests, which were made public in 2013 and matched the anecdotal accounts of the day. 

In an exclusive interview with EFE on August 4, 2024 he outlined what he experienced that day, including witnessing government agents dressed as civilians firing wildly at demonstrators.

"While this was happening, a group of plainclothes police arrived at the Deauville and started shooting wildly," he recalls.

Among the thirty photos that Poort gave to EFE, several can be seen of a man, wearing dark glasses, a white shirt and khaki trousers, with a short firearm in his hand.

Regis Iglesias, a Cuban dissident, explained how the regime militarized the streets in order to scare the populace:  

A convoy of trucks loaded with repressive special forces and a vehicle topped with a 50 caliber machine gun patrolled the long street.

Little has been reported on this, but some photographs and sounds have survived. This, together with the evidence of individuals who were present, provides a greater understanding of what occurred. 

What happened?

Five hundred Cubans had gathered at the Havana sea wall (El Malecon) to join a launch thought to be heading to Miami.  These folks did not wish to overthrow the regime, but rather to live in freedom elsewhere. 

They were met by the secret police of the Castro dictatorship, who ordered the throng to disperse.

Rather than defusing the situation, another 500 Cubans joined in and began marching along the Malecon, yelling "Freedom!" and "Down With Castro!" A hundred Special Brigade troops and plain clothes police assaulted the protesters after marching for a kilometer, firing live rounds into the gathering.

Secret police aiming handgun at protesters on August 5, 1994

30 years later and the full details of what transpired remains mostly silenced despite the pictures of regime officials pointing their handguns at the demonstrators combined with reports of the sounds of gun shots and wounded protesters echoing down through the years in anecdotal stories about that day. 

Eyewitness account

Ignacio Martínez Monter

Ignacio Martínez Montero posted on la Voz del Morro a first hand account of what happened that day that is translated to English below:

Then came the year 94 One hot August of that year's day, I'd arrived at my mother in laws home in Cuba and Chacón in the heart of Old Havana, near the Malecón, for that reason alone, after visiting my mother in law, I sat , like many, on the wall of the bay, very close to where still today the famous Casablanca launch travels in and out. That year was turbulent, constantly talking about boats diverted to Miami, and the tugboat. Maybe that's why the special brigade trucks arrived and attacked all of us who were sitting. 

Our response to this aggression was only to clamor for freedom. It has been said that we threw stones; but all that is a lie, the truth was that we were tired of so much aggression and without agreeing to we began to walk together screaming, Enough, Down with the revolution ... And before reaching Hotel Deauville, a battalion waited for us that attacked us with sticks and iron rods. It was they who made the big mess. They broke my left eyebrow and left me semi-lame. Yes, there were assaults and the aggressors had guns, but not among the civilians. One of the boys who went with us, who was called the Moor, even while handcuffed, they shot him in the torso and it was a miracle that he did not die. Who do you think paid for that? No one. 

They put us in a truck where they received us with beatings only to convince us to scream "Viva Fidel." They took us to the police station located at L and Malecon. Hours later I was taken to Calixto García hospital. There they attended to my foot and I treated the eyebrow wound; the medical certificate, never appeared. From there we boarded another bus and were taken to the prison 15/80, I could say "kidnapped" because nobody knew where we were. Some kids and nephews of my dad, who were with us, were released immediately. A boy could not take it and ended up hanged. No one learned of this; but we are many the witnesses who know what really happened that August 5th 1994, the day of Maleconazo.

Thirty years later, the Communist dictatorship in Cuba remains in power, terrorizing, torturing, and murdering nonviolent dissidents in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. This includes shooting young black men in the back. Despite all of this some Progressive Americans want to implement Cuban-style policing in the United States, claiming that we can learn a lot from them. They have no idea what they are saying. Unless, of course, they desire a totalitarian police state.

 

 People of good will should remember the victims of the Communist dictatorship in Cuba, and the Cuban people's ongoing struggle for freedom..

 

Diubis Laurencio Tejeda was a 36-year-old singer who was shot in the back by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) in Havana on July 12. 

 

There are others, but they have not been officially recognized. 

 

This is the case of 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 August 5th, 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. 

 

I had thought that the events of July 11, 2021, and August 5, 1994, would raise awareness among the public about the true nature of the Castro dictatorship and the importance of standing with the people of Cuba instead of their oppressors. However, three years later, too many people still deny the evidence and persist in believing that this is a normal government.