Miriam Celaya, Translator: Norma Whiting
With such discipline as my training provides, I am carefully reading,
for the second time, an article published on page 3 of Granma (May 4th,
2011), in a section created to reminisce about the revolutionary
liturgical and dated events of the moment, which they named Remember
Girón. The referenced article, entitled "I was the youngest combatant at
Bay of Pigs", is signed by someone named Ramón Jerez Carmenate,
recounting in the first person his own experiences from participating in
that battle 50 years ago.
In case any readers are now wondering what kind of morbid masochist wish
has me reading a Granma article more than once, let me assure you that I
would not have conceived such journalistic cynicism otherwise. Let me
suggest to you to share my impressions from a brief account of what
Jerez Carmenate states. This gentleman says: "I turned barely 13 August
20th, 1960 and joined the militia with my brother Luis, who was born in
'46″, which means he was a mere boy then, as was his brother, just 14.
Anyone in their right mind would question, for starters, what kind of
parents would allow their underage children to become part of an entity
destined for war; so the author justifies it his way: "My old man tried
to persuade us and talked to us about joining the Youth Patrols and
Rebel Youth, but we always wanted to do what we had not been able to
accomplish during the war: to fight the enemy face to face".
Another question would be what kind of institution or government would
authorize the recruitment of children into armed militias, and here
again the author explained: "Thus, in Jaimanitas, where he lived, they
finally allowed me to become militia, though I, at least, was put
through huge obstacles because of my age, and I can't even remember how
it was that they let me in". It is a pity that Ramón Jerez's memory
failed at this point, though he must be only around 63 today, and –
curiously — does remember that "The FAL rifle they assigned to me was
almost bigger than I was, but I managed to get along with it". On the
other hand, Jerez recognizes that "… this was the age of playing, and
pencils, and notebooks, and I was already acquainted with guns, and
bullets, and machine guns". Granma sketches his testimony this way, as
the adventures of a cute militant boy.
But that child's participation in the militia was not merely symbolic,
judging by his own words. The writer recalls that in the midst of the
events at the Bay of Pigs, "on the morning of April 17, my unit, J, was
sent into the combat zone, which we didn't even know where it was
located…" and later he summarizes his personal experiences those war
days in other passages. I quote, because they are self-explanatory:
"… The four mouth kids gave the mercenary aircraft hell, and those that
we didn't down, we prevented from completing their mission of massacring
the population and attacking our troops."
"On April 18th, at the entrance to Playa Larga, I really found out what
it was to fight against airplanes, because we found ourselves facing two
enemy B-26. In the afternoon, we continued the charge, and if it wasn't
because a portion of our location was changed, we would have suffered
several casualties, because a rocket fell where we had just been".
"Then we continued the advance towards Playa Girón, and on the morning
of the 19th they greeted us with a shower of mortars, cannons and
machine-gun-50 bursts".
On seeing the fall of other members of the militia, Ramón Jerez states
that, "Those scenes of seeing dead and wounded comrades, instead of
filling you with fear, they make you fight against the enemy with more
hatred and anger". The author himself confesses that he was unaware of
being the youngest fighter at the Bay of Pigs, until writer José Mayo —
author of a book entitled "Hero Children of Bay of Pigs" — confirmed it.
In short, in 1961, not in Batista's Cuba, but already in the
revolutionary era of social justice, the socialist character of the
process just recently declared by group acclamation, and in clear
violation of any civilized human principle, the Cuban government allowed
sending children to war.
However, I may not been paying much attention to a Granma chronicle,
which was, by the way, certainly splashed with bravado, but because I
remembered that the same newspaper, dated instead April 1st 2011, had
published an article titled Children of War (page 7) signed by Sara
Cazal Sardón, where she, very rightly so, denounced the violation of the
Facultative Protocol of the Convention of the Rights of Children, which
manifests itself in the actual recruitment of minors by government
groups and insurgencies in Africa and other underdeveloped areas of the
world, in order to have them engage in war. The reporter wisely argued
that "children are cannon fodder.
It doesn't matter whether they are recruited by force or voluntarily.
Once trained for war, they fear nothing". And she pointed out that "In
addition to the physical effects that come with participation in
conflict, children suffer severe consequences on an emotional level." I
could not agree more.
But her article did not just refer to Third World regions as responsible
for such violations. Cañizal also noted that "… though in Europe and the
United States minors do not participate in wars, they are trained in
recruitment camps for minors. In the US, the Pentagon recruits children
in schools as young as 14 (…). The purpose is the same: to train them to
kill". And she concludes by launching a sentence I would gladly
subscribe to 100%: "The recruitment of children is a war crime and it
goes against the declaration of Children's Rights. In any situation,
children should be the first to receive protection and aid, and they
must be isolated from all kinds of cruelty and exploitation. A world
that sends its children to war is doomed to its own destruction".
What I don't understand is how the official journalism could have
forgotten – if it's about an oversight and not about flagrant disrespect
to its readers — what it published before about this issue and now,
after just one month, can contradict itself in such an absurd manner. Is
it any less criminal to recruit militant children at Playa Girón? Even
taking into account that it was the exception and not the rule than
those of other children of the world in times of war? Is it that the
main Cuban newspaper, at the same time it grants itself the right to
criticize the Pentagon, has the nerve to ignore the existence of
military schools for teens in Cuba, such as Camilo Cienfuegos Military
Schools, nicknamed "the Camilitos"? Don't these military Cuban schools
also teach our young "to kill"?
What could also be categorized as criminal is the cult of war violence
and the use of weapons against other Cubans, established as values to be
imitated, which each anniversary are endorsed in children's
representations of an imaginary attack the Moncada Barracks, the landing
of the expedition of the yacht Granma, the attack on the Presidential
Palace, the fighting guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra, the invasion of
the Rebel Army and of many other acts of war being taught to students of
primary and secondary education as top examples of heroism. It seems
that the Cuban government is in possession of a special license that
allows it to promote war in a child's fancy, without constituting a
reprehensible or sinister incident.
It would be nice if the director of Granma and all those responsible for
the official Cuban press would be a tad more careful when selecting the
themes of their "news" media. After they have already lost their
professionalism and decorum, a bit of silence could be useful, at least
to save decency… if decency has indeed survived all the shooting.
6 May 2011
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