Pedro Luis Boitel: Cuba's martyr for academic freedom and human rights born 90 years ago today

"They can kill and destroy my body, but never my spirit, that they will never be able to break." * - Pedro Luis Boitel  (1931 - 1972)

Pedro Luis Boitel born May 13, 1931 - May 25, 1972

Pedro Luis Boitel was born in Cuba on May 13, 1931 to a family of modest means of French origin. He studied at the University of Havana while working as a radio technician. Opposing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista he joined the July 26 movement led by Fidel Castro. The majority of the movement's members like Pedro were anti-communists.

Once Batista left for exile and Fidel Castro took control the anti-communist members of the July 26 movement became an obstacle to absolute power. Following the revolution, Boitel returned to University were his fellow students nominated to run for the presidency of the Federation of University Students in 1960.  Fidel Castro personally intervened to remove him from the presidency. Pedro Luis Boitel's threat to the emerging communist regime was that he refused to betray the Federation of University Students and sought to maintain academic freedom and autonomy.

 

As time went on and the dictatorial nature of the Castro regime became more apparent, the student leader became an opponent to Fidel Castro. Condemned to a decade in prison in 1961 he served the cruel and unjust sentence but as the date of his release came and went prison officials refused to free him. In response to the years of cruelty, torture and now denial of his freedom he went on hunger strike on April 3, 1972. Pedro Luis Boitel died forty nine years ago on May 25, 1972 after 53 days on hunger strike in Havana in the Castillo del Principe. Academic freedom and autonomy ended in 1960 replaced with fear, repression, and ideological litmus tests to attend university. It has still not been restored in Cuba today.  

The first time I heard about Pedro Luis Boitel was in the 1987 documentary Nobody Listened. The image and testimony of his mother who looked forward to death to be reunited with her son is heart breaking.  

The world knows about Pedro Luis Boitel because his mother, Clara Abrahante Boitel, fought to save her son and make known the atrocities committed against Pedro Luis regardless of the threats visited upon her.   

Pedro Luis Boitel at the CMQ radio station

Today marks what would have been Pedro Luis Boitel's 90th birthday, but he died in 1972 at age 41 on a hunger strike in Castro's prisons, but his ideals and example lived on in the Cuban opposition both inside and outside of Cuba.

 
Original Spanish quotes by Pedro Luis Boitel and English translations:

“Los hombres no abandonan la lucha cuando la causa es justa.”

"Men do not abandon the fight when the cause is just." 

“Podrán matar y acabar con mi cuerpo, pero nunca con mi espíritu, ese no lo podrán doblegar jamás.”

"They can kill and destroy my body, but never my spirit, that they will never be able to break."