"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)
Victims photos of the massacre at the 1972 Olympics in Munich at a
ceremony to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the attack,
which left 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman dead. Ronald Wittek/EPA
At 4:30 am Central European Time on September 5, 1972, as the Israeli athletes slept, eight members of the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, carrying duffel bags loaded with AKM assault rifles, Tokarev pistols, and grenades, snuck into the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany. They initially took 11 Israelis hostage.
They demanded the release of 234 Palestinians and non-Arabs jailed in Israel, along with two West German insurgents held by the West German penitentiary system, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, who were founders of the West German Red Army Faction terrorist group.
The hostage-takers threw the body of one Israeli hostage they had killed out of the front door of
the residence to demonstrate their resolve.
Who had been training Palestinians in terror tactics since the early 1960s?
"Fidel Castro had been operating his own schools for guerrillas since 1961, starting with recruits from Latin America and Africa. By 1964, Palestinians and Europeans had joined the ranks," reported Claire Sterling in The New York Times Magazine on March 1, 1981.
The Castro regime welcomed the founding of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and made first contacts with the Palestinian FATAH in 1965 in Algiers and Damascus.
The Israelis refused to meet the hostage takers demands, the Germans breached the Olympic village, but the terrorists succeeded in killing all 11 Israeli hostages, and one West Germany police officer.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the terrorist attack the Germany government made a formal apology.
“As head of state of this country and on behalf of the Federal Republic
of Germany, I ask your forgiveness,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier
of Germany said, addressing the victims’ families. “I ask for your
forgiveness for the lack of protection for the Israeli athletes at the
Olympic Games in Munich and for the lack of trying to find explanations
afterward.”
This leads to an obvious question. If the Germans have apologized for failing to protect the Israeli athletes and trainers killed by the Palestinian terrorists, then when will the Cubans apologize for training them to carry out the terror attack in Munich?
How the Cuban Republic obtained independence through protracted diplomatic efforts.
Cubans
through political intrigue managed to avoid the fate of Puerto Rico and
the Philippines during the Spanish-Cuban-American War. The United States
military had occupied Cuba from 1898 to 1902, and the bitter price of
independence was accepting the Platt Amendment, which permitted U.S.
interference in Cuban internal affairs to preserve order and protect
American interests, put into question the status of Cuba's Isle of Pines
as a possible U.S. possession.
Cuban nationalists elected in 1900 during U.S. occupation
Cuba's first elections were held in June 1900 under the U.S. occupation
for local officials, and pro-U.S. candidates did not fare well losing to
nationalist candidates, and the pattern was repeated again in August
1900 to elect candidates to the constitutional convention.
The majority
elected were war veterans, Mambises, who fiercely opposed the U.S.
occupation, and Juan Gualberto Gómez, a black intellectual, he had been a close ally of José Martí in the war of independence, who spent the rest of his life opposing the Platt Amendment, and advocating for racial equality representing his constituency in Havana.
In 1892 the black Cuban journalist and future statesman founded the Central Directory of Societies of Color, a network that would spend the next sixty seven years pushing for Black advancement in Cuba.
Reclaiming Cuban territory, and reducing American military presence.
The
Cuban Republic formally came into existence on May 20, 1902 and it
began to achieve concrete results. American speculators had bought up
land on what was then called the Isle of Pines,
and renamed the Isle of Youth during the Castro regime, following the
U.S. occupation of Cuba and the island had been settled by American
settlers, and its status as a U.S. territory a political question,
according to American courts.
Cubans successfully negotiated the maintenance of the Isle of Pines as
part of Cuba on July 2, 1903 in the Hay-Quesada Treaty that was
negotiated between U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and Gonzalo de
Quesada, the Cuban Ambassador to the United States, and the treaty was
finally ratified on March 13, 1925 following years of pressure from economic and political interests wishing otherwise.
The
United States had wanted to build four military bases in Cuba, but the
Cuban government successfully negotiated this down to two in 1903, those being Guantanamo and Bahia Honda. Bahia was given back to Cuba in 1912 for more land for the Guantanamo military base. By 1912 there was only one U.S. military base operating in the island.
Cuba's first dictator: Cuban nationalist Gerardo Machado
Gerardo Machado ruled Cuba from 1924 through 1933.
Gerardo Machado, a brigadier general
in the war of independence and later a businessman was elected
president of Cuba in 1924 but seized power over all political parties in
1927 and became Cuba's first dictator.
In 1925 General Machado succeeded
Dr. Zayas as President. In spite of his promise not to stand for
reelection, Machado sought to have the Constitution of 1901 modified so
that he could maintain himself in power. As a result, a widespread state
of public disorder became almost permanent. It was under these
circumstances that Machado was reelected without opposition in 1928.
On January 19, 1928 President Calvin Coolidge and the First Lady visited Cuba and met with General Gerardo Machado who at the time was transforming his rule into Cuba's first dictatorship.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa in a 2008 book review published in The Wall Street Journal titled "The Family Spirit" described Bacardi's clash with the new Cuban authoritarian leader.
"José Bosch, called Pepín, a young businessman who also married into the
Bacardi family and was an early opponent of Gerardo Machado's corrupt
rule in the 1920s. Machado made Bacardi, one of Cuba's most successful
companies, a target of predatory taxation, but a proposed rum tax was
more than the distiller could stand. Bacardi opened new facilities in
Mexico and threatened to move its operations there if the tax was
enacted."
Cuban Revolution of 1933: The Sergeants Revolt
Fulgencio Batista and Ramon Grau in 1933
On September 12, 1933 The Madera Tribune
carried an editorial titled "America Will Never Consent to Removal Of
Platt Amendment." Cuba was in the midst of a crisis caused by President
Gerardo Machado. He was democratically elected, but had made changes
the constitution to break a campaign promise, run for re-election and perpetuate his presidency for a second term. Together with the
arrival of the Great Depression in 1929, a period of political and
economic crisis led to the end of Machado's presidency in a
revolutionary environment in 1933.
At a critical moment in the struggle against Machado when populists and
students called for a general strike, it was the communists who broke
the strike and sought an accommodation with the Cuban tyrant. It made
the communist party extremely unpopular in Cuba.
"Shortly after assuming office in 1933, President Roosevelt authorized
his new Ambassador to Cuba, Mr. Sumner Welles, to act as mediator
between Machado and the majority of his opponents. The proposal was
accepted and the basis for an agreement was reached which would have
ended the conflict between government and governed in Cuba, if General
Machado had given effect to his offer to resign. Instead, influenced by
the evil advice of some of his friends and by his own intemperance, he
carried out acts of such violence that on August 11, 1933, the Cuban
Army declared against his authority, thus obliging him to renounce his
office and leave the country the very next day."
Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, a Cuban diplomat and opponent of Machado, was offered the position of President when Machado fled. He took office on August 13, 1933.
U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Benjamin Sumner Welles in a August 24, 1933 telegram warned of continuing instability in Cuba.
"I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that my original hope that the
present Government of Cuba (Céspedes' administration) could govern as a
constitutional government for the remainder of the term for which
General Machado had himself elected must be abandoned. If the solid and
unwavering support of the Army could be counted on, and if the groups
and parties represented in the present Government were unanimous in
their support of the administration, it might be possible for the
existing Government to maintain itself, pass the necessary legislation
of all kinds required, and hold the general national elections in
November 1934 as originally anticipated. As a matter of fact, however, a
general process of disintegration is going on. The Army is by no means
in a satisfactory condition and the relapse in the health of General
Sanguily, Chief of Staff and the one ranking officer in the Cuban Army
who can command the support of his subordinates, has delayed the taking
of the measures necessary to enforce discipline within the Army which he
alone could have undertaken satisfactorily."
This was followed by a
revolution led by Sergeant Fulgencio Batista with other enlisted men and university students in what became
known as the Sergeants Revolt on September 4, 1933.
On September 4, 1933, Fulgencio Batista seized the moment and organized his troops in the military ranks and gave them instructions.
"From this moment forward, do not obey anyone's orders but mine. First
sergeants must immediately take control of their respective military
units. If there is no first sergeant, or if he refuses to take command,
the senior sergeant must do so. If there is no sergeant, a corporal. If
there is no willing corporal, then a soldier, and if not, then a
recruit. The units must have someone in command and he must be an
enlisted man."
The sergeants took uncontested control of Columbia barracks and were soon joined by members of the student directory "beginning with José Leyva, Ramiro Valdés Daussá, Juan António Rubio Padilla, Carlos Prío Socarrás, Rubén de León, and Justo Carrillo."
Four hundred military officers opposed to Batista regrouped at the Hotel Nacional, but Batista with his enlisted men crushed the officers at what became known as the Battle of Hotel Nacional, and the revolutionary forces consolidated control.
Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada had been outside of Havana to examine damage done by a hurricane, and returned to the Capitol city to learn that he was no longer the President of Cuba, and accepted the outcome of the coup. He would go on to continue his long and distinguished career as a Cuban diplomat until his death six years later in 1939 from a heart attack.
On September 5, 1933 both Fulgencio Batista and Ramon Grau San Martin visited Ambassador Sumner Welles to determine the position of the United States with regards to the events unfolding. The revolutionaries initially created a governing pentarchy, but that gave way to Ramon Grau San Martin as president for a hundred days, followed by Batista becoming a behind the scenes strong man.
President Ramón Grau San Martín waves to crowd in 1933.
This revolutionary process put Fulgencio Batista into the
national spotlight and by 1934, pushing Grau San Martin out of power, he became the strong man behind the scenes
even though democratic formalities were restored.
Cuban Presidents: 1902 to 1952 and dictator Batista 1952-1959
Cuba's democratic renaissance 1940-1952
In 1940 all the political tendencies in Cuba met to draft what became
known as the 1940 Constitution.
A presidential election was held and
Fulgencio Batista elected. He served out his term as president from 1940
to 1944. Due to a clause in the new Constitution he was unable to run
for re-election.
In the election of 1944 the opposition candidate,
Ramon Grau San Martin, won and served a term as president from
1944-1948 and in the election of 1948, Batista’s political party again
lost in the general elections and Carlos Prios Socarras was elected president.
Cuba's last freely elected presidents: Carlos Prío and Ramon Grau
Over a 20 year period beginning in 1933 two men, first allied, then bitter political enemies would dominate Cuban politics:the Cuban sergeant Fulgencio Batista, and the university professor Ramon Grau San Martin,
Emilio Bacardi Moreau was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 5, 1844, the
son of Facundo Bacardí Massó, and after a life of entrepreneurship and
patriotic service, he died 100 years ago today on August 28, 1922,
of a heart ailment. He was 78 years old. The city of Santiago
suspended all public events for two days to mourn and celebrate his
life. He had been nicknamed “Cuba’s foremost son.”
Elements of the Cuban regime have tried to observe this anniversary and co-opt the Bacardi name, but the Bacardi family is the antithesis of the Castro family and Castroism in Cuban history through to the present day.
"Emilio Bacardi, especially, comes to life as the book’s most powerful character, though one so strange that Gabriel García Márquez
might have invented him. Emilio was imprisoned twice by Spain off the
coast of Morocco for his revolutionary activities. But he still managed
to hold the company together, to serve as Santiago’s mayor during the
unsettled years of the American occupation, to help found a salon called
the Victor Hugo Freethinker Group, to practice theosophy in a
predominantly Catholic country and to track down a genuine mummy on a
trip to Egypt, which he bought as the centerpiece for a museum he had
founded in Santiago."
His son Emilio Bacardi Lay actively took part in Cuba's war of independence. In 1895, he was a field officer for General Antonio Maceo during the invasion of Cuba by independence forces. He reached the rank of colonel by the age of 22.
Emilio Bacardi Lay ( Source: Cuba en la memoria )
In 1895, José Martí landed a
boat just east of Santiago, beginning Cuba's second war of
independence. Martí was soon killed in battle. Emilio Bacardi Moreau, who had taken the reins of the Bacardi
company, was a disciple of Martí and took great risks during the wars of independence, resulting in his forced exile with his family,
first on the isle of Chafarinas off the coast of Africa and then in Jamaica during the Ten Years War, and during the second war of independence.
During
the Republic, the Bacardi family not only had enlightened business
practices but also engaged in civic activities that promoted a Cuban
democratic culture. Emilio Bacardi was the first democratically elected mayor of Santiago de Cuba. His reputation for honesty and public service led to his election to Cuba's national senate in 1906. This tradition continued in later Bacardi generations. Each time that a dictatorship arose in Cuba under
Gerardo Machado in the 1930s, and later Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, the Bacardis joined the
democratic resistance.
The Castro brothers emerged from the
worst elements of political gangsterism to impose a dictatorship that
has lasted 63 years. The new dictatorship illegally confiscated Bacardi's assets in Cuba on October 15, 1960, attempted to seize their licenses, and trademarks, but failed.
Bacardi Imports, Inc., re-established its headquarters in Miami in 1963
after having been based for a century in Santiago de Cuba. Emilio
Bacardi Lay, who was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 12, 1877, died in exile in Miami on October 14, 1972 at the age of 95. He was the last surviving ranking officer from Cuba's war of independence with Spain.
On Francisco Franco's death in 1975, Fidel Castro decreed three days of mourning
in Cuba for the Spanish despot, in an official decree rubber stamped by Cuban president Oswaldo Dorticós.
Bacardi in the diaspora would continue to make world class rum, to win awards for their quality, and expand as a business.
They would also continue their traditions of service, enlightened
stewardship of their company, and support for a democratic Cuba.
Biography of the Bacardi family by Tom Gjelten
This is the history that the Castro dynasty would like to erase or alter.
Meanwhile, to all who read this please
consider that if you wish to make a toast to freedom then do it with Bacardi.
To commemorate the Europe Union's Day of Remembrance for the victims of
all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, President von der Leyen issued the following statement excerpted here:
“On 23 August, we honour the memory of the victims of
totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, in Europe and beyond. Today, on
the 83rd anniversary of the signature of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
this date carries a special significance. This year, Putin brought the
horrors of war back to Europe, along with the reminder that peace cannot
be taken for granted.[ Rest of statement here ].
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was named after the two signers, Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav
Molotov and Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. It contained secret protocols
that divided Eastern and Central Europe between the two totalitarian regimes. What
they called a "peace treaty"signed on August 23, 1939 started World War 2 with the invasion and conquest of Poland by the Nazis and Soviets days later in September 1939.
Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite since 1948, had its Prague Spring in 1968, a moment when
reformers in the government sought socialism with a human face and it
was ended on August 21, 1968 with the arrival of Warsaw Pact tanks on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's orders followed by an occupation that crushed the reformist initiative.
Castro backed Leonid Brezhnev's invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968
Today let us also remember the Cubans murdered by the totalitarian dictatorship in Cuba.
This is not an exhaustive accounting.
Killing peasants who resisted
Firing squads in Cuba ordered by the Castro brothers
While Fidel Castro talked democracy in 1959 the firing squads were filmed
and broadcast to terrorize the populace and consolidate control. Those who
had fought by his side in good faith believing the Revolution was a
struggle to restore democracy became uneasy with the course of the
new regime.
Frank Calzon writing in National Review
on November 10, 1978 about the six year peasant uprising in the
Escambray and numbers killed citing official and non-official sources.
"Raul Castro estimated that five hundred government soldiers died in
order to kill or capture 3,591 " bandits." Writing in 1971, the British
historian Hugh Thomas put the total slightly higher: "Minor guerrilla
skirmishing has gone on most of the time in Oriente and other
mountainous districts in an unsung war; rumors abound but probably at
least four thousand guerilleros have been killed since 1962."
Rafter deaths
15-year-old rafter Gregorio Perez Ricardo died of dehydration in 1991.
In February of 1991 news accounts of the death by dehydration
of 15-year-old Gregorio Perez Ricardo, a rafter fleeing Cuba, as U.S.
Coast Guard officials tried to save his life made the news, but the
question that arises is how many rafters since 1959 have perished in the
straits fleeing Castroism or been murdered by Castro's border patrol?
In the 1995 monograph, The Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty authored by human rights expertHolly Ackerman,
and sociologist Juan M. Clark and published by the Policy Center of the
Cuban American National Council placed the number of balseros, Cuban
boat people, to have died trying to leave Cuba in a range with an upper
limit of 100,000 over the first 36 years of the Castro regime. Professor
Clark, who passed away in 2013, is the author of Castro's Revolution: Myths and Reality
that was published posthumously in 2016 and covered with great detail
the sociological impact of Castroism on Cuba and its human cost.
There are several IACHR special reports on Cuba from 1962, 1963, 1967, 1970, 1976 , 1979 and 1983 that document extrajudicial killings in the island.
On Sunday, July 22, 2012, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalantewere killed. Cuban state security bumped into the car they were driving,
and when the vehicles stopped, with everyone still alive in the car,
they approached the driver, striking him in the temple with the butt of a
pistol. Within hours, the lifeless and brutalized bodies of both Oswaldo and Harold would appear.
Authorities recognized one death in these protests. Diubis Laurencio Tejeda was a 36-year-old singer who was shot in the back by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) in Havana on July 12. There are others, but they have not been officially recognized.
Christian Díaz,
age 24, disappeared after joining the protests. Relatives on July 12
reported him missing to the PNR in Cárdenas. Police told his father that
Christian was jailed in Matanzas. On Aug. 5, officials informed his
family he’d drowned in the sea and was buried in a mass grave. His
family is convinced he was beaten to death.
The body count
Glenn Garvin wrote an important essay on December 1, 2016 titled "Red Ink: The high human cost of the Cuban Revolution" and in it addresses the question of how many extrajudicial executions have taken place in Cuba. This blog addressed this issue before in 2012, but Garvin adds some new and critical insights to understanding the real nature of the Castro regime.
"University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel,
who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the
killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that
credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Milan Kundera
Eighty three years ago on August 23, 1939 the world learned that
Communist Russia and Nazi Germany had signed a non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It was named after their respective foreign ministers, Vyacheslav
Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop.
August 23 marks the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, established on the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact anniversary.
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs 🇵🇱 (@PolandMFA) August 23, 2022
Observers would have been even more
horrified had they known of the secret protocols
that divided Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian regimes. What
they called a "peace treaty" in reality was a war treaty.
Rolling Soviet tanks and Nazi motorcyclists in Poland (September 1939).
Sixteen days later the Soviet Union exercising its secret agreement with the Nazis invaded Poland from the East
and met their German allies in the middle of Poland.
Nazi and Soviet soldiers greet one another in Poland (1939)
Soviet Foreign MinisterVyacheslav Molotov in a October 31, 1939 speech spoke candidly about the Nazi-Communist alliance, and ridiculed its victims.
"The ruling circles of Poland boasted quite a lot about the ‘stability’
of their state and the ‘might’ of their army. However, one swift blow to
Poland, first by the German Army and then by the Red Army, and nothing
was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty which had
existed by oppressing non-Polish nationalities."
Approximately 230,000 Polish soldiers and officers and thousands of military
service representatives were taken captive by the Russians. The Soviet precursor to the KGB was the NKVD. "From October 1939, the delegated NKVD officials from Moscow heard the
prisoners, encouraged them to cooperate and collected data. Only a few
of the prisoners agreed to collaborate. The commanding officers’ reports
included opinions about hostile attitudes of the Poles and a minimal
chance of them being useful to the USSR authorities."
The decision to shoot the prisoners was signed on March 5, 1940 by seven members of the All- Union
Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy
Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas
Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich.
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov meets with Adolf Hitler (1940)
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in a speech delivered
on August 1, 1940 while the Soviet Union was then still allied with
Nazi Germany continued to describe their military alliance as a
"non-aggression pact."
"A radical change for the better in the relations between the Soviet
Union and Germany found its expression in the non-aggression pact signed
last August. These new, good relations between the USSR and Germany
have been tested in practice in connection with events in former Poland,
and their strength has been sufficiently proved."
"Stalin was shocked; he had received a plethora of warnings of an imminent invasion – notably from Winston Churchill, informed by Britishintelligence
briefings. The communist dictator had refused to believe them,"
reported Agence France Press. Stalin preferred to rely on Hitler's assurances.
Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, Joseph Stalin, and Soviet foreign minister, Molotov
Today,
communist apologists will continue to defend Stalin and attempt to
cover up this history of collaboration between the Soviet Union and Nazi
Germany. It may also explain the real reason behind attacks on the legacy of Winston Churchill. His observation on the relationship between the Communists and the Nazis in his bookThe Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm (1948) is damning and accurate.
"Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism… As Fascism sprang
from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot
those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world
into more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their
destruction."
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the reckless strategy pursued by Stalin and the Communist International cost 22 to 28 million Russian lives alone in World War Two, and nearly led to the Nazi conquest and occupation of the Soviet Union.
Posts
