THE HOPE OF FREEDOM IN COMMUNIST CUBA

THE HOPE OF FREEDOM IN COMMUNIST CUBA

JUSTICE IS TRUTH IN ACTION - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - FRI. JULY 17,2020

Excerpts from Armando Valladares' book, "Against All Hope" Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1987

  "The cruelty of the guards in Cuban Communist Cuba is unimaginable and satanic. Saint Padre Pio said there are more devils roaming the world today than at any time in world history. Think of the Chinese Communist party and their cruel persecution of Christian and Moslem believers.

    
Cuba is only 90 miles off the coast of America. In the name of Julio Tan, Diosdada Aquit, and Robert Lopez, let us decide which of the two candidates running for the United States Presidents will bring freedom to the Cuban people. 

Chapter 34 - Concentration Camps and Murders - p. 221 - 224

     "The Ministry of the Interior's predictions, that we couldn't stand up to a whole year of that work without begging on our knees to enter Political Rehabilitation were never fulfilled. We had actually earned the gold medal Captain Morejoin had promised us, and not just one prisoner, as he had said, but rather thousands and thousands of us. 

   
 Their failure made them unleash an even more desperate wave of violence. But in step with the insane fury of the soldiers, as deep consciousness as growing inside of us, and inflexible determination to resist, not to give in.... They couldn't make us give up or give in. It was not a dark, fanatical resistance, but light and premeditated. a product of our very beings, of faith and love of God and of freedom...

    
On January 9, 1966  the leaders of the gangs met Tarrau at Prison Hq. The meeting lasted only a few minutes. They discussed the reasons the counterrevolutionary prisoners gave for not going into the Rehabilitation Program and formulated a plan to force us to enter. The method they decided on was an operation  of real terror. The heads of the gangs received bloody orders: they were given free rein to kill prisoners in each gang...

   
Three examples will show the extent of the violence and cruelty the guards could engage in with impunity. The head of one of squads, a man named Arcia, wanted to humiliate JULIO TAN, so he ordered him to pull weeds with his hands. Tan refused. The squad leader, bayonet in hand attacked and wounded him. JULIO trying to escape the blows of the bayonet fell to the ground. Behind him another of the guards hit him with a hoe. That was the moment Arcia was waiting for. He plunged the bayonet into JULIO TAN;s thigh and moved it around in a circle to enlarge the wound. JULIO bled to death within minutes.

   
 DIODADA AQUIT had picked up his plate and was standing in front of the truck as he did every afternoon... There was a strong gusty wind blowing. AQUIT's hat flew off his head and fell a few yards away. He asked the squad leader for permission to get out of line and pick up his hat, and the soldier told him to wait a minute, he was going to do the count, but when the count was over. AQUIT could get his hat. The squad leader began the headcount, came to the end, turned around, and signaled the prisoner to pick up his hat... but he never straightened up again. From the back of the line, one of the escorts had emptied his AK rifle's magazine into AQUIT's back. "That'll teach you not to get out of line without permission!" he said, gesturing at him with the still-smoking barrel.

ROBERT LOPEZ and I had been together since 1961. He was an idealistic young man, freckled, very pleasant, very pleasant. He declared that he was on a hunger strike ... wouldn't work anymore, wouldn't take the beatings and the harassment anymore..When the guards agreed to take him back to the Circular, everyone thought he was going to the hospital. But the convoy went on to the punishment cells, and they threw ROBERTO inside. They cut of his water to make his agony even more painful. 

   
 Captain Morejion went to his cell and asked him what he wanted. And ROBERTO told home the only thing he wanted was some flowers put on his grave when he died... ROBERTO spent weeks on the hunger strike. His thirst made his ordeal even worse, and hastened its outcome. As he was dying, he kept crying for water. The men in the adjoining cells called the guards ... bring him water...but instead, the guards took out the prisoner who was yelling and gave him a beating with thick braided electrical cord. All morning you can hear ROBERTO calling out for water.

     Finally two or three of the guards opened the gate to the punishment-cell complex. They went all the way to the back, where ROBERTO was lying on the floor. They stopped only when their boots were almost touching the prisoner's cadaverous face. "You want water?" one of the guards said. "Well, drink piss!" And he pulled out his member and urinated on ROBERTO's face, in his eyes, in his gasping mouth. The next day ROBERTO was dead." ... George H. Kubeck