Obituary : MARIO CHANES DE ARMAS, 80

The Miami Herald
Mon, Feb. 26, 2007  MARIO CHANES DE ARMAS, 80
Funeral today for former Cuban political prisoner

A one-time comrade of Fidel Castro and former Cuban political prisoner will be buried Tuesday in Miami after suffering a heart attack.

BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA
El Nuevo Herald

Mario Chanes de Armas, the Cuban political prisoner who served the longest sentence in modern times and symbolized the struggle for civic freedom in 20th century Cuba, will be remembered today with a funeral service in Miami.

Chanes, 80, who suffered a fatal heart attack Saturday, spent his life in prison and in exile, but no adversity convinced him to halt his quest for a democratic future for his homeland.

Certainly not during the 30 years he spent in prison for opposing the regime of Fidel Castro, his comrade-in-arms during the failed raid on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1953.
In the past two years, Chanes' health deteriorated rapidly as a consequence of Alzheimer's disease. His memory failed, and in 2005, he was admitted into an assisted living facility in Hialeah.
Chanes died at Hialeah Hospital, where he had been taken in serious condition. His closest relatives were at his bedside.

''He died with the serenity and peace that accompanied him his whole life through,'' said his sister, Belén López. `He was a marvelous and kind man, willing to help everybody in exchange for nothing, a man of an earlier era.''

Labor organizer Mario Chanes de Armas

 THE EARLY YEARS

Born in the Marianao neighborhood of Havana on Oct. 25, 1926, Chanes took up commerce after graduating from high school.

Because of his leadership abilities, he soon became a labor leader in the Havana areas of Puentes Grandes and Ceiba and later extended his influence as an organizer to other provinces.

He was on his way to becoming an influential figure in Cuban labor circles, when the military coup of March 10, 1952, led by Gen. Fulgencio Batista, forced him to reassess his future.

Chanes gave up his labor work and joined the underground, where he conspired against Batista. That is where he met Fidel Castro, during a meeting with young people opposed to Batista's regime.
''A dear friend of ours, photographer Fernando Chenard Piña, knew a gentleman named Fidel Castro Ruz, and we began to meet in a house at 109 Prado in Havana,'' Chanes recalled during a long interview with El Nuevo Herald in 2003.

Along with Chenard, Chanes became chief of the secret cells that trained young men in the use of firearms, in preparation for the raid on the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953. Chanes drove in the third car behind Castro and was wounded in the hand before retreating.

Captured days later outside Santiago de Cuba, he was tried and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, but he was released in 1955 in a general amnesty to the raiders. He then moved to Miami and worked here as a dishwasher.

CASTRO CALLS
Not long thereafter, Castro summoned him from Mexico and asked him to join the expeditionaries aboard the yacht Granma. Chanes did not hesitate to take up arms again. On Dec. 2, 1956, he and 81 other rebels landed on the eastern coast of Cuba.

After the failed landing, Chanes managed to reach Havana, where he directed sabotage teams. He was arrested again, and was in prison when the revolution triumphed, on Jan. 1, 1959.
Chanes became disenchanted by the shift in the revolutionary process toward communism and tried to pull away from the circles of power.

On July 17, 1961, he was arrested on charges of conspiring to assassinate Castro and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. He always maintained that the charges were fabricated, pointing out that no weapons or compromising documents were ever found in his possession.

`A PLANTADO'
Refusing to accept the routine in prison or even wear prison garb, Chanes identified himself as a plantado -- a disobedient inmate -- until July 16, 1991, when he was released.

Chanes found exile in Miami in 1993.

Mario Chanes de Armas in 1993

He went on to became a tireless activist for the release of Cuban political prisoners and called for the democratization of Cuba at numerous international conferences. Until 2003, Chanes worked actively in the group Plantados, along with other well-known former political prisoners with whom he served time in Cuban prisons.

Chanes took up the banner of peaceful reconciliation among Cubans and vigorously supported all activists who practiced domestic opposition on the island.

Chanes is survived in Miami by his sisters Belén, Mercedes, Aleida and Merceditas. His son, Mario, died in 1984.

Visiting will begin at 5 p.m. today at the Bernardo Garcia Funeral Home, 4100 NW Seventh St., Miami. Burial has been set for Tuesday.

Miami Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report. 

Miami Herald, August 21, 2006

Tape suggests Raul Castro ordered Brothers shootdown

A recording purportedly of Raúl Castro suggests he gave direct orders for the shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue planes.

By WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA 

Posted on Mon, Aug. 21, 2006

Cuban Defense Minister Raúl Castro discussed plans for the 1996
shootdowns of two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes during a meeting with
official journalists just weeks after the event, according to an audio
tape obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

In the tape, a voice identified as Raúl’s details the planning carried
out during a meeting of military officers around Jan. 13, 1996, the day
Brothers aircraft allegedly had overflown Havana to drop anti-government
leaflets.

”I made it clear that [the decision to shoot] had to be decentralized
if we wanted it to be effective, so we gave the power to five
generals,” the voice says. The Brothers airplanes “were going to
escalate this, and we had no other recourse but to make this decision.

”I told them [MiG pilots] to try to knock them down over [Cuban]
territory, but they [the Brothers aircraft] would enter Havana and go
away . . . Of course, with one of those missiles, air-to-air, what comes
down is a ball of fire that will fall on the city,” the voice says.
“Well, knock them down into the sea when they reappear. If not, consult
with the people in authority.”

The two Brothers Cessna C-337 were shot down by MiGs Feb. 24, killing
Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales.
Brothers to the Rescue has denied any violations of Cuban airspace.

The 11-minute recording was taped during a June 21, 1996, conversation
at a Cuban Communist Party office in the eastern city of Holguín between
Castro, government officials and journalists from the government’s Radio
Rebelde network.

The authenticity of the recording could not be independently confirmed.
A telephone call Sunday to the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington
went unanswered.

RECORDING’S SOURCE

The recording was obtained by a Havana journalist who requested
anonymity for his own security. Cubans in Miami who listened to it say
they believe it is indeed Raúl’s voice. The Holguín newspaper carried a
report on Raúl’s presence there the day after the meeting. The recording
was delivered to El Nuevo Herald through Nueva Prensa Cubana, a Miami
agency that represents several dissident journalists in Cuba.

On two occasions, the voice on the recording is heard warning the
government journalists to “publish nothing about this.”

Cuban leader Fidel Castro told CBS News anchor Dan Rather in April of
1996 that he had given general orders that violations of Cuban airspace
should be stopped, but that neither he nor Raúl had given the specific
order for the Feb. 24 shootdown.

Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his younger brother three weeks
ago after undergoing ”complicated” intestinal surgery. He is reported
to be recovering but has not been seen in public since although photos
and a video have been released.

Cuba has long maintained that the Brothers’ Cessna 337 planes were shot
down within its territorial waters. But an investigation by the United
Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization concluded they were
well outside Cuban waters.

The tape does not specify the names of the five generals empowered to
order the shootdowns. In August 2003, federal prosecutors in Miami
indicted three Cuban officers for the attacks: Gen. Rubén Martínez
Puente, then head of the anti-aircraft command, and MiG pilot-brothers
Alberto Lorenzo and Francisco Pérez Pérez.

ON FULL ALERT

In the recording, the voice says that Cuban military forces were put on
full alert after Brothers airplanes allegedly violated Cuban airspace on
July 13, 1995.

‘One MiG-23 got behind them . . . `I have him, I have him,’ he said.
‘Let him go,’ he was ordered,” says the voice, adding later that the
order to stop the incursions remained in force as of the Holguín
meeting. “The order stays.”

In the tape, the voice also says that just before the Holguín meeting
the speaker ordered the emergency landing of a plane carrying Fidel
Castro from central Cuba to Havana because air force radars had detected
”several” suspicious marks in Havana province.

”I ordered that the plane land in Varadero,” the voice says. ‘It was
necessary to say that the order was mine. `Make it land in Varadero!’
and [Fidel] told them to obey it.”

José Basulto, president of Brothers to the Rescue, and relatives of the
dead pilots have long insisted on bringing Raúl Castro before U.S.
justice for the shootdowns.

”This is the type of proof we have been seeking from day one as
confirmation that the murder was premeditated,” said Maggie Alejandre
Khuly, sister of pilot Armando Alejandre.

Basulto, who was in another plane during the attacks, said the tape
“points to Raúl Castro as the direct source of the decision to down the
airplanes . . . This is a record of the plans for the crime.”

Audio:
http://www.miami.com/multimedia/miami/elnuevo/archive/audio/0820raulcastro.html

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/fidel_castro/15322216.htm

 

Find more about BROTHERS TO THE RESCUE SHOOTDOWN

From the Archives: Raul Castro: Cocaine Connection? (ABC News)

Investigative

Raul Castro: Cocaine Connection?

By Brian Ross And Vic Walter

Aug 14, 2006 9:55am

Federal prosecutors in Miami were prepared to indict Raul Castro as the head of a major cocaine smuggling conspiracy in 1993, but the Clinton Administration Justice Department overruled them,  current and former Justice Department officials tell ABC News.

The officials say Castro, as Cuban Defense Minister, permitted Colombian drug lords to pay for the use of Cuban waters and airstrips as staging grounds for smuggling runs into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s. "It was a major investigation involving numerous witnesses that was killed at the highest levels in Washington," said a former Justice Department official with direct knowledge of the case. "There were numerous national security and intelligence issues that would have made the case difficult," said Tom Cash, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Miami. 

Convicted Colombian drug boss Carlos Lehder of the Medellin cartel testified in a 1991 federal trial that he met twice in Havana with Raul Castro to arrange safe passage for cocaine flights over Cuban airspace. The draft indictment, as described by a former Justice Department official who saw it, listed Raul Castro as the leader of a conspiracy involved in smuggling seven and a half tons of cocaine into the United States over a 10-year period. At least a dozen other Cubans were also to be indicted. 

In 1989, a top Cuban General, Arnoldo Ochoa, was convicted by a Cuban court and ordered executed with three other military officers for their roles in drug smuggling. Cuban waters continue to be used by drug smugglers, according to federal law enforcement officials. "The smugglers know that the U.S. Coast Guard can’t go after them in Cuban waters," one official said. There was no immediate comment from the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C.  In the past, Fidel Castro has denied that his country or his brother had any role in protecting drug smugglers. 

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2006/08/raul_castro_coc/

ICRC on how communist dictatorship in Cuba ended their visits to Cuban prisons in 1959

International Committee of the Red Cross, July 12, 2005

The ICRC since 1945: Cuba, the revolution and its immediate aftermath

12-07-2005

How the ICRC entered into contact with Cuban revolutionary forces, supervised the transfer of wounded prisoners, and carried out a series of visits to jails in post-revolutionary Cuba.

By the end of 1957, Fidel Castro's rebel movement had wrested control of parts of Cuba from the forces of the Batista government. Concerned by the humanitarian consequences of the conflict, the ICRC sent a message to the Cuban Red Cross in April 1958, asking what could be done to help the victims.

No direct reply was forthcoming but in a telegram received at the beginning of July, Fidel Castro asked for ICRC help in organizing the release and transfer of wounded government prisoners who his medics were unable to care for because they lacked medical supplies. He said the wounded soldiers needed urgent help.

There followed a further exchange of messages, routed through the Venezuelan capital, Caracas and using the Swiss short-wave radio service. The ICRC shared these messages with the Cuban Red Cross and on 9 July sent a delegate, Pierre Jequier, to the island. Jequier's mission was to offer practical assistance to the Red Cross, to promote respect for common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (dealing with internal conflicts), and to assess the need for humanitarian relief on the rebel side, as well as ways to ensure its distribution.

 Rebel radio transmitter  

After a meeting with the head of state, President Batista, Jequier obtained authorization to arrange for the transfer of wounded. The authorities proposed that it take place near the southern town of Bayamo, close to rebel-held areas. The proposal was relayed to Castro's forces through ICRC headquarters and a radio station in Caracas, tuned to the rebels' transmitter in the Sierra Maestra. The rebels rejected the location, saying it would require a long walk through the mountains, and made a new proposal.

It took several days for the parties to agree on a location, but at last a truce was declared on 23 and 24 July. Jequier and a new colleague from Geneva went to the place suggested by Castro, an advance post of the Cuban army. " There they watched as a woman bearing a white flag approached on horseback. She told them that 50 wounded prisoners were nearby. She was then joined by Che Guevara, who told the delegates that 200 more prisoners were a bit further away… " . *

All of the prisoners were handed over to the Cuban army, watched by the ICRC and the Cuban Red Cross, whose doctors gave first aid to those needing it. To round off their involvement, and before leaving Cuba for Geneva, the delegates provided money to the Cuban Red Cross to buy medical supplies for the rebel army.

A fortnight later a representative of the Cuban revolutionary movement ( Frente Civico Revolucionaro ) visited Geneva and urged the ICRC to carry out visits to rebels held by the government, as well as army personnel held by the Castro forces. A delegate went to Havana in September and made contact with the authorities, but was unable to secure agreement for visits or other activities. He returned to Geneva but the ICRC kept trying to persuade Cuban representatives to allow further action, but to no avail.

 ICRC appeal  

On 30 December 1958, on the eve of the collapse of the Batista regime, the ICRC appealed to both sides to respect the spirit of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and to apply the provisions of Article 3. Two days later the new leadership of the Cuban Red Cross contacted the ICRC, which decided to send Pierre Jequier back to Havana.

Jequier met the new head of state, Dr. Urrutia, who undertook to respect the provisions of the Geneva Conventions for " military prisoners " . The next day the delegate visited an internment camp where some 400 prisoners, military and civilian, were being held.

Despite this promising start, Cuba's new foreign minister told Jequier of his disappointment over the fact that the ICRC had failed to take action to protect civilians who had fallen into the hands of the police before the collapse of the former government. Jequier explained the restrictions facing the ICRC in situations of internal conflict, namely that the authorities had to agree to it taking any action - which had not been the case under the deposed regime. There followed a suspension of visits, but they resumed on 9 March at the country's main prison, La Cabaña, where a thousand prisoners were held.

 Improvements at the jail  

Subsequently Jequier, joined by another delegate from Geneva, established a comprehensive plan for visiting jails in the country, without advance notice. When they went to La Cabaña for the second time they were able to report that conditions had improved since their first visit. By July 1959, they had visited all prisons and returned to Geneva.

Early the following year, in a climate of worsen ing relations between Cuba and the United States, the ICRC received requests from Cuban migrants in the US who claimed that prison conditions were worsening and urged the ICRC to intervene. Despite repeated attempts, the ICRC was unable to obtain permission to carry out any more visits.

The situation became acute after the Bay of Pigs operation, in which Cuban exiles, backed by the United States, attempted a sea-borne invasion. They were defeated and the vast majority of the invading force was captured. The ICRC renewed its call to the authorities for access to prisons, but again without success.

In March 1962, when the captured fighters were about to go on trial, the president of the ICRC appealed to Fidel Castro, asking that the provisions of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions be fully applied. The message once again asked for permission to visit prisoners. Further approaches were made, but Cuba's prison doors remained firmly closed to the ICRC.

 Read more on this in Françoise Perret's   article   in the International Review of the Red Cross  

https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/6e8d35.htm

Documento: CARTA DE INTELECTUALES CUBANOS FRENTE A LOS ATAQUES A LA REVOLUCIÓN

 

 

Ocho días después del juicio sumario y fusilamiento de los jóvenes Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodat Sevilla García y Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, por intentar secuestrar una embarcación para  escapar de Cuba, un grupo de intelectuales cubanos divulgó una carta pública respaldando tácitamente la drástica acción del gobierno de Fidel Castro.

 

CARTA DE INTELECTUALES CUBANOS FRENTE A LOS ATAQUES A LA REVOLUCIÓN

Mensaje desde La Habana para amigos que están lejos

En los últimos días, hemos visto con sorpresa y dolor que al pie de manifiestos calumniosos contra Cuba se han mezclado consabidas firmas de la maquinaria de propaganda anticubana con los nombres entrañables de algunos amigos. Al propio tiempo, se han difundido declaraciones de otros, no menos entrañables para Cuba y los cubanos, que creemos nacidas de la distancia, la desinformación y los traumas de experiencias socialistas fallidas.

Lamentablemente, y aunque esa no era la intención de estos amigos, son textos que están siendo utilizados en la gran campaña que pretende aislarnos y preparar el terreno para una agresión militar de los Estados Unidos contra Cuba.

Nuestro pequeño país está hoy más amenazado que nunca antes por la superpotencia que pretende imponer una dictadura fascista a escala planetaria. Para defenderse, Cuba se ha visto obligada a tomar medidas enérgicas que naturalmente no deseaba. No se le debe juzgar por esas medidas arrancándolas de su contexto.

Resulta elocuente que la única manifestación en el mundo que apoyó el reciente genocidio haya tenido lugar en Miami, bajo la consigna Irak ahora, Cuba después, a lo que se suman amenazas explícitas de miembros de la cúpula fascista gobernante en los Estados Unidos.

Son momentos de nuevas pruebas para la Revolución cubana y para la humanidad toda, y no basta combatir las agresiones cuando son inminentes o están ya en marcha.

Hoy, 19 de abril de 2003, a cuarenta y dos años de la derrota en Playa Girón de la invasión mercenaria, no nos estamos dirigiendo a los que han hecho del tema de Cuba un negocio o una obsesión, sino a amigos que de buena fe puedan estar confundidos y que tantas veces nos han brindado su solidaridad.

Firmado por:

Alicia Alonso
Roberto Fernández Retamar
Miguel Barnet
Julio García Espinosa
Leo Brouwer
Fina García Marruz
Abelardo Estorino
Harold Gramatges
Roberto Fabelo
Alfredo Guevara
Pablo Armando Fernández
Eusebio Leal
Octavio Cortázar
José Loyola
Carlos Martí
Raquel Revuelta
Nancy Morejón
Silvio Rodríguez
Senel Paz
Humberto Solás
Amaury Pérez
Marta Valdés
Graziella Pogolotti
Chucho Valdés
César Portillo de la Luz
Cintio Vitier
Omara Portuondo