Spoken: 1953
Publisher: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales,
La Habana, Cuba. 1975
Translated: Pedro Álvarez Tabío
& Andrew Paul Booth (who rechecked the translation with the Spanish La historia me absolverá, same
publisher, in 1981)
Transcription/Markup: Andrew Paul Booth/Brian Baggins
Online Version: 1997, Castro Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2001
HONORABLE
JUDGES:
Never has a lawyer
had to practice his profession under such difficult conditions; never has such
a number of overwhelming irregularities been committed against an accused man.
In this case, counsel and defendant are one and the
same. As attorney he has not even been able to take a
look at the indictment. As accused, for the past seventy-six days he has been
locked away in solitary confinement, held totally and absolutely
incommunicado, in violation of every human and legal right.
He who speaks to you
hates vanity with all his being, nor are his temperament or frame of mind
inclined towards courtroom poses or sensationalism of any kind. If I have had
to assume my own defense before this Court it is for
two reasons. First: because I have been denied legal
aid almost entirely, and second: only one who has been so deeply wounded, who
has seen his country so forsaken and its justice trampled so, can speak at a
moment like this with words that spring from the blood of his heart and the
truth of his very gut.
There
was no lack of generous comrades who wished to defend me, and the Havana Bar
Association appointed a courageous and competent jurist, Dr. Jorge Pagliery, Dean of the Bar in this city, to represent me in
this case. However, he was not permitted to carry out
his task. As often as he tried to see me, the prison gates were
closed before him. Only after a month and a half, and through the
intervention of the Court, was he finally granted a ten
minute interview with me in the presence of a sergeant from the Military
Intelligence Agency (SIM). One supposes that a lawyer has a right to speak with
his defendant in private, and this right is respected
throughout the world, except in the case of a Cuban prisoner of war in the
hands of an implacable tyranny that abides by no code of law, be it legal or
humane. Neither Dr. Pagliery nor I were willing to
tolerate such dirty spying upon our means of defense for the oral trial. Did
they want to know, perhaps, beforehand, the methods we would use in order to
reduce to dust the incredible fabric of lies they had woven around the Moncada Barracks events? How were we going to expose the
terrible truth they would go to such great lengths to conceal? It was then that
we decided that, taking advantage of my professional rights as a lawyer, I
would assume my own defense.
This decision, overheard by the sergeant and reported by him to
his superior, provoked a real panic. It looked like some mocking little imp was
telling them that I was going to ruin all their plans. You know very well,
Honorable Judges, how much pressure has been brought to bear on me in order to
strip me as well of this right that is ratified by
long Cuban tradition. The Court could not give in to such machination, for that
would have left the accused in a state of total indefensiveness.
The accused, who is now exercising this right to plead his own case, will under no circumstances refrain from saying what he must
say. I consider it essential that I explain, at the onset,
the reason for the terrible isolation in which I have been kept; what was the
purpose of keeping me silent; what was behind the plots to kill me, plots which
the Court is familiar with; what grave events are being hidden from the people;
and the truth behind all the strange things which have taken place during this
trial. I propose to do all this with utmost clarity.
You have publicly
called this case the most significant in the history of the Republic. If you
sincerely believed this, you should not have allowed your authority to be stained and degraded. The first court session was September 21st. Among one hundred machine guns and bayonets,
scandalously invading the hall of justice, more than a hundred people were seated in the prisoner's dock. The great majority had
nothing to do with what had happened. They had been under preventive arrest for
many days, suffering all kinds of insults and abuses in the chambers of the repressive
units. But the rest of the accused, the minority, were
brave and determined, ready to proudly confirm their part in the battle for
freedom, ready to offer an example of unprecedented self-sacrifice and to
wrench from the jail's claws those who in deliberate bad faith had been
included in the trial. Those who had met in combat confronted one another
again. Once again, with the cause of justice on our side, we would wage the
terrible battle of truth against infamy! Surely the
regime was not prepared for the moral catastrophe in store for it!
How to maintain all
its false accusations? How to keep secret what had really happened, when so
many young men were willing to risk everything - prison, torture and death, if
necessary - in order that the truth be told before
this Court?
I was
called as a witness at that first session. For two hours
I was questioned by the Prosecutor as well as by twenty defense attorneys. I
was able to prove with exact facts and figures the
sums of money that had been spent, the way this money was collected and the
arms we had been able to round up. I had nothing to hide, for the truth was: all this was accomplished through sacrifices without
precedent in the history of our Republic. I spoke of the goals that inspired us
in our struggle and of the humane and generous treatment that we had at all
times accorded our adversaries. If I accomplished my purpose of demonstrating
that those who were falsely implicated in this trial
were neither directly nor indirectly involved, I owe it to the complete support
and backing of my heroic comrades. For, as I said, the consequences they might
be forced to suffer at no time caused them to repent of their condition as
revolutionaries and patriots, I was never once allowed to speak with these comrades
of mine during the time we were in prison, and yet we planned to do exactly the
same. The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can
isolate them - neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single
memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity
will sustain them all.
From that moment on,
the structure of lies the regime had erected about the events at Moncada Barracks began to collapse like a house of cards.
As a result, the Prosecutor realized that keeping all those persons named as
instigators in prison was completely absurd, and he requested their provisional
release.
At the close of my
testimony in that first session, I asked the Court to allow me to leave the
dock and sit among the counsel for the defense. This permission was granted. At that point what I consider
my most important mission in this trial began: to totally discredit the
cowardly, miserable and treacherous lies which the regime had hurled against
our fighters; to reveal with irrefutable evidence the horrible, repulsive
crimes they had practiced on the prisoners; and to show the nation and the
world the infinite misfortune of the Cuban people who are suffering the
cruelest, the most inhuman oppression of their history.
The second session
convened on Tuesday, September 22nd. By that time only ten witnesses had testified, and they had already
cleared up the murders in the Manzanillo area,
specifically establishing and placing on record the direct responsibility of
the captain commanding that post. There were three hundred more witnesses to
testify. What would happen if, with a staggering mass of facts and evidence, I
should proceed to cross-examine the very Army men who were directly responsible
for those crimes? Could the regime permit me to go ahead before the large
audience attending the trial? Before journalists and jurists from all over the
island? And before the party leaders of the opposition, who they had stupidly
seated right in the prisoner's dock where they could hear so well all that
might be brought out here? They would rather have blown up the court house, with all its judges, than allow that!
And
so they
devised a plan by which they could eliminate me from the trial and they
proceeded to do just that, manu militari.
On Friday night, September 25th, on the eve of the
third session of the trial, two prison doctors visited me in my cell. They were
visibly embarrassed. 'We have come to examine you,' they said. I asked them,
'Who is so worried about my health?' Actually, from the moment I saw them I
realized what they had come for. They could not have treated me with greater
respect, and they explained their predicament to me. That afternoon Colonel Chaviano had appeared at the prison and told them I 'was
doing the Government terrible damage with this trial.' He had told them they
must sign a certificate declaring that I was ill and was, therefore, unable to
appear in court. The doctors told me that for their part they were prepared to
resign from their posts and risk persecution. They put the matter in my hands,
for me to decide. I found it hard to ask those men to
unhesitatingly destroy themselves. But neither
could I, under any circumstances, consent that those orders be carried out.
Leaving the matter to their own consciences, I told them only: 'You must know
your duty; I certainly know mine.'
After leaving the cell they signed the certificate. I know they did so
believing in good faith that this was the only way they could save my life,
which they considered to be in grave danger. I was not obliged to keep our
conversation secret, for I am bound only by the truth.
Telling the truth in this instance may jeopardize those good doctors in their
material interests, but I am removing all doubt about their honor, which is
worth much more. That same night, I wrote the Court a letter denouncing the
plot; requesting that two Court physicians be sent to
certify my excellent state of health, and to inform you that if to save my life
I must take part in such deception, I would a thousand times prefer to lose it.
To show my determination to fight alone against this whole
degenerate frame-up, I added to my own words one of the Master's lines: 'A just
cause even from the depths of a cave can do more than an army.' As the Court knows,
this was the letter Dr. Melba Hernández submitted at the third session of the
trial on September 26th. I managed to get it to her in
spite of the heavy guard I was under. That letter, of
course, provoked immediate reprisals. Dr. Hernández was
subjected to solitary confinement, and I - since I was already
incommunicado - was sent to the most inaccessible reaches of the prison. From
that moment on, all the accused were thoroughly searched from head to foot
before they were brought into the courtroom.
Two Court physicians
certified on September 27th that I was, in fact, in
perfect health. Yet, in spite of the repeated orders from the Court, I was never again brought to the hearings. What's
more, anonymous persons daily circulated hundreds of apocryphal pamphlets which
announced my rescue from jail. This stupid alibi was invented
so they could physically eliminate me and pretend I had tried to escape. Since
the scheme failed as a result of timely exposure by
ever alert friends, and after the first affidavit was shown to be false, the
regime could only keep me away from the trial by open and shameless contempt of
Court.
This was an
incredible situation, Honorable Judges: Here was a regime literally afraid to
bring an accused man to Court; a regime of blood and terror that shrank in fear
of the moral conviction of a defenseless man - unarmed, slandered and isolated.
And so, after depriving me of everything else, they
finally deprived me even of the trial in which I was the main accused. Remember
that this was during a period in which individual rights were suspended and the
Public Order Act as well as censorship of radio and press were in full force.
What unbelievable crimes this regime must have committed to
so fear the voice of one accused man!
I must dwell upon the
insolence and disrespect which the Army leaders have at all times shown towards
you. As often as this Court has ordered an end to the inhuman isolation in
which I was held; as often as it has ordered my most
elementary rights to be respected; as often as it has demanded that I be
brought before it, this Court has never been obeyed! Worse yet:
in the very presence of the Court, during the first and second hearings, a
praetorian guard was stationed beside me to totally prevent me from speaking to
anyone, even among the brief recesses. In other words, not only in prison, but
also in the courtroom and in your presence, they ignored your decrees. I had
intended to mention this matter in the following session, as a question of
elementary respect for the Court, but - I was never brought
back. And if, in exchange for so much disrespect, they
bring us before you to be jailed in the name of a legality which they and they
alone have been violating since March 10th, sad indeed is the role they would
force on you. The Latin maxim Cedant arma togae has
certainly not been fulfilled on a single occasion during this trial. I
beg you to keep that circumstance well in mind.
What is more, these
devices were in any case quite useless; my brave
comrades, with unprecedented patriotism, did their duty to the utmost.
'Yes, we set out to
fight for Cuba's freedom and we are not ashamed of having done so,' they
declared, one by one, on the witness stand. Then, addressing the Court with
impressive courage, they denounced the hideous crimes committed upon the bodies
of our brothers. Although absent from Court, I was able, in my prison cell, to
follow the trial in all its details. And I have the
convicts at Boniato Prison to thank for this. In
spite of all threats, these men found ingenious means of getting newspaper
clippings and all kinds of information to me. In this way
they avenged the abuses and immoralities perpetrated against them both by Taboada, the warden, and the supervisor, Lieutenant Rozabal, who drove them from sun up to sun down building
private mansions and starved them by embezzling the prison food budget.
As the trial went on,
the roles were reversed: those who came to accuse
found themselves accused, and the accused became the accusers! It was not the
revolutionaries who were judged there; judged once and
forever was a man named Batista - monstruum horrendum! - and it matters little that these valiant and
worthy young men have been condemned, if tomorrow the people will condemn the
Dictator and his henchmen! Our men were consigned to
the Isle of Pines Prison, in whose circular galleries Castells' ghost still
lingers and where the cries of countless victims still echo; there our young
men have been sent to expiate their love of liberty, in bitter confinement,
banished from society, torn from their homes and exiled from their country. Is
it not clear to you, as I have said before, that in such
circumstances it is difficult and disagreeable for this lawyer to fulfill his
duty?
As
a result of so many turbid and illegal machinations, due to the will of those
who govern and the weakness of those who judge, I find myself here in this
little room at the Civilian Hospital, where I have been brought to be tried in
secret, so that I may not be heard and my voice may be stifled, and so that no
one may learn of the things I am going to say. Why, then, do we need that imposing
Palace of Justice which the Honorable Judges would without doubt find much more
comfortable? I must warn you: it is unwise to administer justice from a hospital
room, surrounded by sentinels with fixed bayonets; the citizens might suppose
that our justice is sick - and that it is captive.
Let me remind you,
your laws of procedure provide that trials shall be 'public hearings;' however,
the people have been barred altogether from this
session of Court. The only civilians admitted here have been two attorneys and
six reporters, in whose newspapers the censorship of the press will prevent
printing a word I say. I see, as my sole audience in this chamber and in the
corridors, nearly a hundred soldiers and officers. I am grateful for the polite
and serious attention they give me. I only wish I could have the whole Army
before me! I know, one day, this Army will seethe with rage to wash away the
terrible, the shameful bloodstains splattered across the military uniform by
the present ruthless clique in its lust for power. On that day, oh what a fall
awaits those mounted in arrogance on their noble steeds! - provided
that the people have not dismounted them long before that!
Finally, I should
like to add that no treatise on penal law was allowed
me in my cell. I have at my disposal only this tiny code of law lent to me by
my learned counsel, Dr. Baudillo Castellanos, the
courageous defender of my comrades. In the same way
they prevented me from receiving the books of Martí;
it seems the prison censorship considered them too subversive. Or is it because I said Martí was
the inspirer of the 26th of July? Reference books on any other subject were also denied me during this trial. But
it makes no difference! I carry the teachings of the Master in my heart, and in my mind the noble ideas of all men who have
defended people's freedom everywhere!
I am going to make
only one request of this court; I trust it will be granted as a compensation
for the many abuses and outrages the accused has had to tolerate without
protection of the law. I ask that my right to express myself be
respected without restraint. Otherwise, even the merest
semblance of justice cannot be maintained, and the final episode of this trial
would be, more than all the others, one of ignominy and cowardice.
I must admit that I
am somewhat disappointed. I had expected that the Honorable Prosecutor would
come forward with a grave accusation. I thought he would be ready to justify to
the limit his contention, and his reasons why I should
be condemned in the name of Law and Justice - what law and what justice? - to 26 years in prison. But no. He
has limited himself to reading Article 148 of the Social Defense Code. On the basis of this, plus aggravating circumstances, he
requests that I be imprisoned for the lengthy term of 26 years! Two minutes
seems a very short time in which to demand and justify that a man be put behind bars for more than a quarter of a century. Can
it be that the Honorable Prosecutor is, perhaps, annoyed
with the Court? Because as I see it, his laconic attitude in this case clashes
with the solemnity with which the Honorable Judges
declared, rather proudly, that this was a trial of the greatest importance! I
have heard prosecutors speak ten times longer in a simple narcotics case asking
for a sentence of just six months. The Honorable Prosecutor has supplied not a
word in support of his petition. I am a just man. I realize
that for a prosecuting attorney under oath of loyalty to the Constitution of
the Republic, it is difficult to come here in the name of an unconstitutional,
statutory, de facto government, lacking any legal much less moral basis, to ask
that a young Cuban, a lawyer like himself - perhaps as honorable as he, be sent
to jail for 26 years. But the Honorable
Prosecutor is a gifted man and I have seen much less talented persons write
lengthy diatribes in defense of this regime. How then can I suppose that he
lacks reason with which to defend it, at least for fifteen minutes, however
contemptible that might be to any decent person? It is clear that there is a
great conspiracy behind all this.
Honorable Judges: Why
such interest in silencing me? Why is every type of argument
foregone in order to avoid presenting any target whatsoever against
which I might direct my own brief? Is it that they lack any legal, moral or
political basis on which to put forth a serious formulation of the question?
Are they that afraid of the truth? Do they hope that I, too, will speak for
only two minutes and that I will not touch upon the points
which have caused certain people sleepless nights since July 26th? Since
the prosecutor's petition was restricted to the mere reading of five lines of
an article of the Social Defense Code, might they suppose that I too would
limit myself to those same lines and circle round them like some slave turning
a millstone? I shall by no means accept such a gag,
for in this trial there is much more than the freedom
of a single individual at stake. Fundamental matters of principle are being
debated here, the right of men to be free is on trial, the
very foundations of our existence as a civilized and democratic nation are in
the balance. When this trial is over, I do not want to have to reproach myself
for any principle left undefended, for any truth left unsaid, for any crime not
denounced.
The Honorable Prosecutor's famous little article hardly deserves a minute
of my time. I shall limit myself for the moment to a brief
legal skirmish against it, because I want to clear the field for an assault
against all the endless lies and deceits, the hypocrisy, conventionalism and
moral cowardice that have set the stage for the crude comedy which since the
10th of March - and even before then - has been called Justice in Cuba.
It is a fundamental
principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to
the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in
question, then there is no offense.
The article in
question reads textually: 'A penalty of imprisonment
of from three to ten years shall be imposed upon the perpetrator of any act
aimed at bringing about an armed uprising against the Constitutional Powers of
the State. The penalty shall be imprisonment for from five to twenty years, in
the event that insurrection actually be carried into effect.'
In what country is
the Honorable Prosecutor living? Who has told him that we have sought to bring
about an uprising against the Constitutional Powers of the State? Two things
are self-evident. First of all, the dictatorship that
oppresses the nation is not a constitutional power, but an unconstitutional
one: it was established against the Constitution, over the head of the
Constitution, violating the legitimate Constitution of the Republic. The
legitimate Constitution is that which emanates directly from a sovereign
people. I shall demonstrate this point fully later on, notwithstanding all the
subterfuges contrived by cowards and traitors to justify the unjustifiable.
Secondly, the article refers to Powers, in the plural, as in the case of a
republic governed by a Legislative Power, an Executive Power, and a Judicial Power which balance and counterbalance one another. We have
fomented a rebellion against one single power, an illegal one, which has
usurped and merged into a single whole both the Legislative and Executive
Powers of the nation, and so has destroyed the entire system that was specifically safeguarded by the Code now under our
analysis. As to the independence of the Judiciary after the 10th of March, I
shall not allude to that for I am in no mood for joking ... No matter how
Article 148 may be stretched, shrunk or amended, not a single comma applies to
the events of July 26th. Let us leave this statute alone and await the
opportunity to apply it to those who really did foment an uprising against the
Constitutional Powers of the State. Later I shall come back to the Code to
refresh the Honorable Prosecutor's memory about certain circumstances he has
unfortunately overlooked.
I warn you, I am just
beginning! If there is in your hearts a vestige of love for your country, love
for humanity, love for justice, listen carefully. I know that I will be silenced for many years; I know that the regime will
try to suppress the truth by all possible means; I know that there will be a
conspiracy to bury me in oblivion. But my voice will
not be stifled - it will rise from my breast even when I feel most alone, and
my heart will give it all the fire that callous cowards deny it.
From a shack in the
mountains on Monday, July 27th, I listened to the
dictator's voice on the air while there were still 18 of our men in arms
against the government. Those who have never experienced similar moments will
never know that kind of bitterness and indignation. While the long-cherished
hopes of freeing our people lay in ruins about us we heard those crushed hopes gloated over by a tyrant more vicious, more
arrogant than ever. The endless stream of lies and slanders, poured forth in
his crude, odious, repulsive language, may only be compared to the endless
stream of clean young blood which had flowed since the previous night - with
his knowledge, consent, complicity and approval - being spilled by the most
inhuman gang of assassins it is possible to imagine. To have
believed him for a single moment would have sufficed to fill a man of
conscience with remorse and shame for the rest of his life. At that time I could not even hope to brand his miserable forehead
with the mark of truth which condemns him for the rest of his days and for all
time to come. Already a circle of more than a thousand men, armed with weapons
more powerful than ours and with peremptory orders to bring in our bodies, was
closing in around us. Now that the truth is coming out, now that speaking
before you I am carrying out the mission I set for myself, I may die peacefully
and content. So I shall not mince my words about those
savage murderers.
I must pause to
consider the facts for a moment. The government itself said the attack showed
such precision and perfection that it must have been planned
by military strategists. Nothing could have been farther from the truth!
The plan was drawn up by a group of young men, none of whom
had any military experience at all. I will reveal their names, omitting
two who are neither dead nor in prison: Abel Santamaría,
José Luis Tasende, Renato Guitart
Rosell, Pedro Miret, Jesús Montané and myself. Half of
them are dead, and in tribute to their memory I can
say that although they were not military experts they had enough patriotism to
have given, had we not been at such a great disadvantage, a good beating to
that entire lot of generals together, those generals of the 10th of March who
are neither soldiers nor patriots. Much more difficult than the planning of the
attack was our organizing, training, mobilizing and arming men under this
repressive regime with its millions of dollars spent on espionage, bribery and
information services. Nevertheless, all this was carried out
by those men and many others like them with incredible seriousness,
discretion and discipline. Still more praiseworthy is the fact that they gave
this task everything they had; ultimately, their very lives.
The final
mobilization of men who came to this province from the most remote towns of the
entire island was accomplished with admirable
precision and in absolute secrecy. It is equally true that the attack was carried out with magnificent coordination. It began
simultaneously at 5:15 a.m. in both Bayamo and
Santiago de Cuba; and one by one, with an exactitude of minutes and seconds
prepared in advance, the buildings surrounding the barracks fell to our forces.
Nevertheless, in the interest of truth and even though it may
detract from our merit, I am also going to reveal for the first time a fact
that was fatal: due to a most unfortunate error, half of our forces, and the
better armed half at that, went astray at the entrance to the city and were not
on hand to help us at the decisive moment. Abel Santamaría,
with 21 men, had occupied the Civilian Hospital; with him went a doctor and two
of our women comrades to attend to the wounded. Raúl
Castro, with ten men, occupied the Palace of Justice, and it was my
responsibility to attack the barracks with the rest, 95 men. Preceded by an
advance group of eight who had forced Gate Three, I
arrived with the first group of 45 men. It was precisely here that the battle
began, when my car ran into an outside patrol armed with machine guns. The
reserve group which had almost all the heavy weapons (the light arms were with
the advance group), turned up the wrong street and lost its way in an
unfamiliar city. I must clarify the fact that I do not for a moment doubt the
courage of those men; they experienced great anguish and desperation when they
realized they were lost. Because of the type of action
it was and because the contending forces were wearing identically colored
uniforms, it was not easy for these men to re-establish contact with us. Many
of them, captured later on, met death with true heroism.
Everyone had
instructions, first of all, to be humane in the
struggle. Never was a group of armed men more generous to the adversary. From
the beginning we took numerous prisoners - nearly
twenty - and there was one moment when three of our men - Ramiro Valdés, José
Suárez and Jesús Montané -
managed to enter a barrack and hold nearly fifty soldiers prisoners for a short
time. Those soldiers testified before the Court, and without exception
they all acknowledged that we treated them with absolute respect, that we
didn't even subject them to one scoffing remark. In line with this, I want to
give my heartfelt thanks to the Prosecutor for one thing in the trial of my
comrades: when he made his report he was fair enough
to acknowledge as an incontestable fact that we maintained a high spirit of
chivalry throughout the struggle.
Discipline among the
soldiers was very poor. They finally defeated us because of their superior
numbers - fifteen to one - and because of the protection afforded them by the
defenses of the fortress. Our men were much better marksmen,
as our enemies themselves conceded. There was a high degree of courage on both
sides.
In analyzing the
reasons for our tactical failure, apart from the regrettable error already
mentioned, I believe we made a mistake by dividing the commando unit we had so
carefully trained. Of our best trained men and boldest
leaders, there were 27 in Bayamo, 21 at the Civilian
Hospital and 10 at the Palace of Justice. If our forces had been distributed differently the outcome of the battle might have been
different. The clash with the patrol (purely accidental, since the unit might
have been at that point twenty seconds earlier or twenty seconds later) alerted
the camp, and gave it time to mobilize. Otherwise it
would have fallen into our hands without a shot fired, since we already
controlled the guard post. On the other hand, except for the .22 caliber
rifles, for which there were plenty of bullets, our side was very short of
ammunition. Had we had hand grenades, the Army would not have been able to
resist us for fifteen minutes.
When I became
convinced that all efforts to take the barracks were now useless, I began to
withdraw our men in groups of eight and ten. Our retreat was covered by six
expert marksmen under the command of Pedro Miret and Fidel Labrador; heroically they held off the
Army's advance. Our losses in the battle had been insignificant; 95% of our
casualties came from the Army's inhumanity after the struggle. The group at the
Civilian Hospital only had one casualty; the rest of that group was trapped when the troops blocked the only exit; but our
youths did not lay down their arms until their very last bullet was gone. With
them was Abel Santamaría, the most generous, beloved
and intrepid of our young men, whose glorious resistance immortalizes him in
Cuban history. We shall see the fate they met and how Batista
sought to punish the heroism of our youth.
We planned to
continue the struggle in the mountains in case the attack on the regiment
failed. In Siboney I was
able to gather a third of our forces; but many of these men were now
discouraged. About twenty of them decided to surrender; later we shall see what
became of them. The rest, 18 men, with what arms and ammunition were left, followed me into the mountains. The terrain was
completely unknown to us. For a week we held the
heights of the Gran Piedra range and the Army
occupied the foothills. We could not come down; they didn't
risk coming up. It was not force of arms, but hunger and
thirst that ultimately overcame our resistance. I had to divide the men
into smaller groups. Some of them managed to slip through the Army lines; others were surrendered by Monsignor Pérez Serantes.
Finally only two comrades remained with me - José
Suárez and Oscar Alcalde. While the three of us were totally exhausted, a force led by Lieutenant Sarría surprised us in our sleep at dawn. This was
Saturday, August 1st. By that time
the slaughter of prisoners had ceased as a result of the people's protest. This
officer, a man of honor, saved us from being murdered
on the spot with our hands tied behind us.
I need not deny here
the stupid statements by Ugalde Carrillo and company,
who tried to stain my name in an effort to mask their own cowardice,
incompetence, and criminality. The facts are clear enough.
My purpose is not to
bore the court with epic narratives. All that I have said is essential for a
more precise understanding of what is yet to come.
Let me mention two
important facts that facilitate an objective judgement of our attitude. First:
we could have taken over the regiment simply by seizing all the high ranking officers in their homes. This possibility was rejected for the very humane reason that we wished to
avoid scenes of tragedy and struggle in the presence of their families. Second:
we decided not to take any radio station over until the Army camp was in our
power. This attitude, unusually magnanimous and considerate, spared the
citizens a great deal of bloodshed. With only ten men
I could have seized a radio station and called the people to revolt. There is
no questioning the people's will to fight. I had a recording of Eduardo Chibás' last message over the CMQ radio network, and
patriotic poems and battle hymns capable of moving the least sensitive,
especially with the sounds of live battle in their ears. But
I did not want to use them although our situation was desperate.
The regime has
emphatically repeated that our Movement did not have popular support. I have
never heard an assertion so naive, and at the same time so full of bad faith.
The regime seeks to show submission and cowardice on the part of the people.
They all but claim that the people support the dictatorship; they do not know
how offensive this is to the brave Orientales.
Santiago thought our attack was only a local disturbance between two factions
of soldiers; not until many hours later did they
realize what had really happened. Who can doubt the valor, civic pride and
limitless courage of the rebel and patriotic people of Santiago de Cuba? If Moncada had fallen into our hands, even the women of
Santiago de Cuba would have risen in arms. Many were the rifles loaded for our
fighters by the nurses at the Civilian Hospital. They fought alongside us. That
is something we will never forget.
It was never our
intention to engage the soldiers of the regiment in combat. We
wanted to seize control of them and their weapons in a surprise attack, arouse
the people and call the soldiers to abandon the odious flag of the tyranny and
to embrace the banner of freedom; to defend the supreme interests of the nation
and not the petty interests of a small clique; to turn their guns around and
fire on the people's enemies and not on the people, among whom are their own
sons and fathers; to unite with the people as the brothers that they are
instead of opposing the people as the enemies the government tries to make of
them; to march behind the only beautiful ideal worthy of sacrificing one's life
- the greatness and happiness of one's country. To those who doubt that
many soldiers would have followed us, I ask: What Cuban does not cherish glory? What heart is not set aflame
by the promise of freedom?
The Navy did not
fight against us, and it would undoubtedly have come over to our side later on.
It is well known that that branch of the Armed Forces
is the least dominated by the Dictatorship and that there is a very intense
civic conscience among its members. But, as to the
rest of the national armed forces, would they have fought against a people in
revolt? I declare that they would not! A soldier is made of flesh and blood; he
thinks, observes, feels. He is susceptible to the
opinions, beliefs, sympathies and antipathies of the people. If you ask his
opinion, he may tell you he cannot express it; but that does not mean he has no
opinion. He is affected by exactly the same problems
that affect other citizens - subsistence, rent, the education of his children,
their future, etc. Everything of this kind is an inevitable point of contact between
him and the people and everything of this kind relates him to the present and
future situation of the society in which he lives. It is foolish to imagine
that the salary a soldier receives from the State - a modest enough salary at
that - should resolve the vital problems imposed on him by his needs, duties
and feelings as a member of his community.
This brief
explanation has been necessary because it is basic to a consideration to which
few people, until now, have paid any attention - soldiers have a deep respect
for the feelings of the majority of the people! During the Machado regime, in
the same proportion as popular antipathy increased, the loyalty of the Army
visibly decreased. This was so true that a group of women almost succeeded in
subverting Camp Columbia. But this is proven even more
clearly by a recent development. While Grau San
Martín's regime was able to preserve its maximum popularity among the people,
unscrupulous ex-officers and power-hungry civilians attempted innumerable
conspiracies in the Army, although none of them found a following in the rank and file.
The March 10th coup took place at the moment when the civil
government's prestige had dwindled to its lowest ebb, a circumstance of which
Batista and his clique took advantage. Why did they not strike their blow after
the first of June? Simply because, had they waited for
the majority of the nation to express its will at the polls, the troops would
not have responded to the conspiracy!
Consequently, a
second assertion can be made: the Army has never
revolted against a regime with a popular majority behind it. These are historic
truths, and if Batista insists on remaining in power at all costs against the
will of the majority of Cubans, his end will be more tragic than that of Gerardo
Machado.
I have a right to
express an opinion about the Armed Forces because I defended them when everyone
else was silent. And I did this neither as a
conspirator, nor from any kind of personal interest - for we then enjoyed full
constitutional prerogatives. I was prompted only by
humane instincts and civic duty. In those days, the newspaper Alerta was one of the most widely read because of its
position on national political matters. In its pages I
campaigned against the forced labor to which the soldiers were subjected on the
private estates of high civil personages and military officers. On March 3rd, 1952 I supplied the Courts with data, photographs,
films and other proof denouncing this state of affairs. I also pointed out in
those articles that it was elementary decency to increase army salaries. I
should like to know who else raised his voice on that occasion to protest
against all this injustice done to the soldiers. Certainly not Batista and
company, living well-protected on their luxurious estates,
surrounded by all kinds of security measures, while I ran a thousand risks with
neither bodyguards nor arms.
Just as I defended
the soldiers then, now - when all others are once more silent - I tell them
that they allowed themselves to be miserably deceived; and to the deception and
shame of March 10th they have added the disgrace, the thousand times greater
disgrace, of the fearful and unjustifiable crimes of Santiago de Cuba. From
that time since, the uniform of the Army is splattered
with blood. And as last year I told the people and
cried out before the Courts that soldiers were working as slaves on private
estates, today I make the bitter charge that there are soldiers stained from
head to toe with the blood of the Cuban youths they have tortured and slain. And I say as well that if the Army serves the Republic,
defends the nation, respects the people and protects the citizenry then it is
only fair that the soldier should earn at least a hundred pesos a month. But if
the soldiers slay and oppress the people, betray the nation and defend only the
interests of one small group, then the Army deserves not a cent of the
Republic's money and Camp Columbia should be converted into a school with ten
thousand orphans living there instead of soldiers.
I want to be just
above all else, so I can't blame all the soldiers for
the shameful crimes that stain a few evil and treacherous Army men. But every honorable and upstanding soldier who loves his
career and his uniform is dutybound to demand and to
fight for the cleansing of this guilt, to avenge this betrayal and to see the
guilty punished. Otherwise the soldier's uniform will
forever be a mark of infamy instead of a source of pride.
Of course
the March 10th regime had no choice but to remove the soldiers from the private
estates. But it did so only to put them to work as
doormen, chauffeurs, servants and bodyguards for the whole rabble of petty
politicians who make up the party of the Dictatorship. Every fourth or fifth
rank official considers himself entitled to the services of a soldier to drive
his car and to watch over him as if he were constantly afraid of receiving the
kick in the pants he so justly deserves.
If they had been at
all interested in promoting real reforms, why did the regime not confiscate the
estates and the millions of men like Genovevo Pérez Dámera, who acquired their fortunes by exploiting soldiers,
driving them like slaves and misappropriating the funds of the Armed Forces?
But no: Genovevo Pérez and others like him no doubt
still have soldiers protecting them on their estates because the March 10th
generals, deep in their hearts, aspire to the same future and can't allow that
kind of precedent to be set.
The 10th of March was
a miserable deception, yes ... After Batista and his
band of corrupt and disreputable politicians had failed in their electoral
plan, they took advantage of the Army's discontent and used it to climb to
power on the backs of the soldiers. And I know there
are many Army men who are disgusted because they have been disappointed. At first their pay was raised, but later, through deductions
and reductions of every kind, it was lowered again. Many of the old elements,
who had drifted away from the Armed Forces, returned to the ranks and blocked
the way of young, capable and valuable men who might otherwise have advanced.
Good soldiers have been neglected while the most
scandalous nepotism prevails. Many decent military men are
now asking themselves what need that Armed Forces had to assume the tremendous
historical responsibility of destroying our Constitution merely to put a group
of immoral men in power, men of bad reputation, corrupt, politically degenerate
beyond redemption, who could never again have occupied a political post had it
not been at bayonet-point; and they weren't even the ones with the bayonets in
their hands ...
On the other hand,
the soldiers endure a worse tyranny than the civilians.
They are under constant surveillance and not one of them enjoys the slightest
security in his job. Any unjustified suspicion, any gossip, any intrigue, or
denunciation, is sufficient to bring transfer, dishonorable discharge or
imprisonment. Did not Tabernilla, in a memorandum,
forbid them to talk with anyone opposed to the government, that is to say, with
ninety-nine percent of the people? ... What a lack of confidence! ... Not even
the vestal virgins of Rome had to abide by such a rule! As for the much publicized little houses for enlisted men, there aren't
300 on the whole Island; yet with what has been spent on tanks, guns and other
weaponry every soldier might have a place to live. Batista isn't
concerned with taking care of the Army, but that the Army take care of him! He
increases the Army's power of oppression and killing but does not improve
living conditions for the soldiers. Triple guard duty, constant confinement to
barracks, continuous anxiety, the enmity of the people, uncertainty about the
future - this is what has been given to the soldier.
In other words: 'Die for the regime, soldier, give it
your sweat and blood. We shall dedicate a speech to you and award you a
posthumous promotion (when it no longer matters) and afterwards ... we shall go
on living luxuriously, making ourselves rich. Kill, abuse, oppress
the people. When the people get tired and all this comes to
an end, you can pay for our crimes while we go abroad and live like
kings. And if one day we return, don't you or your
children knock on the doors of our mansions, for we shall be millionaires and
millionaires do not mingle with the poor. Kill, soldier, oppress the people,
die for the regime, give your sweat and blood ...'
But if blind to this sad truth, a
minority of soldiers had decided to fight the people, the people who were going
to liberate them from tyranny, victory still would have gone to the people. The
Honorable Prosecutor was very interested in knowing our chances for success.
These chances were based on considerations of
technical, military and social order. They have tried to establish the myth
that modern arms render the people helpless in overthrowing tyrants. Military
parades and the pompous display of machines of war are used
to perpetuate this myth and to create a complex of absolute impotence in the
people. But no weaponry, no violence can vanquish the
people once they are determined to win back their rights. Both past and present
are full of examples. The most recent is the revolt in Bolivia, where miners
with dynamite sticks smashed and defeated regular army regiments.
Fortunately, we
Cubans need not look for examples abroad. No example is as inspiring as that of
our own land. During the war of 1895 there were nearly
half a million armed Spanish soldiers in Cuba, many more than the Dictator
counts upon today to hold back a population five times greater. The arms of the
Spaniards were, incomparably, both more up to date and more powerful than those of our mambises. Often
the Spaniards were equipped with field artillery and the infantry used
breechloaders similar to those still in use by the infantry of today. The
Cubans were usually armed with no more than their machetes, for their cartridge
belts were almost always empty. There is an
unforgettable passage in the history of our War of Independence, narrated by
General Miró Argenter,
Chief of Antonio Maceo's General Staff. I managed to
bring it copied on this scrap of paper so I wouldn't
have to depend upon my memory:
'Untrained men under
the command of Pedro Delgado, most of them equipped only with machetes, were
virtually annihilated as they threw themselves on the solid rank of Spaniards.
It is not an exaggeration to assert that of every fifty men, 25 were killed. Some even attacked the Spaniards with their
bare fists, without machetes, without even knives. Searching
through the reeds by the Hondo River, we found fifteen more dead from the Cuban
party, and it was not immediately clear what group they belonged to, They did
not appear to have shouldered arms, their clothes were intact and only tin
drinking cups hung from their waists; a few steps further on lay the dead
horse, all its equipment in order. We reconstructed the climax of the
tragedy. These men, following their daring chief, Lieutenant Colonel Pedro
Delgado, had earned heroes' laurels: they had thrown themselves against
bayonets with bare hands, the clash of metal which was
heard around them was the sound of their drinking cups banging against the saddlehorn. Maceo was deeply moved. This man so used to seeing death in all
its forms murmured this praise: "I had never seen anything like this,
untrained and unarmed men attacking the Spaniards with only drinking cups for
weapons. And I called it impedimenta!"'
This is how peoples
fight when they want to win their freedom; they throw stones at airplanes and
overturn tanks!
As soon as Santiago
de Cuba was in our hands we would immediately have
readied the people of Oriente for war. Bayamo was attacked precisely to
locate our advance forces along the Cauto River.
Never forget that this province, which has a million and a half inhabitants
today, is the most rebellious and patriotic in Cuba. It was
this province that sparked the fight for independence for thirty years
and paid the highest price in blood, sacrifice and heroism. In Oriente you can still breathe the
air of that glorious epic. At dawn, when the cocks crow as if they were bugles
calling soldiers to reveille, and when the sun rises radiant over the rugged
mountains, it seems that once again we will live the days of Yara or Baire!
I stated that the second
consideration on which we based our chances for success was one of social
order. Why were we sure of the people's support? When
we speak of the people we are not talking about those
who live in comfort, the conservative elements of the nation, who welcome any
repressive regime, any dictatorship, any despotism, prostrating themselves
before the masters of the moment until they grind their foreheads into the
ground. When we speak of struggle and we mention the people
we mean the vast unredeemed masses, those to whom everyone makes promises and
who are deceived by all; we mean the people who yearn for a better, more
dignified and more just nation; who are moved by ancestral aspirations to
justice, for they have suffered injustice and mockery generation after
generation; those who long for great and wise changes in all aspects of their
life; people who, to attain those changes, are ready to give even the very last
breath they have when they believe in something or in someone, especially when
they believe in themselves. The first condition of sincerity and good
faith in any endeavor is to do precisely what nobody else ever does, that is,
to speak with absolute clarity, without fear. The demagogues and professional
politicians who manage to perform the miracle of being right about everything
and of pleasing everyone are, necessarily, deceiving
everyone about everything. The revolutionaries must proclaim their ideas
courageously, define their principles and express their intentions so that no
one is deceived, neither friend nor foe.
In
terms of struggle, when we talk about people we're talking about the six
hundred thousand Cubans without work, who want to earn their daily bread
honestly without having to emigrate from their homeland in search of a
livelihood; the five hundred thousand farm laborers who live in miserable
shacks, who work four months of the year and starve the rest, sharing their
misery with their children, who don't have an inch of land to till and whose
existence would move any heart not made of stone; the four hundred thousand
industrial workers and laborers whose retirement funds have been embezzled,
whose benefits are being taken away, whose homes are wretched quarters, whose
salaries pass from the hands of the boss to those of the moneylender, whose
future is a pay reduction and dismissal, whose life is endless work and whose
only rest is the tomb; the one hundred thousand small farmers who live and die
working land that is not theirs, looking at it with the sadness of Moses gazing
at the promised land, to die without ever owning it, who like feudal serfs have
to pay for the use of their parcel of land by giving up a portion of its
produce, who cannot love it, improve it, beautify it nor plant a cedar or an
orange tree on it because they never know when a sheriff will come with the
rural guard to evict them from it; the thirty thousand teachers and professors
who are so devoted, dedicated and so necessary to the better destiny of future
generations and who are so badly treated and paid; the twenty thousand small
business men weighed down by debts, ruined by the crisis and harangued by a
plague of grafting and venal officials; the ten thousand young professional
people: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, school teachers, dentists,
pharmacists, newspapermen, painters, sculptors, etc., who finish school with
their degrees anxious to work and full of hope, only to find themselves at a
dead end, all doors closed to them, and where no ears hear their clamor or
supplication. These are the people, the ones who know misfortune and,
therefore, are capable of fighting with limitless courage! To these people whose desperate roads through life have been
paved with the bricks of betrayal and false promises, we were not going to say:
'We will give you ...' but rather: 'Here it is, now fight for it with
everything you have, so that liberty and happiness may be yours!'
The five
revolutionary laws that would have been proclaimed
immediately after the capture of the Moncada Barracks
and would have been broadcast to the nation by radio must be included in the
indictment. It is possible that Colonel Chaviano may
deliberately have destroyed these documents, but even if he has
I remember them.
The first
revolutionary law would have returned power to the people and proclaimed the
1940 Constitution the Supreme Law of the State until such
time as the people should decide to modify or change it. And in order to effect its implementation and punish those who
violated it - there being no electoral organization to carry this out - the
revolutionary movement, as the circumstantial incarnation of this sovereignty,
the only source of legitimate power, would have assumed all the faculties
inherent therein, except that of modifying the Constitution itself: in other
words, it would have assumed the legislative, executive and judicial powers.
This attitude could
not be clearer nor more free of vacillation and
sterile charlatanry. A government acclaimed by the mass of rebel people would be vested with every power, everything necessary in
order to proceed with the effective implementation of popular will and real
justice. From that moment, the Judicial Power - which since March 10th had placed itself against and outside the Constitution
- would cease to exist and we would proceed to its immediate and total reform
before it would once again assume the power granted it by the Supreme Law of
the Republic. Without these previous measures, a return to legality by putting
its custody back into the hands that have crippled the system so dishonorably
would constitute a fraud, a deceit, one more betrayal.
The
second revolutionary law would give non-mortgageable
and non-transferable ownership of the land to all tenant and subtenant farmers,
lessees, share croppers and squatters who hold parcels of five caballerías of land or less, and the State would indemnify
the former owners on the basis of the rental which they would have received for
these parcels over a period of ten years.
The third
revolutionary law would have granted workers and employees the right to share
30% of the profits of all the large industrial, mercantile and mining
enterprises, including the sugar mills. The strictly agricultural enterprises
would be exempt in consideration of other agrarian laws which
would be put into effect.
The fourth
revolutionary law would have granted all sugar planters the right to share 55%
of sugar production and a minimum quota of forty thousand arrobas for all small
tenant farmers who have been established for three
years or more.
The fifth revolutionary
law would have ordered the confiscation of all holdings and ill-gotten gains of
those who had committed frauds during previous regimes, as well as the holdings
and ill-gotten gains of all their legates and heirs. To implement this, special
courts with full powers would gain access to all records of all corporations
registered or operating in this country, in order to investigate concealed
funds of illegal origin, and to request that foreign governments extradite
persons and attach holdings rightfully belonging to the Cuban people. Half of
the property recovered would be used to subsidize
retirement funds for workers and the other half would be used for hospitals,
asylums and charitable organizations.
Furthermore, it was
declared that the Cuban policy in the Americas would be one of close solidarity
with the democratic peoples of this continent, and that all those politically
persecuted by bloody tyrannies oppressing our sister nations would find
generous asylum, brotherhood and bread in the land of Martí; not the persecution, hunger and treason they find
today. Cuba should be the bulwark of liberty and not a shameful link in the
chain of despotism.
These laws would have been proclaimed immediately. As
soon as the upheaval ended and prior to a detailed and far reaching study, they
would have been followed by another series of laws and fundamental measures,
such as the Agrarian Reform, the Integral Educational Reform, nationalization
of the electric power trust and the telephone trust, refund to the people of
the illegal and repressive rates these companies have charged, and payment to
the treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the past.
All these laws and
others would be based on the exact compliance of two essential articles of our
Constitution: one of them orders the outlawing of large estates, indicating the
maximum area of land any one person or entity may own for each type of
agricultural enterprise, by adopting measures which
would tend to revert the land to the Cubans. The other categorically orders the
State to use all means at its disposal to provide employment to all those who
lack it and to ensure a decent livelihood to each manual or intellectual
laborer. None of these laws can be called
unconstitutional. The first popularly elected government would have to respect
them, not only because of moral obligations to the nation, but because when
people achieve something they have yearned for throughout generations, no force
in the world is capable of taking it away again.
The
problem of the land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing,
the problem of unemployment, the problem of education and the problem of the
people's health: these are the six problems we would take immediate steps to
solve, along with restoration of civil liberties and political democracy.
This exposition may
seem cold and theoretical if one does not know the shocking and tragic
conditions of the country with regard to these six problems, along with the
most humiliating political oppression.
Eighty-five per cent
of the small farmers in Cuba pay rent and live under constant threat of being
evicted from the land they till. More than half of our most productive land is
in the hands of foreigners. In Oriente, the largest
province, the lands of the United Fruit Company and the West Indian Company
link the northern and southern coasts. There are two hundred
thousand peasant families who do not have a single acre of land to till
to provide food for their starving children. On the other hand, nearly three
hundred thousand caballerías of cultivable land owned
by powerful interests remain uncultivated. If Cuba is above
all an agricultural State, if its population is largely rural, if the city
depends on these rural areas, if the people from our countryside won our war of
independence, if our nation's greatness and prosperity depend on a healthy and
vigorous rural population that loves the land and knows how to work it, if this
population depends on a State that protects and guides it, then how can the
present state of affairs be allowed to continue?
Except for a few
food, lumber and textile industries, Cuba continues to be primarily a producer
of raw materials. We export sugar to import candy, we export
hides to import shoes, we export iron to import plows ... Everyone agrees with
the urgent need to industrialize the nation, that we need steel industries,
paper and chemical industries, that we must improve our cattle and grain
production, the technology and processing in our food industry in order to
defend ourselves against the ruinous competition from Europe in cheese
products, condensed milk, liquors and edible oils, and the United States in
canned goods; that we need cargo ships; that tourism should be an enormous
source of revenue. But the capitalists insist
that the workers remain under the yoke. The State sits back with its arms
crossed and industrialization can wait forever.
Just as serious or
even worse is the housing problem. There are two hundred
thousand huts and hovels in Cuba; four hundred thousand families in the
countryside and in the cities live cramped in huts and tenements without even
the minimum sanitary requirements; two million two hundred thousand of our
urban population pay rents which absorb between one fifth and one third of
their incomes; and two million eight hundred thousand of our rural and suburban
population lack electricity. We have the same situation here: if the
State proposes the lowering of rents, landlords
threaten to freeze all construction; if the State does not interfere, construction
goes on so long as landlords get high rents; otherwise they would not lay a
single brick even though the rest of the population had to live totally exposed
to the elements. The utilities monopoly is no better; they extend lines as far
as it is profitable and beyond that point they don't
care if people have to live in darkness for the rest of their lives. The State
sits back with its arms crossed and the people have neither homes nor
electricity.
Our educational
system is perfectly compatible with everything I've
just mentioned. Where the peasant doesn't own the
land, what need is there for agricultural schools? Where there is no industry,
what need is there for technical or vocational schools? Everything follows the
same absurd logic; if we don't have one thing we can't
have the other. In any small European country there
are more than 200 technological and vocational schools; in Cuba only six such
schools exist, and their graduates have no jobs for their skills. The little
rural schoolhouses are attended by a mere half of the school age children -
barefooted, half-naked and undernourished - and frequently the teacher must buy
necessary school materials from his own salary. Is this the way to make a
nation great?
Only death can
liberate one from so much misery. In this respect, however, the State is most
helpful - in providing early death for the people. Ninety per cent of the
children in the countryside are consumed by parasites which
filter through their bare feet from the ground they walk on. Society is moved to compassion when it hears of the kidnapping or
murder of one child, but it is indifferent to the mass murder of so many
thousands of children who die every year from lack of facilities, agonizing
with pain. Their innocent eyes, death already shining in them, seem to look
into some vague infinity as if entreating forgiveness for human selfishness, as
if asking God to stay His wrath. And when the head of
a family works only four months a year, with what can he purchase clothing and
medicine for his children? They will grow up with rickets, with not a single
good tooth in their mouths by the time they reach thirty; they will have heard
ten million speeches and will finally die of misery and deception. Public
hospitals, which are always full, accept only patients recommended by some
powerful politician who, in return, demands the votes of the unfortunate one
and his family so that Cuba may continue forever in the same or worse
condition.
With this background,
is it not understandable that from May to December over a million persons are
jobless and that Cuba, with a population of five and a half million, has a
greater number of unemployed than France or Italy with a population of forty
million each?
When you try a
defendant for robbery, Honorable Judges, do you ask him how long he has been
unemployed? Do you ask him how many children he has, which days of the week he
ate and which he didn't, do you investigate his social
context at all? You just send him to jail without further thought. But those who burn warehouses and stores to collect
insurance do not go to jail, even though a few human beings may have gone up in
flames. The insured have money to hire lawyers and bribe judges. You imprison
the poor wretch who steals because he is hungry; but none of the hundreds who
steal millions from the Government has ever spent a night in jail. You dine
with them at the end of the year in some elegant club and they enjoy your
respect. In Cuba, when a government official becomes a millionaire overnight
and enters the fraternity of the rich, he could very well be greeted with the
words of that opulent character out of Balzac - Taillefer
- who in his toast to the young heir to an enormous fortune, said: 'Gentlemen,
let us drink to the power of gold! Mr. Valentine, a millionaire six times over,
has just ascended the throne. He is king, can do everything, is
above everyone, as all the rich are. Henceforth, equality before the law,
established by the Constitution, will be a myth for him; for he will not be
subject to laws: the laws will be subject to him. There are no courts nor are
there sentences for millionaires.'
The nation's future,
the solutions to its problems, cannot continue to depend on the selfish
interests of a dozen big businessmen nor on the cold calculations of profits
that ten or twelve magnates draw up in their air-conditioned offices. The
country cannot continue begging on its knees for miracles from a few golden
calves, like the Biblical one destroyed by the prophet's fury. Golden calves
cannot perform miracles of any kind. The problems of the Republic can be solved only if we dedicate ourselves to fight for it
with the same energy, honesty and patriotism our liberators had when they
founded it. Statesmen like Carlos Saladrigas,
whose statesmanship consists of preserving the statu
quo and mouthing phrases like 'absolute freedom of enterprise,' 'guarantees to
investment capital' and 'law of supply and demand,' will not solve these
problems. Those ministers can chat away in a Fifth Avenue mansion until not
even the dust of the bones of those whose problems require immediate solution
remains. In this present-day world, social problems are not
solved by spontaneous generation.
A
revolutionary government backed by the people and with the respect of the
nation, after cleansing the different institutions of all venal and corrupt
officials, would proceed immediately to the country's industrialization,
mobilizing all inactive capital, currently estimated at about 1.5 billion
pesos, through the National Bank and the Agricultural and Industrial
Development Bank, and submitting this mammoth task to experts and men of
absolute competence totally removed from all political machines for study,
direction, planning and realization.
After settling the
one hundred thousand small farmers as owners on the land
which they previously rented, a revolutionary government would
immediately proceed to settle the land problem. First, as set forth in the
Constitution, it would establish the maximum amount of land to be held by each type of agricultural enterprise and would
acquire the excess acreage by expropriation, recovery of swampland, planting of
large nurseries, and reserving of zones for reforestation. Secondly, it would
distribute the remaining land among peasant families with priority given to the
larger ones, and would promote agricultural cooperatives for communal use of
expensive equipment, freezing plants and unified professional technical
management of farming and cattle raising. Finally, it would provide resources,
equipment, protection and useful guidance to the peasants.
A
revolutionary government would solve the housing problem by cutting all rents
in half, by providing tax exemptions on homes inhabited by the owners; by
tripling taxes on rented homes; by tearing down hovels and replacing them with
modern apartment buildings; and by financing housing all over the island on a
scale heretofore unheard of, with the criterion that, just as each rural family
should possess its own tract of land, each city family should own its own house
or apartment. There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand
years will have gone by and the problem will remain the same. On the other
hand, today possibilities of taking electricity to the most isolated areas on
the island are greater than ever. The use of nuclear energy in this field is
now a reality and will greatly reduce the cost of producing electricity.
With these three
projects and reforms, the problem of unemployment would automatically disappear
and the task of improving public health and fighting against disease would
become much less difficult.
Finally, a
revolutionary government would undertake the integral reform of the educational
system, bringing it into line with the projects just mentioned with the idea of
educating those generations which will have the
privilege of living in a happier land. Do not forget the words of the Apostle:
'A grave mistake is being made in Latin America: in
countries that live almost completely from the produce of the land, men are
being educated exclusively for urban life and are not trained for farm life.'
'The happiest country is the one which has best educated its sons, both in the
instruction of thought and the direction of their feelings.' 'An educated
country will always be strong and free.'
The soul of
education, however, is the teacher, and in Cuba the
teaching profession is miserably underpaid. Despite this, no one is more
dedicated than the Cuban teacher. Who among us has not
learned his three Rs in the little public
schoolhouse? It is time we stopped paying pittances to these young men and
women who are entrusted with the sacred task of
teaching our youth. No teacher should earn less than 200 pesos,
no secondary teacher should make less than 350 pesos, if they are to devote
themselves exclusively to their high calling without suffering want. What is
more, all rural teachers should have free use of the various systems of
transportation; and, at least once every five years, all teachers should enjoy
a sabbatical leave of six months with pay so they may attend special refresher
courses at home or abroad to keep abreast of the latest developments in their
field. In this way, the curriculum and the teaching system can
be easily improved. Where will the money be found
for all this? When there is an end to the embezzlement of
government funds, when public officials stop taking graft from the large
companies that owe taxes to the State, when the enormous resources of the
country are brought into full use, when we no longer buy tanks, bombers and
guns for this country (which has no frontiers to defend and where these
instruments of war, now being purchased, are used against the people), when
there is more interest in educating the people than in killing them there will
be more than enough money.
Cuba could easily
provide for a population three times as great as it has now, so there is no excuse
for the abject poverty of a single one of its present inhabitants. The markets
should be overflowing with produce, pantries should be full, all
hands should be working. This is not an inconceivable
thought. What is inconceivable is that anyone should go to bed hungry while
there is a single inch of unproductive land; that children should die for lack
of medical attention; what is inconceivable is that 30% of our farm people
cannot write their names and that 99% of them know nothing of Cuba's history. What
is inconceivable is that the majority of our rural people are now living in
worse circumstances than the Indians Columbus discovered in the fairest land
that human eyes had ever seen.
To
those who would call me a dreamer, I quote the words of Martí:
'A true man does not seek the path where advantage lies, but rather the path
where duty lies, and this is the only practical man, whose dream of today will
be the law of tomorrow, because he who has looked back on the essential course
of history and has seen flaming and bleeding peoples seethe in the cauldron of
the ages knows that, without a single exception, the future lies on the side of
duty.'
Only when we
understand that such a high ideal inspired them can we conceive of the heroism
of the young men who fell in Santiago. The meager material means at our
disposal was all that prevented sure success. When the
soldiers were told that Prío had given us a million
pesos, they were told this in the regime's attempt to distort the most
important fact: the fact that our Movement had no link with past politicians:
that this Movement is a new Cuban generation with its own ideas, rising up
against tyranny; that this Movement is made up of young people who were barely
seven years old when Batista perpetrated the first of his crimes in 1934.
The lie about the million pesos could not have been more absurd. If, with less
than 20,000 pesos, we armed 165 men and attacked a regiment and a squadron,
then with a million pesos we could have armed 8,000 men, to attack 50 regiments
and 50 squadrons - and Ugalde Carrillo still would
not have found out until Sunday, July 26th, at 5:15
a.m. I assure you that for every man who fought, twenty well
trained men were unable to fight for lack of weapons. When these young
men marched along the streets of Havana in the student demonstration of the Martí Centennial, they solidly packed six blocks. If even
200 more men had been able to fight, or we had possessed 20 more hand grenades,
perhaps this Honorable Court would have been spared
all this inconvenience.
The politicians spend
millions buying off consciences, whereas a handful of Cubans who wanted to save
their country's honor had to face death barehanded for lack of funds. This
shows how the country, to this very day, has been governed
not by generous and dedicated men, but by political racketeers, the scum of our
public life.
With the greatest pride I tell you that in accordance with our principles we
have never asked a politician, past or present, for a penny. Our means were assembled with incomparable sacrifice. For example, Elpidio Sosa, who sold his
job and came to me one day with 300 pesos 'for the cause;' Fernando Chenard, who sold the photographic equipment with which he
earned his living; Pedro Marrero, who contributed several months' salary and
who had to be stopped from actually selling the very furniture in his house;
Oscar Alcalde, who sold his pharmaceutical
laboratory; Jesús Montané,
who gave his five years' savings, and so on with many others, each giving the
little he had.
One must have great
faith in one's country to do such a thing. The memory of these acts of idealism
bring me straight to the most bitter chapter of this defense - the price the
tyranny made them pay for wanting to free Cuba from oppression and injustice.
Beloved
corpses, you that once
Were the hope of my Homeland,
Cast upon my forehead
The dust of your decaying bones!
Touch my heart with your cold hands!
Groan at my ears!
Each of my moans will
Turn into the tears of one more tyrant!
Gather around me! Roam about,
That my soul may receive your spirits
And give me the horror of the tombs
For tears are not enough
When one lives in infamous bondage!
Multiply the crimes
of November 27th, 1871 by ten and you will have the
monstrous and repulsive crimes of July 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th, 1953, in the
province of Oriente. These are
still fresh in our memory, but someday when years have passed, when the skies
of the nation have cleared once more, when tempers have calmed and fear no
longer torments our spirits, then we will begin to see the magnitude of this
massacre in all its shocking dimension, and future generations will be struck
with horror when they look back on these acts of barbarity unprecedented in our
history. But I do not want to become enraged. I
need clearness of mind and peace in my heavy heart in order to relate the facts
as simply as possible, in no sense dramatizing them, but just as they took
place. As a Cuban I am ashamed that heartless men
should have perpetrated such unthinkable crimes, dishonoring our nation before
the rest of the world.
The tyrant Batista
was never a man of scruples. He has never hesitated to tell his people the most
outrageous lies. To justify his treacherous coup of March 10th,
he concocted stories about a fictitious uprising in the Army, supposedly
scheduled to take place in April, and which he 'wanted to avert so that the
Republic might not be drenched in blood.' A ridiculous little tale nobody ever
believed! And when he himself did want to drench the Republic in blood, when he
wanted to smother in terror and torture the just rebellion of Cuba's youth, who
were not willing to be his slaves, then he contrived still more fantastic lies.
How little respect one must have for a people when one tries to deceive them so
miserably! On the very day of my arrest I publicly
assumed the responsibility for our armed movement of July 26th. If there had
been an iota of truth in even one of the many statements the Dictator made
against our fighters in his speech of July 27th, it would
have been enough to undermine the moral impact of my case. Why, then, was I not
brought to trial? Why were medical certificates forged?
Why did they violate all procedural laws and ignore so scandalously the rulings
of the Court? Why were so many things done, things
never before seen in a Court of Law, in order to prevent my appearance at all
costs? In contrast, I could not begin to tell you all I went through in order
to appear. I asked the Court to bring me to trial in accordance with all
established principles, and I denounced the underhanded schemes that were afoot
to prevent it. I wanted to argue with them face to face. But
they did not wish to face me. Who was afraid of the truth, and who was not?
The statements made
by the Dictator at Camp Columbia might be considered amusing if they were not
so drenched in blood. He claimed we were a group of hirelings and that there
were many foreigners among us. He said that the central part of our plan was an
attempt to kill him - him, always him. As if the men who attacked the Moncada Barracks could not have killed
him and twenty like him if they had approved of such methods. He stated that our attack had been planned by ex-President Prío,
and that it had been financed with Prío's money. It has been irrefutably proven that no link whatsoever existed
between our Movement and the last regime. He claimed that we had machine guns
and hand-grenades. Yet the military technicians have stated right here in this
Court that we only had one machine gun and not a single hand-grenade. He said
that we had beheaded the sentries. Yet death certificates and medical reports
of all the Army's casualties show not one death caused by the blade. But above all and most important, he said that we stabbed
patients at the Military Hospital. Yet the doctors from that hospital - Army
doctors - have testified that we never even occupied the building, that no
patient was either wounded or killed by us, and that the hospital lost only one
employee, a janitor, who imprudently stuck his head out of an open window.
Whenever a Chief of
State, or anyone pretending to be one, makes declarations to the nation, he
speaks not just to hear the sound of his own voice. He always has some specific
purpose and expects some specific reaction, or has a given intention. Since our
military defeat had already taken place, insofar as we no longer represented
any actual threat to the dictatorship, why did they slander us like that? If it is still not clear that this was a blood-drenched speech,
that it was simply an attempt to justify the crimes that they had been
perpetrating since the night before and that they were going to continue to
perpetrate, then, let figures speak for me: On July 27th, in his speech from
the military headquarters, Batista said that the assailants suffered 32 dead.
By the end of the week the number of dead had risen to
more than 80 men. In what battles, where, in what clashes, did these young men
die? Before Batista spoke, more than 25 prisoners had been
murdered. After Batista spoke fifty more were
massacred.
What a great sense of
honor those modest Army technicians and professionals had, who did not distort
the facts before the Court, but gave their reports adhering to the strictest
truth! These surely are soldiers who honor their uniform;
these, surely, are men! Neither a real soldier nor a true man can degrade his
code of honor with lies and crime. I know that many of the soldiers are
indignant at the barbaric assassinations perpetrated. I know that they feel
repugnance and shame at the smell of homicidal blood that impregnates every
stone of Moncada Barracks.
Now that he has been contradicted by men of honor within his own
Army, I defy the dictator to repeat his vile slander against us. I defy him to
try to justify before the Cuban people his July 27th
speech. Let him not remain silent. Let him speak. Let him say who the assassins
are, who the ruthless, the inhumane. Let him tell us if the medals of honor, which he went to pin on the breasts of his heroes of
that massacre, were rewards for the hideous crimes they had committed. Let him, from this very moment, assume his
responsibility before history. Let him not pretend, at
a later date, that the soldiers were acting without direct orders from
him! Let him offer the nation an explanation for those
70 murders. The bloodshed was great. The nation needs an explanation. The
nation seeks it. The nation demands it.
It is common
knowledge that in 1933, at the end of the battle at the National Hotel, some
officers were murdered after they surrendered. Bohemia
Magazine protested energetically. It is also known
that after the surrender of Fort Atarés the
besiegers' machine guns cut down a row of prisoners. And
that one soldier, after asking who Blas Hernández was, blasted him with a
bullet directly in the face, and for this cowardly act was promoted to the rank
of officer. It is well-known in Cuban history that
assassination of prisoners was fatally linked with Batista's name. How naive we
were not to foresee this! However, unjustifiable as those killings of 1933
were, they took place in a matter of minutes, in no more time than it took for
a round of machine gun fire. What is more, they took place while tempers were
still on edge.
This was not the case
in Santiago de Cuba. Here all forms of ferocious outrages and cruelty were deliberately overdone. Our men were
killed not in the course of a minute, an hour or a day. Throughout an
entire week the blows and tortures continued, men were thrown
from rooftops and shot. All methods of extermination were incessantly
practiced by well-skilled artisans of crime. Moncada
Barracks were turned into a workshop of torture and
death. Some shameful individuals turned their uniforms into butcher's aprons.
The walls were splattered with blood. The bullets
imbedded in the walls were encrusted with singed bits
of skin, brains and human hair, the grisly reminders of rifle shots fired full
in the face. The grass around the barracks was dark and sticky with human
blood. The criminal hands that are guiding the destiny of Cuba had written for
the prisoners at the entrance to that den of death the very inscription of
Hell: 'Forsake all hope.'
They did not even
attempt to cover appearances. They did not bother in the least to conceal what
they were doing. They thought they had deceived the people with their lies and
they ended up deceiving themselves. They felt themselves lords and masters of
the universe, with power over life and death. So the
fear they had experienced upon our attack at daybreak was dissipated in a feast
of corpses, in a drunken orgy of blood.
Chronicles
of our history, down through four and a half centuries, tell us of many acts of
cruelty: the slaughter of defenseless Indians by the Spaniards; the plundering
and atrocities of pirates along the coast; the barbarities of the Spanish
soldiers during our War of Independence; the shooting of prisoners of the Cuban
Army by the forces of Weyler; the horrors of the
Machado regime, and so on through the bloody crimes of March, 1935. But
never has such a sad and bloody page been written in numbers of victims and in
the viciousness of the victimizers, as in Santiago de Cuba. Only one man in all
these centuries has stained with blood two separate periods of our history and
has dug his claws into the flesh of two generations of Cubans. To release this
river of blood, he waited for the Centennial of the Apostle, just after the
fiftieth anniversary of the Republic, whose people fought for freedom, human
rights and happiness at the cost of so many lives. Even greater is his crime
and even more condemnable because the man who perpetrated it had already, for
eleven long years, lorded over his people - this people who, by such
deep-rooted sentiment and tradition, loves freedom and repudiates evil. This
man has furthermore never been sincere, loyal, honest or chivalrous for a
single minute of his public life.
He was not content
with the treachery of January, 1934, the crimes of
March, 1935 and the forty million dollar fortune that crowned his first regime.
He had to add the treason of March, 1952, the crimes
of July, 1953, and all the millions that only time will reveal. Dante divided
his Inferno into nine circles. He put criminals in the seventh, thieves in the
eighth and traitors in the ninth. Difficult dilemma the devils will be faced with, when they try to find an adequate spot
for this man's soul - if this man has a soul. The man who instigated the
atrocious acts in Santiago de Cuba doesn't even have a
heart.
I know many details
of the way in which these crimes were carried out,
from the lips of some of the soldiers who, filled with shame, told me of the
scenes they had witnessed.
When the fighting was
over, the soldiers descended like savage beasts on Santiago de Cuba and they
took the first fury of their frustrations out against the defenseless
population. In the middle of a street, and far from the site of the fighting,
they shot through the chest an innocent child who was playing by his doorstep.
When the father approached to pick him up, they shot him through his head. Without
a word they shot 'Niño' Cala,
who was on his way home with a loaf of bread in his hands. It would be an
endless task to relate all the crimes and outrages perpetrated against the
civilian population. And if the Army dealt thus with
those who had had no part at all in the action, you can imagine the terrible
fate of the prisoners who had taken part or who were believed to have taken
part. Just as, in this trial, they accused many people not at all involved in
our attack, they also killed many prisoners who had no
involvement whatsoever. The latter are not included in the statistics of
victims released by the regime; those statistics refer exclusively to our men. Some day the total number of victims will
be known.
The first prisoner
killed has our doctor, Mario Muñoz, who bore no arms, wore no uniform, and was
dressed in the white smock of a physician. He was a generous and competent man
who would have given the same devoted care to the wounded adversary as to a
friend. On the road from the Civilian Hospital to the barracks
they shot him in the back and left him lying there, face down in a pool of
blood. But the mass murder of prisoners did not begin
until after three o'clock in the afternoon. Until this hour
they awaited orders. Then General Martín Díaz Tamayo
arrived from Havana and brought specific instructions from a meeting he had
attended with Batista, along with the head of the Army, the head of the
Military Intelligence, and others. He said: 'It is
humiliating and dishonorable for the Army to have lost three times as many men
in combat as the insurgents did. Ten prisoners must be killed for each dead
soldier.' This was the order!
In every society there are men of base instincts. The sadists,
brutes, conveyors of all the ancestral atavisms go about in the guise of human
beings, but they are monsters, only more or less restrained by discipline and
social habit. If they are offered a drink from a river
of blood, they will not be satisfied until they drink the river dry. All these
men needed was the order. At their hands the best and
noblest Cubans perished: the most valiant, the most honest, the most
idealistic. The tyrant called them mercenaries. There they were dying as heroes
at the hands of men who collect a salary from the Republic and who, with the
arms the Republic gave them to defend her, serve the interests of a clique and
murder her best citizens.
Throughout their
torturing of our comrades, the Army offered them the chance to save their lives
by betraying their ideology and falsely declaring that Prío
had given them money. When they indignantly rejected that proposition, the Army
continued with its horrible tortures. They crushed their testicles and they
tore out their eyes. But no one yielded. No complaint was heard nor a favor asked. Even when they had been deprived of their vital organs, our men were still
a thousand times more men than all their tormentors together. Photographs,
which do not lie, show the bodies torn to pieces, Other
methods were used. Frustrated by the valor of the men, they tried to break the
spirit of our women. With a bleeding eye in their hands, a sergeant and several
other men went to the cell where our comrades Melba Hernández and Haydée Santamaría were held. Addressing the latter, and showing her the eye,
they said: 'This eye belonged to your brother. If you
will not tell us what he refused to say, we will tear out the other.' She, who loved her valiant brother above all things, replied full
of dignity: 'If you tore out an eye and he did not speak, much less will I.'
Later they came back and burned their arms with lit cigarettes until at last,
filled with spite, they told the young Haydée Santamaría: 'You no longer have a fiancé because we have
killed him too.' But still imperturbable, she
answered: 'He is not dead, because to die for one's country is to live
forever.' Never had the heroism and the dignity of Cuban womanhood reached such
heights.
There wasn't even any respect for the combat wounded in the
various city hospitals. There they were hunted down as
prey pursued by vultures. In the Centro Gallego
they broke into the operating room at the very moment when two of our
critically wounded were receiving blood transfusions. They pulled them off the
tables and, as the wounded could no longer stand, they were
dragged down to the first floor where they arrived as corpses.
They could not do the
same in the Spanish Clinic, where Gustavo Arcos and José Ponce were patients,
because they were prevented by Dr. Posada who bravely told
them they could enter only over his dead body.
Air and camphor were injected into the veins of Pedro Miret,
Abelardo Crespo and Fidel Labrador, in an attempt to
kill them at the Military Hospital. They owe their lives to Captain Tamayo, an
Army doctor and true soldier of honor who, pistol in hand,
wrenched them out of the hands of their merciless captors and transferred them
to the Civilian Hospital. These five young men were the only ones of our
wounded who survived.
In the early morning
hours, groups of our men were removed from the barracks and
taken in automobiles to Siboney, La Maya, Songo, and elsewhere. Then they were led out - tied,
gagged, already disfigured by the torture - and were
murdered in isolated spots. They are recorded as
having died in combat against the Army. This went on for several days, and few
of the captured prisoners survived. Many were compelled to dig their own
graves. One of our men, while he was digging, wheeled around and slashed the
face of one of his assassins with his pick. Others were even buried alive, their
hands tied behind their backs. Many solitary spots became the graveyards of the
brave. On the Army target range alone, five of our men lie buried. Some day these men will be disinterred.
Then they will be carried on the shoulders of the
people to a place beside the tomb of Martí, and their
liberated land will surely erect a monument to honor the memory of the Martyrs
of the Centennial.
The last youth they
murdered in the surroundings of Santiago de Cuba was Marcos Martí.
He was captured with our comrade Ciro Redondo in a
cave at Siboney on the morning of Thursday the 30th. These two men were led down
the road, with their arms raised, and the soldiers shot Marcos Martí in the back. After he had fallen to the ground, they
riddled him with bullets. Redondo was taken to the
camp. When Major Pérez Chaumont saw him he exclaimed:
'And this one? Why have you brought him to me?' The Court heard this incident
from Redondo himself, the young man who survived
thanks to what Pérez Chaumont called 'the soldiers' stupidity.'
It was the same
throughout the province. Ten days after July 26th, a
newspaper in this city printed the news that two young men had been found
hanged on the road from Manzanillo to Bayamo. Later the bodies were identified
as those of Hugo Camejo and Pedro Vélez.
Another extraordinary incident took place there: There were three victims -
they had been dragged from Manzanillo
Barracks at two that morning. At a certain spot on the highway
they were taken out, beaten unconscious, and strangled with a rope. But after they had been left for dead, one of them, Andrés García, regained consciousness and hid in a farmer's house.
Thanks to this the Court learned the details of this
crime too. Of all our men taken prisoner in the Bayamo
area, this is the only survivor.
Near the Cauto River, in a spot known as Barrancas,
at the bottom of a pit, lie the bodies of Raúl de Aguiar, Armando del Valle and
Andrés Valdés. They were murdered at midnight on the road
between Alto Cedro and Palma Soriano by Sergeant
Montes de Oca - in charge of the military post
at Miranda Barracks - Corporal Maceo, and the
Lieutenant in charge of Alta Cedro where the murdered
men were captured. In the annals of crime, Sergeant Eulalio
Gonzáles - better known as the 'Tiger' of Moncada Barracks - deserves a special place. Later this man
didn't have the slightest qualms in bragging about his
unspeakable deeds. It was he who with his own hands
murdered our comrade Abel Santamaría. But that didn't satisfy him. One day as he was coming back
from the Puerto Boniato Prison, where he raises pedigree fighting cocks in the back courtyard, he got on a
bus on which Abel's mother was also traveling. When this monster realized who
she was he began to brag about his grisly deeds, and -
in a loud voice so that the woman dressed in mourning could hear him - he said:
'Yes, I have gouged many eyes out and I expect to continue gouging them out.'
The unprecedented moral degradation our nation is suffering is
expressed beyond the power of words in that mother's sobs of grief
before the cowardly insolence of the very man who murdered her son. When these
mothers went to Moncada Barracks to ask about their
sons, it was with incredible cynicism and sadism that they were told: 'Surely madam, you may see him at the Santa Ifigenia Hotel where we have put him up for you.' Either
Cuba is not Cuba, or the men responsible for these acts will have to face their
reckoning one day. Heartless men, they threw crude insults at the people who
bared their heads in reverence as the corpses of the revolutionaries were carried by.
There were so many
victims that the government still has not dared make public the complete list.
They know their figures are false. They have all the victims' names, because
prior to every murder they recorded all the vital statistics. The whole long process of identification through the National
Identification Bureau was a huge farce, and there are families still waiting
for word of their sons' fate. Why has this not been cleared
up, after three months?
I wish to state for
the record here that all the victims' pockets were picked to the very last
penny and that all their personal effects, rings and watches, were stripped
from their bodies and are brazenly being worn today by their assassins.
Honorable Judges, a great
deal of what I have just related you already know, from the testimony of many
of my comrades. But please note that many key
witnesses have been barred from this trial, although they were permitted to
attend the sessions of the previous trial. For example, I want to point out
that the nurses of the Civilian Hospital are absent, even though they work in
the same place where this hearing is being held. They were kept from this Court so that, under my questioning,
they would not be able to testify that - besides Dr. Mario Muñoz - twenty more
of our men were captured alive. The regime fears that from the questioning of
these witnesses some extremely dangerous testimony could find its way into the
official transcript.
But Major Pérez Chaumont did
appear here and he could not elude my questioning. What we learned from this
man, a 'hero' who fought only against unarmed and handcuffed men, gives us an
idea of what could have been learned at the Courthouse if I had not been
isolated from the proceedings. I asked him how many of our men had died in his
celebrated skirmishes at Siboney. He hesitated. I
insisted and he finally said twenty-one. Since I knew such skirmishes had never
taken place, I asked him how many of our men had been wounded.
He answered: 'None. All of them were killed.' It was
then that I asked him, in astonishment, if the soldiers were using nuclear
weapons. Of course, where men are shot point blank,
there are no wounded. Then I asked him how many casualties the Army had
sustained. He replied that two of his men had been wounded.
Finally I asked him if either of these men had died,
and he said no. I waited. Later, all of the wounded Army soldiers filed by and
it was discovered that none of them had been wounded
at Siboney. This same Major
Pérez Chaumont who hardly flinched at having assassinated twenty-one
defenseless young men has built a palatial home in Ciudamar
Beach. It's worth more than 100,000 pesos - his
savings after only a few months under Batista's new rule. And
if this is the savings of a Major, imagine how much generals have saved!
Honorable Judges:
Where are our men who were captured July 26th, 27th,
28th and 29th? It is known that more than sixty men
were captured in the area of Santiago de Cuba. Only three of them and the two
women have been brought before the Court. The rest of
the accused were seized later. Where are our wounded?
Only five of them are alive; the rest were murdered. These figures are
irrefutable. On the other hand, twenty of the soldiers who we held prisoner have been presented here and they themselves have declared
that they received not even one offensive word from us. Thirty soldiers who were wounded, many in the street fighting, also appeared
before you. Not one was killed by us. If the Army
suffered losses of nineteen dead and thirty wounded, how is it possible that we
should have had eighty dead and only five wounded? Who ever witnessed a battle
with 21 dead and no wounded, like these famous battles described by Pérez
Chaumont?
We have here the
casualty lists from the bitter fighting sustained by the invasion troops in the
war of 1895, both in battles where the Cuban army was defeated and where it was
victorious. The battle of Los Indios in Las Villas:
12 wounded, none dead. The battle of Mal Tiempo: 4 dead, 23 wounded. Calimete: 16 dead, 64 wounded. La Palma: 39 dead, 88
wounded. Cacarajícara: 5
dead, 13 wounded. Descanso: 4 dead, 45 wounded. San
Gabriel de Lombillo: 2 dead, 18 wounded ... In all
these battles the number of wounded is twice, three times and up to ten times
the number of dead, although in those days there were no modern medical
techniques by which the percentage of deaths could be reduced. How then, now,
can we explain the enormous proportion of sixteen deaths per wounded man, if
not by the government's slaughter of the wounded in the very hospitals, and by
the assassination of the other helpless prisoners they
had taken? The figures are irrefutable.
'It is shameful and a
dishonor to the Army to have lost three times as many men in combat as those lost
by the insurgents; we must kill ten prisoners for each dead soldier.' This is
the concept of honor held by the petty corporals who became generals on March 10th. This is the code of honor they wish
to impose on the national Army. A false honor, a feigned honor, an
apparent honor based on lies, hypocrisy and crime; a mask of honor molded by
those assassins with blood. Who told them that to die fighting is dishonorable?
Who told them the honor of an army consists of murdering the wounded and
prisoners of war?
In war
time, armies that murder prisoners have always earned the contempt and
abomination of the entire world. Such cowardice has no justification, even in a
case where national territory is invaded by foreign
troops. In the words of a South American liberator: 'Not even the strictest
military obedience may turn a soldier's sword into that of an executioner.' The
honorable soldier does not kill the helpless prisoner after the fight, but
rather, respects him. He does not finish off a wounded man, but rather, helps
him. He stands in the way of crime and if he cannot prevent it, he acts as did
that Spanish captain who, upon hearing the shots of the firing squad that
murdered Cuban students, indignantly broke his sword in two and refused to
continue serving in that Army.
The soldiers who
murdered their prisoners were not worthy of the soldiers who died. I saw many
soldiers fight with courage - for example, those in the patrols that fired
their machine guns against us in almost hand-to-hand combat, or that sergeant
who, defying death, rang the alarm to mobilize the barracks. Some of them live.
I am glad. Others are dead. They believed they were doing their duty and in my eyes this makes them worthy of admiration and respect. I
deplore only the fact that valiant men should fall for an evil cause. When Cuba
is freed, we should respect, shelter and aid the wives
and children of those courageous soldiers who perished fighting against us.
They are not to blame for Cuba's miseries. They too are victims of this nefarious
situation.
But what honor was earned by the
soldiers who died in battle was lost by the generals who ordered prisoners to
be killed after they surrendered. Men who became generals
overnight, without ever having fired a shot; men who bought their stars with
high treason against their country; men who ordered the execution of prisoners
taken in battles in which they didn't even participate: these are the generals
of the 10th of March - generals who would not even have been fit to drive the
mules that carried the equipment in Antonio Maceo's
army.
The Army suffered
three times as many casualties as we did. That was because our men were
expertly trained, as the Army men themselves have admitted; and
also because we had prepared adequate tactical measures, another fact
recognized by the Army. The Army did not perform brilliantly; despite the
millions spent on espionage by the Military Intelligence Agency, they were totally taken by surprise, and their hand grenades
failed to explode because they were obsolete. And the
Army owes all this to generals like Martín Díaz
Tamayo and colonels like Ugalde Carrillo and Albert
del Río Chaviano. We were not 17 traitors infiltrated
into the ranks of the Army, as was the case on March 10th.
Instead, we were 165 men who had traveled the length and breadth of Cuba to
look death boldly in the face. If the Army leaders had a notion of real
military honor they would have resigned their commands
rather than trying to wash away their shame and incompetence in the blood of
their prisoners.
To kill helpless
prisoners and then declare that they died in battle: that is the military
capacity of the generals of March 10th. That was the way the worst butchers of Valeriano
Weyler behaved in the cruelest years of our
War of Independence. The Chronicles of War include the following story: 'On
February 23rd, officer Baldomero
Acosta entered Punta Brava with some cavalry when, from the opposite road, a
squad of the Pizarro regiment approached, led by a sergeant known in those
parts as Barriguilla (Pot Belly). The insurgents
exchanged a few shots with Pizarro's men, then
withdrew by the trail that leads from Punta Brava to the village of Guatao. Followed by another battalion of
volunteers from Marianao, and a company of troops
from the Public Order Corps, who were led by Captain Calvo,
Pizarro's squad of 50 men marched on Guatao ... As
soon as their first forces entered the village they commenced their massacre -
killing twelve of the peaceful inhabitants ... The troops led by Captain Calvo speedily rounded up all the civilians that were
running about the village, tied them up and took them as prisoners of war to
Havana ... Not yet satisfied with their outrages, on the outskirts of Guatao they carried out another barbaric action, killing
one of the prisoners and horribly wounding the rest. The Marquis of Cervera, a cowardly and palatine soldier, informed Weyler of the pyrrhic victory of the Spanish soldiers; but
Major Zugasti, a man of principles, denounced the
incident to the government and officially called the murders perpetrated by the
criminal Captain Calvo and Sergeant Barriguilla an assassination of peaceful citizens.
'Weyler's
intervention in this horrible incident and his delight upon learning the
details of the massacre may be palpably deduced from the official dispatch that
he sent to the Ministry of War concerning these cruelties. "Small column
organized by commander Marianao with forces from
garrison, volunteers and firemen led by Captain Calvo,
fought and destroyed bands of Villanueva and Baldomero
Acosta near Punta Brava, killing twenty of theirs, who were handed over to
Mayor of Guatao for burial, and taking fifteen
prisoners, one of them wounded, we assume there are many wounded among them.
One of ours suffered critical wounds, some suffered light bruises and wounds. Weyler."'
What is the
difference between Weyler's dispatch and that of
Colonel Chaviano detailing the victories of Major
Pérez Chaumont? Only that Weyler mentions one wounded
soldier in his ranks. Chaviano mentions two. Weyler speaks of one wounded man and fifteen prisoners in
the enemy's ranks. Chaviano records neither wounded
men nor prisoners.
Just as I admire the
courage of the soldiers who died bravely, I also admire the officers who bore
themselves with dignity and did not drench their hands in this blood. Many of
the survivors owe their lives to the commendable conduct of officers like
Lieutenant Sarría, Lieutenant Campa,
Captain Tamayo and others, who were true gentlemen in
their treatment of the prisoners. If men like these had not partially saved the
name of the Armed Forces, it would be more honorable
today to wear a dishrag than to wear an Army uniform.
For my dead comrades,
I claim no vengeance. Since their lives were priceless, the murderers could not
pay for them even with their own lives. It is not by blood
that we may redeem the lives of those who died for their country. The
happiness of their people is the only tribute worthy of them.
What is more, my
comrades are neither dead nor forgotten; they live today, more than ever, and
their murderers will view with dismay the victorious spirit of their ideas rise
from their corpses. Let the Apostle speak for me: 'There is a limit to the
tears we can shed at the graveside of the dead. Such limit is the infinite love
for the homeland and its glory, a love that never falters, loses hope nor grows
dim. For the graves of the martyrs are the highest altars of our reverence.'
... When
one dies
In the arms of a grateful country
Agony ends, prison chains break - and
At last, with death, life begins!
Up to this point I have confined myself almost exclusively to relating
events. Since I am well aware that I am before a Court convened to judge me, I
will now demonstrate that all legal right was on our side alone, and that the
verdict imposed on my comrades - the verdict now being sought
against me - has no justification in reason, in social morality or in terms of
true justice.
I wish to be duly
respectful to the Honorable Judges, and I am grateful that you find in the
frankness of my plea no animosity towards you. My argument is
meant simply to demonstrate what a false and erroneous position the
Judicial Power has adopted in the present situation. To a certain extent, each
Court is nothing more than a cog in the wheel of the system, and therefore must
move along the course determined by the vehicle, although this by no means
justifies any individual acting against his principles. I know very well that
the oligarchy bears most of the blame. The oligarchy, without dignified
protest, abjectly yielded to the dictates of the usurper and betrayed their
country by renouncing the autonomy of the Judicial Power. Men who constitute
noble exceptions have attempted to mend the system's mangled honor with their
individual decisions. But the gestures of this
minority have been of little consequence, drowned as they were by the
obsequious and fawning majority. This fatalism, however, will not stop me from
speaking the truth that supports my cause. My appearance before this Court may
be a pure farce in order to give a semblance of legality to arbitrary
decisions, but I am determined to wrench apart with a firm hand the infamous
veil that hides so much shamelessness. It is curious: the very men who have
brought me here to be judged and condemned have never
heeded a single decision of this Court.
Since this trial may,
as you said, be the most important trial since we achieved our national
sovereignty, what I say here will perhaps be lost in the silence
which the dictatorship has tried to impose on me, but posterity will
often turn its eyes to what you do here. Remember that today you are judging an
accused man, but that you yourselves will be judged
not once, but many times, as often as these days are submitted to scrutiny in
the future. What I say here will be then repeated many times, not because it
comes from my lips, but because the problem of justice is eternal and the
people have a deep sense of justice above and beyond
the hairsplitting of jurisprudence. The people wield simple but implacable
logic, in conflict with all that is absurd and contradictory. Furthermore, if
there is in this world a people that utterly abhors
favoritism and inequality, it is the Cuban people. To them, justice
is symbolized by a maiden with a scale and a sword in her hands. Should
she cower before one group and furiously wield that sword against another
group, then to the people of Cuba the maiden of justice will seem nothing more
than a prostitute brandishing a dagger. My logic is the simple logic of the
people.
Let me tell you a
story: Once upon a time there was a Republic. It had
its Constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a President, a Congress and Courts of
Law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom.
The people were not satisfied with the government officials at that time, but
they had the power to elect new officials and only a few days remained before
they would do so. Public opinion was respected and heeded and all problems of
common interest were freely discussed. There were
political parties, radio and television debates and forums
and public meetings. The whole nation pulsated with enthusiasm. This people had
suffered greatly and although it was unhappy, it longed to be happy and had a
right to be happy. It had been deceived many times and
it looked upon the past with real horror. This country innocently believed that
such a past could not return; the people were proud of their love of freedom
and they carried their heads high in the conviction that liberty would be respected as a sacred right. They felt confident
that no one would dare commit the crime of violating their democratic
institutions. They wanted a change for the better, aspired to progress; and
they saw all this at hand. All their hope was in the future.
Poor country! One
morning the citizens woke up dismayed; under the cover of
night, while the people slept, the ghosts of the past had conspired and has
seized the citizenry by its hands, its feet, and its neck. That grip,
those claws were familiar: those jaws, those death-dealing scythes, those
boots. No; it was no nightmare; it was a sad and terrible reality: a man named Fulgencio Batista had just perpetrated the appalling crime
that no one had expected.
Then a humble citizen
of that people, a citizen who wished to believe in the laws of the Republic, in
the integrity of its judges, whom he had seen vent their fury against the
underprivileged, searched through a Social Defense Code to see what punishment
society prescribed for the author of such a coup, and he discovered the
following:
'Whosoever
shall perpetrate any deed destined through violent means directly to change in
whole or in part the Constitution of the State or the form of the established
government shall incur a sentence of six to ten years imprisonment.
'A
sentence of three to ten years imprisonment will be imposed on the author of an
act directed to promote an armed uprising against the Constitutional Powers of
the State. The sentence increases from five to twenty years if the insurrection
is carried out.
'Whosoever
shall perpetrate an act with the specific purpose of preventing, in whole or in
part, even temporarily, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the
President, or the Supreme Court from exercising their constitutional functions
will incur a sentence of from six to ten years imprisonment.
'Whosoever
shall attempt to impede or tamper with the normal course of general elections,
will incur a sentence of from four to eight years imprisonment.
'Whosoever
shall introduce, publish, propagate or try to enforce in Cuba instructions,
orders or decrees that tend ... to promote the unobservance
of laws in force, will incur a sentence of from two to six years imprisonment.
'Whosoever
shall assume command of troops, posts, fortresses, military camps, towns,
warships, or military aircraft, without the authority to do so, or without
express government orders, will incur a sentence of from five to ten years
imprisonment.
'A
similar sentence will be passed upon anyone who usurps the exercise of a
function held by the Constitution as properly belonging to the powers of
State.'
Without telling
anyone, Code in one hand and a deposition in the other, that citizen went to
the old city building, that old building which housed the Court competent and
under obligation to bring cause against and punish those responsible for this
deed. He presented a writ denouncing the crimes and asking that Fulgencio Batista and his seventeen accomplices be sentenced to 108 years in prison as decreed by the Social
Defense Code; considering also aggravating circumstances of secondary offense
treachery, and acting under cover of night.
Days and months
passed. What a disappointment! The accused remained unmolested: he strode up
and down the country like a great lord and was called
Honorable Sir and General: he removed and replaced judges at will. The very day
the Courts opened, the criminal occupied the seat of honor in the midst of our
august and venerable patriarchs of justice.
Once more the days
and the months rolled by, the people wearied of mockery and abuses. There is a
limit to tolerance! The struggle began against this man who was disregarding
the law, who had usurped power by the use of violence against the will of the
people, who was guilty of aggression against the established order, had
tortured, murdered, imprisoned and prosecuted those who had taken up the
struggle to defend the law and to restore freedom to the people.
Honorable Judges: I
am that humble citizen who one day demanded in vain that the Courts punish the
power-hungry men who had violated the law and torn our institutions to shreds.
Now that it is I who am accused for attempting to overthrow this illegal regime
and to restore the legitimate Constitution of the Republic, I am held
incommunicado for 76 days and denied the right to speak to anyone, even to my
son; between two heavy machine guns I am led through
the city. I am transferred to this hospital to be
tried secretly with the greatest severity; and the Prosecutor with the Code in
his hand solemnly demands that I be sentenced to 26 years in prison.
You will answer that
on the former occasion the Courts failed to act because force prevented them
from doing so. Well then, confess, this time force will compel you to condemn
me. The first time you were unable to punish the guilty;
now you will be compelled to punish the innocent. The maiden of justice twice
raped.
And so much talk to justify the
unjustifiable, to explain the inexplicable and to reconcile the irreconcilable!
The regime has reached the point of asserting that 'Might makes right' is the
supreme law of the land. In other words, that using tanks and soldiers to take
over the presidential palace, the national treasury, and the other government
offices, and aiming guns at the heart of the people, entitles them to govern
the people! The same argument the Nazis used when they occupied the countries
of Europe and installed their puppet governments.
I heartily believe
revolution to be the source of legal right; but the nocturnal armed assault of
March 10th could never be considered a revolution. In
everyday language, as José Ingenieros said, it is
common to give the name of revolution to small disorders promoted by a group of
dissatisfied persons in order to grab, from those in power, both the political
sinecures and the economic advantages. The usual result is no more than a
change of hands, the dividing up of jobs and benefits.
This is not the criterion of a philosopher, as it cannot be that of a cultured
man.
Leaving aside the
problem of integral changes in the social system, not even on the surface of
the public quagmire were we able to discern the slightest motion that could
lessen the rampant putrefaction. The previous regime was guilty of petty
politics, theft, pillage, and disrespect for human life; but the present regime
has increased political skullduggery five-fold, pillage ten-fold, and a
hundred-fold the lack of respect for human life.
It
was known that Barriguilla had plundered and
murdered, that he was a millionaire, that he owned in Havana a good many
apartment houses, countless stock in foreign companies, fabulous accounts in
American banks, that he agreed to divorce settlements to the tune of eighteen
million pesos, that he was a frequent guest in the most lavishly expensive
hotels for Yankee tycoons. But no one would ever think of Barriguilla as a revolutionary. Barriguilla
is that sergeant of Weyler's
who assassinated twelve Cubans in Guatao. Batista's
men murdered seventy in Santiago de Cuba. De te fabula narratur.
Four political
parties governed the country before the 10th of March:
the Auténtico, Liberal, Democratic and Republican
parties. Two days after the coup, the Republican party
gave its support to the new rulers. A year had not yet passed before the
Liberal and Democratic parties were again in power: Batista did not restore the
Constitution, did not restore civil liberties, did not restore Congress, did
not restore universal suffrage, did not restore in the
last analysis any of the uprooted democratic institutions. But
he did restore Verdeja, Guas
Inclán, Salvito García Ramos, Anaya Murillo and the top hierarchy of the
traditional government parties, the most corrupt, rapacious, reactionary and
antediluvian elements in Cuban politics. So went the 'revolution' of Barriguilla!.
Lacking even the most
elementary revolutionary content, Batista's regime represents in every respect
a 20 year regression for Cuba. Batista's regime has
exacted a high price from all of us, but primarily from the humble classes which are suffering hunger and misery. Meanwhile the
dictatorship has laid waste the nation with commotion, ineptitude and anguish,
and now engages in the most loathsome forms of ruthless politics, concocting
formula after formula to perpetuate itself in power, even if over a stack of
corpses and a sea of blood.
Batista's regime has
not set in motion a single nationwide program of betterment for the people.
Batista delivered himself into the hands of the great financial interests.
Little else could be expected from a man of his mentality - utterly
devoid as he is of ideals and of principles, and utterly lacking the
faith, confidence and support of the masses. His regime merely brought with it
a change of hands and a redistribution of the loot among a new group of
friends, relatives, accomplices and parasitic hangers-on that constitute the
political retinue of the Dictator. What great shame the people have been forced to endure so that a small group of egoists,
altogether indifferent to the needs of their homeland, may find in public life
an easy and comfortable modus vivendi.
How right Eduardo Chibás was in his last radio speech, when he said that
Batista was encouraging the return of the colonels, castor oil and the law of
the fugitive! Immediately after March 10th, Cubans
again began to witness acts of veritable vandalism which they had thought
banished forever from their nation. There was an unprecedented attack on a
cultural institution: a radio station was stormed by
the thugs of the SIM, together with the young hoodlums of the PAU, while
broadcasting the 'University of the Air' program. And
there was the case of the journalist Mario Kuchilán,
dragged from his home in the middle of the night and bestially tortured until
he was nearly unconscious. There was the murder of the student Rubén Batista
and the criminal volleys fired at a peaceful student demonstration next to the
wall where Spanish volunteers shot the medical students in 1871. And many cases such as that of Dr. García
Bárcena, where right in the courtrooms men have
coughed up blood because of the barbaric tortures practiced upon them by the
repressive security forces. I will not enumerate the hundreds of cases where
groups of citizens have been brutally clubbed - men,
women, children and the aged. All of this was being done even before July 26th. Since then, as everyone knows, even Cardinal Arteaga
himself was not spared such treatment. Everybody knows
he was a victim of repressive agents. According to the official story, he fell
prey to a 'band of thieves'. For once the regime told
the truth. For what else is this regime? ...
People have just
contemplated with horror the case of the journalist who was
kidnapped and subjected to torture by fire for twenty days. Each new
case brings forth evidence of unheard-of effrontery, of immense hypocrisy: the
cowardice of those who shirk responsibility and invariably blame the enemies of
the regime. Governmental tactics enviable only by the worst gangster mobs. Even
the Nazi criminals were never so cowardly. Hitler assumed responsibility for
the massacres of June 30, 1934, stating that for 24 hours he himself had been
the German Supreme Court; the henchmen of this dictatorship which defies all
comparison because of its baseness, maliciousness and cowardice, kidnap,
torture, murder and then loathsomely put the blame on
the adversaries of the regime. Typical tactics of Sergeant Barriguilla!
Not once in all the
cases I have mentioned, Honorable Judges, have the agents responsible for these
crimes been brought to Court to be tried for them. How
is this? Was this not to be the regime of public order, peace and respect for
human life?
I have related all
this in order to ask you now: Can this state of
affairs be called a revolution, capable of formulating law and establishing
rights? Is it or is it not legitimate to struggle against this regime? And must there not be a high degree of corruption in the
courts of law when these courts imprison citizens who try to rid the country of
so much infamy?
Cuba is suffering
from a cruel and base despotism. You are well aware that resistance to despots
is legitimate. This is a universally recognized principle and our 1940
Constitution expressly makes it a sacred right, in the second paragraph of
Article 40: 'It is legitimate to use adequate resistance to protect previously
granted individual rights.' And even if this
prerogative had not been provided by the Supreme Law of the Land, it is a
consideration without which one cannot conceive of the existence of a
democratic collectivity. Professor Infiesta, in his
book on Constitutional Law, differentiates between the political and legal
constitutions, and states: 'Sometimes the Legal Constitution includes
constitutional principles which, even without being so classified, would be
equally binding solely on the basis of the people's consent, for example, the
principle of majority rule or representation in our democracies.' The right of
insurrection in the face of tyranny is one such principle, and whether or not
it be included in the Legal Constitution, it is always binding within a
democratic society. The presentation of such a case to a high court is one of
the most interesting problems of general law. Duguit
has said in his Treatise on Constitutional Law: 'If an
insurrection fails, no court will dare to rule that this unsuccessful
insurrection was technically no conspiracy, no transgression against the
security of the State, inasmuch as, the government being tyrannical, the
intention to overthrow it was legitimate.' But please
take note: Duguit does not state, 'the court ought
not to rule.' He says, 'no court will dare to rule.' More explicitly, he means
that no court will dare, that no court will have enough courage to do so, under
a tyranny. If the court is courageous and does its duty, then yes, it will
dare.
Recently there has
been a loud controversy concerning the 1940 Constitution. The Court of Social
and Constitutional Rights ruled against it in favor of the so-called Statutes.
Nevertheless, Honorable Judges, I maintain that the 1940 Constitution is still
in force. My statement may seem absurd and extemporaneous to you. But do not be surprised. It is I who am astonished that a
court of law should have attempted to deal a death blow
to the legitimate Constitution of the Republic. Adhering strictly to facts,
truth and reason - as I have done all along - I will prove what I have just
stated. The Court of Social and Constitutional Rights was
instituted according to Article 172 of the 1940 Constitution, and the
supplementary Act of May 31, 1949. These laws, in virtue of
which the Court was created, granted it, insofar as problems of
unconstitutionality are concerned, a specific and clearly defined area of legal
competence: to rule in all matters of appeals claiming the unconstitutionality
of laws, legal decrees, resolutions, or acts that deny, diminish, restrain or
adulterate the constitutional rights and privileges or that jeopardize the
operations of State agencies. Article 194 established very clearly the
following: 'All judges and courts are under the obligation to find solutions to
conflicts between the Constitution and the existing laws in accordance with the
principle that the former shall always prevail over the latter.' Therefore,
according to the laws that created it, the Court of Social and Constitutional
Rights should always rule in favor of the Constitution. When this Court caused
the Statutes to prevail above the Constitution of the Republic, it completely
overstepped its boundaries and its established field of competence, thereby
rendering a decision which is legally null and void.
Furthermore, the decision itself is absurd, and absurdities have no validity in
law nor in fact, not even from a metaphysical point of view. No matter how
venerable a court may be, it cannot assert that circles are square or, what
amounts to the same thing, that the grotesque offspring of the April 4th
Statutes should be considered the official Constitution of a State.
The Constitution is understood to be the basic and supreme law of the nation,
to define the country's political structure, regulate the functioning of its
government agencies, and determine the limits of their activities. It must be
stable, enduring and, to a certain extent, inflexible. The Statutes fulfill
none of these qualifications. To begin with, they harbor a monstrous,
shameless, and brazen contradiction in regard to the
most vital aspect of all: the integration of the Republican structure and the
principle of national sovereignty. Article 1 reads:
'Cuba is a sovereign and independent State constituted as a democratic
Republic.' Article 2 reads: 'Sovereignty resides in
the will of the people, and all powers derive from this source.' But then comes Article 118, which reads: 'The President will
be nominated by the Cabinet.' So it is not the people
who choose the President, but rather the Cabinet. And
who chooses the Cabinet? Article 120, section 13: 'The President will be
authorized to nominate and reappoint the members of the Cabinet and to replace
them when occasion arises.' So, after all, who nominates whom? Is this not the classical old problem of the chicken and the egg
that no one has ever been able to solve?
One
day
eighteen hoodlums got together. Their plan was to assault the Republic and loot
its 350 million pesos annual budget. Behind peoples' backs and with great
treachery, they succeeded in their purpose. 'Now what do we do next?' they
wondered. One of them said to the rest: 'You name me
Prime Minister, and I'll make you generals.' When this was
done, he rounded up a group of 20 men and told them: 'I will make you my
Cabinet if you make me President.' In this way they
named each other generals, ministers and president, and then took over the treasury
and the Republic.
What is more, it was
not simply a matter of usurping sovereignty at a given moment in order to name
a Cabinet, Generals and a President. This man ascribed to himself, through
these Statutes, not only absolute control of the nation, but also the power of
life and death over every citizen - control, in fact, over the very existence
of the nation. Because of this, I maintain that the position of the Court of
Social and Constitutional Rights is not only treacherous, vile, cowardly and repugnant,
but also absurd.
The Statutes contain
an article which has not received much attention, but which gives us the key to
this situation and is the one from which we shall derive decisive conclusions.
I refer specifically to the modifying clause included in Article 257, which
reads: 'This constitutional law is open to reform by the Cabinet with a
two-thirds quorum vote.' This is where mockery reaches its climax. Not only did
they exercise sovereignty in order to impose a Constitution upon a people without
that people's consent, and to install a regime which
concentrates all power in their own hands, but also, through Article 257, they
assume the most essential attribute of sovereignty: the power to change the
Basic and Supreme Law of the Land. And they have
already changed it several times since March 10th. Yet, with the greatest gall,
they assert in Article 2 that sovereignty resides in the will of the people and
that the people are the source of all power. Since these changes may be brought
about by a vote of two-thirds of the Cabinet and the Cabinet is named by the
President, then the right to make and break Cuba is in the hands of one man, a
man who is, furthermore, the most unworthy of all the creatures ever to be born
in this land. Was this then accepted by the Court of Social
and Constitutional Rights? And is all that
derives from it valid and legal? Very well, you shall see what was accepted:
'This constitutional law is open to reform by the Cabinet with a two-thirds
quorum vote.' Such a power recognizes no limits. Under its aegis, any article,
any chapter, any section, even the whole law may be modified.
For example, Article 1, which I have just mentioned, says that Cuba is a
sovereign and independent State constituted as a democratic Republic, 'although
today it is in fact a bloody dictatorship.' Article 3 reads:
'The national boundaries include the island of Cuba, the Isle of Pines, and the
neighboring keys ...' and so on. Batista and his Cabinet under the provisions
of Article 257 can modify all these other articles. They can say that Cuba is
no longer a Republic but a hereditary monarchy and he, Batista, can anoint
himself king. He can dismember the national territory and sell a province to a
foreign country as Napoleon did with Louisiana. He may suspend the right to
life itself, and like Herod, order the decapitation of newborn children. All
these measures would be legal and you would have to incarcerate all those who
opposed them, just as you now intend to do with me. I have put forth extreme
examples to show how sad and humiliating our present situation is. To think
that all these absolute powers are in the hands of men truly capable of selling
our country along with all its citizens!
As the Court of
Social and Constitutional Rights has accepted this state of affairs, what more
are they waiting for? They may as well hang up their
judicial robes. It is a fundamental principle of general law that there can be
no constitutional status where the constitutional and legislative powers reside
in the same body. When the Cabinet makes the laws, the decrees and the rules -
and at the same time has the power to change the Constitution in a moment of
time - then I ask you: why do we need a Court of
Social and Constitutional Rights? The ruling in favor of this Statute is
irrational, inconceivable, illogical and totally
contrary to the Republican laws that you, Honorable Judges, swore to uphold.
When the Court of Social and Constitutional Rights supported Batista's Statutes
against the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land was not
abolished but rather the Court of Social and Constitutional Rights
placed itself outside the Constitution, renounced its autonomy and committed
legal suicide. May it rest in peace!
The right to rebel,
established in Article 40 of the Constitution, is still valid. Was it established to function while the Republic was
enjoying normal conditions? No. This provision is to the Constitution what a
lifeboat is to a ship at sea. The lifeboat is only launched when the ship has been torpedoed by enemies laying wait along its course.
With our Constitution betrayed and the people deprived of all their
prerogatives, there was only one way open: one right which
no power may abolish. The right to resist oppression and injustice. If any
doubt remains, there is an article of the Social Defense Code
which the Honorable Prosecutor would have done well not to forget. It
reads, and I quote: 'The appointed or elected government authorities that fail
to resist sedition with all available means will be liable to a sentence of
interdiction of from six to eight years.' The judges of our nation were under
the obligation to resist Batista's treacherous military coup of the 10th of March. It is understandable that when no one has
observed the law and when nobody else has done his duty, those who have
observed the law and have done their duty should be sent
to prison.
You will not be able
to deny that the regime forced upon the nation is unworthy of Cuba's history. In his book, The Spirit of Laws, which is the foundation of the
modern division of governmental power, Montesquieu makes a distinction between
three types of government according to their basic nature: 'The Republican form
wherein the whole people or a portion thereof has sovereign power; the Monarchical
form where only one man governs, but in accordance with fixed and well-defined
laws; and the Despotic form where one man without regard for laws nor rules
acts as he pleases, regarding only his own will or whim.' And then he
adds: 'A man whose five senses constantly tell him that he is everything and
that the rest of humanity is nothing is bound to be lazy, ignorant and
sensuous.' 'As virtue is necessary to democracy, and honor to a monarchy, fear
is of the essence to a despotic regime, where virtue is not needed and honor
would be dangerous.'
The
right of rebellion against tyranny, Honorable Judges, has been recognized from
the most ancient times to the present day by men of all creeds, ideas and
doctrines.
It was so in the
theocratic monarchies of remote antiquity. In China it
was almost a constitutional principle that when a king governed rudely and
despotically he should be deposed and replaced by a virtuous prince.
The philosophers of
ancient India upheld the principle of active resistance to arbitrary authority.
They justified revolution and very often put their theories into practice. One
of their spiritual leaders used to say that 'an opinion held by the majority is
stronger than the king himself. A rope woven of many strands is strong enough to
hold a lion.'
The city states of
Greece and republican Rome not only admitted, but
defended the meting-out of violent death to tyrants.
In the Middle Ages, John Salisbury in his Book of the Statesman
says that when a prince does not govern according to law and degenerates into a
tyrant, violent overthrow is legitimate and justifiable. He recommends for
tyrants the dagger rather than poison.
Saint Thomas Aquinas,
in the Summa Theologica, rejects the doctrine of tyrannicide, and yet upholds the thesis that tyrants should be overthrown by the people.
Martin Luther
proclaimed that when a government degenerates into a tyranny
that violates the laws, its subjects are released from their obligations to
obey. His disciple, Philippe Melanchton, upholds the
right of resistance when governments become despotic. Calvin, the outstanding
thinker of the Reformation with regard to political ideas, postulates that
people are entitled to take up arms to oppose any usurpation.
No
less a man that Juan Mariana, a Spanish Jesuit during the reign of Philip II,
asserts in his book, De Rege et Regis Institutione, that when a governor usurps power, or even if
he were elected, when he governs in a tyrannical manner it is licit for a
private citizen to exercise tyrannicide, either directly
or through subterfuge with the least possible disturbance.
The French writer,
François Hotman, maintained that between the
government and its subjects there is a bond or contract, and that the people
may rise in rebellion against the tyranny of government when the latter
violates that pact.
About the same time,
a booklet - which came to be widely read - appeared under the title Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, and it
was signed with the pseudonym Stephanus Junius Brutus. It openly declared that resistance to
governments is legitimate when rulers oppress the people and that it is the
duty of Honorable Judges to lead the struggle.
The Scottish
reformers John Knox and John Poynet upheld the same
points of view. And, in the most important book of that movement,
George Buchanan stated that if a government achieved power without taking into
account the consent of the people, or if a government rules their destiny in an
unjust or arbitrary fashion, then that government becomes a tyranny and can be
divested of power or, in a final recourse, its leaders can be put to death.
John
Althus, a German jurist of the early 17th century,
stated in his Treatise on Politics that sovereignty as the supreme authority of
the State is born from the voluntary concourse of all its members; that
governmental authority stems from the people and that its unjust, illegal or
tyrannical function exempts them from the duty of obedience and justifies
resistance or rebellion.
Thus far, Honorable
Judges, I have mentioned examples from antiquity, from the Middle
Ages, and from the beginnings of our times. I selected these examples from
writers of all creeds. What is more, you can see that the right to rebellion is
at the very root of Cuba's existence as a nation. By virtue of it you are today able to appear in the robes of Cuban
Judges. Would it be that those garments really served the cause of justice!
It is
well known that in England during the 17th century two kings, Charles I
and James II, were dethroned for despotism. These actions coincided with the
birth of liberal political philosophy and provided the ideological base for a
new social class, which was then struggling to break the bonds of feudalism.
Against divine right autocracies, this new philosophy upheld the principle of
the social contract and of the consent of the governed, and constituted the
foundation of the English Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1775
and the French Revolution of 1789. These great revolutionary events ushered in
the liberation of the Spanish colonies in the New World - the final link in
that chain being broken by Cuba. The new philosophy
nurtured our own political ideas and helped us to evolve our Constitutions,
from the Constitution of Guáimaro up to the
Constitution of 1940. The latter was influenced by the socialist currents of
our time; the principle of the social function of property and of man's
inalienable right to a decent living were built into it, although large vested
interests have prevented fully enforcing those rights.
The right of
insurrection against tyranny then underwent its final consecration and became a
fundamental tenet of political liberty.
As far back as 1649,
John Milton wrote that political power lies with the people, who can enthrone
and dethrone kings and have the duty of overthrowing tyrants.
John Locke, in his
essay on government, maintained that when the natural rights of man are violated, the people have the right and the duty to
alter or abolish the government. 'The only remedy against unauthorized force is
opposition to it by force.'
Jean-Jaques Rousseau said with great eloquence in his Social
Contract: 'While a people sees itself forced to obey and obeys, it does well;
but as soon as it can shake off the yoke and shakes it off, it does better,
recovering its liberty through the use of the very right that has been taken
away from it.' 'The strongest man is never strong enough to be master forever,
unless he converts force into right and obedience into duty. Force is a
physical power; I do not see what morality one may derive from its use. To
yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; at the very least, it is an
act of prudence. In what sense should this be called a duty?' 'To renounce
freedom is to renounce one's status as a man, to renounce one's human rights,
including one's duties. There is no possible compensation for renouncing
everything. Total renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man and to
take away all free will is to take away all morality of conduct. In short, it
is vain and contradictory to stipulate on the one hand an absolute authority
and on the other an unlimited obedience ...'
Thomas Paine said
that 'one just man deserves more respect than a rogue with a crown.'
The people's right to
rebel has been opposed only by reactionaries like that
clergyman of Virginia, Jonathan Boucher, who said: 'The right to rebel is a
censurable doctrine derived from Lucifer, the father of rebellions.'
The
Declaration of Independence of the Congress of Philadelphia, on July 4th, 1776,
consecrated this right in a beautiful paragraph which reads: 'We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; That to secure these Rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed; That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it
and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.'
The famous French
Declaration of the Rights of Man willed this principle to the coming
generations: 'When the government violates the rights of the people,
insurrection is for them the most sacred of rights and the most imperative of
duties.' 'When a person seizes sovereignty, he should be condemned to death by
free men.'
I believe I have
sufficiently justified my point of view. I have called forth more reasons than
the Honorable Prosecutor called forth to ask that I be condemned to 26 years in
prison. All these reasons support men who struggle for the freedom and
happiness of the people. None support those who
oppress the people, revile them, and rob them heartlessly. Therefore
I have been able to call forth many reasons and he could not adduce even one.
How can Batista's presence in power be justified when he gained it against the
will of the people and by violating the laws of the Republic through
the use of treachery and force? How could anyone call legitimate a
regime of blood, oppression and ignominy? How could anyone call revolutionary a
regime which has gathered the most backward men,
methods and ideas of public life around it? How can anyone consider legally
valid the high treason of a Court whose duty was to defend the Constitution?
With what right do the Courts send to prison citizens who have tried to redeem
their country by giving their own blood, their own lives? All this is monstrous
to the eyes of the nation and to the principles of true justice!
Still there is one
argument more powerful than all the others. We are
Cubans and to be Cuban implies a duty; not to fulfill that duty is a crime, is
treason. We are proud of the history of our country; we
learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human
rights. We were taught to venerate the glorious
example of our heroes and martyrs. Céspedes, Agramonte, Maceo, Gómez and Martí were the first names engraved in our minds. We were taught that the Titan once said that liberty is not
begged for but won with the blade of a machete. We were
taught that for the guidance of Cuba's free citizens, the Apostle wrote in his
book The Golden Age: 'The man who abides by unjust laws and permits any man to
trample and mistreat the country in which he was born is not an honorable man
... In the world there must be a certain degree of honor just as there must be
a certain amount of light. When there are many men without honor, there are always others who bear in themselves the honor of
many men. These are the men who rebel with great force
against those who steal the people's freedom, that is to say, against those who
steal honor itself. In those men thousands more are contained, an entire people
is contained, human dignity is contained ...' We were taught that the 10th of
October and the 24th of February are glorious anniversaries of national
rejoicing because they mark days on which Cubans rebelled against the yoke of
infamous tyranny. We were taught to cherish and defend
the beloved flag of the lone star, and to sing every afternoon the verses of
our National Anthem: 'To live in chains is to live in disgrace and in
opprobrium,' and 'to die for one's homeland is to live forever!' All this we
learned and will never forget, even though today in our land there is murder
and prison for the men who practice the ideas taught to them since the cradle.
We were born in a free country that our parents bequeathed to us, and the
Island will first sink into the sea before we consent to be the slaves of
anyone.
It seemed that the
Apostle would die during his Centennial. It seemed that his memory would be extinguished forever. So great was the affront! But he is alive; he has not died. His people are rebellious.
His people are worthy. His people are faithful to his memory. There are Cubans
who have fallen defending his doctrines. There are young men who in magnificent
selflessness came to die beside his tomb, giving their blood and their lives so
that he could keep on living in the heart of his nation. Cuba, what would have
become of you had you let your Apostle die?
I come to the close
of my defense plea but I will not end it as lawyers usually do, asking that the
accused be freed. I cannot ask freedom for myself while my comrades are already
suffering in the ignominious prison of the Isle of Pines. Send me there to join
them and to share their fate. It is understandable that honest men should be
dead or in prison in a Republic where the President is a criminal and a thief.
To you, Honorable
Judges, my sincere gratitude for having allowed me to express myself free from
contemptible restrictions. I hold no bitterness towards you, I recognize that
in certain aspects you have been humane, and I know
that the Chief Judge of this Court, a man of impeccable private life, cannot
disguise his repugnance at the current state of affairs that compels him to
dictate unjust decisions. Still, a more serious
problem remains for the Court of Appeals: the indictments arising from the
murders of seventy men, that is to say, the greatest massacre we have ever
known. The guilty continue at liberty and with weapons in their hands - weapons
which continually threaten the lives of all citizens.
If all the weight of the law does not fall upon the
guilty because of cowardice or because of domination of the courts, and if then
all the judges do not resign, I pity your honor. And I
regret the unprecedented shame that will fall upon the Judicial Power.
I know that
imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled
with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do
not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the
lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will
absolve me.