First edition
Copyright © 1995 by Norberto Fuentes, and The International Republican Institute
[First Cuban book in the Internet, October 1996. Edited by Modesto Arocha, form Alexandria Library Incorporated]
Glosary
NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
i. THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
ii. VICTORY IS OURS! THE CHILDREN HAVE SURRENDERED!
iii. HAVANA DOESN'T SURRENDER EASILY
iv. THE DUNKIRK OF THE POOR
NOTES
A TACTIC CHRONOLOGY
A STRATEGIC CHRONOLOGY
REFERENCES
FAR: Revolutionary Armed Forces
MinFAR: Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
Min-Int: Ministry of the Interior
PNR: National Revolutionary Policy
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Given the particular nature of my experience and outlook, and also the fact that this study has been generously supported from its inception by the International Republican Institute (IRI), I hasten to clarify an important point. All the facts and judgements contained herein are entirely my own. The IRI's role was restricted to granting me the fullest freedom to tell the story in my own way, knowing that they were commissioning a work from an iconoclast, one capable, however, of rendering a fresh and vivid first-hand account. Once more--this time in a very different way--I find myself navigating into the eye of a hurricane! That much said, the reader should know that this is the work of a creative writer--not of a political scientist. If at times it reaches a particular intensity or density, it is because I seem to possess in adequate measure the skills necessary to tell a good story.
The IRI took the initiative and offered its sponsorship; it made available to me all the required facilities. I therefore must express my special gratitude to its president, R. Bruce McColm, who played a decisive role in conceptualizing the project. It is my understanding as well that Frank Calzon, who labors in another part of the vineyard, in this case, Freedom House, originally suggested the idea, for which I am likewise grateful. Rosa Berre and Carlos Quintela provided me with a temporary home in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, and what is more important still, the ammunition for countless--if sometimes exhausting--ideological debates. Their devotion and friendship made me appreciate once more the validity of the famous phrase of Antonio de Saint-Exupéry that "old comrades don't grow on trees."
At the IRI I contracted an enormous debt of gratitude with Norberto Santana, who rapidly transformed himself from colleague to firm friend--in effect, he is now a "new comrade". I must also acknowledge here, the help of human rights activists, dissidents, and members of the Cuban resistance, who provided me with the greater part of the information I have used here and who--for obvious reasons--cannot be named.
Much of this information was gathered in Cuba working with them during my last days before departing for exile. Some if it I obtained on my own. Special thanks are due also to a small but embattled clandestine movement in Cuba which goes by the name GATO, and to its members "Abel", "Zark", and "Jarun".
A final note. The staff of the IRI manifested both an elegant sensibility and a passion for literature--two elements that go far towards bridging the gap between different nations. As for the young people of the Cuban resistance, they demonstrated that there does in fact exist the possibility of opening a channel of clandestine information between Cubans on the island and those in exile. It is one we must--and can--maintain efficiently and effectively.
N. F.
Virginia, May 20, 1995
Where can any people go if it loses the habit of seriously reflecting upon the meaning and consequences of its acts?--JOSE MARTI
--I rested my head on the column and began humming an old hymn from the first days of
the Revolution.
--We began to laugh.
--"I taught five peasants to read," she confessed.
--"You did? Where?"
--"In the Sierra Maestra," she replied. "In a place called El Roble."
--"I was near," I said, "I was teaching other peasants in La Plata. That
was three mountains away."
--"Christ all Friday, how long ago was that?"
--Twenty-two...twenty-three years," I replied.
--"No one understands that history," she said. "I tell it to my
psychiatrist and all she does is give me a strong tranquilizer. Twenty three years, you
said?"
--She looks at me with a tired expression.
--"I think I'm empty," she sighs.
--"I do too."
GUILLERMO ROSALES, Boarding Home
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They began the year with three things--and they ended it with them. Top priorities, as they like to say in the somewhat stale doubletalk of the Cuban Revolution, the language spoken by its sleek and well-fed functionaries. Too bad, no one uses the military term "Negative, comrade" any more to say no. Instead, it's positive, comrade: the love affair is over. Well, there you have it: a recent popular expression, not to be used when a policeman is anywhere in earshot. It's proscribed. The love affair is over. Everything is over. Everything. Although it times they don't seem to realize it. So as I say, there are three priorities for the year. There's the sugar harvest, the meeting of the National Assembly (where some purported economic reforms are slated to be discussed), and finally, there's the meeting with some Cubans from Miami.
The commander in chief has been dribbling drops of information into the tiny circles which make up the closed circuit of the ruling nomenklatura: a few generals, a handful of ministers and vice-ministers, above all the immediate presidential entourage--Raul (the brother and number two in the family business), "Chomi" (José Millar Barreucos, the melancholy but tireless chief of his secretariat), Carlos Lage (the youngest, the unflappable architect of economic reforms, a good kid, Lage), Eugenio Zelman (the surgeon, the brains of the group and the person charged with the effective functioning of each one of the Commander's arteries). Their job is to absorb these priceless tidbits of new information and spread them abroad. The three tasks of the Year of Grace 1994. It begins with the unfurling of these banners, and ends up being the darkest, the worst in the Commander's political career: a tugboat is sunk with more than twenty children on board; Havana witnesses the first popular uprising in its entire history--the so-called maleconazo[1] in August--and he meets up with a stubborn Bill Clinton who refuses to accept a massive outflow of refugees to Florida, a sharp deviation from the traditional practices of the good old days. A tugboat, August 5, and a rafters' crisis. The negative balance of the Commander's years. The negative balance of ours as well.
Each one of these affairs represents a serious problem. To begin with, there's the tugboat. Not from the moral point of view, such as might be the case with any other ruler who had to murder nearly two dozen kids (for one of those "reasons of state" that are never in short supply, since the operation was undertaken as a warning), but rather because the scandal it unleashed required the regime to close ranks and expend vast amounts of political capital on damage control. Then, there was the uprising in Havana, a serious challenge which forced it to change tack entirely. Here you had a city which had been utterly neutralized for four decades, the object of military plans to squelch any possible uprising which would have met Hitler's needs in the case of Stalingrad or Paris--and then, whoosh!, one summer afternoon, control of the capital slipped out of their hands for two hours (four even, in some of the more intransigent quarters).
And then there was Bill Clinton. Who'd have thought of it? Here you have this kid we had already classified a budget version of Jimmy Carter--and after all, didn't he have all those Carterites in his cabinet?--turning out to be unexpectedly resistant to our normal practice of disposing of our most inconvenient citizens by shipping them off to the United States. Imperfectly, hastily, and not altogether convincingly for true connoisseurs, he puts an end to Fidel's classic maneuver.
But as for the commander, he's not to be counted out. He still has forces in reserve, and he's going to continue fighting. And if at the end of each battle the same thing usually happens (he recognizes that in spite of the tactical retreats he still has room for tricks and the opportunity to gain a second wind), he compels his opponents to make an objective count of his forces and to establish to what point they are active or residual, and where they can expect the next blow to land. It's a long, excruciating business in this country: shaking off its aging caudillo and compensating for a deplorable, a monumental loss of time getting it back on the road towards development. As one grizzled veteran of the internal resistance puts it, "Maybe the whole problem comes down to the fact that the Yankees haven't assured him lifetime impunity." It may well be, also--this is just a modest opinion--that the present situation in Cuba can be explained by the simple fact that Fidel Castro doesn't know how to do anything else. His only calling, the only thing for which he feels a genuine passion and to which he is willing to dedicate serious effort is to tighten the screws. Maybe under other circumstances he would have been a good belt-maker. Or a lathe operator. Or a master pastry-chef. Or one of those worthy, patriotic cigar makers, of the kind that in the last century provided the resources for Martí and his revolution.
We can expend plenty of time speculating on what might have been. But here and now what is happening in Havana, is that the Commander is proceeding at top speed down Fifth Avenue in the Miramar district in his convoy of shiny armored Mercedes-Benz sedans (designed to resist even the frontal impact of PG-7 missiles, but--attention to this detail!--strangely vulnerable to anti-tank mines. There he goes, Lord of the City in all his splendor, still in charge! Let's not deny his genuine qualities. Nor the seriousness of the problem he faces either. Let's chat a while about him, about the year, about us--we ordinary Cubans.
Some of the relevant episodes are given in the text that follows. An authentic dangerous summer. La Habana 1994. The final Cuban crisis.
This is an observer's report.
A revolution as badly made as the Cuban, lacking any real popular base, should have dissolved years ago. Certainly nothing can be expected from the workers and peasants, both of whom have sunk into lethargy since the late 'sixties. Today the nomenklatura is left with a single valid interlocutor: its best, its most brilliant member, Fidel Castro who repeatedly recurs to the only resource available to sustain his glory. (If you pay attention to this one, boys, you'll learn something and know where to aim your next blow.) The only basis of Castro's power is, in fact, his confrontation with the United States. It is his sole source of support, his ideology, his social program, even his version of economic development. The persistence of a war which his powerful northern neighbor accepts every time the bearded gladiator calls three times with his clenched fist held over his head, his hair flying in all directions. A call that occurs more or less automatically, when the bearded gladiator's own sensitive warning systems go off, or when his auxiliary alert network (cruder but entirely reliable) represented by State Security sends him a signal: "Danger, Commander." And then they elaborate: "The social bases which the great theoreticians of Marxism teach us are the reliable allies of the revolution are in ferment. Trouble in the bases. Time now to seek conflict abroad." Fidel vanquishing his fellow Cubans on the Florida coasts. That's what the chapter is called.
"What can people do?", one hears all over Havana.
Nothing more than what they do. That's enough. And no one finds out--as happened in the events of August 5.
Meanwhile, the great leader poses for photographers. He appears in Time. He makes the front cover. "The Lion in Winter," it reads. Then U. S. News and World Report. The Lion in Winter, again. The chief in his winter quarters. The chief, with his carefully cultivated look of innocence, with his open hand over his chest, but announcing summer.
But the problem continues to be the need for reforms, and he continues to tell us: there will be no changes.
The land. Everything will be resolved, as always, on the land: far from the centers of power and the American liberals and their hymns to the elderly, unrepentant lion in his winter quarters. In any case, let's talk preventive measures. Another cliche dear to the nomenklatura. To take measures. They tend to take measures. Of all kinds. The last one was in the credit and service cooperatives where now he recalls Lenin's slogan in 1917: if the best method of dictatorship for the entire country--in this case, all the Russias--was a monopoly of foreign trade, the Commander decides that the unrivalled formula of control of small peasants will be an administrative apparatus for planting, prices, and overall planning.
See? It's all part of the same history. An old story or a story that is beginning to be old.
If we agree that the Cuban Revolution is the result of a confrontation between two worlds--the wildest, most improbable episode of the Cold War--then it's obvious that for the winning side the revolution's survival at its very front door is totally unprecedented, useless, even offensive. But what an exciting observation post, gentlemen. How does it manage to survive? Actually, the answer is quite simple, though it may prove difficult of assimilation for highly-paid grand strategists. The problem, you see, is that flies well below their radar, designed to measure global confrontations, missile systems, space wars, and the like. It is an utterly autonomous organism. It survives the Cold War and even ignores the disappearance of the Socialist Camp. The domino effect passes right by it, leaving it unaffected. It is a challenge to the system because it resists, because it has this remarkable capacity for resistance--which in and of itself is nothing more than proof of the mutability, the efficiency, the capacity for reproduction of the very creole organisms to which it owes its origin. And it is highly instructive to watch the United States still reacting to the phenomenon with the same degree of fear and anxiety as it did during the Kennedy era, when its greatest concern was the massive support of the Cuban people for its leader and when Fidel Castro appeared to many to be a great statesman.
Let us quickly expend whatever perverse admiration is due to the son of an immigrant from Galicia who settled in the northern part of Oriente province and was given to robbing tractors from the nearby plantations of United Fruit (Yes, nothing more or less than Mamita Yunai, as the peasants used to call it!) And who was likewise inclined, under cover of extreme darkness, to move the fenceposts of his land to advance his holdings at the cost of the famous company. (What an excellent early lesson for the Maximum Leader: U. S. frontiers are always and everywhere moveable.) He hasn't been defeated, which technically makes him the victor. But meanwhile he has disappointed all expectations. After thirty-five years in power he has returned to the point where he should have always been: alone with his people. But not to lead them, but rather to face them and square accounts.
Let's face facts: both superpowers bought him off, each in their own moment. And they fought over him. He won in the end, but now the jig is up. A few brave souls insist on asking themselves, still giddy from the blows, what happened to that large, beautiful, unhappy island so familiar to readers of Hemingway--unhappy, yes, but with a constitution (supported even by the Communists) which was one of the most advanced in the world? Why did a country voluntarily commit political and economic suicide, surrendering in the process its real social conquests? But then again, why trouble ourselves with such questions when journalists in New York, comfortably insulated from our troubles, are riding to the rescue. Havana is a platform much nobler than Bosnia, and also much closer. Ancient, luxurious Havana, sending its lights over the Gulf of Mexico, now suddenly become an impoverished Port-au-Prince. They invented him. Fidel of the Forest. Who dispenses with his collaborators, one by one. The 26th of July Movement, the 13th of March Revolutionary Directory, the Second Front of Escambray, even the Popular Socialist (Communist) party. To repress or control many of them he can depend on foreign assistance--that of the Yankees, for example, who were busy chasing Communists in Cuba from the 1940s up through the 1960s, the same Cuban Communists who were in fact their allies, nothing more than members of a reformist party that had decided to change its name for tactical reasons.
The FBI preferred to persist in its stereotype.
Tsk, tsk...too bad.
Fidel Castro signs a separate peace with the KGB. He's busy talking to Moscow when Hoover's boys (or was it Dulles' boys?) "resident" in Havana are entertaining themselves with their microgenetic lenses or aiming their Gamma-570 rays at a handful of disheveled followers of some guys in sweaty white guayaberas[2] with names like Blas Roca or Lázaro Peña or Salvador García Agüero. The fact is that not a penny of Moscow's gold ever entered the cash boxes of the Popular Socialist Party, which didn't have any cash boxes anyway. "Agents of Moscow"--a label in which the United States believed quite seriously, but which had nothing whatever to do with reality. That's the problem working with such crude analytical tools: stereotypes taken from the comic strips.
The writing was clear on the wall from the very beginning of the glorious Cuban Revolution, when on January 8, 1959 Castro (after having flirted with Batista's old army) declared that we didn't need arms at all ("Arms--against whom?") and proceeded to disarm all his own followers. Then he set up the famous show trials for Batista's air force pilots. I say show trials because it was necessary to try the accused twice in order to get a guilty verdict. Twice! "And I would have tried them three times if it were necessary," he once declared to a group of us.
On the heels of the trials came the "disappearance" of Camilo Cienfuegos, the most popular hero of the revolution, who never made it to 1960. Camilo--disappeared. How? Our chief explained it all to us in a weepy television address lasting no less than five hours. According to him, the tiny Cessna that Camilo was piloting was brought down by a nocturnal storm at sea. Some eight years later--on October 8, 1967--he placed the weakened asthmatic frame of Ché Guevara in the line of fire of the rifles of the CIA and the Bolivian General Staff. When he hears that there are negotiations going on, that the conversations in the little schoolhouse in La Higuera are getting a bit too extended, he quietly sends instructions to his contacts in La Paz: the Argentine should arrive at Valle Grande stiff--stiff and cold. And with that, he puts an end to a mysterious dialogue taking place between the Argentine on one hand, and CIA personnel of Cuban origin and the Bolivian military on the other.
General Arnaldo Ochoa had to wait three decades for his turn. But in this case the chief won't make use of enemy forces to effect disposal. No, instead, he will place him in front of his own firing squad, branded as a traitor and executed as an enemy of the Revolution. If historical circumstances prevent you from placing him on the sacrificial altar, if martyrdom does not suit the present case, comrade judges, then we feel obligated to introduce you instead to a new, cooperative traitor. Your job is to get him up against the wall of the firing squad as quickly as possible. After the trial of Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez, this revolution of ours, which in its infinite kindness and humanism has never even struck a prisoner, offers the condemned man a choice. Does he wish to be tied to a post with his eyes blindfolded? His hands secured a waist-level? Blindfold yes but rope no? Rope yes but blindfold no? Or no blindfold and hands free? Fine, however you wish. Put yourself over there, please. Right there, at the foot of the sandbags. Thank you, prisoner. Fine.
After the tugboat "13th of March" was sunk, killing some twenty children, they wanted to behave themselves. Be responsible. When a few service launches operating within Havana Bay temporarily escape, they don't sink them. Instead, they place the griffins--gunboats of Soviet manufacture issued to the Coast Guard--at a prudent distance, loaded with phosphorescent lifejackets and a handful of military cameramen (Reuters had been invited as well, fully briefed). Thus positioned, for quite a time they patrol the area in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, but on continual alert. Then all of a sudden, quite by surprise, the old urge returns and the new hunting season is declared open. The restriction on rafters is lifted, and the tough guys of the Coast Guard are invited to go to it. But the syndrome remains, nonetheless. A kind of fear of losing control over anything that shows up on its recently acquired (and very expensive English radar sets), any objective at sea which might otherwise escape their notice. That's how crimes of omission are committed. Crimes that Fidel Castro knows that, in the final analysis, no one is going to notice.
The syndrome flourishes anew at the beginning of 1995 when the Maximum Leader is on the verge of a trip to Paris, where he intends to use for the first time a civilian suit in blue pastel, replacing his normal combat fatigues made of Chinese silk. He is advised that radio communication has been lost with a Cuban cargo boat, the Guantánamo, with 26 crewmen--his compatriots--aboard. The normal practice is to alert the well-trained international rescue system. No, the Commander says, let's wait. What if, instead of a ship in distress, what we have is a crew attempting to desert? Wait. Don't say anything yet.
A badly stowed cargo and twenty-five Cubans suddenly disappeared. Dead. But Fidel Castro's trip goes off without a hitch. "PARIS ACCLAIMS FIDEL," reads the headline in Granma. Not so much as a word about the Guantánamo. The silence lasts 16 days. Thus, subordinating all else to a top priority activity of the Commander--in this case, his first trip to France--the Cuban authorities throw a mantle of silence over the sinking of the cargoboat, and the disappearance of 25 of its 26 crewmen, which in fact occurred on the night of March 10 somewhere in the Atlantic, while the vessel was trying to make its way to Spain. News of the event was withheld from the families of the crewmen until the Ministry of Transport issued a slim communiqué announcing that radio communications with the vessel had been lost on the indicated date.
Planning such a pleasant trip--the first in which the world would see the Commander in civilian clothes--one could not risk the possibility of an international scandal, could one? Especially one like this, in which the entire crew of a Cuban ship were to rise up against the regime on the high seas. No, that wouldn't do at all. What we need here is silence, a silence utterly symmetrical with the end of radio contact with the ship. Silence. Silence. [3]
No one is responsible for the fact that the language or the ideas of an independent author suddenly acquire an aggressive character, or may even begin to resemble a declaration of war. But this possibility is not always accepted. The government maintains a complete dossier on every Cuban. Experience, boys. Thus when this author went into exile in August, 1994 he told an Italian newspaper that the President of the Council of State and also of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, as well as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Comrade Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, is a sonofabitch. Which, in fact, sounds quite lovely in Italian, almost a line out of one of their neo-realist films. Figlio della putana. Well, this is what provoked a long series of messages and telephone calls from some of the most important figures of Western literature. Just calm down, they advise. Adjust quietly to exile. But the author in question, your humble servant, has something else in mind. He wants to call attention to an entire line of conduct. Of a certain person. Let's take the example of the refugees, one of the principal instruments of fidelismo. Here we have a regional problem that really ought to be the responsibility of the United Nations, not successive U. S. administrations, since if the problem is examined properly it's obvious that Cuban refugees have been scattered across half the surface of the globe. An authentic diaspora. Sweden. Germany. Russia. Canada. Mexico, Costa Rica. Panama. Venezuela. Spain. Hell, even in Angola with the forces of UNITA![4].
But no. Just look: what we have are our good friends in the United States, always desperate to resolve Castro's problem, to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. Formidable allies, those.
If General Gondín wanted to celebrate the new year 1994 by staging a parade of panchos, that is, armored transports designed to convey anti-riot troops, vehicles actually copied from the South African Buffel Mk III's captured by the Cubans in their Angolan campaign of 1988 (renamed in honor of Major General Francisco M. Cruz Bourzac, or "Pancho", one-time chief of the Ordinance Command, whose plane was downed by friendly fire), and if Gondín also wanted Cuban television to repeat ad nauseum training films designed for elite forces (the so-called "wasps"") especially trained in martial arts by teachers especially imported from North Korea, and if besides (an irritable chap, this Gondín, squat, with his hair pasted down with cheap pomade supplied by the Red Army, small and tough, inclining forward in his elevator shoes to impart a greater sense of presence on the occasion of his swearing in as first vice-minister of the Interior, Gondín wanted the police to patrol the city accompanied by drooling bull dogs. But the Commander in Chief has a better idea, a shortcut. Thus he explains during a meeting of the Cuban high command in December, 1993. As kindly as he knows how, he explains that military parades are very expensive; better to leave the problem to him, since after all, if there is discontent in Cuba it's all due to the Yankee blockade, and he knows how to deal with the Yankees. Leave that problem to me. A note of tenderness even creeps into his voice when he asks his closest collaborators (punctuated by a slightly malicious smile), "Give me your vote of confidence."
The first maneuver is moving forward right on schedule. We are just about to begin a year whose principal tasks are the sugar harvest, economic debate in the National Assembly, and a meeting with the people from Miami. Then comes failure. After that, a second wind. The first symptom is an agreement with a famous tailor in Belgium, followed by the announcement that the Commander in Chief will be present in Copenhagen and Paris. And with that, he parts the scene.
On Sunday March 26 the Spanish and Portuguese rescue services announce that the Liberian merchant ship MV Dole Africa, en route towards Puerto Rico, some 500 miles south of the Azores, happened upon a lifeboat belonging to the Guantánamo. On board was one José Luis Martínez, the ship's electrician and the only survivor of the disaster.
Martínez was adrift, psychologically ready to die. A tortoise had climbed aboard, but he chose not to kill it. He preferred hunger. Meanwhile, in Paris, far, far from shipwrecks and stranded sailors, the Commander, elegantly attired in a blue three-piece suit, raised his glass and joked with journalists. A trip to the United States? Why not? Hell, he added, I might even make the journey on a raft!
In this chapter we're going to get into some heavy material. But don't worry, it's just for a few moments. Matters having to do with the law. Perhaps we ought to specify a few matters before we continue.
The method employed is to drop one layer of crimes on another layer of crimes. But that can only be done on the basis that one error leads to another. The person who commits layer upon layer of crimes is the same gentleman who is offended when they call him a murderer just because he ordered the sinking of the tugboat 13th of March and pushed thousands of desperate Cubans into taking to the seas in search of the unattainable U. S. coastline. You see, don't you? It's simple. A crime like the sinking of the tugboat is obscured by the unknown number--thousands, surely--of rafters who will perish in the Florida straits. Error compounding error is the practice of successive American administrations who seemed determined to pick up Castro's gauntlet. If you negotiate with him today, tomorrow you'll have to have a hand twice as good, with many more aces in the hole. Different classes speak different languages, isn't that so, Comrade Mao? Asian rhetoric which seems to have invaded the social sciences. Acceptable, perhaps, for inclusion in the Red Book.
Both sides are exhausted. Cuba today is like Cuba in 1898. It's not true that in our war with Spain the Cuban insurgents were poised for victory when the U. S. intervened. No, the truth is that both sides were exhausted, neither able to prevail over the other.
The current struggle in great measure has been designed by people expecting the other side to give in. They're too confident for their own good.
What's missing is a decision by the United States to tip the balance. If it comes out in favor of Castro, it demoralizes the opposition.
The United States needs to understand something: it's been fighting only against Fidel Castro, and it continues to fight only against him.
Trained to think that others are going to fall--Fidel Castro, in this case, evidently--no one does anything. Threatened with massive exodus, it would have been better advised to transform the exiles into a military force. Instead of 30,000 exiles in Guantánamo, 30,000 anti-Castro insurgents. As veteran chess players know, a threat is even better than an actual move. Time for some fresh thinking. Negotiations can only mess things up. Pardon me, but that's a fact. It can ruin everthing.
The present struggle in Cuba is not, in fact, between the Revolution and some vague counter-revolution. No, it's between tyranny and democracy.
Hemingway's definition of fascism: a lie told by thugs/
According to Solzhenitsyn--perhaps the only saint in the history of literature since the French Revolution--"to be merciful one must be right" (and he underlines the prayer in his Gulag manuscript). The current legal situation of the Cuban government and its capacity to even minimally fulfill even one of is own, originally proclaimed ideals of justice is not only incompatible with the philosophy of the Russian writer. As the old saying goes, the cobbler's children always go barefooted.
Just think of it: Dr. Goebbels' ideal of a republic has finally been located in the tropics. And we didn't know it all along. Here the new year is greeted not only with armored personnel carriers and improvised karate lessons for overfed anti-riot brigades, cudgels and brass knuckles, but an entire juridical apparatus. Again, what a marvel: they take refuge in the law! They toss you into the Roman arena, advising you beforehand that the lions that very soon will tear you limb from limb are doing so in the name of justice. Lord have mercy, do they have laws. They promulgate them themselves.
A case in point. Here is a clip from the July 5, 1994 edition of Granma, the regime's official daily.
By Katiusa Blanco
With a view to providing greater flexibility and a more individualized application of justice, the Council of State recently approved a number of modifications to the Penal Code. These will permit a more adequate treatment of criminal acts with grave social connotations.
The changes went into effect this past June 10...
...the Code...was modified in various crucial ways. One of them defines the possibility of extending beyond 20 years the existing maximum sentence. Previously this was only possible when a 30-year term was decreed in place of capital punishment.
Now sentences can exceed 20 years, and even reach 30, in cases of multiple crimes, second offenses, or second or third offenses in the case of serious crimes, or under extraordinary circumstances.
Extraordinary circumstances include crimes committed under conditions where the accused takes advantage of a public calamity or some other special situation; when the crime is carried out against persons or goods related to priority projects of the national economy, or when the crime is committed in the spirit of vengeance or as a reprisal for participation in acts in defense of the interests of society or the country as a whole by citizens in support of the authorities. For such crimes, the sentence may be extended to up to half-again as many years.
In order to assure that the force of law is not evaded, and with a view to liquidating the economic power of delinquents, the accessory punishments were also modified and increased by Decree-Law 150...
Moreover, the punishments are more wide-ranging and take into account recent developments. The one applying to illicit enrichment, formerly limited to any government functionary or employee, is now extended to any person, though the most serious sanctions are reserved for the former category. The crime of attacks on public order is extended in the sense that it more widely defines the persons who might be their target: government functionaries, agents, and citizens who take up defense of social property or the interests of society. Stronger punishments for the crime of public disorder are contemplated when the evident purpose is to alarm the population, to create disorder, or to provoke panic anywhere...
The primary purpose of these revisions to the Code is to assure a greater respect for legality, to preserve social discipline, and to assure civic tranquility.
But, dear readers of Granma, this is a mere artillery preparation for a larger assault yet to come. In this context, "civic tranquility" means that if you board the tugboat 13th of March you should be prepared to be hit by water cannons without uttering a peep. That is the spirit and letter of the law. Could candorous editors of Time find a way to live under these draconian regulations for at least a week? Nothing personal in the thought. After such an experience, maybe their next cover story would be slightly different, revealing that the Lion in Winter is actually a sonofabitch.
...whoever follows like a lamb the singsong of the bell and the voice of the shepherd has to be ready to die at the first flash of the knife.--Raul Rivero
To hit someone over the head with a club--a grand Cuban tradition?
The guys, that is, the police, are armed with sticks--"yumas," says the coronel.
Sticks. That's the usual Cuban jargon to refer to police batons. Which operate a high velocity, adds the colonel. And he also says that he personally expressed opposition to this (the use of high-velocity police batons) at various meetings at the "MinInt"--the Ministry of Interior.
He says that his colleagues had no vision of the future. And we have to understand him: he was a veteran revolutionary who took a long time convincing himself to join a police force armed with batons, because to belong to the MinInt amounted to assuming the same role that they'd often told him was played by the brutal, perverted police of the dictator Batista, the police of capitalism and imperialism.
Once the battle of ideas was concluded, they turned to tear gas or other paralyzing fumes designed to screw up the earth's ozone layer. They once dropped some of this stuff on a handful of old ladies standing in line because--so they said--they were manifesting "anti-social conduct" and had to be duly repressed. A high Cuban official by the name of Fidel Castro once said that the Chinese at Tien An-Men didn't know how to properly repress, and that's why they were forced into the painful, unpleasant task of having to eliminate thousands of their citizens--is "eliminate" the proper euphemism for running over people with tanks? Just about then the Cubans began create a new formation, the Special Brigade, dressed in blue uniforms, which are after all the internationally-recognized color of the police. But really, the matter is troubling. Batista's police also wore blue uniforms. Then someone got the bright idea of having us patrol with dogs. Now the city has a new flavor, a new aspect: it resembles a town under foreign occupation, with the invading troops moving about in trucks equipped with fortified observation turrets, heavily-armed cops moving about in groups of four. All with yuma sticks. Oh I forgot to say: that yuma is the usual Cuban slang expression for North Americans.
Che Guevara once spent hours on television explaining to us his evident preference for pistols. That was back in 1959. The Argentine didn't much like sticks.
The high level of alcohol abuse that (according to the colonel) now exists in the ranks of these troops is "troubling to the command."
And he adds, it's not enough to say that the troops that shot people at Cojímar at point-blank range were raw recruits. Recruits under whose command?, he asks. Or, he asks, is Cuba the only country in the world where recruits act on spontaneous impulse? Let's not forget that hundreds of such recruits were punished after the Second World War for crimes against humanity, and their commanders sent to the gallows.
The most important thing in the world is the SUV, and then God, probably in that order, he tells us.
SUV is the abbreviation for Sistema Unico de Vigilancia, the body that controls the activities of the Cuban police forces. The colonel confirms that in Cuban police doctrine it is established that the SUV is, in effect, the most important law-enforcement body and for this very reason he believes that the SUV can only be compared to God or the Big Bang! And, asks a new recruit, with the Baku oil wells? Possibly, replies the colonel. According to SUV doctrine, in the event of any abnormal situation, the police are obliged to report "with all deliberate speed" to the authorities.
Abnormal situations can also serve other purposes as well. Something as important as the application of the truncheon. When to club, and when not to? MinInt has worked out its doctrine on the subject for the benefit of operators of high velocity police batons, or any other offensive weapon. Said doctrine will provide the answer. The MinInt likewise instructs that one may use force--that is, to strike citizens--in the event of any provocative act. Violence is the law of the jungle, the colonel pontificates, and a sign that we've run out of patience. But, says the colonel, these last two statements will nowhere be found in official doctrine. Now, just what constitutes a provocative act for some unfortunate policeman recruited at random in one of the eastern provinces? At one time, say at the beginning of the 1970s, it was said that one could not strike citizens under any circumstances and that obedience had to be evinced through technical means: judo or several men. On one occasion the crew of a patrol boat radioed to ask permission to apply a "334", which is to say, to pound some delinquents to smithereens. In effect they never used the radio again--they just applied the "334". Later the victims were found unconscious and beaten to a pulp. There were other occasions--I just mentioned one of them--when the boys got a little overenthusiastic lobbing paralyzing gases in the direction of some noisy old ladies waiting in line.
The level of alcohol abuse, yes, that's it. No doubt what we're doing is right, the colonel thinks. But how we're doing it, how we're going about it...
I know the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the MinInt well enough to know that when they shoot, it's because they've been given orders to do so. No one in Cuba opens fire at point-blank range at a boat or a group of persons without the corresponding order. And not because later they may say that it is a crime to pounce upon a boat full of women and children, or even if it were only men. These soldiers, such blooded veterans, were implacable when it came time to judge and execute Batistiano war criminals. Quite the contrary, they savagely demanded their execution. How many children and adolescents have been shot by now by the present Cuban authorities? Who killed more minors: Machado, Batista, or who? Lieutenant William Calley and Mi Lai was represented in Cuba as the incarnation of the devil. But what do we do now with our own officers, less publicized to be sure, who are responsible for similar actions, and not half-way around the globe but in their own front yard?
"...good and evil were not the exclusive property of a single party or people...But the important thing, then and now, is to know which side harbored the greatest percentage of evil."--Marguerite Yourcenar
It was time for the parade. The 1st of May, 1991. Much attention given to the details, which amounted to a huge assembly of bicycles, ....our Commander in Chief, who would thus open the march of the Cuban working class on this important occasion, grizzled and smiling, pushed by four of his huskiest bodyguards who would pedal from one end of the Plaza de la Revolución to the other. At the end he decided not to. Instead, he made the journey on foot. And then quickly lurch towards his Mercedes. The fact is he has no desire to get involved with bicycles. His distaste for same dates from the 7th or 8th of December, 1942, when he broke his nose in a competition at his school, the exclusive Colegio de Belén in Havana (he smashed up against the wall and had to spend the next two weeks with his face wrapped in an ugly bandage.) He's reminded every time he puts his hand to his nose--that same broken nose so emblematic of his personality. Bicycles aren't worth a bucket of sh-- to him. Not to be trusted. Above all, when going downhill.
Few know if the original pledge to lead the review on a bicycle, but what did surprise many who were present on that occasion was the sudden appearance from the basement level of the Palace of the Revolution of a hundred tanks, who retreated in perfect formation after having provided the Commander with adequate protection. The Bucharest syndrome, you might say, recalling the last speech of Ceasescu, when the masses suddenly switched from lukewarm applause to loud boos. From there to the overthrow of the regime was one short step. It taught Fidel Castro an invaluable lesson. No need to expose himself to risk at the Plaza de la Revolución, delivering endless periorations.
Historically the regime liked to say that it was the product of a people's war. Nonetheless, the events themselves were preparing a different outcome. A war against the people. The Headquarters Regiment parades in full camouflage kit behind the palace. The problem transforms itself from political to spiritual. And it exhausts itself.
The process veers off course probably as early as 1963, when Fidel Castro discovers that he has the USSR as an ally. From then on, Cuba is invulnerable. Here is where we lose. When he lost. We don't even have international opposition. Let's face facts. We then followed a leader of exceptional qualities. The caudillo. It seems that we had to fall into his hands to escape the island. National sentiment was exacerbated. May be ridiculous, but that's the way it happened. When the Socialist Camp collapsed, that's when we have a regime that begins to realize that its war is at home, with its own people.
When these supposed vanguards discover the crime, the first question one asks oneself is who designates the vanguard. Fidel Castro makes a very strong case that he was selected through history and because he has demonstrated an ability to lead his people. Today we know that is not quite true. But how to convince foreign visitors!
Khrushchev, probably by way of justification, or at least by way of explanation--don't be offended, please, it's one's revolutionary's vision of another--once said that Stalin was inspired by an idea but the realization of that idea costs thousands (millions, at latest report) of murders, and this was what converted him into a tragic personality. A tragedy. Just think of it--a tragedy. That's what makes it unpleasant to have to talk about a certain Fidel Castro, because if anyone has been fickle in matters ideologically it is he. And his crimes are by now without number. Or is it that he's trying to break some sort of record? [5]
The bottom line is this: you can't make a revolution with social objectives with the single objective of attaining and retaining power. Here we hit upon an idea that needs some elaboration. Because at the end what you have is the boomerang effect. Better the unvarnished crimes of a Trujillo or Somoza, two historical personalities much more accommodating for our purposes here. They have no inhibitions about being seen covered in blood.
The Soviet model of repression favors survival--the survival of the ordinary citizen, that is. It serves no purpose to exterminate in mass. It's better to maintain them alive, as prisoners. There you have the repressive Leninist ideal! The wives of prisoners act as vectors of revolutionary terror in every neighborhood, acting as useful warning-signals for as long as twenty-five years. After all, a widow will eventually remarry, sometimes in as little as two or three years, and get on with her life. But political prisoners constitute a problem for their entire families, and for an extended period of time. This conception is what makes it difficult to understand the massacres into which the Commander tends to fall from time to time. The current talk of compensation for revolutionary damages after the fall of the regime, so common outside of Cuba, are irrelevant fantasies. The same applies to the return of confiscated properties. Because, after all, how much is a month in prison worth? A brother executed for "counter-revolutionary crimes"? To be sure, as our Soviet advisors used to say, the death penalty should be applied only in extraordinary cases. Imprisonment is far more scientific: all it takes is a visit to an imprisoned relative once every two months to break the resistance of those on the outside. "Nothing is stronger than the instinct of self-preservation suddenly menaced," Martí wrote.
In the end he won, but now the jig is up. He won but he lost. The nomenklatura--if there remain any intelligent souls therein--don't know what they're missing. Who, after all, is putting the most serious obstacles in the way of their future welfare? Fidel Castro. Let's ask all of them or let them behold the example of the former Socialist Camp.
And finally we come to the eternal problem of the embargo. It should be guided by a single consideration: to be lifted only if it works in favor of the freedom of Cuba. Step by step. What should be avoided at all costs is something which would benefit Fidel Castro. The U. S. ought not to try replacing the Soviets. The best investment for the United States in Latin America is democracy. And the fact is that the United States isn't even an empire. How can we obligate the United States to impose its will? The Soviets, by way of contrast, has contracted a serious debt with Cuba because they helped to forge its chains. But now Fidel is looking for new business partners. In 1992 the Soviets repatriated its combat brigade in Cuba with the same celerity with which they removed the nuclear missiles thirty years before. Without warning. This shows that the Soviets always knew what Castro was worth. It's the Americans who've regularly respected him more.
What's left of the Commandante in any event is a sense of pragmatism. To negotiate anything except his departure from power.
There. In his office in the palace paneled in rare Cuban woods. He hasn't finished yet. Prepare yourself for many more pirouettes.
Back to the head of this document
If we have gotten to the point in our desperate culture in which we feel obligated to kill children, regardless of why or of what color, then we do not deserve to survive and probably won't.--William Faulkner
Who gave the order? Why wasn't the matter investigated exhaustively, the malefactors brought to trial, and all the circumstances dragged out into the light of day, just as the pretended to do in the famous "Cause Number 1", as a result of which generals and colonels were sent to the gallows? [6] Why were some military men brought to justice, but others not? Lately the Cuban military are falling into the trap of allowing its fortunes to be tied to that of a bloody dictatorship. Their uniforms, like their honor, are being besmirched. I repeat: how many children did Batista kill? No ideology or system of government can justify such massacres. A young woman deserving of a short story by Guillermo Cabrera Infante like In Peace as in War--one such very similar to a certain María Victoria, whom we'll hear from shortly--and the photograph of the child accidentally killed by one of Batista's bombardments are images, are voices increasingly frequent under this government which we once imagined would bring us bread and justice. I invite all those who agreed to join the Rapid Reaction Brigades[7] to take a good long look at themselves in the mirror. Consider what happened in Cojímar. The modus operandi is to manipulate the people or silence them. A revolution that began by demanding the right to execute war criminals...you, gentlemen, tell us sincerely what crimes in the history of Cuba are more monstrous than these--these stories of children murdered weekly because they have robbed or a few bananas, or the action of Cojímar or the massacre at Canimar. The misfortune of our country is that it in no way resembles the sugar-coated version served up to viewers of CNN. Our leader allows us to live under the solid principle that the police are not permitted to shoot at people. Well, they're doing it now, and the government has nothing to say for itself. The stories that circulate mouth-to-mouth are horrific: after the tragedy of the tugboat 13th of March it's common knowledge that there are some mothers in Cuba who've taken so many tranquilizers they dare not increase their dosage by a single pill.
The matter is simple. How can anyone believe that three tugboats executed this kind of military operation without the knowledge of the port authorities...and that they supposedly were not in communication...with each other...and because one of the pursuing tugs paused at the mouth of the harbor and then attacked afterwards
No one goes anywhere in a boat that's sprung a leak, as Granma would later have us believe. They left the dock in perfect condition. On board there were no less than ten sailors. And the Soviet-made gunboats did not go out when the sea currents are measured at 3. So how could this tug have left with a measurement of between 2 to 3 and a leak of 7 centimeters? They would have sunk straightaway. The water would seep through. They say that it had just been repaired. But a tugboat cannot sink on the basis of the weight it carries. It was cut in two along the stern, as with a knife. The cargo is called "a little pig" or "sweet water", in sailor's slang. But our overachieving tugboat covered seven miles in 45 minutes in spite of the harassment and the blows it was receiving--that's speed and that's resistance!--and how is a boat going to be a floating coffin, a boat that supposedly is leaking like a sieve, when they are bombarding it with water? And in spite of everything it's capable of navigating, rapidly, seven miles in 45 minutes, and it doesn't sink until they attack it?
From the 15th of May to the 15th of August the Caribbean waters around Cuba are as flat as a plate, and it takes a cyclone to stir up the water sufficiently to merit a bulletin from the port authorities. As a matter of fact, in this case there were survivors afloat in the water for a full hour until the gunboat arrived. Who advised the gunboat? That we'll never know.
But in their effort to appear innocence, the authorities are acting in an excessively shameful fashion. The only thing people are asking for is justice, not an indictment of the work of the Revolution in its totality or even of current-day Cuban policies. No one is questioning either our system of education or public health. The refusal of the government to investigate and punish the guilty can only be explained by one thing, namely, an interest in covering up the crime and its perpetrators. But no historic project of any kind can be defended in this way, at the cost of the lives of innocent children.
Moreover, even if we can force ourselves to accept the official version, namely, that it was an accident, wouldn't it be useful to investigate the matter fully, as governments are wont to do in misfortunes of this type? Were one of the officers drunk? That's possibility. But how could it have been an accident when the personnel concerned were accustomed to maneuver enormous cargo-boats and tankers...The accident thesis is the hardest of all to accept.
When the KAL 747 was downed at the cost of 264 innocent lives (years later it was discovered that in the cabin they thought they were suffering only from a loss of pressure and not being downed by air-to-air missiles fired by--one has to suppose--eight Soviet interceptors) the Cubans at the United Nations played one of their favorite roles: representatives of the barbarous Slavs before the Western world. There they declared their utter conviction that the USSR could only have ordered the attack because it had confused a commercial aircraft with a military plane, and they didn't know that the attack would result in the loss of so many innocent lives...in short, a regrettable accident, but not because the Jumbo was overflying their security zones. Well, Commander, now how do we deal with this monstrous crime in our own front room?
The only thing being asked for is justice, that is, that those responsible for the crime, because they perpetrated an illegal act, be punished. Or at a minimum, that the facts of the case be clarified in a clear-cut, convincing fashion. If in fact a crime has been committed there should be no problem in bringing both victims and executioners out into the full view of public opinion, so that Cubans can draw their own conclusions. As long as this doesn't happen, neither history nor the legacy of revolutionary martyrs are capable of justifying the inaction of the present Cuban government. Not even yours, Fidel Castro. Let me repeat: no legacy of any revolutionary martyr can justify turning a high-pressure water cannon on a mother clutching a three-month old child at point-blank range. You never tire of repeating your favorite slogan, namely, that they (the valiant dead of the Cuban Revolution) "would have been like us today". It is precisely on their behalf that the veteran Cuban revolutionaries in power today ought to act. In no other way can we save from ignominy the glorious legion of our revolutionary martyrs. I must confess that I find it impossible to imagine that a Martí, a Maceo, or a Mella would be capable of participating in or even approving an operation of this sort. It is in their name that justice ought to be done. And let me add that the long arm of the law should reach even those who cynically hid the truth with pharisaic articles in the official press. All of our proudest revolutionary banners should be struck until the moment that justice has been done. The Cuban government still has the floor. And the Cuban court of public opinion is still waiting to hear from it.
What we have here are victims for which we are responsible. No one came from abroad to place a bomb somewhere in Cuba. Rather here, in our land, on our seas. Where are the knee-jerk declarations of our intellectuals and our arrogant foreign ministry, forever ready to leap to condemnation at any massacre perpetrated hundreds and thousands of miles away? My Lai. What is the name of our own William Calley? What does he like? Who is this man so recently referred to simply as the "hero" in the offices of the Terminales Mambises? [8] Who is this "Juan" from whom an old friend begged pardon because he had his child in his arms? Let the authorities dredge up the ship. Let them turn over the bodies. The position of the Ministry of the Interior, namely, that the old tug cannot be recovered because of the water depth is a flat-out lie. It is only twenty fathoms below the surface, well within the continental shelf. Another lie, this one told by Fidel Castro himself: that there was no morgue set up for some 20 victims at the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Batista's pilots were judged not once but twice...Do we have here the rule of justice, or raw power alone? Tell us, Fidel. We're listening.
Is the Cuban government covering up for a band of murderers? There's only one way to demonstrate the contrary: to present to the public all the evidence, the testimony of all the witnesses, the cross-examination of all parties concerned.
Just to take one incident: that of a child of three months plucked from his mother's arms and tossed into the water by a member of the Rapid Reaction Brigade. I invite all of you who signed up for service in this body to abide by the consequences.
And now let's enjoy one of those splendid little slices of mendacity which appear daily in Granma, "the newspaper that never lies," as Fidel Castro is fond of saying. Here's a news item over which the country held its breath and which may well have been a turning point in Cuba's history. It comes from the edition of July 14, 1994.
CAPSIZED TUGBOAT ROBBED BY ANTI-SOCIAL ELEMENTS
At approximately 3 a. m. yesterday, anti-social elements forcibly abducted the tugboat 13th of March belonging to the Western Mambisa Terminal, with a view of illegally quitting the country.
In its haste the boat capsized approximately 7 miles offshore. Some 31 persons (20 men, 5 women and 6 children) were rescued by government boats or by units of the Coast Guard.
This irresponsible act of piracy promoted and stimulated by counter-revolutionary radio stations, the most reactionary elements of Cuban emigration in Miami, and by the well-known refusal of the United States to abide by migration agreements, produced the unfortunate incident which continues under investigation by the competent authorities.
Two days later Granma's tone had moderated a bit. It still maintains its tone of admonishment. But it clearly reflects indirectly an attempt at exculpation.
NOTE FROM THE MINISTRY OF INTERIOR
As a result of investigation by the relevant authorities of the circumstances surrounding the event that occurred in the early morning hours of last July 13, in which the tugboat 13 of March, belonging to the maritime services of the Ministry of Transport, was sunk some 7 miles north of Havana Bay, it has been established that the sinking took place as the result of a collision between the boat in question and another tugboat belonging to the same agency which was attempting to catch up with it.
The tugboat 13 of March was boarded by a group of persons at the pier where it was docked. The leaders of the group that tried to quit the country illegally effectively disabled the communications equipment of the wharfside office before boarding.
The boat had been notified of a malfunction which made possible a leak, a fact that was known to the leaders of the plan, who nevertheless proceeded in an irresponsible way to carry out their design.
In an attempt to prevent the hijacking, three boats belonging to MITRANS (Ministry of Transportation) attempted to intercept it, and as a result of the maneuvers executed to achieve this objective the unfortunate accident took place, resulting in the eventual sinking of the ship.
Two units of the Coast Guard who happened to be patrolling in the immediate area immediately went to the aid of the shipwrecked passengers, joining the rescue efforts of the three MITRANS embarkations.
Given the conditions of navigation and the force of the currents (Force 3) in the early hours of the morning, only 31 persons were rescued alive. They were immediately taken back to the docks and given immediate medical attention. The rest of the persons belonging to the group have been lost at sea. The principal leader is being detained.
This unfortunate incident demonstrated once more how unscrupulous elements are willing to risk the lives of people, including women and children, kin their unscrupulous efforts to illegal emigrate to the United States, there to be received as heroes. As is well known, that country does not concede visas so that Cubans can visit it through normal channels.
A few days later one of the smaller boats belonging to the public transportation system of Havana Bay, La Regla was hijacked. The event took place in the early morning hours of July 26, and the tossing overboard of some passengers "by unscrupulous anti-social elements responsible for the kidnapping" was presented to us as if it were a full-dress counter-revolution. What begins as a tragedy repeats itself as farce. If there weren't so much blood spilled in the process, it would seem...like a farce. Behind all of this I perceive, gentlemen, the fine hand of one Fidel Castro: I know his sense of humor. Whether a product of Cuban propaganda or not, the fact is that these hardened travelers on La Regla managed to achieve their objective...thanks to the children who had gone down with the tugboat. This time the Soviet-built gunboats didn't open fire. The year before, after the uprising at Cojímar, the same thing happened: the hunting season was suspended. Civilians were temporarily declared off-limits.
In any event, one is obliged to think, the only thing the fidelista authorities are likely to do is to advance the legal proceedings, for if there is one thing of which we can be certain it is that they will be brought to trial. Only one thing is capable of making everyone forget this massacre, and that is the perpetration of other, bigger catastrophes of a similar nature. As a matter of fact, it wasn't long before Cojímar was no longer a topic of conversation.
Her name is María Victoria García Suárez. She is 28 years of age. She has survived to tell this story.
The time is 9:20 a.m., July 27, 1994. She is sitting in the room that normally serves as her parents' bedroom. She is talking to her father. The conversation is recorded.
The horrible event occurred fifteen days ago. First of all, dear, how do you feel?
Fine.
Are you under any form of medical attention?
No.
Do you consider yourself emotionally able to tell us the tragic circumstances?
Yes.
Are you telling us these things under any sort of pressure?
No.
All right, let's begin. Did your family--that is, your father, your siblings--know of your decision to leave the country?
No.
Why not?
Well, it was a very serious decision, too serious really to discuss casually. It might have compromised our effort.
Tell us what happened near the Morro Castle.
When we cleared the Morro...I realized that we were being chased by a..by another tugboat, but we kept on going...we kept our distance ahead. It continued following us. Later it was joined by another tug, and we continued forward and they managed to collide with us on one side. They hit us and they turned the water on us with high pressure water cannons. The two tugs. Then, a bit later on, they were joined by one more tug. We had one on one side of us, and another behind. The three of them were firing heavy streams of water at the women and children who were on the deck. Afterwards, the tug behind us managed to hit us from there, sticking its prow in our bow and splitting it. We said to them that...we begged them not to do it...not to shoot more water at us...to stop, there were children aboard, that they were going to kill both them and us, that they didn't understand that there were children aboard, and they kept firing water at us and colliding into us. They hit us from all sides.
Then we...we cried out to one boy that was stationed on the bridge of one of the tugs, we cried at him, Jacobo, don't shoot, don't hit us with more water, we have children here, you're going to kill them, and he just laughed saying, Let them die! He didn't understand. Then they were firing streams of water from the tug that was behind us. They were trying to reach the engine room, so as to shut the door. I heard someone say, "Shut the door!", but I didn't see anything because there were too many people in front of me. But then I did hear the door shut. After that we had no escape. We...we cried out, we offered to surrender. Leave us alone, we surrender, we'll turn back. But they kept on spraying us with the water-cannons and bumping against us. Afterwards we stopped the engine because we saw that now there was no alternative, that we had to stop. Then we said to them, Look, we've stopped, we're going to turn back, we surrender, we're going to turn back. We had already killed the engine. But they kept on hitting us. They didn't understand that we had stopped. Then later, the boat that was on one side, on the right side, hit us hard and we capsized. That's when the boat began to sink on us.
The...the investigating officer assigned to the case says that the facts were not as you have related them. He claims...access to other versions from sources who were standing near you during those horrendous moments. Among other things he says that "the 13th of March attacked a Polargo blocking its way, inflicting in the process a crack in its prow, which produced the massive entry of water. He also thinks that at no point were you abandoned to your fate. The ships that had followed you remained nearby until Coast Guard launchers could catch up. He says that the three tugs were not in a position to rescue you because of the small size of their crews (three persons). They were afraid to board your boat for fear of being overcome by you guys. He emphasizes that the watercannons were used to put the engine out of action, not against people on deck...What can you tell me about these things that he's told me...and that you don't seem to know?
Well, the problem is that we couldn't have attacked another tug because we're made of wood and had everything to lose. That was logical. We kept on going, trying to leave them behind, because we were made of wood. It would have been crazy to attack them: we couldn't possibly have won. I don't think they wanted to sink the...the boat nor do I think there would have been people killed...But then when we saw that they...that their objective was to sink us...because if they wanted to stop the boat or escort us into the bay and...and arrest us, they could have done that from the very beginning because they had...they had better equipment, more power...but believe me, at no point did we think of attacking them. They're the ones that attacked us, hitting us again and again.
That is to say that the leak that he thinks was caused by the attack of the 13th of March on the Polargo behind you, that leak wasn't caused by that.
No.
That is to say, specifically the leak was due to...
It was due to the repeated bashings we took from them.
The blows from the other boats, they came from, from, from the port side to the starboard side...or from behind?
They hit us from all sides.
With the prow...with the prow?
Yes, with their prow.
Their prow.
But well, the biggest blow was the one that came from behind when they split our entire stern. And the...the other blow was the one that, the one that sunk us, that capsized us on the right side.
See here, this blow from ah, by the stern, from behind the 13th of March attacked by...by a Polargo. Is that it? Something like that doesn't take much...to cause you to lose your life. On what side of the deck were you then? On the stern or the prow?
I was in the prow side. On the prow side with my back to the tugboat that, that hit us. I mean that there was nothing in the way of protection behind me. If it had pushed a bit further forward I would have been crushed between it and the prow. Because I was...ah...with my back to them.
You, you were alone or were you with...with Juan Mario?
I was with Juan...Juan Mario.
He was running around or...?
No, I had him...clutching a inner tube that there was there.
He was grabbing on to that?
He. He was holding onto the tube and I was protecting him. Holding him down.
You didn't...you didn't use some sort of rope to secure him to the tube or anything like that?
No. I held him close. I protected him with my body.
You protected him with your body. And then, see here, where did the jets of water from the cannons hit you?
They hit me in the back, they were incredibly strong, they seemed more like blows from a whip. They even left purple welts on me.
Those purple marks. Yes. Then the ones you're showing me came from the water cannons?
Yes.
Because they were all full of...
Yes, they were jets of water that landed straight on my back. They even lowered my pants and pulled off my sweater.
That is to say, they actually undressed you with water jets.
Yes, because they were direct hits. The jets went straight at me.
At you and the other persons there.
The other people too.
You...he says...the investigating officer tells me that you people were never abandoned by the boats, in this case the ones that were attacking you. How much truth is there to that?
We.
And that the boats remained there until the Coast Guard launches arrived.
They...they left. When the gunboats arrived, they left. At no time did they rescue us because if their purpose was to sink us they couldn't very well rescue us. Besides, it's obvious because they arrived at port empty. They didn't pick up a single survivor.
But wait a minute. You're saying that when you were drowning--because we really have to clarify this point well, don't we?--are you saying that you weren't alone, the tugs were still there. Were they still right next to you or had they gone away...or how was it?
They were right there, and they stayed there until the gunboats arrived.
But you were drowning.
Yes we were. They saw that we were there, trying to save ourselves.
But they made no effort to rescue you.
Just the opposite. They churned the water up so that we would go down. They managed to push us down under the waves.
What you're saying then is that...what they were doing was to circle you, to cruise around you to create a whirlpool.
That's it.
To send you to the bottom for the last time, right?
Yeah.
Is that how you see it?
Exactly.
Sure?
Yes.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
No, just like that, just like that. Because they didn't...What they did was to churn up the water. To get it to pull us down for one last time. Yeah, they hit us with water from all sides.
Precisely. Well, ah...The investigating officer has also said that the three tugs were in no condition to assist you. Explain this. Because according to what he told me, there were only three crewmen on board. Could you see anyone aboard the tugs?
Yes, I saw...I saw various people. This guy Jacobo, the same guy to whom we were shouting...he put himself...he stopped so that we could see him. Or rather, so that he could see us. I know we saw him. That was when we yelled at him that there were children that he was going to kill. They could have helped us. They were already there.
Aha. Here--now look. There's one matter that...that I still don't...that I want you to reaffirm or that you....Because, well, fifteen days ago and what you told me the first day, I think that you're repeating it now. That is to say, it's the same story. That's why, well, I have to give tremendous credit to your version. The investigating officer assures me that the water jets were intended to shut down the engine. And I ask you: the motor of the tug was exposed to the outside, or was it protected by something?
It was protected by the engine room.
Is that really where the water jets were aimed?
They were aimed at us--the people on deck.
And you told me that you were going to...that you had to close the doors of the engine room because...
Yes, because they...that is, there were three tug boats hitting us with water cannons and it was we who were exposed to the jets. The engine wasn't. Because it was protected by the cab, you know? But of course there's always a door to those things, so that can get in to service the machinery. On top of that, ah, since they had already shattered our stern, water was coming in through the leak.
Now see here. The woman you spoken to me about with the child in her arms. What happened to here when the water jets hit? That, I think you told me about already? The woman who had her child in her arms and the water jets?
There was...
What happened with the water jet and the child?
There was...there as a man beside me.
Ah, a man.
A man that...that had a little girl, maybe three, four years old. And the little girl cried a lot. And he showed them the little girl and LA PARABA. But I don't think that they survived because the water jets were coming in from all sides. I think that, I don't know if it carried her off, but it's probable because he kept holding up the girl and they didn't seem to get the point; they kept hitting us with water jets. And it seems to me that at some point the water took them to the bottom.
Well now, look here. A short while ago you said that you surrendered. Is that right?
Yes.
How? How was that? You guys...how did you signal your willingness to surrender?
Well, we held up the children and we told them that...that they were going to kill children, that there were women and children that...lease not to fire more jets at us from the water cannon because they were going to kill the children aboard. And then the children ah...began to hold up their hands and shout, "We surrender, we surrender...Don't fire more water at us. We're going to sink? You're going to kill us."
Did this appeal provoke any compassion on their part?
None at all.
Compassion at the spectacle of a pathetic appeal. After all, it was nothing more than that.
Nothing. They kept on aiming water jets at us and hitting us.
What type of reaction...
They just kept on.
What type of reaction...
They jeered at us.
Ah..
They jeered at us while they kept hitting us. They didn't seem to realize that we'd given up hope, that the children were asking, were begging...that we were reader to surrender. Not to hit us with more water. The children were weeping and crying out.
Now then...Up to now what you've told me...I want your opinion. Do you consider yourself the ultimate responsible party for...this tragic event?
No.
What degree of responsibility are you willing to assume?
None. I think that I...I was making the trip for the welfare of my family. The future welfare of my child.
That is, you think you don't have any responsibility at all.
No.
For the act itself. Now, let's look back a bit. Did you people actually hijack the 13th of March?
Well....
Tell us how you got there, how you happened to board the tug in the first place.
My uncle worked that day. His shift started at 6 a.m. He worked on that particular boat, so he had full access to it. It was in daily service in the port. We got there...
There...ah, where is "there"?
There in...in the port of Havana Bay.
What part of the bay? Ah, let's say, before arriving at the Regla docks or going beyond them?...Just to have a point of reference.
Beyond the Regla docks.
There's a part that's called Tallapiedra. And there's another part called Margarita.
There--in Tallapiedra.
Ah, in Tallapiedra. In Tallapiedra there is...there's something there. The State Electrical Enterprise, isn't it? I think it's the Cuban Electrical Company.
Yes, that's it.
Go on.
Then we entered, we went in. Rapidly, in silence, without making a disturbance.
You...A moment, please. Pardon me for interrupting you. Did you have to use force against anyone?
No.
Did you break or disable...
No.
[continuing] oh, I don't know, any security devices, doors, padlocks?
No, we didn't. By the time we entered the door was already open, and we got onto the boat in silence. Without any problem at all.
How did you reach the dock site?
In a tourist bus.
What kind?
A Quaster.
I see. Now, on the ship itself, how many persons were traveling? You can just give me a round figure.
Somewhere between 70 and 73 persons. I can't say exactly, but if you consider the number of survivors and the number who were lost, it comes to...more or less between 70 and 73. There were a lot of children too.
Were they traveling as part of their families?
All of them.
Ah, families. Now who does that count? Just them or the crewmen also?
The crewmen's families too.
That is to say, it appears that every crewmen brought along...
He traveled with his family.
He travelled with his family. Now, give me the breakdown. For example, of the persons. How many children, women...
There were...
Young people...
About 20 children, maybe just slightly more. Like 22, 23 children.
Yes.
About 15 to 20 women. The rest were men
Now tell me. Could you notice the difference between this starting number...by the time you got to Jaimanitas?
Yes.
In Jaimanitas you could see who remained alive?
Yes. There were 20 men, six children, and five women. Of those, two children and one woman remain in the hospital.
Now see here. All along the route taken, let's say between the Tallapiedra docks you've just mentioned at the exit near Morro castle, did you notice anything abnormal?
No, nothing. The ship had no problems.
Did you have your lights on, or were you traveling in darkness?
We...were travelling inside. I couldn't see one way or the other. But later, from what people say, I gather we were traveling with our lights on.
Your lights on. Ah...try to make this clear because just now you said that you were traveling below deck. And now you say you were inside. How could that be? Explain...how could you...
Yes, because when we boarded the boat we all took refuge inside the engine room.
I see.
So as not to be seen. Then later, when we realized that we were being pursued by another tug they ordered the women and children, some of the older children too, out on deck.
I get it.
They ordered us out on deck.
Now, let's just go back a minute...Pardon me if this is a bit exhausting because, look, I feel for you. But pardon me if I tire you out. But I want to make sure the facts are pinned down here. Let's go back to the final moments of the event. Were your closest relatives with you? I mean, for example...where was your husband Ernesto?
Ernesto...
And your brother Joel?
Ernesto and my brother were in..the engine room. Because not everybody could go outside. Just a few men and the women and children. The older children. But we couldn't...we didn't know how to handle it, so some of us couldn't go outside.
Now, explain to me in as detailed a fashion as you can, how you lost...your little boy, my grandson Juan Mario. How did you lose him? Explain that part.
We were outside, on the deck. I had the boy and was protecting him with my body. Then I said to him: Papi, don't look. Don't look...Don't look, close your little eyes and put your head down, because I was afraid that the water was going to hit him with one of those blows...that were very hard, that hurt a lot.
You see I didn't want him...to suffer, get it? Those pains. The waterjets had already hit me but I had to just put up with it and not cry out so as...not to frighten him. He didn't cry or shout at any time. He remained calm. He put up his little arms and head so that they could see there were children on board...so that they wouldn 't keep shooting jets of water at us. And then...I said to him to lower his head and close his little eyes, so he wouldn't be afraid.
But then when I saw the boat was about to sink, I said to him, Papi, loosen your life-preserver, see? Then I took him and hugged him. But we went down anyway. Then...we came up again, but there were so many waves that we went down again, and as I don't know how to swim, or even float, we kept going down...then we came up again and I saw the boat trying to resist the water, fighting for its life, but then I saw a drowned woman alongside of me and I held on to her.
Then...there were lots of waves generated by the same boats that were creating a whirlpool. A lot of waves. They went over our heads. Then I held onto the woman since it was the only way I could remain more or less afloat. And then when I looked around for my boy I saw that he wasn't fighting any more, he was drowned. But I didn't let go of him, I held onto him because I was afraid (her voice breaks) that...I wanted to pull him out to see if he could be revived, if they could save him, so I grabbed...the woman, I held tight to her. Then I saw a board, and I began to cry out thinking that Ernesto might be there. But I saw that no one was answering me.
Then I got closer to...the board where the children were and...and some women and children holding onto to it. It was like a box. Then...there...I grabbed...I was still holding the child and then I saw...but...I saw that he wasn't alive because he was kind of...stiff...he didn't respond. And then...when [voice begins to break] When I grabbed the board [begins to weep] everyone fell on top of me and they took the boy ought of my hands. [sobs twice].
Then I took hold of the board again. Then everyone fell on top of me, I lost hold, and then I grabbed it again and everyone fell on top of me again. Then I saw...I saw the gunboat...the tugs, and we cried out to...to save us, to help us, and they said no. That if we wanted to save ourselves we'd have to wait for the gunboat.
He says...
And then, when the gunboat came they threw us some ropes attached to lifejackets, phosphorescent ones, orange ones...and that's how we were able to board, to get up to the boats.
Look here, you've told me in one of our many conversations that..Did the boy pray?
The boy did. So did everyone. Me too. We prayed a lot.
And...what did the boy say to you?
The boy just said to me, "Lord God, help us." [crying intensely] "Help us. Save us, Lord, that we suffer no more."
Yes. Now look, dear: when you were rescued, who actually did the rescuing, the Coast Guard launch or the tugs?
The Coat Guard.
And the tugs, what did they do meanwhile?
They went on their way. [calms down]
Did they have any of you on board?
No, they didn't rescue anyone. They went on their own.
Then you received from the...from the Coast Guard launches reasonably good treatment by the crews?
Yes...When we boarded...when I boarded, they gave me a lot of blows on the back to make me spit out the water, because I'd swallowed a lot. And then they covered us with some sheets and gave us water and coffee, and let us go to the bathroom. There...an officer...I think he came from Oriente province...even offered me a cigarette. Actually they didn't treat us badly, truth to tell.
Yes. Now, see here...
At least they rescued us.
Where did they take you after that?
To Jaimanitas.
Jaimanitas. And there could you see...relatives, if there were any, who survived?
From our family, two cousins of mine who traveled on the gunboat. Nothing more. And me.
Do you...know the names of these cousins?
Dariel Prieto Suárez and Iván Prieto Suárez.
A working class hero is something to be.--John Lennon
Let's see now how they treat their working-class heroes...and their officers at State Security.
Mayi--that's how you're frequently called--how is it...why did you decide to leave the country by this route? Are you an anti-social type, were you under some sort of sentence...?
Nothing of the sort. I wasn't guilty of anything. We wanted to go without leaving any debts. I'm not an anti-social type since I've got no police record...never have.
You've never been arrested...
Never.
...by the police. Never been a prisoner, ever?
Never, never.
Ah..
And then we...our purpose was to go, work, to be able to help our family members who remained here. We never had political problems of any sort. Our problem was this. We had to work because here we don't...we don't have any help. We have serious economic problems. I have...my parents are sick and we wanted to help them, send them medicines.
See here, ah...ah...at the time that...you took the decision to leave, were you working?
Yes.
And your husband?
He was also.
Where did you work?
In a grocery dispensary.
A grocery. And how was the...for example, the grocery was doing well, the neighbors were happy with...
Yes...
...with the work you were doing there?
Yes. We...From the moment we went to work there, we made it very nice. We fixed it up, and they even gave us an award for having a "model store". They gave us the "Vanguard" diploma. One quarter they gave Ernesto a diploma for "Best Worker in the Municipality". It was the first quarter of the year.
Now answer me this: Joel was working also?
Yes. He was working in a discotheque in Guanabacoa.
Did Joel have any problems, like, with the police? Were the police after him, was he arrested?
No. Not him. Not him. None of us had any citations for misconduct.
You consider yourselves law-abiding citizens, then?
We had no police records at all.
And you belong to a decent, law-abiding family.
Yes, we do.
Now, this question is fundamental. Do you have any family in the United States?
No.
Then why did you head for there? For the reason you just gave? To look for a...?
Yes. To...to be able to work...Because I know that there we could work and...and we could have money to send to the family. We could help those who remained here. That was our objective, to work.
Now, look. I ask for a little more help--I realize I've imposed a lot on you, but I'm asking for a little more patience because we're about to finish...How many relatives did you lose in this heartbreaking...this heartbreaking event? How many in total?
In total, thirteen.
Ah, among the thirteen, does that count both survivors and those who drowned?
No...thirteen...
Including yourself?
Thirteen were drowned. But also there are. There's my uncle. My Uncle Eduardo.
Wait a moment. Describe to me, with their names and professions, at least the ones you remember. Go ahead.
Well, look...
The ones...the ones that died.
The ones that died. There was my son Juan Mario Gutiérrez García, 10 years old.
What grade in school?
He had just finished sixth grade.
Go ahead.
Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro, my husband, 25 years old, who managed the...Mañana. The Mañana Grocery. Joel García Suárez, my brother, twenty years old, who worked at the discotheque in Guanabacoa, that belongs to the Ministry of Culture.
He had a profession, didn't he?
He was an audio operator. Ah...then there was my uncle, Eduardo Suárez Esquível.
Yes.
He was an engineer.
How old was he, more or less?
More or less thirty years old. Between thirty and forty.
Yes.
Estrella Suárez Esquível, who worked in a laboratory, she was a laboratory technician. She was between 40 and 50 years old. More or less 45. There was also my cousin Eliecer Suárez, who was eleven years old. He'd already completed the seventh grade. Also my cousin Omar Rodríguez Suárez who was between 25 and thirty years. Ah..His wife, whose name was Miralis and the daughter of...Miralis was between 25 and 30 years too. The little girl, who was two years old. Her name was Cindy. Cindy Rodríguez. Also...we lost a half-cousin there too. His name was Lázaro Borges. With his wife Lisette, and their daughter...the daughter was...four years old.
Fidencio Ramel was related to you?
Yes...Yes, he was too. One uncle of mine called Fidencio Ramel Prieto, fifty years old, is the father of Daniel Prieto Suárez and Iván Prieto Suárez, both under arrest. [9]
Then, of all the members of your family, who survived? Tell us about those who did...
There was Dariel Prieto Suárez, 26 years old, and Iván...
What did Dariel do for a living?
He worked as a chauffeur for the police...in...in Villa Marista.
He was a trooper in State Security?
Yes. And...and Iván Prieto Suárez, who was...24 years old, who was a radio operator in the Guiteras district, at a discotheque that just opened. And there was me, María Victoria García Suárez, 28 years old.
Did you lose any close friends?
Yes, we lost a...a friend of ours. Ah...Amado González, whose nickname was "Espiguita". He was fifty years old.
Do you have anything else to add, dear?
No...
Nothing more to add?...
No...The only thing I want to say is that I wish justice would be done. Justice be done because a crime was committed here. Because they could have arrested us and...and taken us into port. If they wanted to take us prisoner, fine. But not...not to drown us, not to kill so many people, so many relatives of ours.
Have they returned the remains of your dead relatives?
No. They say they couldn't have rescued them.
The inspecting officer I interviewed said that attempts to retrieve the remains were fruitless because of the depth of the area...three and a half kilometers. Really I think--and this is a matter of personal consideration--the oceanographic studies that have been done in that part of the northern Havana litoral show that depths like that...do not exist. But look, he told me this: that there was no possibility of bringing up the bodies or the boat either. Well, there's a part there...How is it that Iván managed to save himself. Can you tell me that part? What do you know about it? How did Iván manage to save himself?
Well. My aunt..went to see him. They let her see him. I had told my aunt that Iván had a problem with his foot. I didn't know if it was a bruise or if he had a wound, but I knew he had some sort of problem there. Then she went there, to Villa Marista, and they told her, no, he didn't have any problem at all. But the day of the visit, she could see he had some sort of problem with his foot. The foot was swollen and already had scabs.
Then she said to him, "Iván, what happened to your foot?" He said, "Nothing, Mami, the problem is that I caught it in the steering wheel. When the boat sunk, going down, that's when I managed to disentangle my foot from the wheel. And...that's when I could surface. MMMM....My cousin is...alive. He didn't...he didn't have problems, nothing except the foot and his ears, he has to have an operation on his ears.
That is to say, it's evident, for example, that the depth wasn't really that great, because if...if it were like that, so deep...Iván would have drowned from...ah...the water pressure alone.
Obviously.
...Well, they say that...it isn't possible to rescue either the bodies nor the victims. Well, anything more? I hope we haven't forgotten to ask any really relevant questions. Ah...have you been invited to offer...some sort of information by the authorities concerning the event? Have they called you...
No.
...to help clarify what happened?
No....They questioned me, they took me to Jaimanitas. With videos...and they took photos there too. At Jaimanitas...We were questioned in a...
Did you say then what you are saying here now?
Yes, the same exactly...in a video. And they took photos. Afterwards, they took us to...to Villa Marista, so that a political figure would escort us home. And after I got home they've...summoned me once...to report to Guanabacoa district, to a investigating officer from Villa Marista, but I wasn't feeling very well and I couldn't...they couldn't get much out of me.
Did you go alone?
No, my dad went with me. But they were also questioning him.
Did anyone else go with you?
The president of the local Federation...of Cuban Women and...one or two more. One of them was...I don't really know who they were. I remember that they had weapons on their belt. That's why our neighbors figured they were arresting me.
Precisely. And...well, have you seen the video they ran on television, the video where...
Yes.
....with four people who were supposedly on the boat. First I want to ask you, did you know those people, did you see them there on the boat--these four, I mean?
Well, of those persons, ah...one, yes, I saw, he was...he is the husband of Janette, from Cotorro. The other is Raul, the...the pilot. The other two I don't remember having seen at all.
And...what impression did their statements have on you...? Because they don't coincide with what you say here.
Of course. I think that they...That video was taken in Villa Marista. They weren't dressed as..as prisoners, but in civilian clothes. But...It was taken in Villa Marista, because they were still under arrest. They haven't be released even now.
But I am referring to their confessions. What do you think...? Is it true what they are saying...?
No, it's not the truth, it's not the truth, it's not... It wasn't that way. It wasn't that way. They should know it. I don't know why they spoke that way. If they were under pressure or something, but I know that...it wasn't like that.
I agree with you. I think we're right. Ah...You can't cover the sin with...with your finger. That is to say...the truth is our sun. Ah, I thank you very much, dear, for this time that you've dedicated to this interview which I consider is...will be historic. It will serve for us, the family, to remember, to hold tight in our memory, in a cassette, precisely what happened under those tragic circumstances, where you and I, naturally, and all those in the house, have been touched by a tragic event that I never imagined at the age of 50 could occur to me.
I thank you very much, my daughter, I kiss your soul, your heart, for this effort, because in reality I thought, I said, well, it'll be difficult to interview my own daughter and...to place on the record those things that you know in the house where we've wished to have you sleep to forget these things. Well, then, for history, Jorge García Mas.
There is a deep symbolic meaning to the massacre of the ex-Czar, his family and staff. Just as liberty has its great historic days--the battles of Lexington and Concord, the storming of the Bastille--so does totalitarianism. The manner in which the massacre was prepared and carried out, at first denied and then justified, has something uniquely odious about it, something that radically distinguishes it from the previous acts of regicide and brands it as a prelude to the twentieth century mass murder...--Richard Pipes
There is something particularly odious and discriminatory in this paragraph which appeared in Granma on Saturday, July 23, 1994, which says: "In this long struggle we are compelled to mourn crimes like that of Tarará, where four courageous young Cubans were shot at point blank range by unscrupulous elements." Batista would never have been permitted to invoke the memory of the soldiers he lost at Moncada to then proceed to sink a ship with 23 other children on board. To seek other examples...
We had best prepare to wait for the fifth or sixth declaration of Fidel Castro's government before we get anywhere near to the truth. This declaration of the number of victims is the only thing that has not varied from the beginning. Those of the Cuban press have in fact shifted around considerably.
Crimes of this type are only possible under regimes that consider themselves little less than eternal. The same rule applies to excesses committed by the highest authorities. The democratic game would tie their hands. There has to be some way of understand them. It's as if a feudal island were established here, and there was no way to ask the duke to drop his whip and request his hangman to return to tilling the soil. They are totally out of touch with present realities.
Now, please listen:
Man's Voice: At three fifteen in the morning we pushed out into Havana Bay. Five minutes later we realized that the tugboat Polargo 5 was coming toward us. It started hitting us with extra-strong water-cannons which they carry on board, because those are the kind of ships used to put out the flames of ships on fire. They have 500 milligrams of force...The first thing they did was to hit us, to neutralize us, to cut off all our communication, break all our windows, and pull off all our doors.
Woman:...they told the children to be calm, to lower their heads a bit, that...
Man: When we entered...when we left the mouth of the bay some fifteen of us went up on deck to show the children...to try to get them not to hurt the children.
Man: Most of the men were outside, trying to cover the women and children on deck. We put our backs to them, it was a huge jet, terrible pressure. At seven miles our tugboat was already full of water, tons of water...persons down below in the hold were up to their knees in water. One of the government boats came, got ahead again, and the other one came and rammed us on the side and managed to sink us. And when we sank they want around in circles to increase the force of the whirlpool, so they'd send us all to the bottom.
The same man: I was fleeing with my family, this kid I have here and the other one that died. There was my wife, a boy of 11 years, and an uncle of my wife who lived with us and that was like a father to me.
Woman: How did they drown?
Man: We were together, but as I said just now it was very difficult to survive because there were no life-jackets. They kept circling around us, intensifying the force of the whirlpool to finish off those who were still alive. We survived because...of a freak of nature, a wooden box aboard the 13th of March which held the refrigerator. It turned out to be very resistant, kept floating in spite of everything, and some of us held onto it and urged others to do the same.
Woman: Did you see your wife and son go down for the last time?
Man: No, I couldn't see anything because it was dark. We were all holding onto each other...a large group under the water, many could surface, others couldn't and remained below the surface. It was very difficult because I had this boy here, I had him by the neck, and it was difficult to see anything.
Woman: Did you think that...?
Man: No, I thought that my life had come to an end. What gave me the strength to survive was this boy.
The same man: He helped me because I saw...and struggled to reach the mysterious box that had fallen out of the tug.
Woman: Speak to me of the people that were trapped in the hold. Did they know...that they were going to die?
Man: Look, when a tugboat sinks, the water takes up all the empty spaces in the hold, and I could sense, since I was in the water, some five or ten meters away from the ship when it was sinking, and I could hear the blows against the side and the shouts of the women who wanted to get out and couldn't, who couldn't do anything.
The same man: My family, I couldn't rescue my family...they out of my reach. I was able to find one boy, but I couldn't pull him towards me because he was trapped [under] the persons that...tumbled over you...those that tumbled over you, that took you by the hair, by the shoulders, it was a case of every man for himself. And the gunboat approached and threw us a line with some lifejackets, and then we began to board. The rescue ship turned around and we left the area so that we wouldn't be able to see them pulling the corpses out of the water, and they had us at sea until eleven the next morning, and then they took us to Jaimanitas, where they put us behind bars.
A final review. Granma insists upon speaking of the event. On July 23 it publishes an article entitled "A Bitter Lesson for Irresponsible People", written by Guillermo Cabrera Alvarez. Let us return to the discussion.
The tugboat chosen was built in 1879 (115 years old), was constructed of wood...Designed for a crew of four persons (captain, machinist, sailor and cook), hence it had lifesaving equipment adequate exclusively for those four persons.
Here the attempt was obviously to emphasize the age of the ship, and the fact that it was made of wood, both supposedly rendering it barely servicible. But if it had been a ship which was in fact not serviceable, surely the article in Granma would have explicitly said so. One version monitored by Radio Martí alleged that the 13th of March had just been repaired. It would be interesting to know how many old wooden ships are currently in service in the Cuban fishing and merchant marine fleets. Moreover, a tugboat is by its very design an extremely seaworthy ship, which just because it contemplates a crew of only four persons is likely to capsize just because a hundred people board it. The matter of the crew is a sophism. The crew consists of people who are trained to pilot and service a ship. An oil tanker of the larger type is designed to carry a crew of some 20 persons, but capable of transporting 2,000. Just count any day of the week how many passengers the tiny, even flimsy wood launches serving the route from Havana to Regla normally carry--it will definitely be more than 63. Count the number of lifejackets that these launches normally carry. Was the yacht Granma designed to carry 82 persons? [10]
The most recent inspection, which was completed on May 9, 1994, showed that the boat was equipped solely for use within the port area. In previous inspections leaks had been established. According to the testimony of some of the survivors the water pump was not functional, and when they boarded the ship they noted pools of water within the hold.
Why, at the time of the last inspection, were the leaks not noted? A leak can be small, medium-sized or large. How large was this one? Could it be large enough to lead the boat to capsize over a period of several years? Almost all old ships made of wood leak to some degree, since there is no way of making their joints wholly impermeable. If the weak were large, the boat wouldn't have been able to operate within the port of La Habana over an extended period of time. Moreover, all large ships made of wood tend to have a bit of water in their holds. Was it sufficient in this case to provoke legitimate concern?
What does it take to fill a boat so that it will capsize? Evidently, water--which is exactly what was flowing so abundantly in the case of the 13th of March. To fix ones' attention on the water pump is therefore the height of hypocrisy.
...the flotation level was submerged between seven and eight centimeters...
One would have to consult an expert to find out if seven or eight centimeters above the flotation line represents a danger for a boat of this type. And in fact, the captain was an expert of this time. According to Granma, he said "there are no problems, everything is in order."
Up to this point the article uses up a quarter of its space to suggest that it was the fugitives' fault for having hijacked a boat which was technically deficient. Besides not succeeding, it suggests as well that any trip carries a certain risk, even a drive in an automobile. To be sure, in an episode of this type, people are willing to incur somewhat more risk than when they are traveling as tourists. But the fundamental question which one would put to an expert would be: What probability exists that the tugboat 13th of March, with these supposed technical problems, would be capable of completing the journey between Habana and Key West under the meteorological conditions prevailing on that specific day? Was it madness to attempt it, or were the travelers running nothing more than an acceptable level of risk?
When we had reached the La Francesa docks [recalls the captain Muñoz García], the tug approached me from the port side. I backed up, turned to it, I hit it on the stern side, but it got out of the way. It did not wait for the blow, as if it were trying to protect us. In this way I was able to clear the route to the high seas.
It is difficult to believe that people who are traveling on a wooden boat, would taken on pursuers traveling in a ship which was both larger and made of steel. In any event, it appears that they were proceeding cautiously in an attempt to reach the main ocean roads, which were various miles off the coast.
Frank González, another of the survivors, testifies that "they threw us lifejackets; that's how we were saved. I don't believe we would ever have arrived at the destination we set out to reach."
Who are "they"? In the testimonies of two survivors monitored by Radio Martí, it was said that when the Coast Guard cutters arrived they began rescue operations, but the crews of the other tugboats, who witnessed the sinking, not only made no attempt to rescue anybody, but cynically tossed lifejackets well outside the range of those who were drowning. In no place does the article in Granma say that the tugboats began the rescue operation or even participated on it. How many lives were lost by the inhumane attitude of the crewmen? Is there no law on the books which makes such conduct illegal?
Around 3:30 a.m. they began maneuvers to clear the way for the ship to sink...which occurred in a matter of minutes. It was 4:50 a.m. when...the Coast Guard units reached the locale and immediately began rescue operations.
Please note the chronology here. They do not say that "they immediately reached the locale" but rather that "they arrived at the local and immediately..." How long did they delay in arriving? For anyone even superficially familiar with the Cuban security system, it is obvious that the Coast Guard units could have arrived in a matter of minutes. According to official sources, the operation lasted an hour and twenty minutes, many times the amount necessary for a prompt and effective intervention.
A group of workers from the Enterprise acted in direct defense of their interests. They advised the Coast Guard of the hijacking and themselves took the initiative to detain the fugitives.
This makes one think that they approached the matter from the same perspective as the "Rapid Response Battalions". Not the authorities, then, but the people itself responded to a provocation. The kindhearted authorities intervened only to save the irresponsible!
With regard to the declarations of survivors which support the official version, we should fully consider just what is involved in a ten-day detention in solitary at the Villa Marista penitentiary. (Be it noted here that the Cuban judicial system does not permit defense lawyers to be present in the early stages of a case). Concretely, we are talking about exposure to the best experts imaginable in extracting confessions, from persons subjected to an emotional shock of almost unimaginable magnitude. What is remarkable in all of this is that the government was only able to produce isolated statements favorable to its version from four survivors, of the twenty that were detained there. None of them, by the way, came from women.
In any civilized country, in a tragedy of this sort, the names of the disappeared, of those whose bodies were recovered, and those who survived, are published in due course. In this case it did not happen. Nor was the public advised as to how many were arrested, much less who they were.
It would appear that the authorities made only one mistake, though a crucial one. They should have detained the women survivors and held them incommunicado, since some of them immediately told their stories to foreign journalists, versions which run totally counter to the official story. Having failed to prevent the leak, the Cuban government has chosen to ignore it.
The supposed unofficial version that appeared in Granma does nothing more than repeat the aforementioned official version of the Ministry of Interior--nothing different and all--only that it provides a more detailed version and superficially enriches it with statements of three survivors, all of the prisoners, and this only after three days of questioning.
The official version is:
(1) The sinking of the 13th of March was accidental, due to the deplorable physical condition of the boat itself, and an accidental collision with another on a dark night and on choppy waters.
(2) The Coast Guard units restricted themselves to saving the shipwrecked.
The declarations of some survivors say that:
(1) The sinking was not an accident but purposely accomplished as a result of repeated collisions initiated by other tugboats.
(2) None of the crews of the attacking boats rescued anybody, but rather to the contrary, cruelly mocked the victims.
(3) The crews of the attacking boats were perfectly well aware of the fact that the 13th of March carried women and children aboard.
Evidently it is impossible under present circumstances to carry out an air-tight, wholly objective investigation. Nonetheless, an analysis of the statements of two women survivors broadcast by Radio Martí, and the unofficial version, justify the following speculation:
The authorities might have known of the plan to flee the island ahead of time, either through a denunciation by someone privy to the plot, or a casual indiscretion. They chose to allow the hijackers to proceed with a view to making them the object of warning. In this thesis, the Cuban government was tired of the humiliation of having to constantly patrol for people leaving for Key West on rafts, tugboats, and other ships. The spectacle was damaging to the regime for two reasons: (a) it demonstrated its weakness, e.g., its inability to restrain those who wished to flee; (b) it revealed the growing desperation in Cuba, which impelled people to take to the sea under extremely dangerous circumstances.
Observers of the mechanisms of power in Cuba know that an order of that type can be given only by people at the highest level.
It would explain as well the testimony of two survivors who say that the pursuing tugs were already waiting for them in the bay. To add credibility to their statement, there were three tugboats (of all the many non-military vessels) known to have participated in preventing the flight, or rather, precisely the very type of ship capable of matching the power of the 13th of March. Now, what probability exists that precisely three tugboats participated in this event in the early hours of the morning, if they were not previously alerted?
Moreover, three tugboats, both larger and more powerful than the 13th of March, operating in the placid waters of the inner port, are surely sufficient to prevent the 13th of March from heading out to sea. But that was not the order.
The plan, rather, was to have the attack take place on the high seas. How far out? Seven to ten miles from the coast would be ideal. Closer in would produce witnesses; farther out would put the affair outside Cuban territorial waters. That locale was purposely selected ahead of time as part of the plan of operations.
The Coast Guard, of course advised ahead of time, maintained a prudent distance so that the "action of the people" could be completed before they intervened to carry out rescue operations. No one familiar with the Cuban system could believe that a boat might happen upon a hijacking of this type, without immediately informing the authorities, and that (above all given that the incident was occurring in the country's principal port), the Coast Guard would not have been on the scene in a matter of minutes. Indeed, one could have anticipated that, all things being equal, even planes and helicopters would have been dispatched to the site. One might add that it is a well known fact that the Cuban military jealously guard their professional prerogatives, and are not typically inclined to delegate their tasks to unauthorized civilians.
This thesis is further buttressed by official declarations which tend to emphasize that thanks to the action of civilian boats that the hijacking was prevented. They had nothing to do with it. They only intervened in the final phase, to provide rescue and relief.
A matter of interest, the article claims that "the investigations of this unfortunate incident do not indicate any malicious intent." "Indicate" is a very moderate usage. Note, please that they do not say "demonstrate", "prove", "irrefutably", or anything of the sort. Could that word be placed there as a kind of safety valve, providing the regime with cover in the event that new evidence comes to light? It wouldn't be the first time that those on top, to save themselves, sacrificed those at the bottom.
Back to the head of this document
On July 13, the tugboat 13th of March sunk seven miles north of the Port of La Havana, causing the loss of forty lives (half of them children), with 30 survivors. The boat had been hijacked b a group with the intention of quitting Cuba illegally. The authorities affirm that the cause was an accidental collusion with another tugboat which was in hot pursuit, but some survivors have insisted that the boat was intentionally sunk, and besides, that many died from a wilful refusal to provide emergency rescue services.
On July 26 the authorities announced that another group seized a launch that was transporting passengers from one side of Havana Bay to the other. In this instance no attempt was made to prevent the hijacking. Instead, the boat was escorted on its way. Thirty-two miles off the Cuban coast, a U. S. Coast Guard ship, having been previously advised by the Cuban authorities, gathered up 15 of the 30 passengers, all of whom requested asylum in the United States.
On August 3, another launch was sequestered, very much in the same way, and with the same result. Shortly afterwards another lunch was hijacked but ran out of fuel some 12 miles off the coast. It was rescued and pulled back to the Port of Havana by a tugboat.
Noting the sudden burst of tolerance on the part of the Cuban authorities, on August 4 hundreds of people wanting to leave the island began to peacefully congregate along the Malecón (Seawall), hoping either to seize one of the launches or awaiting a new, officially approved outmigration of the type which had occurred at Mariel fourteen years before. [11] By nightfall the area was thick with people, many of them choosing to sleep right there in anticipation of developments.
During the late hours of the night of Thursday the 4th and the early morning hours of Friday the 5th a rumor began to circulate rapidly from one end of Havana to the other, namely, that a new Mariel was about to take place, this time along the Malecón. The rumor acquired added credibility thanks to the surprisingly tolerant attitude of the authorities towards the large numbers of people gathered at the site. Many Cubans were found there carrying anything they thought would float, so that in the event of an announcement, they would be among the first to board the American ships that would expectedly appear. One militant of the Communist party spoke of having seen two groups of young people (around 50 people in all) at 8 in the morning on Friday the 5th, at la Víbora (15 miles south of the Malecón), with bundles and backpacks, marching towards the coast to see if "something was happening" and if they could leave the country.
At the end of the morning the concentration of persons along the Malecón, from the Alameda de Paula all the way to the Hotel Rivera seems to have reached a critical pass. The situation was utterly unprecedented: here, in the full light of day, were various thousands of persons, openly disaffected with the Cuban regime, prepared to publicly expose themselves as much for hours at a time, and in the very heart of Havana no less!
After noon, as hunger, eat, sun and uncertainty took their toll, disturbances began to break out. The most daring were yelling anti-government slogans, and addressing themselves to crowd made to order for a full-scale uprising.
The combination of frustration and agitation produced its expected result--a revolt. Thousands of demonstrators, in their vast majority drawn from young people of the humblest social sectors, but not themselves necessarily anti-social (however much some of the latter may have participated or taken advantage of the situation), ran through the streets bordering the Malecón demarcated by Galiano on the east, Belascoaín on the west, and Reina to the south, an area of slightly more than one kilometer square (see map). As they moved along they picked up additional supporters. One witness has stated that as he moved along San Lázaro Street, he saw small demonstrations on each one of the side streets.
These events reached their climax between three and four in the afternoon on Friday the 5th. Many thousands of demonstrators without leaders and with no fixed purpose, were running through the principal streets of downtown Havana, breaking windows with sticks and rocks, and shouting the same slogans against the revolution: Down with Fidel Castro! Down with socialism! Liberty! Enough already!
But not only shop-windows were broken; they also attacked the hard-currency stories: "La Filosofía", the well-established "Miami", and "Hotel Deaville". Some establishments were sacked and pillaged. For several hours the demonstrators were in complete control of large parts of the zone, in full view of the rest of the population, who did nothing to stop them. The famous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution were nowhere to be seen.
Evidently, the demonstrators enjoyed considerable popular sympathy, since many people shouted and threw objects against the police and the mob from their roofs or balconies. One witness claims to have seen one such attack on more than one hundred policemen, marching in formation, at 4:45 in the afternoon on Reina Street.
A sympathizer with the Revolution, a responsible person who holds an important administrative job in the area where the incident occurred, probably repeating the version confected by authorities of the Party, said that 20,000 persons participated in these demonstrations (the authorities actually calculated, though they did not make public, the figure of 50,000 dissidents). The same witness added that the whole affair was the product of professional political agitators, who paid anti-social elements to start the protest. All the participants, he said, were lumpen elements very common to the area.
It is perhaps worth mentioning here that the conditions of life in this area, and also in many others in La Habana, are rendered wretched by excessive crowding (the municipalities of Old Havana and Downtown Havana each have a population density that exceeds that of some of the world's most heavily-populated cities), by the high level of unemployment, and by lack of water, light and gas. That stratum of the population made up of people between the ages of 15 to 40 are almost always on the street, congregating in groups.
The authorities finally responded...with some delay. At that very moment heads were falling in high places, punishments being doled out to those who had failed to lock the barn door before the horse got out. Heavily armed anti-riot troops arrived, making their first public appearance, fitted out in special uniforms, and riding in jeeps crowned with machine-guns mounted on tripods. The police were also present in force. Helicopters circled overhead, and the ground became thick with special security agents disguised as laborers.
The regime proposed to snuff out the disturbances by surrounding the area boarded by Malecón, Belascoaín, Galiano and Reina streets, securing the perimeter, and then working inward to extinguish all resistance. The highest priority was given to defense of Hotel Deaville, where tourists were lodged. One observer reported having seen the following in Galiano Street: the government troops advanced in formation, meeting the demonstrators head-on. In the first row were "civilians of the Blas Roca contingents"; after them, the National Revolutionary Police; and finally, th