Hopes for democracy won't stay buried in Cuba

Hopes for democracy won't stay buried in Cuba
By Frank Calzon | Jan. 19, 2016 at 1:42 PM

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- People should remember what the dictators
have done.

This month marks the 57th anniversary of Fidel Castro's triumphant march
into Havana after dictator Fulgencio Batista fled in 1959.

Castro entered the city on Jan. 8; a few days earlier, his brother Raul
had taken control of Santiago, Cuba's second-largest city. On Jan. 10,
Raul Castro, now president of Cuba, ordered a long, deep trench dug near
the historical San Juan Hill, site of the U.S. skirmishes against the
Spanish led by Teddy Roosevelt, which took place on Jan. 11.

His army's trucks hauled 70 Cuban nationals to the site, lined them up
and executed them. Their bodies fell into the trench and were buried.
There were no trials or "due process."

That action ought to enlighten Americans today as to nature of the
Castro regime and the character of the man who inherited the Cuban
presidency from his ailing brother and is now engaged with U.S.
President Barack Obama in making decisions affecting Cuba's future and
relationship with the United States.

While Fidel Castro enthralled Habaneros with long speeches, the most
important promise of the Castros' revolution was immediately betrayed
and abandoned. Fidel Castro had repeatedly said that once Batista was
gone, Cuba's Constitution would be reinstated. Millions celebrated the
departure of Batista and arrival of Fidel Castro's self-declared
"democratic revolution."

Cuba's Constitution prohibits the death penalty. Fidel Castro's promise
of democracy rapidly disappeared, and neither brother shows any new
respect for the rule of law.

Cuban Army trucks hauled the doomed Cubans to the hill. Some cried,
others pleaded to live professing support for the Castro Revolution.
Some were blindfolded. Many remained silent. One execution was delayed
several hours to accommodate TV crews who wanted better lighting to film
the grisly event.

As in Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union's communist rule, where
similar mass executions took place, there is no marker indicating where
the Cubans' remains lie. There is also no marker at the cemetery in
Havana where Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa is buried.

Ochoa joined the Castros' rebel army in the Oriente mountains as a young
boy, eventually becoming part of Fidel Castro's personal guard. He
became a general leading the Cuban armies in Angola, was very popular
with the enlisted men and known for cracking jokes about Fidel Castro's
leadership. After all, none of Fidel Castro's skirmishes against Batista
compared with the bombing campaigns and the tank warfare that the
general directed in Africa.

In a speech, Cuba's minister of defense Raul Castro, Ochoa's longtime
friend, warned him that jokes about Fidel Castro were "not funny."

Fidel Castro ordered the general's home wired and taped everything said.
In a kangaroo-court trial, the general and "Hero of the Revolution" was
sentenced to die, marched to the infamous "paredon" (execution wall) and
buried in an unmarked tomb. Perhaps, after the Castros are no longer in
power, his name will be inscribed on the door, and the tomb will become
a tourist attraction at Colon Cemetery.

These are the Castro brothers that Obama hopes to embrace during his
planned visit to Havana this spring. Indeed, the smiling Raul Castro
shown in a photograph taken at the United Nations with the president and
Michelle Obama is the same man who, in 1996, ordered Cuban MiGs to shoot
down civilian Americans flying in international airspace and searching
for refugees adrift in the Florida Straits. Raul Castro awarded the MiG
pilots medals and hailed as a "hero" one of the Cuban spies, Gerardo
Hernandez, who was convicted in U.S. courts of helping to plan the murders.

Obama ordered Hernandez released in 2014 as part of a deal to restore
diplomatic relations.

The president argues that much of what happened that triggered American
animosity toward Cuba happened before he was born.

Yet it does matter to Cuban Americans today. And it will matter to
Cubans tomorrow when they learn the real history of the island and the
story of the American president who meant well and inspired their hopes
and then turned his back on the people of Cuba to embrace another
dictator, as so many of his predecessors did.

Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, based
in Washington D.C.

Source: Frank Calzon: Hopes for democracy won't stay buried in Cuba -
UPI.com -
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2016/01/19/Hopes-for-democracy-wont-stay-buried-in-Cuba/2451453225390/