7-20-05,10:06am
A few weeks ago, Cubans felt the pain expressed through testimonies made by Latin Americans who suffered the terror imposed in their countries by military dictatorships which governed the continent for decades.
The painful deeds exposed by Hebe de Bonafini, Martin Almada and Carlos Enrique, among many others. It forms part of their lives – the murdered wife, the “disappeared” son, dead parents. These were the abuses suffered by their own flesh and blood. Their accounts detailed sad stories which continue to demand justice.
State terrorism brought those governments which, under the protection of the United States, imposed violence to reach their goals. For many years military dictatorships found terror to be the sole way to retain power.
Listening to these truths a terrible scene came to my mind – that lived by Haydée Santamaría during the events of the Moncada Barrack assault in 1953. Killers wanted to intimidate her. Bailiffs took a bloody eye from her brother Abel and brought it to the cell where she was confined.
“If you don’t say what he didn’t want to say, we’ll pull out his other,” they said. But Haydée’s answer was simple: “if you pulled out his eye and he said nothing, I will say even less.” The revolutionary woman suffered humiliation, and the death of her brother and fiancé, but she did not give up.
Pinochet, Videla, Stroessner and Somoza – just to cite a few examples – had their predecessors.
And of course Batista was one of them. This man, evil by nature, built upon the bloody experiences implemented by the Cuban governor under Gerardo Machado; and as if that were not enough, he used diabolic lessons from German fascist teachers.
After the coup d’ etat which brought him to power on March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista, the sergeant turned into colonel and later general, clearly stated he would do anything to keep the chairman’s seat.
This moment is described by President Fidel Castro as the commencement of an era of terror which would leave thousands of dead – most of them murdered, since only some 500 Cubans died on the battlefield. In order to fulfill the dictator’s goals, Batista counted on the unconditional and timely assistance, as well as instructions, from the US government.
Though violence had its precedents, it would not be until Moncada that the tyrant would show his teeth with tremendous fury.
After Moncada’s military failure, most of the young attackers were taken prisoner. History recalls July 27 as the day in which more than 25 of these youth were killed. After Batista’s speech from the military headquarters, soldiers killed fifty more.
Fidel Castro, the leader of the rebels, denounced that fact in the delivery of his momentous defense speech known as “History Will Absolve Me.”
Fidel Castro would clearly state in Santiago de Cuba that “all forms of cruelty, savagery and barbarity were used.” According to Fidel’s account of the period after the Moncada Barrack’s events, carnage was an everyday reality and crimes even doubled when compared with November 27, 1871 (when eight medical students were shot by Spanish colonial forces).
“The Moncada Barrack was transformed into a torture and death workshop, with some of those shameless men turning their military uniforms into butchers’ aprons. Walls were smeared with blood, bullets remained encased with skin, brain fragments and smoking human hairs, while the grass outside was covered with dark and sticky blood” Fidel said during his declaration.
The repression unleashed hit the civilian population. Even a child who was going home with a bag of bread became a victim of the barbaric acts.
This was the work of a “Monstrum horrendum,” as it was characterized by the revolutionary leader. Right from that moment, the Batista and his henchmen began to use torture and killing as the principal weapons to maintain power.
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959 put an end to such crimes.
Another page of history came afterwards. The United States would shelter those killers who managed to flee the island for safe haven on US soil. There, they began to organize and prepare hundreds of terrorist acts which have taken the lives of thousands of Cubans.
Previously the US government protected Fulgencio Batista; they now do the same for other notorious killers – such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, among many others.
