Reflection on José Martí, Racism, and the Castro Regime

"Slavery does not imply inferiority in the enslaved race, since Gauls with blue eyes and blond hair were sold as serfs with shackles around their necks in the markets of Rome. This example helps make ignorant whites less prejudiced."  - José Martí "My Race" Patria, April 16 1893

Standing, left to right: Manuel de la Cruz, Jose Maceo,
Guillermo Moncada. Seated: Juan Gualberto Gomez, Jose Marti, Jose D. Poyo. Key West, Florida.

Reviewing José Martí on the subject of racism within the Cuban context is depressing, and especially the above statement on slavery. Fidel Castro's revolution over six decades enslaved an entire people. Regardless of one's race, religion, or class all were forced to be subservient to the Castro family or face exile, prison, torture, extrajudicial killings or firing squads. 

Reading The New York Times one must parse it in the same way than one does Granma, when reading anything they write or publish on Cuba. The Gray Lady recently published an opinion piece by French journalist and essayist Jean François Fogel that reports that Cuba under the Castro dictatorship is "a segregated society: 70 percent of black and mixed-race Cubans said they didn’t have access to the internet, compared with 25 percent of white Cubans. The racial wealth gap was also vast: While 50 percent of white Cubans had a banking account, only 11 percent of black Cubans said they had one. Moreover, white Cubans received 78 percent of remittances to Cuba, and they controlled 98 percent of private companies."

These numbers are questionable, but the underlying sentiment is that there is a racial divide in Cuba today. Worse yet the writer claims that selecting a white prime minister was a betrayal of racial equality in Cuba. This ignores the reality that both the president and the prime minister are puppets controlled by the Castro family.  

In order to justify the present sorry condition of Cubans, Fogel rewrites history claiming that "the dominance of the white political leader and the disenfranchisement of black Cubans have always been a part of the island’s history." This ignores the role played by strong black leaders that changed things for the better in the wars of independence and in the first half century of the Republic. It also ignores the mixed raced strong man who dominated Cuban political life for two decades. He was first elected president democratically in 1940 and later returned to destroy the democratic order taking power as dictator in 1952..  

This blog entry is an attempt to challenge François Fogel's false narrative highlighting some important historic figures.

Juan Gualberto Gómez Ferrer

Juan Gualberto Gómez Ferrer (July 12, 1854 – March 5, 1933) who together with José Martí conspired to revolt against Spain. In 1892 he founded the Central Directory of Societies of Color, a network that would spend the next sixty seven years pushing for Black advancement in Cuba.  Gómez Ferrer was captured on February 28, 1895 and imprisoned by the Spanish for three years. Upon his release he went to New York and continued the struggle for Cuban independence from exile. "In December 1898, he accompanied Major General Calixto García to Washington, D.C. as a member of the commission sent to negotiate for the funds necessary for the Cuban Liberation Army and recognition of the rebels."  In 1900 he was elected to represent Oriente in the Constituent Assembly. 

Following independence Juan Gualberto Gómez Ferrer  was deeply critical of "the Platt Amendment" stating that it had "reduced the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban Republic to a myth." He held seats in the Cuban House of Representatives (1914–1917) and Senate (1917–1925), representing the province of Havana.  Gómez Ferrer consistently campaigned to defend Black Cubans from discrimination, oppression, and violence. He wrote extensively, and books about him were published in Cuba on the centenary of his birth in 1954. 

Martín Morúa Delgado

A contemporary figure to Juan Gualberto was Martín Morúa Delgado (1856-1910). He published newspapers, magazines, and novels that opposed slavery and racism while advocating integration and independence for Cuba from Spanish rule. Morúa Delgado was Cuba’s first black Senator following Cuba's independence from Spain while still under U.S. occupation in 1901. He would go on to be Cuba's first black Senate President in 1909, and passed away in 1910 in the position of Minister of Agriculture. 

Cubanidad, the ideology of a Cuban identity that transcends races, was first put forward by Jose Marti in the independence struggle, would continue in the Republic, and by the 1930s embracing African culture as intrinsically part of Cuban identity was seen as a way to resist American imperialism by most Cubans, regardless of their racial origins. 

In the 1940s concrete successes were finally seen by many Cuban blacks on the political front. The network of mutual aid associations that Juan Gualberto Gómez had established in 1892 and their constituent parts would play an important role in obtaining anti-discrimination planks in the 1940 Constitution, and additional reforms against racism in the workplacce in 1950.

Fulgencio Batista

Unlike Fidel Castro, Fulgencio Batista had been elected president of Cuba in free and competitive elections in 1940. He served out his presidential term from 1940 through 1944. President Batista had been discriminated against and denied membership in the Havana Yacht Club on account of his being of mixed race, despite being President of Cuba at the time. He left Cuba in 1944 and returned in 1948 when he was elected to the Cuban Senate, and in 1952 staged a coup that returned him to power as dictator. This opened the way to Fidel Castro's violent take over in 1959. Nevertheless, a non-white president had been elected to hold real political power in 1940 by a free people. Batista is a tragic figure that first helped to build up a democratic order only to tear it down 12 years later.

Nevertheless, challenges persisted through the prism of race relations leading to more radical solutions being proposed in the 1950s.

A more radical critique of how to confront race problems in Cuba would be made by Juan René Betancourt. Betancourt was a lawyer by profession and member of the Sociedad "Victoria" in Camaguey and cultural secretary of the Provincial Federation of Black Societies of Camaguey. He was politically active from 1940 through 1959 and pushed for black consciousness and economic uplift through black solidarity and pushed for a more radical approach.  Like many, he initially joined the 1959 revolution, but quickly became disenchanted and critical with the communist takeover in Cuba.

Black civil society, that had played an important role in empowering black Cubans over the first six decades of the 20th century, was systematically dismantled by the Castro regime. This was a disaster for black empowerment in Cuba. Today, the results can be seen in the numbers presented by Jean François Fogel. However, Cuba watchers should be aware that this legacy has not been completely disappeared, but is to be found among those hounded and persecuted by the Castro dictatorship.

Juan René Betancourt

In exile Juan René Betancourt would criticize Cuban exile for not having a political vision that included black empowerment, but he did cite one exception, and that was the Cuban Christian Democrats. Their ideological descendants in Cuba today are the Christian Liberation Movement.

Erneido Andres Oliva Gonzalez presents Brigade Flag to President Kennedy

The deputy commander of the Brigade 2506 land forces that invaded Cuba in an effort to oust the Castro dictatorship in April of 1961 was Erneido Andres Oliva Gonzalez, a black Cuban. On December 29, 1962 he presented President John F. Kennedy the Brigade Flag during a ceremony at the Orange Bowl. President Kennedy pledged ""Commander I assure you that this flag will be returned to this Brigade in a free Havana."  Erneido worked closely with Attorney General Robert Kennedy in Operation Mongoose that staged commando raids on the Castro regime's military installations. Following the assassination of President Kennedy by Castro sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963 the new President, Lyndon Johnson, shutdown Operation Mongoose.

Oliva Gonzalez participated in the U.S. intervention of the Dominican Republic in 1965 where he served over a year, and helped prevent the rise of another communist dictatorship in Latin America. He ended his career in the U.S. military with the rank of Major General. He continued to yearn for a free Cuba.

Furthermore, black leadership would continue to advocate for freedom in Cuba. Manuel Cuesta Morúa ( born 1962 ), a Cuban dissident leader, claims ancestry from Martín Morúa Delgado, on his mother’s side, Mercedes Morúa.  He is part of the movement seeking a restoration of democracy and human rights in Cuba, has spoken at international gatherings, and carried out campaigns to empower Cubans in the island.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa

These individuals outlined above are not puppets put into power by a dictator, as is the case of Miguel Díaz-Canel, and others identified by Fogelin in his opinion piece, but free individuals that sought and are seeking a Cuba where black Cubans are full citizens with equal rights and opportunities along with their fellow country men and women of different races. 

The Castro regime claims José Martí  as the intellectual author of their ideological project, and that is a lie. The regime in Cuba is the anti-thesis of what the Cuban poet advocated. 

The true legacy of Juan Gualberto Gómez Ferrer and José Martí lives on in the democratic opposition in Cuba, and the Cuban diaspora around the world that continue to resist the Castro tyranny..  

Sins of the Republic: The M.S. St. Louis leaves Germany for Cuba on May 13, 1939

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.” – Thomas Jefferson

SS St. Louis Havana Harbor May-June 1939

The M.S. St. Louis left Hamburg 80 years ago on May 13, 1939 with more than 900 Jewish passengers fleeing Nazi Germany only to be rejected entry by Cuba, the United States, and Canada. 

May 27 - June 6, 1939 spanned the period 80 years ago when corrupt Cuban officials extorted desperate Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and then thanks to popular anti-immigrant fervor refused to grant them safe harbor leading the ship to try its luck with the United States, and Canada only to be denied and forced to return to Europe where many of the passengers would later perish in gas chambers of the holocaust.

Passengers on the MS St. Louis. - USHMM, courtesy of Dr. Liane Reif-Lehrer

Looking over the literature on this black spot in Cuban history there are a number of lessons to be learned that can be applied even today, and there is a need to apologize for a great wrong committed by the Cuban people against these 938 passengers aboard the M.S. St. Louis. Political corruption, envy, and the manipulation of public sentiment by agents of a totalitarian regime led to a voyage of refugees seeking freedom into what became known as a voyage of the damned.

As usual in Cuban history there are those who try to blame the United States for the actions of the Cuban officials, but as time passes and new documents are released that charge is without a serious basis. The U.S. State Department was trying to pressure the Cuban government to take the Jewish refugees so that the United States would not be placed in the position of having to accept the refugees.

Fulgencio Batista and President Federico Laredo Brú (1938)

The Strongman, The President, and the Director of Immigration

The Cuban Republic founded in 1902 suffered political instability that led to an elected President Gerardo Machado changing the Constitution to be able to run for re-election and in effect become a dictator which led to the revolution of 1933. The revolution of 1933 had placed Fulgencio Batista in the position as strong man with Presidents in office that he essentially had impeachment power over.

For example, Dr. Federico Laredo Brú had been elected Vice President in 1936 on the same ticket as President Miguel Mariano Gomez, son of former president José Miguel Gómez who won the presidential election, but when he vetoed a bill to create rural schools under army control that Fulgencio Batista had wanted passed the strong man, engineered his impeachment in December of1936 and Laredo Brú would serve out Gomez’s term. He was the nominal president controlled by strongman Batista when the M.S. St. Louis arrived in Cuba on May 27, 1939.

The Great Depression and the economic downturn created an anti-immigrant environment around the world. In Cuba this manifested itself in early 1939 with the passage of Decree 55 which drew a distinction between refugees and tourists. “The Decree stated that each refugee needed a visa and was required to pay a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of Cuba. But the Decree also said that tourists were still welcome and did not need visas.

The Director-General of the Cuban immigration office, Manuel Benitez Gonzalez, realized that Decree 55 did not define a tourist or a refugee. He decided that he would take advantage of this loophole and make money by selling landing permits which would allow refugees to land in Cuba by calling them tourists. He sold these permits to anyone who would pay $150. According to U.S. estimates, Benitez Gonzalez had amassed a personal fortune of $500,000 to $1,000,000.Though only allowing someone to land as a tourist; these permits looked authentic, were even individually signed by Benitez Gonzalez, and generally were made to look like visas. His small fortune created resentment and envy in the bureaucracy that would eventually force him to resign.

Manuel Benitez Gonzalez was also a protégé of Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista, and was most likely providing the strongman a kickback. On May 5, Decree 937 was passed which closed the loophole Benitez Gonzalez had exploited. Without knowing it, almost every passenger on the M.S. St. Louis had purchased a landing permit for an inflated rate but by the time they arrived in Cuba those permits had already been nullified by Decree 937.

The argument has been made that pro-Franco sentiment explains the rejection of the Jewish refugees and anti-semitic demonstrations. This requires ignoring that under Franco's brutal dictatorship, during the entire Second World War especially after 1942, Spanish borders were kept open for Jewish refugees from Vichy France and Nazi-occupied territories in Europe. Furthermore that Franco's diplomats extended their diplomatic protection over Sephardic Jews in Hungary, Slovakia and the Balkans. Spain was a safe haven for all Jewish refugees and antisemitism was not official policy under the Franco regime. What happened in Cuba?

80 years ago, the MS St. Louis set sail from Germany with hundreds of Jewish refugees on board. They were fleeing Nazi Germany - but the passengers were denied refuge in Cuba, the US, and Canada. With nowhere to go, many of them would later perish in the Holocaust. #WeRemember pic.twitter.com/2CNMEeZtmU

— WJC (@WorldJewishCong) May 13, 2019

According to the Jewish Virtual Library: "Goebbels had decided to use the M.S. St. Louis and her passengers in a master propaganda plan. Having sent agents to Havana to stir up anti-Semitism, Nazi propaganda fabricated and hyped the passengers' criminal nature - making them seem even more undesirable. The agents within Cuba stirred anti-Semitism and organized protests. Soon, an additional 1,000 Jewish refugees entering Cuba was seen as a threat."

This is pure speculation, but a combination of factors: the opposition to Fulgencio Batista sought to expose corrupt practices and exploit the anti-immigrant sentiment generated by the economic downturn combined with Nazi agents, less inept than Heinz Lüning, seeking to exploit and heighten the anti-semitism created a perfect political alignment that led to a mass demonstration on May 8, 1939 and Primitivo Rodriguez, a spokesman for opposition figure Ramon Grau San Martin, urging Cubans to "fight the Jews until the last one is driven out." The demonstration drew 40,000 spectators. Thousands more listened on the radio.

The Cuban government admitted 28 passengers with proper identification. 22 of them were Jewish and had valid U.S. visas; the remaining six-four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals--had valid entry documents. One further passenger, after attempting to commit suicide, was evacuated to a hospital in Havana. The remaining 908 passengers were denied entry. In the end according to the Jewish Virtual Library it was about money. The Cuban government wanted $500 per refugee (approximately $500,000 in total). The same amount as required for any refugee to obtain a visa to Cuba. Several men claiming affiliation with the Cuban government, one identified himself as having powers to negotiate bestowed by President Brú. These men insisted that $400,000 to $500,000 were needed to ensure the St. Louis passengers' return to Cuba. The negotiators for the passengers believed that these men just wanted a cut in the profit by negotiating a higher price.

Around noon on Tuesday, June 6, President Brú closed negotiations. Through a misunderstanding, the money allotment had not been agreed upon and the negotiators had missed a 48 hour deadline that they didn't know existed. One day later, the negotiators offered to pay President Brú’s every demand but the President said it was too late. The option of landing in Cuba was officially closed. The refugees would go on to be rejected entry by the United States, Canada and return to Europe. 254 of the passengers would subsequently perish in the Nazi Holocaust. Worse yet the Nazis took the example of the rejection of the Jewish refugees as a sign first that forced emigration of their Jewish population as a solution was off the table and that the world would not care if they were
exterminated.

Over the years books and movies have been written and produced documenting and dramatizing this crime and tragedy. In 1976 the Voyage of the Damned recreated the entire episode and in 2009 it was referred to in the back story of one of the characters in the film Rosa and the Executioner of the Fiend directed by Ivan Acosta.

On April 25, 2000 at 7:30pm at the height of the Elian controversry, approximately 1,500 Cubans marched from Ocean Drive and 10th Street on South Beach to the Holocaust Memorial in a silent march to ask for forgiveness for a great crime. If one believes as Martin Luther King Jr. did that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” then praying for mercy and asking for forgiveness for a great wrong is a necessity. Although the participants in the march knew what the purpose was the press preferred to focus on the Elian controversy and not the act of contrition.

There was what may have well been a final opportunity to remember the victims and ask for forgiveness of those who survived this ordeal nearly 10 years ago on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at the Eden Roc on Miami Beach were the survivors gathered to remember the 70th anniversary of the ill fated voyage. The testimony and experiences related were powerful and disturbing.

Representatives from both Israel and Germany were present and spoke. Many of the survivors said that they had forgiven what had been done to them but that they would never forget. A profound injustice was committed against these Jewish refugees by the Cuban government at the time, and lamentably, although a new political order arrived in Cuba in 1959 it doubled down on Anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions.

The government in Havana has carried on the worse of this legacy and compounded it in its non-stop propaganda attacks over the past half century against Israel. One of the low points under the current regime was during the Yom Kippur War were Fidel Castrp in 1973 dispatched 500 Cuban tank commanders to try and destroy Israel not to mention the Cuban government's training and supplying of Arab terrorists.

Survivors of the 1939 SS St. Louis voyage gathered in Miami Beach in 2009

Both the United States, in a formal resolution of the 111th Congress,and Canada, by erecting a monument and including this episode in its education program, have apologized and made amends.. When will Cuba? Additional information available at https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/st-louis/

To shamefully forget the dead is a desecration. Greatness is rooted in truth and truth is virtue. – José Martí

Requiescat in pace Luis Alberto Monge Álvarez, former president of Costa Rica and friend of free Cubans

Remembering a departed President who co- founded a just and enduring free order in Costa Rica

Luis Alberto Monge Álvarez (December 29, 1925 – November 29, 2016)

Friends of freedom lost a great ally on November 29, 2016 when Luis Alberto MongeÁlvarez passed away he was ninety years old.  At the age of 23, President Monge was the youngest member of the National Constituent Assembly of 1949. He was twice legislator for the PLN (1958-1962 and 1970-1974) and was president of the Legislative Assembly. He was President of Costa Rica for just four years between 1982 and 1986. The current President of Costa Rica declared three days of national mourning on his passing.

President Luis Alberto Monge (Center) surrounded by other former presidents

For Cubans he was a friend of freedom who assisted Cubans resisting tyranny first against Fulgencio Batista and later against Fidel Castro.  In 2004 he was a founding member of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba. Four years later at a gathering of this committee in Costa Rica he spoke clearly in a manner that sadly to many heads of state fail to do today. The following is a cable made public by wikileaks describing this meeting:

Costa Rica continues to be one of the region's leading critics of the Castro government and a strong advocate for democratic change and human rights reforms in Cuba. For instance, on May 20, 2008, the Costa Rican Committee for Solidarity with Democracy in Cuba and the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba hosted a forum on Cuba. Participants included a former ex-president of Costa Rica, a current Costa Rican deputy, an ex-deputy, a Czech diplomat in Costa Rica, and a former Cuban political prisoner. The May 20, 2008 forum highlighted Costa Rica's commitment to freedom and democracy and its criticism of Cuba's abysmal record on human rights. Luis Alberto Monge Alvarez, President of Costa Rica from 1982 to 1986 and a member of President Arias' National Liberation Party (PLN), spoke of "communist occupation" in Cuba. He referred to the "communist dictatorship" of the Castro regime while expressing Costa Rica's solidarity with the Cuban people.

Incidentally Costa Rica has a 96.3% literacy rate, has an excellent universal healthcare system, and a thriving democracy that respects fundamental freedoms and the rule of law. This is no small part due to President Luis Alberto Monge's life time of work and leadership in Costa Rica. He was a politician who practiced what he preached with honesty and transparency and in the process became an elder statesman of Costa Rica.

President Luis Alberto Monge on the right protesting for the freedom of Lech Walesa

Sins of the Republic: The S.S. St. Louis Arrives in Cuba on May 27, 1939

SS St. Louis Havana Harbor May-June 1939

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.” – Thomas Jefferson

Passengers aboard the SS St. Louis. - USHMM, courtesy of Dr. Liane Reif-Lehrer

On April 25, 2000 at 7:30pm at the height of the Elian controversry, approximately 1,500 Cubans marched from Ocean Drive and 10th Street on South Beach to the Holocaust Memorial in a silent march to ask for forgiveness for a great crime. If one believes as Martin Luther King Jr. did that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” then praying for mercy and asking for forgiveness for a great wrong is a necessity. Although the participants in the march knew what the purpose was the press preferred to focus on the Elian controversy and not the act of contrition. 

May 27 - June 6, 1939 spanned the period 70 years ago when corrupt Cuban officials extorted desperate Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and then thanks to popular anti-immigrant fervor refused to grant them safe harbor leading the ship to try its luck with the United States only to be denied and forced to return to Europe where many of the passengers would later perish in gas chambers of the holocaust.

Looking over the literature on this black spot in Cuban history there are a number of lessons to be learned that can be applied even today, and there is a need to apologize for a great wrong committed by the Cuban people against these 938 passengers aboard the S.S. St. Louis. Political corruption, envy, and the manipulation of public sentiment by agents of a totalitarian regime led to a voyage of refugees seeking freedom into what became known as a voyage of the damned.

As usual in Cuban history there are those who try to blame the United States for the actions of the Cuban officials, but as time passes and new documents are released that charge is without a serious basis. The U.S. State Department was trying to pressure the Cuban government to take the Jewish refugees so that the United States would not be placed in the position of having to accept the refugees.

Fulgencio Batista and President Federico Laredo Brú (1938)

The Strongman, The President, and the Director of Immigration

The Cuban Republic founded in 1902 suffered political instability that led to an elected President Gerardo Machado changing the Constitution to be able to run for re-election and in effect become a dictator which led to the revolution of 1933. The revolution of 1933 had placed Fulgencio Batista in the position as strong man with Presidents in office that he essentially had impeachment power over. For example, Dr. Federico Laredo Brú had been elected Vice President in 1936 on the same ticket as President Miguel Mariano Gomez, son of former president José Miguel Gómez who won the presidential election, but when he vetoed a bill to create rural schools under army control that Fulgencio Batista had wanted passed the strong man, engineered his impeachment in December of1936 and Laredo Brú would serve out Gomez’s term. He was the nominal president controlled by strongman Batista when the S.S. St. Louis arrived in Cuba on May 27, 1939.

The Great Depression and the economic downturn created an anti-immigrant environment around the world. In Cuba this manifested itself in early 1939 with the passage of Decree 55 which drew a distinction between refugees and tourists. “The Decree stated that each refugee needed a visa and was required to pay a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of Cuba. But the Decree also said that tourists were still welcome and did not need visas. The Director-General of the Cuban immigration office, Manuel Benitez Gonzalez, realized that Decree 55 did not define a tourist or a refugee. He decided that he would take advantage of this loophole and make money by selling landing permits which would allow refugees to land in Cuba by calling them tourists. He sold these permits to anyone who would pay $150. According to U.S. estimates, Benitez Gonzalez had amassed a personal fortune of $500,000 to $1,000,000.Though only allowing someone to land as a tourist; these permits looked authentic, were even individually signed by Benitez Gonzalez, and generally were made to look like visas. His small fortune created resentment and envy in the bureaucracy that would eventually force him to resign.

Manuel Benitez Gonzalez was also a protégé of Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista, and was most likely providing the strongman a kickback. On May 5, Decree 937 was passed which closed the loophole Benitez Gonzalez had exploited. Without knowing it, almost every passenger on the S.S. St. Louis had purchased a landing permit for an inflated rate but by the time they arrived in Cuba those permits had already been nullified by Decree 937.

The argument has been made that pro-Franco sentiment explains the rejection of the Jewish refugees and anti-semitic demonstrations. This requires ignoring that under Franco's brutal dictatorship, during the entire Second World War especially after 1942, Spanish borders were kept open for Jewish refugees from Vichy France and Nazi-occupied territories in Europe. Furthermore that Franco's diplomats extended their diplomatic protection over Sephardic Jews in Hungary, Slovakia and the Balkans. Spain was a safe haven for all Jewish refugees and antisemitism was not official policy under the Franco regime. What happened in Cuba?

According to the Jewish Virtual Library: "Goebbels had decided to use the S.S. St. Louis and her passengers in a master propaganda plan. Having sent agents to Havana to stir up anti-Semitism, Nazi propaganda fabricated and hyped the passengers' criminal nature - making them seem even more undesirable. The agents within Cuba stirred anti-Semitism and organized protests. Soon, an additional 1,000 Jewish refugees entering Cuba was seen as a threat."

This is pure speculation, but a combination of factors: the opposition to Fulgencio Batista sought to expose corrupt practices and exploit the anti-immigrant sentiment generated by the economic downturn combined with Nazi agents, less inept than Heinz Lüning, seeking to exploit and heighten the anti-semitism created a perfect political alignment that led to a mass demonstration on May 8, 1939 and Primitivo Rodriguez, a spokesman for opposition figure Ramon Grau San Martin, urging Cubans to "fight the Jews until the last one is driven out." The demonstration drew 40,000 spectators. Thousands more listened on the radio.

The Cuban government admitted 28 passengers with proper identification. 22 of them were Jewish and had valid U.S. visas; the remaining six, four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals, had valid entry documents. One further passenger, after attempting to commit suicide, was evacuated to a hospital in Havana. The remaining 908 passengers were denied entry. In the end according to the Jewish Virtual Library it was about money. The Cuban government wanted $500 per refugee (approximately $500,000 in total). The same amount as required for any refugee to obtain a visa to Cuba. Several men claiming affiliation with the Cuban government, one identified himself as having powers to negotiate bestowed by President Brú. These men insisted that $400,000 to $500,000 were needed to ensure the St. Louis passengers' return to Cuba. The negotiators for the passengers believed that these men just wanted a cut in the profit by negotiating a higher price.

Around noon on Tuesday, June 6, President Brú closed negotiations. Through a misunderstanding, the money allotment had not been agreed upon and the negotiators had missed a 48 hour deadline that they didn't know existed. One day later, the negotiators offered to pay President Brú’s every demand but the President said it was too late. The option of landing in Cuba was officially closed. The refugees would go on to be rejected entry by the United States, Canada and return to Europe. 254 of the passengers would subsequently perish in the Nazi Holocaust. Worse yet the Nazis took the example of the rejection of the Jewish refugees as a sign first that forced emigration of their Jewish population as a solution was off the table and that the world would not care if they were exterminated.

Over the years books and movies have been written and produced documenting and dramatizing this crime and tragedy. In 1976 the Voyage of the Damned recreated the entire episode and in 2009 it was referred to in the back story of one of the characters in the film Rosa and the Executioner of the Fiend directed by Ivan Acosta.

There was what may have well been a final opportunity to remember the victims and ask for forgiveness of those who survived this ordeal this past Sunday, December 13, 2009 at the Eden Roc on Miami Beach were the survivors gathered to remember the 70th anniversary of the ill fated voyage. The testimony and experiences related were powerful and disturbing. Representatives from both Israel and Germany were present and spoke. Many of the survivors said that they had forgiven what had been done to them but that they would never forget. A profound injustice was committed against these Jewish refugees by the Cuban government at the time, and lamentably, although a new political order arrived in Cuba in 1959 bringing many new evils with it. The government in Havana today has carried on the worse of this legacy and compounded it in its non-stop propaganda attacks over the past half century against Israel. One of the low points under the current regime was during the Yom Kippur War were in 1973 Fidel Castro dispatched 500 Cuban tank commanders to try and destroy Israel not to mention the Cuban government's training and supplying of Arab terrorists.

Survivors of the 1939 SS St. Louis voyage gather in Miami Beach in 2009

Although young Cuban exiles made a powerful gesture of contrition in 2000, Cuban exile organizations representing Cuba's democratic republic should recognize this historic wrong as other free peoples have done including both the United States in a formal resolution of the 111th Congress and Canada by erecting a monument and including this episode in its education program . Additional information available at http://thestlouisproject.com/

To shamefully forget the dead is a desecration. Greatness is rooted in truth and truth is virtue. – José Martí

Ver un crimen en silencio es cometerlo. - José Martí