"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” - Mohandas Gandhi
Yesterday, Cuba’s communist dictatorship in New York City at the United Nations demonstrated that one can win a vote, and still lose.
The United States, together with 18 other democracies, distanced
themselves from the Cuban dictatorship and its falsehoods about the U.S.
embargo. The total vote was 165 in favor of the resolution, seven
against, 12 abstentions, and eight non votes. The dictatorship, and
their allies tried to spin this non-binding resolution, a propaganda
exercise, repeated annually since 1992, but this time was different.
It was a fiasco.
First, on October 28, 2025 Ambassador Mike Waltz, U.S. Representative to the United Nations factually and truthfully outlined the moral case for U.S. sanctions on the Cuban dictatorship,
and rebutted the distortions, and lies circulated by Havana. Ambassador
Bruno Rodriguez, the foreign minister for the Cuban dictatorship,
interrupted Ambassador Waltz’s address to the UN, but came away from the
encounter small, and diminished. Watch it for yourself here.
Secondly, Havana has been denying their involvement in Vladimir Putin’s
war in Ukraine, but that is a lie that was called out yesteday by
Ambassador Melnyk Andrii. Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the
United Nations. His excellency explained that the reason for Ukraine’s
vote against the resolution condemning the US embargo on Cuba was
Havana’s complicity in Moscow’s recruitment of thousands of Cuban
soldiers now fighting in Ukraine. You can watch his presentation below.
These are the reasons why Argentina,
Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, Paraguay, and Ukraine joined with the
United States to vote against the resolution. These are also the
reasons why Albania, Bosnia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Ecuador,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldavia, Morocco, and Romania
abstained this time.
In addition there were eight
countries that did not vote for whatever reason and they are: Bulgaria,
Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Madagascar, Myanmar, Naura, Syria, and
Venezuela.
The so-called “high point” in these non-binding votes
was in 2016 when both the United States, and Israel abstained, and no
one voted against the resolution. The vote was 191 in favor, 0 against,
and 2 abstentions. This was during the Obama thaw with Havana.
This
time was different, but not only due to the vote itself, but also the
debate, and the action that took place on the same day.
Today,
while the World was focused on Havana’s non-binding propaganda exercise,
Kyiv took concrete action in protest to Cuban soldiers waging war on
Ukraine for Putin.
It was not a good day for Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez, and the dictatorship in Havana.
Today, Vaclav Havel’s maxim uttered in his important essay, The Power of the Powerless,
was seen in action. “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie,
then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in
truth.”
Truth and facts exposed the Cuban dictatorship before the international community, and left it shaken.
It was a bad day for the Cuban dictatorship, but a great day for Cuban dissidents, and for freedom in New York City.
Learn why the Cuban dictatorship still fears her. #CeliaCruz100
Celia Cruz was born a hundred years ago, and passed away 22 years ago in 2003.
Her music continues to be censored in Cuba, and the Cuban dictatorship
cannot tolerate a group of Cuban artists honoring her memory.
What is it that the communists in Havana fear from this Black Cuban woman?
She was born on October 21, 1925 in the poorest section of the Santos Suárez neighborhood in Havana and lived in a small home with 13 relatives. Her mother, Catalina Alfonso, was a stay-at-home mom who looked after her vast extended family, while her father, Simon Cruz, worked as a railroad stoker.
He monitored steam pressure, managed water levels, maintained the fire,
and regulated steam-powered jets that distributed coal within the
firebox of the locomotive engine.
She began singing as a child, and to compete on radio programs as a young woman. Cruz’s cousin Serafín entered her in a competition on the radio programLa Hora del Té (Tea Time) in 1947. She received first prize, a meringue cake, for her performance of the tango “Nostalgia.”
Fifty
two years later on April 30, 1999 in the Spanish program, Séptimo de
caballería”, in which she sang and took part in a panel discussion with
other artists: Ángela Carrasco, Lolita Flores, and Miguel Bosé. Celia briefly discussed the role her mom played
in circumventing her dad’s objections to his daughter having a career
in show business. “My father didn’t want me to be a singer or an artist.
My mother told me, ‘Forget it, I’ll get it sorted out with him.’”
To appease her father, who was embarrassed that his daughter
was involved in show business, Celia pursued her studies to become a
teacher, but continued to compete in singing competitions. She recorded her first track in Venezuela in 1948.
At the height of her popularity in Cuba, Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
Miguel Angel Quevedo, a Cuban businessman, hired Celia Cruz to perform with a pianist in his home at the beginning of 1959.
The most influential magazine in Cuba, Bohemia, which had backed the
revolution, was owned by Quevedo. … On the night of the performance at
Quevedo’s house, Celia was singing when all of a sudden the guests began
to rush to the front door. Fidel Castro had arrived. She kept singing.
Celia
was informed by Quevedo that Fidel was interested in meeting her. Celia
said she was hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place.
Fidel would have to approach her if he wished to meet her. However, the
commandant refrained from doing so.
On July 15, 1960, Celia Cruz was forced to leave Cuba because
she refused to submit to the new dictator and wanted to carry on living
as a free artist. But in 1962, when her mother was sick, she attempted to visit her, but Fidel Castro banned her from entering Cuba. The government once more prevented Celia from going to her mother’s funeral when she passed away. Her music was also censored in Cuba since she did not actively support the dictatorship.
In
the same Spanish program, Séptimo de caballería, mentioned earlier she
was repeatedly asked to reconcile with the Cuban dictatorship, “to open
the door.”
Celia responded to them,
“I’m not going to tell you she is above Cuba. But Catalina Alfonso [
her mom] is right next to Cuba, and for her I’m not the one who’s going
to open the door. I’m not there, because they closed it to me. My mother
died, and I couldn’t go and bury her because they didn’t want to let me
in. Let that regime leave then, because it has to go. But should I go
there? What you told me are pretty words but I won’t...”
“I
don’t want to go to a country where I can’t speak like I’m speaking to
you now. They were the first to [distance] themselves. Now, since the
dollars are so convenient for them, they send all those poor old people
here.” …“[Cuba is] a farm, and he’s the owner.” … “There’s a book of Cuban
music that couldn’t be released to the world if it didn’t feature Celia
Cruz. And it didn’t, because I’m out. So they’re the most unjust and
narrow-minded. Because Celia Cruz has to be included there, whether they
like it or not, I am Cuba, period.”
Celia Cruz is the “Queen of Salsa.” She was also called the “Queen of
Cuba” but in reality she is the “Queen of a Free Cuba.” Celia still
holds a symbolic position in Cuba that is a focus for national identity
and unity. She is a synthesis both of the Afro-Spanish culture, the
defense of human dignity, and resistance to tyranny throughout her own
life.
During the Summit of the Americas in 1994, she asked the leaders of the Americas,
“Please, on behalf of my compatriots, I ask you not to help Fidel
Castro any more so he can go away and leave us a Cuba free of
communism.” She said that all the artists had been asked to refrain from
expressing political messages, but she had engaged in an act of civil
disobedience.
Even
22 years after her passing she remains a Cuban icon internationally,
and her example, when shared with the Cuban populace at large, endangers
the continuing rule of Cuba’s communist dictatorship.
This is why they still fear the Queen, and why the secret police continue to censor her memory and ban her music.
More on this important anniversary here. A Spanish version of this OpEd was published in Diario Las Americas earlier today.
"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.”
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, 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.
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.
“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.”
“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.
"Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies." - Mohandas Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, 156 years ago today, and his legacy continues to be passionately debated in India. The Economic Times,
based in India, in 2021 published an editorial titled "Continuing relevance of Mohandas Gandhi" that highlights the challenges to Gandhian
nonviolence today in his home country.
“Gandhi
is remembered for Ahimsa, non-violence. However, Gandhi’s Ahimsa was
not passive acceptance of violence, but its active resistance by the
force of moral purpose and mobilization of public opinion. Today, we
have elected representatives who venerate Gandhi’s assassin, but few
supporters who follow his example of opposing violence.”
Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of debate is that China and Vietnam are totalitarian dictatorships
where such debate is forbidden, and Pakistan has been divided between
periods of democratic and military rule in questioning the founder could
prove unhealthy. India on the other hand has been a democracy through
out its period of independence.
Gandhi liberated an entire subcontinent from imperial rule without firing a
shot. The United Nations, beginning in 2007, has designated his birthday, October 2nd, as
the International Day of Nonviolence. Nevertheless, he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized by the Nobel Committee as the "Missing Laureate."
He wasn't a rich man. He never held formal political office. He wasn't a
saint or divine figure. He was just a man. An attorney who had taken a vow of poverty and celibacy. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Gandhi transformed himself into a principled
strategic non-violent activist in South Africa
at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and
policies of the colonial authorities. An important
theoretical result of his South African campaign was the
development of Satyagraha.
Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian
Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The
final name was the fusion of two words
as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness
(agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the
Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”
The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about
economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor
and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred.
They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce
equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of
the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will. I
shall bring about economic equality through non-violence, by converting
people to my point of view by harnessing the forces of love as against
hatred. I will not wait till I have converted the whole society to my
view but will straight away make a beginning with myself. It goes
without saying that I cannot hope to bring about economic equality of my
conception, if I am the owner of fifty motor-cars or even of ten bighas
of land. For that I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest
of the poor.
It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by
violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will
fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence
in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as
the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to
which it owes its very existence. [...] It can be easily demonstrated
that destruction of the capitalist must mean destruction in the end of
the worker and as no human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption,
no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he
wrongly considers to be wholly evil.
This explains in large part the hostility from communists to
Mohandas Gandhi's social political agenda, and many on the Left who
share the Marxist belief in class struggle.
Gandhi's approach is reflected in what is considered his greatest act of nonviolence, the 1930 Salt March, in which he wrote two letters to his British adversary in India, Viceroy Lord Irwin, who he addressed as a friend in which he outlined both his grievances, and the act of civil disobedience he planned to carry out.
The contrast between
those who advocate class struggle and those who advocate nonviolent
resistance could not be more stark.
Mohandas Gandhi changed political protests and empowered millions with Satyagraha and the use of strategic nonviolence
to battle powerful and violent regimes and great injustices in an
effective manner that frustrates those who want to preserve or change
the status quo using violence.
Nonviolent resistance does not
mean the absence of violence. It is a courageous decision to challenge
the oppressors using nonviolent means. Telling the truth and resisting a
violent adversary with nonviolent means is not without risk, but it has
a greater chance of success than violent resistance. Oswaldo Payá spoke
truth to power on July 20, 2012, denouncing the fraudulent change of the dictatorship and offering a vision of real change in Cuba.
"The
Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) and the opposition do not kill,
sabotage or exclude, everyone knows that. Our motto is Liberty and Life.
We do not want power for ourselves; we want peace and civil rights for
all, because where there are no rights there is no justice. We seek only
the power of the people, popular sovereignty, as Martin Luther King
did, remember? Power to the people!... We denounce institutionalized
corruption. Those who have power declare us enemies and do not compete
with the opposition but rather sentence it, stigmatize it and annihilate
it." ... "The peaceful, logical and fair solution that can lead to
change and genuine dialogue is to recognize these rights. Enough of
reactionary justifications that say that the people are not ready, that
they do not want change. Do you think that fifty-four years without
freedom and without rights are not enough? Others say that the people do
not want rights, what an insult! Others may say that many Cubans want
this government. I do not believe it, but in any case no Cuban can
decide what they want in this environment. With these laws and with this
system, Cubans cannot choose who they want to govern them, what system
to have. We demand rights for all, without hatred or offense, with
justice. Everyone knows that not even the National People's Assembly can
decide freely, it also receives orders. This will change only when they
are elected by the people, only then will they obey the people. That is
our demand. We continue to call on all Cubans, no matter how they think
or where they come from, to be part of the solution and the changes.
Only the people can do that. Why say no to our rights? Why elitism?
Philosophies and theologies? What oppresses us is fear, intolerance and
the determination of a group to maintain absolute power. Let us abandon
pretense! Let us take the path of the people, which is the path of
democracy."
This vision is still relevant today, and the price Payá
had to pay for speaking the truth to power and acting accordingly cost
him his life and Harold Cepero two days later, on July 22, 2012, when both were murdered by agents of the Cuban dictatorship.
They were killed because with their truth telling and their non-violent
resistance they threatened the continuity of the dictatorship.
Nonviolence
and it's culture of life is a force more powerful, and it offers an alternative to war that threatens humanity's existence with its culture of death.
She never renounced political violence and terrorism as methods of struggle
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry announced earlier today: “On September 25,
2025, U.S. citizen Joanne Deborah Byron, ‘Assata Shakur,’ passed away in
Havana, Cuba, as a result of health ailments and her advanced age.” Her
full name was Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard, and she was a terrorist
who escaped justice in 1979 while serving a life term for the murder of a
New Jersey State Trooper.
The People’s Forum described her in a social media post as an “Anti-racist activist & freedom fighter.”
What happened in 1973?
Troopers
Werner Foerster and James Harper arrested Joanne Chesimard and two of
her associates on the New Jersey Turnpike on May 2, 1973, for a motor
vehicle infraction. Unbeknownst to the troopers, all three subjects were
carrying semi-automatic weapons and had fake identities. Chesimard
opened fire from the front passenger seat, injuring Trooper James Harper
in the shoulder. Chesimard got out of the car and kept shooting at both
troopers until Harper’s return fire wounded her as she fled for cover.
Trooper
Harper fatally injured James Coston, the passenger in the back seat,
who also fired at the troopers. Trooper Werner Foerster and Clark
Squire, the driver of the vehicle, were fighting hand-to-hand. After
suffering serious injuries to his right arm and abdomen, Foerster was
killed by roadside execution with his own military weapon. The jammed
firearm belonging to Chesimard was discovered beside Foerster.
Forty
years after the cold-blooded murder of this New Jersey state trooper,
the fugitive convicted of the killing, Joanne Chesimard a.k.a. Assata
Shakur, was named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI, apparently the
first woman ever to make the list, on May 2, 2013.
Chesimard
was an active, prominent member of the Black Panther Party and later
the Black Liberation Army, which was described as one of the most
violent militant organizations of 1970s. During this same time, the
Black Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the murder of several
police officers throughout the United States. On May 2, 1973, Chesimard
and two accomplices were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by Troopers
James Harper and Werner Foerster for a motor vehicle violation. All
three subjects possessed fictitious identification, and, unbeknownst to
the troopers, all three were armed with semi-automatic handguns. From
the front passenger seat, Chesimard fired the first shot, wounding
Trooper James Harper in the shoulder. As Harper moved for cover,
Chesimard exited the car and continued to fire at both troopers until
she was wounded by Harper’s return fire.
The rear seat passenger,
James Coston, also fired at the troopers and was mortally wounded by
Trooper Harper. Trooper Werner Foerster was engaged in a hand-to-hand
combat with the vehicle’s driver, Clark Squire. Foerster was severely
wounded in his right arm and abdomen and then executed with his own
service weapon on the roadside. Chesimard’s jammed handgun was found at
Foerster’s side.
The three assailants returned to their car and
drove down the road approximately five miles before abandoning the
vehicle. Within half an hour, Chesimard was arrested by New Jersey State
Troopers. Coston was found to have died near their vehicle, and Squire
was found 40 hours later within a mile of their car.
Chesimard and
Squire were charged, convicted, and sentenced for the murder of Trooper
Werner Foerster, as well as on additional charges. Squire remains in
jail. In 1979, Chesimard escaped with help from a coalition of radical,
domestic terror groups who took two guards hostage during an armed
assault at the facility where she was being lodged. She later fled to
Cuba. Since this time, she has been classified as a federal fugitive and
the subject of an unlawful flight to avoid confinement warrant.
Domestic terrorist who attacked U.S. Capitol broke Chesimard out of prison in 1979
Some
more details on her escape. On November 2, 1979, Joanne Deborah
Chesimard was broken out from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women by
members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force under the direction of
the Black Liberation Army. Leftists over social media have celebrated
the escape of this individual on the anniversary of her escape with the
hashtag #AssataShakurLiberationDay.
She is not the only American woman to have links to Cuba and terrorism against the United States. Marilyn Buck engaged in terrorist actions including murdering three police in 1981 and bombing
the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest the invasion of Grenada. Buck also
helped to break Joanne Chesimard out of prison. Buck died of uterine cancer at home at age 62 on August 3, 2010. The Cuban government’s official media refer to her as an “activist and former political prisoner.”
The
accusation of “violence” or “terrorism” no longer has the negative
meaning it used to have. It has acquired new clothing; a new color. It
does not divide, it does not discredit; on the contrary, it represents a
center of attraction. Today, to be “violent” or a “terrorist” is a
quality that ennobles any honorable person, because it is an act worthy
of a revolutionary engaged in armed struggle against the shameful
military dictatorship and its atrocities.
Who was Werner Foerster, the man Chesimard was found guilty of murdering?
Werner Foerster served two years and 10 months with the New Jersey State Police, and left behind his wife Rosa Charlotte Heider Foerster, and his 3 year-old son Eric. Prior to working for the police he had been a welder. Werner was just 34 years old. Both Werner and Rosa were German immigrants.
Werner Foerster with his son Eric
Today, let us remember Chesimard’s victims, and the sad fact that she
evaded justice thanks to the dictatorship in Havana - that also
advocated for the terrorism and political violence - leading to blood
shed on American soil.
The People's Forum
warmly welcomes the Cuban dictatorship’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Eduardo
Rodríguez Parrilla in New York City, but should be celebrating the life and legacy of
Celia Cruz instead.
Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without pain.” – Celia Cruz
The centennial of Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso's
birth will be celebrated on October 21, 2025. She is better known by her
stage name Celia Cruz.
Celia had agency and she decided not to
bend the knee to the dictatorship. She wanted to live and perform in
freedom, which meant leaving Cuba after 1959.
Fidel Castro attempted to force the salsa singer to pay him homage, but Celia refused. Salserísimo Perú, a Youtube site
founded by three Peruvian journalists to disseminate knowledge on salsa
and tropical music, provides a more comprehensive and accurate history
than the Smithsonian Institution.
The following is an account of Celia Cruz’s first “encounter” with Fidel Castro.
“In
the early months of 1959, Celia Cruz was hired to sing with a pianist
at the house of the Cuban businessman Miguel Angel Quevedo. Quevedo
owned the magazine Bohemia, the most influential in Cuba and who had
supported the revolution in the last few years. The guerrilla movement
with a certain Fidel Castro in front proclaimed in Santiago the
beginning of the revolution. At that moment Celia enjoyed great
popularity for “Yebero Moderno”, “Tu voz” and “Burundanga” songs she had
recorded with the Sonora Matancera. As a guest artist of Rogelio
Martinez’s group the Guarachera (Celia) was free to accept other
contracts as a soloist. This allowed her to show her talent on different
radio stations in Havana, and perform in Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru.
Since the regime of Fidel took power, it had begun to systematically
seize businesses, radio and television stations. [Fidel Castro speaking:
‘The revolution was something like a hope and that joy, possibly,
prevented us from thinking all that we still had to do.’ For the
Guarechera, Fidel was ending free expression and the arts in her
country. The night of the show in the home of Quevedo, Celia was singing
standing next to the pianist, when suddenly the guests started to run
to the front door of the house. Fidel Castro had arrived. Neither she
nor the pianist moved and continued singing. Suddenly, Quevedo
approached Celia and told her that Fidel wanted to meet her because in
his
guerrilla days, when he cleaned his
rifle he was listening to Burundanga. Celia replied that she had been
hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. If Fidel wanted
to meet her, he would have to come to her. But the commandant did not
do that.”
Castro barred Celia Cruz from visiting her dying mother
Since
Celia Cruz refused to bow to the new dictator, and wanted to continue
to live the life of a free artist, she had to leave Cuba on July 15,
1960. However, when her mom was ill she tried to return to see her in 1962, but was barred from entering the country by Fidel Castro. When her mother died Celia was again blocked by the dictatorship from attending her funeral. Because she was not an active supporter of the regime, her music was banned in Cuba.
Regime
apologists and their agents of influence have attempted to pretend that
things have changed with regards to artistic freedom.
On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported
that Cuba’s ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on
August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists
by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on
anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.
There was only one problem. It was not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión
(ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue
to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: “All those who had allied with
the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio ”
Celia
is in good company. Other major Cuban artists who have had their music
banned by the Castro regime are Olga Guillot, Rolando Lecuona, Paquito
D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Israel Cachao López, Ramón “Mongo”
Santamaría, Mario Bauza, Arsenio Rodríguez, Willy Chirino, and Gloria
Estefan.
Cuban cultural genocide
According to the 2004 book Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today edited by Marie Korpe,
there is growing concern that post-revolution generations in Cuba are
growing up without knowing or hearing censored musicians such as Celia
Cruz, Olga Guillot, and the long list above. This could lead to a loss
of Cuban identity in future generations. This approach has been referred
to as a Cuban cultural genocide, denying generations of Cubans their
history.
Communists are celebrating the centenary of the
birth of Fidel Castro with a series of propaganda stunts over the next
year. They should be called out and fact checked.
One of these stunts was carried out by the People's Forum in New York City on September 21, 2025, and was an effort to whitewash the racist legacy of the Cuban dictatorship.
This was known by 1961 when Cuban black nationalist Juan René Betancourt in his essay, "Castro and the Cuban Negro", published in the NAACP publication The Crisis in 1961 detailed how it was done.
“Of
the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their doors and
others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is without
the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba died at the
hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had the cynical
impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose of
censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil obviously
exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man to offer
America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”
Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and
Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black
diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended
autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian
rule.
It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite
allying with Black elites in the United States, and Africa while
criticizing racism in the United States.
For decades, the Castro
regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to
the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official
propaganda with racist tropes.
The elimination of Afro-Cubans from this dynamic by the new communist revolutionary elite turned racism into a political tool outside of Cuba
to advance the Castro regime's communist agenda, but turned it into a
taboo topic by ungrateful blacks, labeled counter-revolutionaries by the
dictatorship.
What happened in Cuba two years after the glorious national rebellion
of July 11, 2021, which was brutally crushed by the regime with
violence and repression?
Those who miraculously escaped imprisonment and persecution speak
courageously before the camera in a country that is sinking, with no
glimmer of hope except for the desperate urge to flee, by any means
necessary. A bankrupt society, abandoned to its fate, without the
solidarity or support of the nationals and foreigners who once placed
their faith in a doomed and corrupt ideology.
Cuba’s Eternal Night follows 5 Cubans over the span of 2 years as
they struggle with government repression, scarcity of food and medicine,
and the biggest mass exodus the island has ever experienced.
Film followed by Q&A session
Expected guests
Jordan Allott
Director, Writer
Biographies
Jordan Allot
Jordan Allott is a documentary filmmaker and founder of In Altum Productions (IAP). With over 35 countries on his filmmaking resume—from China and Syria to Nigeria and Cuba—his work explores themes ranging from international human rights and American politics to Catholic spirituality. Luis Alvarez
Videography, Audio tech, Certified Drone Operator Born in Bogota, Colombia, Luis studied film directing at the New York Film Academy. Luis’s extensive production experience includes working with IAP for over 12 years. Traveled to Cuba to carry out interviews for Cuba’s Eternal Night documentary.
Ariadna Mena Rubio is a long time Cuban human rights activist, and labor union activist, who suffered detentions and harassment from Cuba's secret police. In Cuba she was a member of the Confederación de Trabajadores Independiente de Cuba (CTIC) and the Asociación Sindical Independiente de Cuba (ASIC). Prior to being exiled, she had traveled outside of Cuba to denounce the human rights situation in the island, and returned home to the island. She appears in the documentary, Cuba’s Eternal Night, where her odyssey to obtain asylum in the United States is highlighted.
John Suarez
John Suarez is a human rights activist and executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba and a former program officer for Latin America Programs at Freedom House.
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