On this day in 1895 José Martí was killed by Spanish troops in Cuba. The struggle for Cuban freedom continues.

"There is no forgiveness for acts of hatred. Daggers thrust in the name of liberty are thrust into liberty's heart." - José Martí

José Julián Martí Pérez: January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895

 

Earlier version taken from CubaBrief

José Julián Martí Pérez was killed 126 years ago today in battle against Spanish troops at the Battle of Dos Ríos, near the confluence of the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto, on May 19, 1895. He is buried in the Santa Efigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. Cubans the world over honor his memory and Cuban independence follows a day later. Seven years and one day after Martí's death Cuba formally obtained its independence on May 20, 1902. Dr. Suchlicki in his essay "THE DEATH OF A HERO" describes him as Cuba’s greatest hero and most influential writer.

Cubans across the ideological divide claim José Martí as their own. The claims of the dictatorship, led by the Castro family, that Martí is the intellectual author of their political project is ironic considering that the life and writings of this Cuban journalist, poet, and independence leader are the antithesis of the Castro regime.

Killed 126 years ago today riding into battle on horseback

It is doubly ironic because both Francisco Franco's father and Fidel and Raul Castro's father had been soldiers who fought in Cuba to preserve its colonial status within the Spanish empire. Castro's father, Angel, according to the 2016 documentary, "Franco and Fidel: A Strange Friendship", had a photo of Franco on his nightstand. This historical link translated into a "special relationship" between the two dictators and is available online.

Both José Julián Martí Pérez's writings and actions taken by him in life point to a man who prized liberty, independence based in popular sovereignty, and freedom of speech, thought and association as fundamental to his sense of being. He was a prisoner of conscience, before Amnesty International coined the term, jailed for writing a disapproving letter to a classmate who joined the Spanish army.

Jailed for her journalism since April 30th: Mary Karla Ares

Today, Cuban journalist Mary Karla Ares has been jailed since April 30, 2021 for covering a non-violent protest in Havana, Cuba on Obispo Street. The Committee to Protect Journalists on May 3, 2021 said "Cuban authorities must immediately release journalist Mary Karla Ares, drop the criminal investigation into her work, and allow the press to report freely." Castro officials have ignored their request, and she remains jailed for filming a protest.

Under the Castro regime freedom of expression can end in prison for engaging in "enemy propaganda," and freedom of thought can also lead you to prison for the crime of "dangerousness." This is an affront to José Marti's belief that "liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy." Hypocrisy, under the Castro regime, is a currency for survival.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Cuba under the Castros is not the vision advanced by Cuba's greatest hero. This tradition of freedom and respect for freedom of thought and speech existed during the Republic (1902 - 1952) and still exists today, underground, among dissidents in the island, and on more than one occasion cost the lives of other heroes to defend. One of Marti's modern day counterparts is Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who addressed the European Parliament on December 17, 2002:

"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.’"

Oswaldo was extra-judicially executed by the secret police on July 22, 2012. Other modern counterparts can also be found in the 27N and San Isidro movements, and the artists, journalists and intellectuals that nonviolently gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture to read the works of José Martí on January 27, 2021, and were beaten up by the Castro dictatorship's Minister of Culture, and arrested by the regime's political police.

The legacy of José Martí in Cuba today is found among the persecuted dissidents defending free speech, freedom of expression and demanding a free and independent Cuba. Although the Castro regime uses the name and image of the Cuban journalist and poet they have done everything to pervert and destroy his true message of liberation.

"I think they kill my child every time they deprive a person of their right to think." - José Martí 

Burial site for Apostol of Cuba

 

On this day Pablo Morales Barbas was born in 1966. He was murdered by the Castro regime on February 24, 1996.

 "Only through non violent means can we cleanse the Cuban nation from the hatred instilled by the dictatorship in Cuban hearts. The nonviolent methods have proven to be the most effective and humanitarian means of resistance against Castro's totalitarian state." - Jose Basulto, Our Struggle, March 2, 1996

May 16, 1966 - Feb 24, 1996

Four men were killed when the two planes they were flying in were shot down on a Saturday afternoon at 3:21 and 3:27 on February 24, 1996 over international airspace while engaged in a search and rescue flight for Cuban rafters. Their planes were destroyed by air-to-air missiles fired by a Cuban MiG-29 aircraft on the orders of Raul and Fidel Castro.  

Eva Barbas mourns her son's passing.

Pablo Morales Barbas was born in Havana, Cuba, on May 16, 1966 and was the same age as Carlos Costa but with a different life experience. He studied cartography and obtained a degree as a geodesics technician. In August 1992, Pablo fled Cuba on a raft and after three days at sea, was spotted in the ocean by Brothers to the Rescue. This experience motivated him to join the previously mentioned organization. He was a passenger in the aircraft with Carlos Costa when they were shot down on February 24, 1996. 

Pablo's mom Eva Barba holds a Bible open with a photo of her son.

Pablo was survived by his mother Eva Barbas, who passed away in 2013, a sister, and a brother. He was a Cuban citizen at the time of his death with residency in the United States and was just 29 years old. He would have turned fifty five years old today.

What was Pablo doing in Brothers to the Rescue?

He risked his live in the Florida Straits to rescue Cuban rafters and at the same time the organization he belonged to, Brothers to the Rescue, challenged the Cuban exile community to abandon both violent resistance and appeasement approaches in order to embrace strategic nonviolence.  This path followed the way of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi with both civil disobedience and a constructive program. 

 

What was the end result? Brothers to the Rescue saved more than 4,200 men, women, and children ranging from a five-day old infant to a 79 year old man, and rescued thousands more during the 1994 refugee crisis. This humanitarian movement also brought together Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. This the Castro regime could not abide, and did all it could to destroy this grassroots movement, including murder and terrorism.

He did not die in vain and his martyrdom is remembered inside and outside of Cuba and will continue to be so wherever free Cubans gather. This is also true of the other three men who died with him on February 24, 1996.

 

 

The four who were killed represented all aspects of the Cuban diaspora: Armando Alejandre Jr, a child who arrived with his parents from Cuba in 1960, Carlos Costa, born in Miami Beach in 1966 and Mario Manuel de la Peña, born in New Jersey in 1971 the children of Cuban exiles. 

 

Pablo Morales was born in Cuba in 1966, raised there and was saved by Brothers to the Rescue when he was 26 years old while fleeing the island on a raft. Two were from Havana, one was from New Jersey and the other from Miami Beach.  

Today we remember Pablo Morales on the 55th anniversary of his birth, and the cost of nonviolent resistance that saved thousands of lives, and for the span of five years brought Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits together.

On This Day: Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born 54 years ago today and martyred 11 years ago

"Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]" - Orlando Zapata Tamayo, letter smuggled out April of 2004*

Orlando Zapata Tamayo May 15, 1967 - February 23, 2010

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born on May 15, 1967 in Santiago de Cuba and died following a prolonged hunger strike on February 23, 2010 in Havana, Cuba under suspicious circumstances.  Amnesty International recognized the pro-democracy activist and human rights defender as a prisoner of conscience.

Orlando Zapata was a human rights defender unjustly imprisoned in the Spring of 2003 and tortured by Cuban prison officials and state security agents over the next six years and ten months. He died on February 23, 2010 following a prolonged hunger strike, aggravated by prison guards refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit. He is a victim of Cuban communism.

Christian Liberation Movement leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who was extrajudicially executed two and a half years later on July 22, 2012 together with Harold Cepero Escalante, the movement's youth leader, issued a statement the same day that Orlando died and appeared in a photograph holding up a photocopy of the martyred human rights defender's name and image. 

"Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died this afternoon, February 23, 2010, after suffering many indignities, racist slights, beatings and abuse by prison guards and State Security. Zapata was killed slowly over many days and many months in every prison in which he was confined. Zapata was imprisoned for denouncing human rights violations and for daring to speak openly of the Varela Project in Havana's Central Park. He was not a terrorist, or conspirator, or used violence. Initially he was sentenced to three years in prison, but after successive provocations and maneuvers staged by his executioners, he was sentenced to more than thirty years in prison." 

 

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas with photocopy image of Orlando Zapata Tamayo

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born in Santiago, Cuba on May 15, 1967. He was by vocation a brick layer and also a human rights activist, a member of the Movimiento Alternativa Republicana, Alternative Republican Movement, and of the Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Cívica, National Civic Resistance Committee. Orlando gathered signatures for the Varela Project, a citizen initiative to amend the Cuban constitution using legal means with the aim of bringing Cuba in line with international human rights standards.

Amnesty International had documented how Orlando had been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November of 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were arrested and later released. He was also arrested on December 6, 2002 along with fellow prisoners of conscience Oscar Elías Biscet and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo.   

Dr. Biscet just released from prison a month earlier had sought to form a grassroots project for the promotion of human rights called "Friends of Human Rights." State security prevented them from entering the home of Raúl Arencibia Fajardo, Oscar Biscet, Orlando Zapata Tamayo,Virgilio Marante Güelmes and 12 others held a sit-in in the street in protest and chanted "long live human rights" and "freedom for political prisoners." They were then arrested and taken to the Tenth Unit of the National Revolutionary Police, Décima Unidad de La Policía Nacional Revolucionaria (PNR).

Orlando Zapata Tamayo together with other activists

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was released three months later on March 8, 2003, but Oscar Elias Biscet, Virgilio Marante Güelmes, and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo remained imprisoned. On the morning of March 20, 2003 whilst taking part in a fast at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and the other political prisoners. Orlando was taken to the Villa Marista State Security Headquarters.

He was moved around several prisons, including Quivicán Prison, Guanajay Prison, and Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. Where according to Amnesty International on October 20, 2003 Orlando was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations. Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out following a brutal beating it was published in April of 2004:

"My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*

On May 18, 2004 Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Virgilio Marante Güelmes, and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo were each sentenced to three years in prison for contempt for authority, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in a one-day trial. Orlando Zapata Tamayo would continue his rebelliousness and his non-violent resistance posture while in prison and suffer numerous beatings and new charges of disobedience and disrespect leading to decades added to his prison sentence in eight additional trials. 

Protests for Orlando Zapata Tamayo continue
Eleven years have passed but the martyred Cuban human rights defender is not forgotten. From the beginning the regime sought to put down and silence protests and acts of remembrance for him, but failed. 

In March of 2010 at the second Geneva Summit for Human Rights former prisoner of conscience Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo testified to what had happened to Orlando Zapata. In Norway, regime agents became violent and created international controversy after a Cuban diplomat bit a young Norwegian-Cuban woman for trying to record her mom engaged in a protest remembering Orlando Zapata Tamayo in front of the Cuban Embassy in Oslo in May of 2010.

On September 30, 2010 the Canadian punk rock band I.H.A.D. released a song linking what happened to Orlando Zapata Tamayo to the indifference of Canadian tourists visiting Cuba asking the question: Where were you the day Orlando Zapata died? On May 10, 2012 the Free Cuba Foundation published a video accompanying the song, after receiving the band's permission, with images and song lyrics.

On February 23, 2016 at the 8th edition of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Rosa María Payá gave the last presentation in which she remembered and honored the memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on the sixth anniversary of his passing.  

Today we remember the day this courageous activist was born in Cuba 54 years ago, and look forward to the day that his sacrifice is remembered in Cuba's history books. 

 

*Source: "Queridos hermanos míos de la oposición interna de Cuba", escribió Zapata en su misiva, "tengo muchas cosas que decirles, pero no he querido hacerlo por papel y tinta, pues espero ir a ustedes un día cuando nuestra patria sea libre y sin dictadura castrista. Vivan los derechos humanos, con mi sangre les escribí, para que la guarden como parte del salvajismo de que somos víctima el presidio político Pedro Luis Boitel". - "Golpiza y celda tapiada para Orlando Zapata"  La Habana, 22 de abril 2004 (María López, Lux Info Press / www.cubanet.org  

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Pedro Luis Boitel at the CMQ radio station

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

 
Original Spanish quotes by Pedro Luis Boitel and English translations:

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

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

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

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

Project Varela: Christian Liberation Movement recalls when thousands of Cuban citizens demanded change in Cuba.

We do not forget, we do not betray our principles and values, we are consistent, without fanfare, with serene courage, with generosity, without hatred but without fear: Long live the Varela Project !!! - Regis Iglesias Ramirez, May 10, 2021 over Twitter

Oswaldo Payá, Antonio Diaz, and Regis Iglesias turn in petitions to National Assembly on 5/10/02

Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, in his 1999 novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting observed that "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Memory provides context to unfolding events today, and helps to render informed judgements.

For example, nineteen years ago on May 10, 2002, carrying 11,020 signed petitions in support of the Varela Project, the Christian Liberation Movement's Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Antonio Diaz Sanchez, and Regis Iglesias Ramirez walked to the Cuban National Assembly with bulky cardboard boxes labeled Project Varela. The Christian Liberation Movement was founded by Catholic lay people in Havana in September 1988, and is part of a non-violent dissident movement that traces its origins and influences to the Cuban Committee for Human Rights that was founded in 1976. Today Regis Iglesias commemorated the anniversary in a Tweet (the content is translated in the quote at the top of the blog entry.)

Nosotros no olvidamos, no traicionamos nuestros principios y valores, somos coherentes, sin estridencias, con valor sereno, con generosidad, sin odio pero sin miedo: Viva el Proyecto Varela!!! pic.twitter.com/HqeUbdrXAA

— regis iglesias (@maverick18mcl) May 10, 2021

The Varela Project, named after the Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela, sought to reform the Cuban legal system to bring it in line with international human rights standards. They had followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign.

Former President James Carter visited Cuba in May 2002 and on May 15th gave a speech at the University of Havana, where he advocated for the lifting of economic sanctions on Cuba and "called for the Varela Project petition to be published in the official newspaper so that people could learn about it."

Yet the dictatorship's response to the nonviolent citizen's initiative, and to President Carter's request, was to coerce Cubans into signing another petition declaring the Constitution unchangeable and quickly passed it through the rubber stamp legislature. The Varela Project was not presented for debate before the National Assembly, which according to then existing law drafted by the Castro dictatorship meant that it should have been debated in that legislative body.

President James Carter at the University of Havana.

Less than a year later beginning on March 18, 2003 the Black Cuban Spring would begin with a massive crackdown on Cuba's civil society with many of the organizers of Project Varela, imprisoned and summarily sentenced up to 28 years in prison. The 75 activists who had been imprisoned with long prison sentences became known as the "group of the 75." During the Black Cuban Spring Antonio Diaz Sanchez was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and Regis Iglesias Ramirez was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Havana announced, at the time, that the Cuban dissident movement had been destroyed. They spoke prematurely. First, the remaining activists who were still free continued gathering signatures and would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures on October 5, 2003, and they continued to gather more. Furthermore, the wives, sisters and daughters of the activists who had been detained and imprisoned organized themselves into the "Ladies in White." A movement that sought the freedom of their loved ones and organized regular marches through the streets of Cuba, despite regime organized violence visited upon them. This new movement was led by Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a former school teacher.

Founder of the Ladies in White, Laura Pollán

Antonio Diaz Sanchez and Regis Iglesias Ramirez were released from prison into forced exile in 2010. Today marking this anniversary of the Varela Project, Regis Iglesias's following statement was published by the Christian Liberation Movement.

"Until now the only response to the more than 35,000 citizens who have supported this initiative has been persecution, kidnapping, prison, exile and murder. But until political pluralism and freedom of information are recognized and guaranteed, until economic freedoms are recognized for Cubans, an amnesty is not decreed, a new electoral law is not approved where citizens can be nominated by the people, and elections are not held in the midst of an environment of respect for popular sovereignty, diversity of opinions and we can freely choose the government that represents Cubans, we will not renounce to maintain our civic demand, remembering that the Cuban regime is a gangster regime that does not respect the rights of citizens or the sovereignty of Cubans."

President Carter made a second trip to Cuba in March 2011, and did not publicly mention Project Varela during that visit, but instead focused efforts on trading Alan Gross for the remaining members of the WASP network jailed in the United States on charges of espionage, and murder conspiracy that killed three Americans and a US resident in 1996, and calling for the lifting of economic sanctions on the Castro regime. President Carter also downplayed the threat of FARC, ETA, and ELN terrorists harbored in Cuba.

Less than two months after the visit, Cuban dissident and former political prisoner, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (age 46) was arrested and beaten to death by Cuban regime police while protesting the dictatorship and died early on Sunday May 8, 2011. Months later on October 15, 2011 Laura Inés Pollán Toledo died under suspicious circumstances at the Calixto Garcia hospital.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was killed on July 22, 2012 together with Harold Cepero, a youth leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, in a car "accident" that all the hallmarks of a state security operation copied after the East German Stasi, who trained intelligence operatives in the Castro regime.

Revisiting and remembering these historic moments is part of the struggle against forgetting, and the conversation that it may arouse will only serve, when backed up with facts, to strengthen memory with truth. Memory, and retentiveness are defenses against the Castro regime's totalitarian rewriting of history.