Remembering the lives taken July 13, 1994: May their memory be a blessing

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defense. Through this we can build, we must build, a defense against repetition. - Simon Wiesenthal 

 

  

Thirty one years ago a great crime was committed that has still not been resolved. 

In the early morning hours of July 13, 1994 thirty seven men, women, and children were killed by government agents as they sought to travel to freedom on board of the “13 de Marzo” tugboat seven miles off the Cuban coast. Eleven of these Cubans were children ranging in age from Helen Martínez Enríquez, just five months old to Mayulis Méndez Tacaronte age seventeen.

 

International human rights bodies and organizations investigated the incident. The United Nations Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur on Cuba made the following observation on October 24, 1995 in his report on the human rights situation in Cuba to the UN General Assembly:

“Although the Government maintains that the authorities bore no responsibility for what was considered to have been an accident, the Special Rapporteur received testimony from some of the survivors indicating that Government launches from the port of Havana tried to stop the 13 de Marzo with pressurized water jets and then deliberately rammed it, causing it to sink. Non-governmental sources informed the Special Rapporteur that the number of persons who died was not 32, as the Government had stated, but at least 37 and that the families have for a year now been asking for an investigation to be initiated.”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a report released on October 16, 1996 concluded that what transpired that early morning “was not an accident but rather a premeditated, intentional act” by agents of the Cuban government and held the Cuban State responsible for violating the right to life of all the people who were shipwrecked and perished as a result of the sinking of the tug "13 de Marzo", which events occurred seven miles off the Cuban coast on July 13, 1994.

Thirty one years later, the men responsible for this mass murder remain at large and protected by the Cuban state and the survivors and family members have faced persecution, harassment, death threats, and arbitrary detentions for speaking out.  

In 2009 one of these family members, Jorge Garcia, agreed to address Florida International University students at a panel organized by the Free Cuba Foundation on the fifteenth anniversary of the July 13, 1994 “13 de Marzo” tugboat massacre. Prior to the event we met and he sat down and he explained on camera what had transpired before, during and after the events of July 13, 1994.

 

Jorge Garcia is a man who has suffered a loss few can imagine.

 

In a January 1998 Nightline interview Jorge described how he learned the news. “When I asked my daughter, ‘What about Juan Mario?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ ‘And Joel?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ ‘And Ernesto?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ And then we knew that other members of the family were all lost, 14 in all.” His daughter, Maria Victoria Garcia, had survived but she lost her brother, Joel García Suárez age 24;  her husband, Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro age 25; and her son, Juan Mario Gutiérrez García age 10.

 

Jorge García was detained and interrogated on several occasions. His longest detention was for 15 days. His daughter, María Victoria García, was one of three of his family who survived the massacre but was still in danger:  "They tried on several occasions to kill my daughter, because she was the first to speak out and contradict the regime’s official narrative.”

Father and daughter had spoken on camera to Nightline from Havana, Cuba about the July 13, 1994 attack on the “13 de Marzo” tugboat.  A year later in 1999 they had to go into exile as political refugees fearing for their lives.

Thirty one years later the remains of the thirty seven victims have not been recovered and returned to their families.  Nor has the state provided any compensation to the survivors or the families of the dead.

On July 12, 2014 Jorge Garcia took part in a flotilla organized by the Democracy Movement ( Movimento Democracia ) that got within 12 miles of the coastline of Cuba and five miles from the spot that today still serves as a watery grave for fourteen family members including his son and grandson. This is as close as he was able get to pay his respects to his loved ones.

On Saturday, July 13, 2024 at 6:00pm at Florida International University with members of the Free Cuba Foundation, the Christian Liberation Movement, and other people of good will, I took part in a 13 minute moment of silence to protest 30 years of injustice and pray that a serious investigation finally be conducted, that the remains of the victims be returned to their families, and that the individuals responsible for this atrocity face justice in a fair trial with their rights respected in a court of law.

Today, July 13 at 6:00pm at the Main Fountain at @FIU we held a 13 minute silent vigil to mark the day 30 years ago when agents of the Cuban dictatorship sank the "13 de Marzo" tugboat killing 37 men, women and children. #Truth #Memory #Cuba pic.twitter.com/5K3mFX3zgU

— Human Rights Violations in Cuba (@freecubafndtn) July 14, 2024

We also mourned the passing of  Jorge Garcia on June 3, 2024 and that of his daughter, María Victoria García, months earlier on January 2, 2024, without obtaining justice for their murdered family members.

 

In the meanwhile let us pray for the 37 murdered 31 years ago and the eleven children who never had a chance to grow up and live full lives in freedom and that they and their loved ones may one day have justice. May their memory be a blessing.

Helen Martínez Enríquez ( 5 months)
Cindy Rodríguez Fernández (age 2)
José Carlos Nicole Anaya (3)
Angel Rene Abreu Ruiz ( age 3)
Yisel Borges Alvarez (4) 
Caridad Leyva Tacoronte (age 5)
Juan Mario Gutiérrez García (age 10) 

Yousell E. Perez Tacoronte (age 11)
Yasser Perodin Almanza (age 11)
Eliecer Suarez Plasencia ( age 12)
Mayulis Mendez Tacoronte (age 17)
Miladys Sanabria Cabrera ( age 19 )
Odalys Muñoz García (age 21)
Yuliana Enríquez Carrazana (age 22)
Yaltamira Anaya Carrasco (age 22)
Lissett María Álvarez Guerra (age 24)
José Gregorio Balmaceda Castillo (24)
Joel García Suárez (age 24)
Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro (age 25)
María Miralis Fernández Rodríguez (age 27)

Pilar Almanza Romero (age 28)
Leonardo Notario Góngora ( age 28)
Jorge Arquímides Lebrijio Flores (age 28)   
Rigoberto Feut Gonzáles (age 31)
Omar Rodriguez Suarez (age 33)
Lázaro Enrique Borges Briel (age 34)
Julia Caridad Ruiz Blanco (age 35)
Martha Caridad Tacoronte Vega (age 36)
Eduardo Suárez Esquivel ( age 39)
Martha M.Carrasco Sanabria (age 45)  
Augusto Guillermo Guerra Martínez ( age 45)
Rosa María Alcalde Puig (age 47)    
Estrella Suárez Esquivel (age 48)
Reynaldo Joaquín Marrero (age 48)       
Manuel Cayol (age 50)           
Amado Gonzáles Raices (50)
Fidelio Ramel Prieto-Hernández (51)

 

The war on the West is undeclared, but is already being fought in Israel and Ukraine

"The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all. It may have ended in a traditional form as we know it from the 20th century, but new, far more sophisticated ways of controlling society are being born. It requires alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a detached view." - Václav Havel, "Freedom and Its Enemies" November 14, 2009.

On February 20, 2014 Russian troops invaded Ukraine, and seized Crimea. Eight years later, on February 24, 2022, Moscow began a new offensive to seize all of Ukraine, but unlike in Crimea, Russian troops were unable to achieve their new objective due to armed Ukrainian resistance.

The war continues to rage today, and Moscow has brought in troops and soldiers from around the world..

Nearly 20,000 Cubans have joined the Russian army since February 2022, with the complicity of the dictatorship in Havana, to fight for Putin in Ukraine. The Islamic regime in Iran began shipping drones to attack Ukraine in 2022, and first confirmed use of of these Iranian weapons was on September 13, 2022.  North Korean troops engaged in combat, on behalf of Moscow, in Ukraine on November 4, 2024. There are also unverified reports of Chinese troops and weapons being involved in the war backing Moscow in Ukraine.

Equally disturbing are the links between Cuba and Iran, and their decades long hostility against the United States.

In a transmittal letter accompanying the Defense Department’s May 1998 report,The Cuban Threat to U.S. National Security, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen wrote to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: ‘‘I remain concerned about Cuba’s potential to develop and produce biological agents, given its bio-technology infrastructure. In its public Executive Summary, the report stated,"Cuba’s current scientific facilities and expertise could support an offensive BW [bioweapons] program in at least the research and development stage.

Cuba’s biotechnology industry is one of the most advanced in emerging countries and would be capable of producing BW agents.’’In the October 2001 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, Jose de la Fuente,the former director of research and development at Cuba’s premier Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, wrote he was ‘‘profoundly disturbed’’ that Cuba was selling to Iran technology that could be used to produce biochemical weapons. He wrote, ‘‘No one believes that Iran is interested in these technologies for the purpose of protecting all the children in the Middle East from hepatitis, or treating their people with cheap streptokinase when they suffer sudden cardiac arrest . . .."

During a May 2001 visit to Tehran, Fidel Castro proclaimed,"Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, during a speech at the Imam Khomeini Mosque in Tehran in 2015, said Israel "will not see (the end) of these 25 years.”  This was just after the nuclear deal between Iran in which they agreed to cut its uranium stockpile. 

On October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded Israel killing 1,200, and taking hundreds of hostages. Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, began firing rockets into Israel.   

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba are creating an alternative world order hostile to Western democracies and the rule of law.  

There are two options. The first is to recognize the challenge, and develop intelligent strategies to counter it within a framework of Western alliances or secondly, ignore it, and pretend there is no threat and surrender to the new configuration of anti-democratic forces. The first is not without risk, but the latter guarantees servitude to tyranny.

However, with the first, there is an alternative to war. Cuban and Venezuelan freedom activists have made the case for it. Nazanin Boniadi, an Iranian-born human rights activist, actress, and 2023 Sydney Peace Laureate, made the same case in an OpEd published in Time today.

For decades, many of us pleaded with world leaders: reject both appeasement and war with the Islamic Republic. There was another path—to strangle the regime and empower the people. Few chose it. Too many asked the question, “Do the people of Iran really want change?” as if they did not hear waves of Iranian protestors chant, “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei” on the streets. Perhaps now—as these cries echo from the rooftops of Tehran, even under the specter of war—they will finally listen.

Ronald Reagan in his 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing" made the case plainly between the options of resistance and appeasement. "There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace - and you can have it in the next second - surrender," said the future 40th President of the United States. 

75 years ago today: Milada Horáková sentenced to death in Communist show trial in Czechoslovakia

"When you realize that something is just and true, then be so resolute that you will be able to die for it.”   – Milada Horáková, in a letter to her daughter

 

Image of Milada Horáková at her show trial

First wrote about Milada Horáková, the Czech democrat who resisted both Nazis and Communists, back in 2014, and her refusal to go along with the political show trial organized against her in 1950. 

She had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived torture in a Nazi prison. After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. 

However she refused to abandon her country. 

She was arrested at her office on September 27, 1949 "on charges of conspiracy and espionage against the state." 

The show trial of Horáková and twelve of her colleagues began on May 31, 1950. 

Oxford Languages defines a show trial as "a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice." 

Vladimir Lenin called them "model trials", but they would eventually become known as show trials under Josef Stalin with hundreds of thousands executed and millions sent to work camps in Siberia, and they would take place not only in the Soviet Union, but in the East Bloc including Czechoslovakia, and as far away as Cuba. The Nazis also copied the practice, and so have other repressive regimes.

Adam D. E. Watkins in his 2010 paper "The Show Trial of J U Dr. Milada Horáková: The Catalyst for Social Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1950" explains the importance of the show trial in gutting democratic traditions and replacing them with Stalinism.

"The study deconstructs the show trial’s influence on inducing a country to foster the Communist movement against decades of democratic traditions. The research reveals the impact of the show trial of Dr. Milada Horáková in 1950 and how it was instrumental in reforming a society, marked the beginning of Stalinism, and ushered forth a perverted system of justice leading to a cultural transformation after the Communist putsch. Furthermore, the revolution truncated intellectual thought and signified the end of many social movements – including the women’s rights movement."

According to Watkins, Horáková was seen by the public as a symbol of  the First Republic and of democracy. Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological and physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague in their 2005 report on the discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial.

[S]he faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable.

Milada Horakova addressed the court in the final day of her show trial on June 8, 1950 in which she refused to go along with the script prepared for her. 

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Eduard Benes. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them."

Because she refused to cooperate with the Stalinists her punishment was particularly severe, death by hanging.

During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too."  

Milada Horáková  was executed in Pankrác Prison on June 27, 1950 through "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes. She was 48 years old." 

The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.  She wrote letters to her mother-in-law, husband, and daughter. Only her daughter, Jana, would learn of the contents of the letter when it was published in an underground publication in Czechoslovakia in 1970. She finally received the letters in 1990.

In the letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. 

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.

Hours prior to her execution she reaffirmed her position to her family:

I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose. That is no disgrace. An enemy also does not lose honor if he is truthful and honorable. One falls in battle; what is life other than struggle?  

In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, then 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder.  She was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 but was given a presidential pardon by Vaclav Klaus on humanitarian grounds one year and six months into her sentence and released in 2010. 

The former prosecutor defended her actions claiming that what she did was legal and that she was "following orders." Brozova-Polednova tried to appeal her conviction at the Strasbourg Court in 2011 and lost. She died on January 15, 2015 at age 93.

Milada's life story was brought to the big screen in 2017, was available on Netflix, and can be purchased on Amazon. Below is an English trailer for this important film.

#Tiananmen36: Remembering the Tank Men

 "The heroes of the tank picture are two: the unknown figure who risked his life by standing in front of the juggernaut, and the driver who rose to the moral challenge by refusing to mow down his compatriot." - Pico Iyer

A Nonviolent moment: Tank Men face off in Beijing on June 5, 1989

On June 5, 1989 in Beijing, following the Chinese Communist Party's massive and bloody crackdown  on thousands of Chinese students and workers on June 3rd and 4th after six weeks of protests that began in Tiananmen Square and spread across 400 cities in China something remarkable happened in the midst of all the horror and terror. 

A man risked all to protest what had taken place. Wearing a white t-shirt, black trousers, and carrying what appeared to be a shopping bag he walked out on the north edge of Tiananmen Square, along Chang'an Avenue and faced down a column of Type-59 tanks.

Wider perspective of Tank Men protest with full column of tanks

 

Jianli Yang, a Tiananmen Massacre survivor and former Chinese political prisoner and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China in his important 2022 article in Newsweek provides the full significance and context of what happened.

"I was near Tiananmen Square in the early morning on June 4, just as gunfire began. At one point, I was so close to the soldiers that I shouted to them in their trucks and told them not to shoot. We even sang songs that every Chinese knows, trying to touch their hearts. But when they received the order, they just opened fire. I saw many killed, including 11 students who were chased and run over by tanks on that fateful day."

Photos appeared of what remained after a tank ran over a student, and this is what Tank Man was in danger of becoming.

Human body crushed to pieces by PLA's tanks.

 In the video of the confrontation, the lead tank tried to drive around him, but the lone man repeatedly ran in front of the tank to prevent its passing. The tank driver turned off his engine and the rest of the column of tanks followed suit. 

The protester climbed on top of the tank and began to talk with him. Eventually he climbed back down and the tank driver turned the engines on but the protester once again blocked the tank column.

Jianli makes a powerful observation about this dynamic between the two men in the same OpEd in Newsweek.

"The Tank Man photo was taken the next day, on June 5, the morning after, when the massacre was still ongoing. By any measure, this image is one of heroism. But how many heroes do we see?

Nearly nine years after the picture was taken, the writer Pico Iyer said: "The heroes of the tank picture are two: the unknown figure who risked his life by standing in front of the juggernaut, and the driver who rose to the moral challenge by refusing to mow down his compatriot."

Not only did the driver refuse to kill, but he undoubtedly disobeyed orders and risked—and perhaps received—punishment in order to save a countryman's life."

We do not know the identities of either Tank Man, or what happened to them, but we do know that for one moment, in the midst of a blood bath perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party, humanity and dignity triumphed over repression in this particular case.

For more information visit:

Standoff At Tiananmen
How Chinese Students Shocked the World with a Magnificent Movement for Democracy and Liberty that Ended in the Tragic Tiananmen Massacre in 1989
http://www.standoffattiananmen.com/

Virtual Museum of China '89
http://museums.cnd.org/China89/

http://www.cnd.org/June4th/

Screams for help at China's secret 'black jails' - 27 Apr 09 AlJazeera
https://youtu.be/NsN4-A1G5zc

Seeking Justice, Chinese Land in Secret Jails / NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/asia/09jails.html

A piece of red cloth by Cui Jian (music video - song sang by him in the Square)
https://youtu.be/l8UPST1ZKSw

Frontline Documentary Tankman
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/

Many viewed the Tiananmen Square massacre as a crime, but the Cuban dictatorship saw it as an opportunity.

How the events of June 4, 1989 in China allowed Havana to rekindle relations with Beijing

 

A crime against the Chinese people by the Chinese Communist Party

Thirty six years ago the non-violent Chinese Pro-Democracy Movement was subjected to a military crackdown in which at least 10,000 Chinese people were killed.

The United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Chinese students condemned the crackdown by the “People’s Liberation Army.” Chinese students around the world took to the streets and protested the bloodshed in Beijing.

People of conscience the world over were horrified. Beijing was diplomatically shunned.

Cuba’s dictatorship endorsed the Tiananmen massacre to normalize relations with Beijing

In contrast, the dictatorship in Cuba saw an opportunity to rekindle and old friendship. Together with North Korea, and East Germany expressed their support for the actions taken by Beijing.

Cuban foreign minister Isidoro Malmierca commended Chinese authorities for “defeating the counterrevolutionary acts.” Fidel Castro openly supported Beijing’s Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, as a means to both preempt reform elements in the Cuban regime, and improve relations with Beijing.

Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen’s visit to Latin America took place in the midst of the crackdown, and he described the contrast between Havana’s warm welcome and the disapproval of many other countries in the region.

“The crackdown in Beijing, Qian says, completely changed the atmosphere around his tour: many Latin American governments expressed their disapproval of the suppression and cancelled his visits, and even the overseas Chinese, who usually greeted visiting Chinese officials with enthusiasm, had“stern faces” and questioned the reasons for using force. Qian had planned a visit to Mexico before Cuba. The Mexican government cancelled his visit but allowed him to go to Cuba via Mexico City.”

[…]

“But Qian’s reception in Havana exceeded his expectations. He was greeted by the Cuban foreign minister at the airport and brought to a welcome dinner the next evening hosted by Fidel Castro himself. Castro had a long talk with Qian at dinner which continued in his office until midnight. Understanding Qian’s situation, Castro gave him a detailed description of what had happened in Beijing since 4 June and the international response, based on his collection of information and from his own perspective. Castro said that he “completely supported the Chinese government” and would offer “whatever occasions and facilities” Qian might need to make his government’s voice heard.”

Cuba-Sino relations: From a warm embrace in 1960 to a decades long chill in relations

Communist China and Cuba had been close in the first years of the Castro regime. Mao Zedong had already been in power in China for a decade when the Castro regime took power in Cuba in 1959.

On September 28, 1960 the Cuban dictatorship diplomatically recognized the People’s Republic of China.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara led a Cuban delegation’s visit to Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in November 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Americas.

Subsequently, between 1960 and 1964 the two regimes collaborated closely together.

Mao's regime in 1958 had embarked on the Great Leap Forward, a campaign to reorganize the Chinese populace to improve its agricultural and industrial production along communist ideological lines. The campaign was a disaster that led to mass famine and a death toll of at least 45 million which did not end until 1962.

The visit by the Cuban delegation at the time did not go unnoticed in Mainland China. Dimon Liu was born in China and immigrated to the United States in 1965. She wrote about her early experiences growing up in the midst of the Great Leap Forward in 2017 and her first encounter with Cuba while still in China.

It was 1960, the height of famine during the years of Great Leap Forward. I was a child living in the southern city of Guangzhou in China. Meal time meant a little rice, and whatever we could scrape together. For nearly two years, we had no meat, fish or even cooking oil. We were starving.

All of a sudden, there was cane sugar from Cuba, and we school kids had to learn Cuban songs. We had been on rations even before the Great Leap Forward which began in 1958. Thirty jin (one jin is about 1.1 pound) of grains per month for an adult, and fifteen jin for a child above the age of seven. Two jin of meat and two ounces of cooking oil, also for a month. [...] People on our streets were dying of many infectious diseases, though no one dared to say anyone died of hunger.[...]

Frank Dikotter, the historian at the University of Hong Kong who wrote "Mao's Great Famine", a book about this period, said in a social media post that "the first thing the regime did in September 1960 was to procure an extra 100,000 tons of grain and ship it to Cuba," in order to help break the economic blockade imposed by Washington on the island. Dikotter added that "you can feed about 2000 people for a day with a ton of rice... Or over half a million people for a year."

Properly fed people rarely existed in China at that time, unless you belonged in the very small and exclusive club of Chinese Communist elite. For a child like me who received coupons for under 8 pounds of rice a month, you could have fed more than 2 million of us for a year; or about half a million Chinese adults for a year on a standard ration of 30 jin, or 33 pounds of rice per month for the amount of grain sent to Cuba.

Cuba was not the only place that China exported food to during those harrowing years.

In the midst of the Great Famine, while tens of millions of Chinese died of hunger, Beijing exported food to their communist ally in Cuba.

Relations between China and the Castro regime cooled, and completely deteriorated following a February 6, 1966 speech by Fidel Castro that was heavily critical of the Peoples Republic of China. Havana finally sided with Moscow in the Sino-Soviet split.

Criticizing Mao

Castro, while receiving Soviet subsidies, would continue to slam the Chinese Communists in the 1970s.

Journalist Chieu Luu, in his CNN article “Castro’s Cuba and Mao’s China: Communist regimes that never saw eye to eye” published on November 26, 2016 recalled the late Cuban dictator’s critique of Mao Zedong in 1977.

“I believe that Mao (Zedong) destroyed with his feet what he did with his head for many years. I’m convinced of that. And some day the Chinese people, the Communist party of China will have to recognize that,” Castro told American journalist Barbara Walters in May 1977. He went on to list what he said were Mao’s grave mistakes: a cult personality and abuse of great power. “I also acquired that power, but I never abused it, nor did I retain it in my hands,” Castro said. Although both Cuba and China were functioning Communist states, Castro told Walters he viewed China as a “good ally” of the US, which was a bitter enemy of Cuba.

How Moscow drove Cuba into improving relations with Beijing

Russia’s democratic spring in the mid to late 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev led to a cooling of relations between Havana and Moscow.

Perestroika was a policy that recognized economic central planning was a failure, and pursued reforming and restructuring the Soviet economy, and Glasnost was a policy that sought “more open consultative government and wider dissemination of information.”

These policies both instituted were viewed with great dread, and rejected by the Castro brothers. This was at a time when 75% of Cuba’s commercial exchanges were with the Soviet Union, but that did not stop Havana from censoring Soviet publications, and the beginning of the Castro brothers’ outreach to Beijing in 1989.

Havana’s successful engagement with Beijing: Harming U.S. interests and security

Backing the massacre of thousands of Chinese nationals by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the orders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) resulted in Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s high-level visit to Cuba in 1993. This was followed by Raul Castro’s first visit to China in 1997.

Prior to this, Beijing quietly began in 1992 jointly operating intelligence bases targeting the United States from Cuba, according to Chris Simmons, a former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency’s Western Hemisphere counterintelligence research section, revealed to the Miami Herald on July 4, 2024. He said that U.S. surveillance services were unaware of the arrangement until 2001, operating undetected for a period of nine years.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report in December 2024 that identified four places in Cuba it believes are most likely to be aiding China’s intelligence activities against the United States. One of the authors of the report Ryan C. Berg, Director, Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Andrés Martínez-Fernández, Senior Policy Analyst, Latin America, Allison Center for National Security, testified before Congress on May 6, 2025. They point to these spy bases in Cuba being upgraded with new technology.

This restored “special friendship” between two Communist dictatorships was founded on the mass killing of Chinese civilians by the PLA in June 1989, and Havana’s public support for this crime against humanity.

Following this rapprochement, it is believed Havana began offering their biotech knowledge, gained from Moscow, to their counterparts in Beijing, and in 2002, China and Cuba signed a formal agreement to produce monoclonal antibodies.

By 2004 Cuba had joint ventures in China that included both biotech, and genetic engineering. Douglass Starr in Wired Magazine on December 1, 2004 reported on this phenomenon in the article “ The Cuban Biotech Revolution“.

What Cubans call “the Special Period” produced one notable success: pharmaceuticals. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, Cuba got so good at making knockoff drugs that a thriving industry took hold. Today the country is the largest medicine exporter in Latin America and has more than 50 nations on its client list. Cuban meds cost far less than their first-world counterparts, and Fidel Castro’s government has helped China, Malaysia, India, and Iran set up their own factories: “south-to-south technology transfer.”

In 2015, then vice-president Miguel Diaz-Canel visited Beijing and praised Havana’s collaboration with Communist China in the sphere of biotechnology. Granma, Cuba’s official national communist newspaper, reported on the Cuban vice-president’s visit to a biotech facility in China.

“Díaz-Canel emphasized the notable progress made by Cuba and China in the sphere of biotechnology over recent years while also highlighting the close collaboration that the two countries share in the sector; providing great benefits and knowledge for both peoples.”

Without Havana’s joint ventures over the past 20 years in Cuba, Beijing may not have been in a position to have the capability to run a biotech / genetic engineering lab like the one in Wuhan that caused so much tragedy during the COVID pandemic.

Modernizing big brother for the 21st century

Raúl Castro met with China’s Minister of Public Security on December 1, 2024, and Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei are providing Havana censorship tools that are used to block information, track dissidents, silence dissent, and shut down the internet during anti-government protests.

Communist China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning on June 4, 2024 described Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla as a “good old friend of China.” Rodríguez’s official visit from June 5 to 9, 2024 as a special envoy of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel highlighted the two communist regimes’ “special friendship.” Never forget that this rekindled friendship was forged in the blood spill 36 years ago in Tiananmen Square.