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Sunday, July 26, 2020

Setting the record straight on the aftermath of the July 26th Moncada Barracks attack

The men of the July 26th betrayed by Castro
Bodies of insurgents who attacked the Moncada military barracks on July 26, 1953
Today In History | July 26, 1953 | #Cuba Fidel Castro sacrificed young lives to turn himself into a national figure in the attack on the Moncada Barracks
Bodies of insurgents who attacked the Moncada military barracks on July 26, 1953
Six years later Fidel Castro replaced dictator Batista with himself and his brother who have ruled Cuba for 61 years and counting. During  the Castro dictatorship, compatriots that had taken part in the Moncada Assault and became disillusioned with the new dictatorship were sentenced to prison.
One of Castro's longest serving political prisoners was Mario Chanes de Armas, a labor organizer, who had assaulted the Moncada barracks and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was amnestied together with Fidel Castro in 1955. Upon his death on February 26, 2007 Sergio Bustos, writing in The Miami Herald gave the following summary of Mario's life:
"Considered one of the founders of the Revolution, Chanes de Armas survived the Moncada attack, trained in Mexico, came over on the yacht Gramma and lived to greet Castro in Havana on Jan. 9, 1959, when the conquering heroes arrived on top of a U.S. Sherman tank.

Instead of joining the revolutionary government, Chanes de Armas chose to his work in a brewery. Two years later, after watching Castro betray their movement, he spoke out against communists and was tried as a counterrevolutionary.'

On July 17, 1961, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, longer than any other Cuban political prisoner. It included six years in solitary confinement.

'I watched men get shot, point blank, beaten with bayonets, arbitrarily pulled out and punished. But we were alone. The world didn't know,' he told the Miami Herald in a 1999 interview.
Thirty years to the date of his imprisonment, he was released and reunited with his four sisters in Miami."
Mario Chanes de Armas completed a 30 year sentence under Castro dictatorship.
Jaime  Costa  Chávez, an anti-communist, who participated in the Moncada Assault, but refused to recant when he revealed that high ranking communists had been paid by Batista to conspire against the July 26th Movement when they were in Mexico. He became disillusioned with the revolution as it turned openly to communism. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but was released and sent into exile after six years due to what Cuban doctors thought was a large brain tumor, but turned out to be a large cerebral clot.
 Jaime  Costa  Chávez
 Gustavo Arcos Bergnes attended the University of Havana and studied diplomatic law. However, his studies were abruptly interrupted by Fulgencio Batista's coup on March 10, 1952. This is where he met Fidel Castro and later joined him on the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada military barracks. Gustavo was shot in the back, touching his spine and damaging the sciatic nerve, and left partly paralyzed by the wound suffered in the assault. [ Anita Snow reported in the Associated Press on Wednesday, May. 18, 2005 that "His sciatic nerve was damaged and has deteriorated over the years, making walking difficult, especially up the one flight of stairs from the street."]

Gustavo Arcos wounded in the Moncada Barracks attack on July 26, 1953
Gustavo was sentenced to ten years in prison but was pardoned and released 22 months later in 1955 and went with the rest of the group to organize a rebel army in Mexico. He traveled through Latin America and the United States gathering money and munitions. His brother Luis Arcos Bergnes was killed when the Granma expedition landed in Cuba in 1956 and were met by Batista's forces.

Gustavo Arcos was appointed Cuba's ambassador to Belgium following Castro's arrival to power in 1959. Wounded in the Moncada assault with a martyred brother, he could have easily remained a privileged member of the revolutionary elite, but that was not why he had taken up arms against Fulgencio Batista. He had fought for an end to dictatorship and the restoration of a democratic Cuba. When he returned to Cuba in 1964 he saw not only that the government had turned communist but that Fidel Castro was another dictator.  At the time Raul Castro personally offered Gustavo a position in the regime leadership. Gustavo rejected the offer. He was already disenchanted and preferred to remain in the diplomatic corps, away from Havana.Gustavo expressed his dissent privately.

"They shot a lot of people," Mr. Arcos told the Associated Press in 2005 during the summary trials held after the revolutionaries took power. "They shot people who could have easily been imprisoned." 

 On March 15, 1966 he was detained and in 1967 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. for alleged counterrevolutionary activity. He served three years in prison before being released after a long hunger strike in 1969, but was not allowed to leave the country. 
Joining the Cuban Committee for Human Rights
In 1982 at the Combinado de Este prison he and his younger brother, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, formed in 1976. The brothers had been imprisoned in 1981 for trying to leave the country illegally. Soon thereafter, the Committee began to send out proclamations denouncing the deplorable conditions in which political prisoners were kept. By 1986, due to international pressure, the Cuban government was forced to allow a few concessions such as visits by several international human rights organizations and the release of several prisoners, who then extended the work of the Committee to the streets of Havana. Shortly after his release from prison in 1988, Gustavo Arcos succeeded the committee’s executive director, Dr. Ricardo Bofill, who was forced into exile. 

In 1990, against the protests of many Cuban exiles, Gustavo Arcos issued a statement to Castro asking him to convene a "National Dialogue," which would include all segments of Cuban society, on the island and in exile. During his address to the Worker's Congress on January 28, 1990, Castro issued his response noting that "the Cuban people" will take care of those activists.

On March 5, 1990 government sponsored mobs attacked Sebastian Arcos's home. On March 8 another mob, led by future Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, attacked Gustavo's home. From exile, many old friends asked Gustavo to dissolve the Committee to save the activists' lives. Gustavo replied: "The Cuban Committee for Human Rights will continue its work, even if it costs us our own lives...no terror, nor propaganda will be able to deter the development of humanistic ideas in our country."

On January 13, 1992 the executive board of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights again issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to nonviolence and calling for dialogue:   "Violence is not and cannot be the solution to our problems... We will not tire from insisting that the only possible solution is civilized discussion of our differences. This is an appeal to Cubans for wisdom and common sense... No act of violence is justified... Let us say no to violence and learn to live in peace."

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes and Jesús Yanes Pelletier were arrested at their homes in Havana on the evening of 15 January 1992. Both Gustavo and Yanes Pelletier were released after approximately 24 hours. However, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was charged with "enemy propaganda" and "inciting rebellion," he was sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. He was transferred to Ariza Prison in  Cienfuegos Province,  more than 130 miles from Havana, where Sebastian was imprisoned alongside dangerous criminals and was systematically denied medical attention. In 1993 the regime offered him a deal: Sebastian would be released immediately if he only agreed to leave the island for good. Sebastian rejected the deal, becoming the first documented case of a political prisoner choosing prison in Cuba over freedom in exile.
Brother Sebastian killed by medical neglect while arbitrarily imprisoned
After an international campaign that included his designation as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and a request by France Libertés, the organization founded by former French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, Sebastian Arcos was released in 1995. A few weeks after his release, Arcos was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in the rectum, for which he had previously been denied medical care in prison. After a Cuban doctor was fired from his post for treating Arcos, he traveled to Miami for further care.

In 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes testified before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Sebastian Arcos Bergnes died in Miami surrounded by relatives on December 22, 1997.

Due to his worsening health in his last years he lowered his profile and ceded much of the work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Nevertheless, he met with US Senators visiting Cuba in 2000, with former President Carter in 2002 and signed a letter in 2003 denouncing the unjust imprisonment of 75 Cuban dissidents imprisoned in the Black Cuban Spring.

Gustavo Arcos in later years.
In the 2005, Associated Press article, Anita Snow reported that he stayed in touch with other dissidents and spoke "frequently with Oswaldo Paya, a devout fellow Roman Catholic who led a signature-gathering effort called the Varela Project, which sought a referendum asking voters if they favored civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to business ownership." The article concluded with Gustavo's concern that he would not live to see the return of democracy saying : "I do hope I will see the end of this, but I'm not sure if I will.
He passed away a year later on August 8, 2006. 

They put their lives on the line for restoring democracy, but were betrayed by Fidel and Raul Castro. The Castros replaced an authoritarian dictatorship that had harmed Cuba for seven years, with a totalitarian one that has done far more damage and killed many more Cubans.

Thankfully, the forces of a democratic Cuba continue to resist the Castro tyranny.


Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Cubans and Cuban Americans hold vigil for July's martyrs at the Embassy of Cuba in Washington DC

 For truth and justice.

July 13, 2020 at the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, DC.
On July 13th at 12 noon we were in front of the Cuban embassy in a silent protest for 13 minutes for the 37 victims of the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre and said a prayer for these victims of communism, their loved ones, and for justice. We maintained social distance, and all participants wore masks through out the event. Activists inside the island held their own actions in remembrance of these victims.

 
Over the past 26 years Cubans have mourned the 37 men, women, and children who were extrajudicially executed by agents of the Cuban government on July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat was attacked and sunk.

Tragically, Chinese are mourning Chinese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and human rights defender Liu Xiaobo who died three years ago on July 13, 2017 at the First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China after being unjustly imprisoned from December 8, 2008 until his untimely death. It is likely that he died of a cancer made terminal by politically motivated neglect. July 13th will mark three years since his passing. 


July 13, 2020 at the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, DC.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader of the same movement, Harold Cepero Escalante were both extrajudicially executed eight years ago on July 22, 2012 in a crash engineered by the Cuban dictatorship's agents.

July 13, 2020 at the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, DC.
 The demand for justice remains unfulfilled in all these cases, but we must not despair.

We continue to bear witness embracing truth and memory in defiance of the attempt to whitewash and forget. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explained the importance of doing this in his 1986 Nobel Lecture on why it is important to remember: 


"To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death." ... "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
There was media coverage in both Spanish and English and videos of the event. Please share them with others. 


July 13, 2020 at the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, DC.
We will continue to remember and demand truth and justice.  There names will not be forgotten.


July 13, 2017
Liu Xiaobo, Age: 61

July 22, 2012
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Age: 60
Harold Cepero Escalante, Age: 32

July 13, 1994
Hellen Martínez Enriquez. Age: 5 Months
Xicdy Rodríguez Fernández. Age: 2
Angel René Abreu Ruíz. Age: 3
José Carlos Niclas Anaya. Age: 3
Giselle Borges Alvarez. Age: 4
Caridad Leyva Tacoronte. Age: 5
Juan Mario Gutiérrez García. Age: 10
Yousell Eugenio Pérez Tacoronte. Age: 11
Yasser Perodín Almanza. Age: 11
Eliécer Suárez Plasencia. Age: 12
Mayulis Méndez Tacoronte. Age: 17
Miladys Sanabria Leal. Age: 19
Joel García Suárez. Age: 20
Odalys Muñoz García. Age: 21
Yalta Mila Anaya Carrasco. Age: 22
Luliana Enríquez Carrazana. Age: 22
Jorge Gregorio Balmaseda Castillo. Age: 24
Lissett María Alvarez Guerra. Age: 24
Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro. Age: 25
María Miralis Fernández Rodríguez. Age: 27
Leonardo Notario Góngora. Age: 28
Jorge Arquímedes Levrígido Flores. Age: 28
Pilar Almanza Romero. Age: 31
Rigoberto Feu González. Age: 31
Omar Rodríguez Suárez. Age: 33
Lázaro Enrique Borges Briel. Age: 34
Julia Caridad Ruíz Blanco. Age: 35
Martha Caridad Tacoronte Vega. Age: 35
Eduardo Suárez Esquivel. Age: 38
Martha Mirella Carrasco Sanabria. Age: 45
Augusto Guillermo Guerra Martínez. Age: 45
Rosa María Alcalde Puig. Age: 47
Estrella Suárez Esquivel. Age: 48
Reynaldo Joaquín Marrero Alamo. Age: 48
Amado González Raices. Age: 50
Fidencio Ramel Prieto Hernández. Age: 51
Manuel Cayol. Age: 56 

Monday, July 6, 2020

13 minute silent vigil to protest 26 years of justice denied for 37 Cuban victims of the "13 de Marzo" massacre

To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie WieselNight


Over the past 26 years Cubans have mourned the 37 men, women, and children who were extrajudicially executed by agents of the Cuban government on July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat was attacked and sunk.

Tragically, Chinese are mourning Chinese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and human rights defender Liu Xiaobo who died three years ago on July 13, 2017 at the First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China after being unjustly imprisoned from December 8, 2008 until his untimely death. It is likely that he died of a cancer made terminal by politically motivated neglect. July 13th will mark three years since his passing. After eight years in "unofficial detention" his widow Liu Xia was finally allowed to leave China on July 10, 2018.

Liu Xiaobo  was one of the authors of Charter 08 and signed it along with more than three hundred Chinese citizens. The Charter is a manifesto that was released on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It calls for more freedom of expression, human rights, more democratic elections, the privatization of state enterprises and economic liberalization and would collect over 10,000 signatures.



Charter 08 is reminiscent of the Varela Project that was initially signed by 11,020 Cubans in May of 2002 calling on the Cuban government to respect international human rights norms and engage in the same kind of reforms. Both were inspired by Vaclav Havel and Charter 77. 

Lamentably one of the authors of the Varela Project, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader of the same movement, Harold Cepero Escalante were both extrajudicially executed eight years ago on July 22, 2012 in a crash engineered by the Cuban dictatorship's agents.

The demand for justice remains unfulfilled in all these cases, but we must not despair.

We must bear witness embracing truth and memory in defiance of the attempt to whitewash and forget. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explained the importance of doing this in his 1986 Nobel Lecture on why it is important to remember:  

"To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death." ... "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." 
On July 13th at 12 noon we will be in front of the Cuban embassy in a silent protest for 13 minutes for the 37 victims of the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre and will send this brief essay to the Liu Xiaobo website, light a candle and say a prayer for these victims of communism, their loved ones, and for justice. We will maintain social distance, and ask all participants to bring a mask and cover their mouth and nose through the event.

We will continue to remember.

July 13, 2017
Liu Xiaobo, Age: 61

July 22, 2012
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Age: 60
Harold Cepero Escalante, Age: 32

July 13, 1994
Hellen Martínez Enriquez. Age: 5 Months
Xicdy Rodríguez Fernández. Age: 2
Angel René Abreu Ruíz. Age: 3
José Carlos Niclas Anaya. Age: 3
Giselle Borges Alvarez. Age: 4
Caridad Leyva Tacoronte. Age: 5
Juan Mario Gutiérrez García. Age: 10
Yousell Eugenio Pérez Tacoronte. Age: 11
Yasser Perodín Almanza. Age: 11
Eliécer Suárez Plasencia. Age: 12
Mayulis Méndez Tacoronte. Age: 17
Miladys Sanabria Leal. Age: 19
Joel García Suárez. Age: 20
Odalys Muñoz García. Age: 21
Yalta Mila Anaya Carrasco. Age: 22
Luliana Enríquez Carrazana. Age: 22
Jorge Gregorio Balmaseda Castillo. Age: 24
Lissett María Alvarez Guerra. Age: 24
Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro. Age: 25
María Miralis Fernández Rodríguez. Age: 27
Leonardo Notario Góngora. Age: 28
Jorge Arquímedes Levrígido Flores. Age: 28
Pilar Almanza Romero. Age: 31
Rigoberto Feu González. Age: 31
Omar Rodríguez Suárez. Age: 33
Lázaro Enrique Borges Briel. Age: 34
Julia Caridad Ruíz Blanco. Age: 35
Martha Caridad Tacoronte Vega. Age: 35
Eduardo Suárez Esquivel. Age: 38
Martha Mirella Carrasco Sanabria. Age: 45
Augusto Guillermo Guerra Martínez. Age: 45
Rosa María Alcalde Puig. Age: 47
Estrella Suárez Esquivel. Age: 48
Reynaldo Joaquín Marrero Alamo. Age: 48
Amado González Raices. Age: 50
Fidencio Ramel Prieto Hernández. Age: 51
Manuel Cayol. Age: 56