During the Summer of 1994 Cubans were angry. The so-called “Special Period” which meant scarcity and hunger was underway, and news that Cuban government agents had murdered 37 Cubans who had tried to flee the island on the “13 de Marzo” tugboat was circulating amongst the populace.
When the protest broke out and spread, the noise caught the attention of some with the presence of mind to video tape, and photograph this historic event, and lucky enough to smuggle the images out of the island.
Karel Poort, a Dutch freelance photographer and tourist visiting Cuba, took photos during the 1994 protests, which were made public in 2013 and matched the anecdotal accounts of the day. In an exclusive interview with EFE published on August 4, 2024 he outlined what he experienced that day, including witnessing government agents dressed as civilians firing wildly at demonstrators.
When the Dutchman arrived at the hotel opposite the Malecón, a Cuban approached him and said: “Keep taking photos and show the disaster that exists here in your country.” “While this was happening, a group of plainclothes police arrived at the Deauville and started shooting wildly,” he recalls.
Among the thirty photos that Poort gave to EFE, several can be seen of a man, wearing dark glasses, a white shirt and khaki trousers, with a short firearm in his hand. In one of them he is in front of the hotel, pointing upwards; in another he is pointing directly towards Poort and in others he is seen running towards where the protesters were.
Half an hour after those events, a patrol car stopped behind the photographer: “Three policemen ordered me to hand over the film and the camera. They grabbed me and, miraculously, I managed to get away and ran as fast as I could towards my hotel (…) I was able to take more photos from the window of my room,” he adds.
How did it begin on August 5, 1994?
El Malecon, the sea wall in Havana, was the gathering place for five hundred Cubans who wanted to board a launch believed to be sailing to Miami. These people wanted to live in freedom somewhere else, not topple the government.
Once on the scene, the Castro dictatorship’s secret police tried to coerce the gathering Cubans to leave and gave the order for the crowd to disperse.
The intimidation did not help to diffuse the situation. Rather, the gathering expanded, an additional five hundred Cubans joined, and they started to march down the Malecon while shouting “Freedom!” and “Down With Castro!” Following a one-kilometer march, the demonstrators were attacked by one hundred Special Brigade soldiers and plainclothes police, who opened fire on them with live ammunition.
Cubans were beaten down, shot, jailed, and killed. Thirty years later and the full scale of repression remains unknown. What is known is that at least three Cubans were killed, hundreds injured, and 370 arrested.
Regis Iglesias, a Cuban dissident, explained how the regime militarized the streets in order to scare the populace today in an essay he wrote for Diario Las Américas. This is a brief excerpt translated to English.
Porvenir Avenue, where I lived, looked more like a military parade route than an ordinary city artery. A caravan of trucks packed with special repressive troops and a vehicle with a .50-caliber machine gun patrolled the long street from top to bottom.
Little has been reported on this, but some photographs and video have survived. This, together with the evidence of individuals who were present, provides a greater understanding of what occurred. The Cuban dictatorship, like their communist counterparts in China in 1989 , showed in August 1994 that they were willing to do whatever it took to maintain their hold on power. They repeated this in July 2021 when Miguel Diaz-Canel saying the quiet part out loud:, “They would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the Revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything.”
Cubans continued to stand up for freedom
Between 2002 and 2004, more than 35,000 Varela Project petitions signed by Cubans were turned into the National Assembly, which called for restoring democracy and human rights reforms. Dozens of members of the Christian Liberation Movement spent years in Cuban prisons in the crackdown that followed. Their founding leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and the movement’s youth leader Harold Cepero Escalante were assassinated by government agents on July 22, 2012
On July 11, 2021 hundreds of thousands of Cubans across Cuba took to the streets, demonstrating that they wanted freedom, an end to the Castro dictatorship, and were willing to risk their lives to achieve it. Simultaneously, the communist dictatorship demonstrated its willingness to use violence, including lethal force, and intimidation to silence all civilians calling for nonviolent change. It started in San Antonio de los Baños, just 16 miles from the capital city of Havana, with Cubans flocking to the streets in protest and speaking out. Images were posted on social media, and dissent spread over the island before the regime could silence them. Cubans marched in over 50 cities and hundreds of other localities, singing lines from the protest song Patria y Vida and demanding freedom, an end to tyranny, homeland, and life. The response delivered on the same day by Miguel Diaz-Canel was a call to violence, “We are calling on all the revolutionaries of the country, all the communists, to take to the streets and go to the places where these provocations are going to take place today, from now on, and in all these days and face it decisively, firmly, with courage.” He ended his speech to the nation by stating, “The order of combat has been given, revolutionaries take to the streets.” The Cuban dictatorship blocked Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Telegram. Violence worsened, and regime agents beat and shot Cubans, and thousands were arbitrarily detained.
There was only one dictatorship in the Americas in 1994, and that was in Cuba. However, the international community chose to deal with the Cuban dictatorship rather than support the democratic opposition in Cuba. Today, there are three cruel dictatorships—Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—that have a history of executing peaceful protestors, and systematically violating human rights.
Cuban dictatorship’s agents in Venezuela today
Jim Brooke, Russia-Ukraine correspondent for The New York Sun, has written an excellent piece, that exposes Havana’s decades long and ongoing involvement in turning Venezuela into a narco-tyranny.
Now 93 years old, Mr. Castro first came to power with his older brother Fidel 65 years ago. Although Raúl Castro stepped down three years ago as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, he is still considered the ultimate power on the island.
“Army General Raúl Castro Ruz spoke by phone with comrade Nicolás Maduro Moros to congratulate him on the electoral victory achieved in the elections held today in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” reads a statement by Cuba’s Foreign Ministry. “The Leader of the Cuban Revolution reaffirmed to Comrade Maduro the solidarity and affection of Cuba.”
Matching words with actions, Cuba reportedly has sent 32 plane loads of aid and advisors to Venezuela in the week since the contested election. Included in the aid are believed to be hundreds of “Avispa Negras” or “Black Wasps.” Formally called Cuba’s Mobile Brigade of Special Troops, these soldiers are descended from special forces units airlifted to Angola in 1975. Over the years, these units have been trained by Soviet Spetsnaz, North Korean, and Communist Chinese instructors. Wearing black balaclavas, the “Black Wasps” carry automatic weapons, generally assault rifles of Soviet design.
Will the democratic world finally stand together with their Latin American counterparts today nonviolently resisting tyranny?
BabaluBlog, August 5, 2024
The 30th anniversary of Cuba’s ‘Maleconazo’: The massive protest that rattled the Castro dictatorship
It was 30 years ago today, August 5, 1994, when the Cuban people took to the streets in protest and came very close to toppling the Castro dictatorship and breaking the chains of communist tyranny. The Cuban regime was so rattled and scared, it sent out its State Security agents to shoot into the crowds to disperse them and quash the protest.
Via Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:
#5A Maleconazo at 30: When Castro’s secret police shot into crowds of non-violent Cuban protesters with live ammunition
Five hundred Cubans had gathered at the Havana sea wall (El Malecon) to join a launch thought to be heading to Miami. These folks did not wish to overthrow the regime, but rather to live in freedom elsewhere.
They were met by the secret police of the Castro dictatorship, who ordered the throng to disperse.
Rather than defusing the situation, another 500 Cubans joined in and began marching along the Malecon, yelling “Freedom!” and “Down With Castro!” A hundred Special Brigade troops and plain clothes police assaulted the protesters after marching for a kilometer, firing live rounds into the gathering.
30 years later and the full details of what transpired remains mostly silenced despite the pictures of regime officials pointing their handguns at the demonstrators combined with reports of the sounds of gun shots and wounded protesters echoing down through the years in anecdotal stories about that day.
Eyewitness account
Ignacio Martínez Montero posted on la Voz del Morro a first hand account of what happened that day that is translated to English below:
Then came the year 94 One hot August of that year’s day, I’d arrived at my mother in laws home in Cuba and Chacón in the heart of Old Havana, near the Malecón, for that reason alone, after visiting my mother in law, I sat , like many, on the wall of the bay, very close to where still today the famous Casablanca launch travels in and out. That year was turbulent, constantly talking about boats diverted to Miami, and the tugboat. Maybe that’s why the special brigade trucks arrived and attacked all of us who were sitting.Our response to this aggression was only to clamor for freedom. It has been said that we threw stones; but all that is a lie, the truth was that we were tired of so much aggression and without agreeing to we began to walk together screaming, Enough, Down with the revolution … And before reaching Hotel Deauville, a battalion waited for us that attacked us with sticks and iron rods. It was they who made the big mess. They broke my left eyebrow and left me semi-lame. Yes, there were assaults and the aggressors had guns, but not among the civilians. One of the boys who went with us, who was called the Moor, even while handcuffed, they shot him in the torso and it was a miracle that he did not die. Who do you think paid for that? No one.
They put us in a truck where they received us with beatings only to convince us to scream “Viva Fidel.” They took us to the police station located at L and Malecon. Hours later I was taken to Calixto García hospital. There they attended to my foot and I treated the eyebrow wound; the medical certificate, never appeared. From there we boarded another bus and were taken to the prison 15/80, I could say “kidnapped” because nobody knew where we were. Some kids and nephews of my dad, who were with us, were released immediately. A boy could not take it and ended up hanged. No one learned of this; but we are many the witnesses who know what really happened that August 5th 1994, the day of Maleconazo.
Thirty years later, the Communist dictatorship in Cuba remains in power, terrorizing, torturing, and murdering nonviolent dissidents in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. This includes shooting young black men in the back. Despite all of this some Progressive Americans want to implement Cuban-style policing in the United States, claiming that we can learn a lot from them. They have no idea what they are saying. Unless, of course, they desire a totalitarian police state.
Continue reading HERE.
The New York Sun August 3, 2024
Cuba Shows Its Hand in Venezuela as Maduro, Clinging to Power, Applies Lessons He Learned at Havana
With mass demonstrations planned across Venezuela this morning, Maduro worries about the loyalties of his own police and army. Enter the ‘Black Wasps,’ Cuban special forces units.
By James Brooke
Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has some of the world’s best tutors on how to cling to power: Communist Cubans. While Venezuelans complain that their disastrous socialist revolution has dragged on for 25 years, few Cubans remember anything but Communism. This year marks 65 years since the Communists took power in Cuba. In a decade, they could overtake the Soviets, who ruled Russia for 74 years.
In 1986, seeking to export one-party rule around the Caribbean and Latin America, Cuban recruiters identified a promising young Caracas bus driver, a rising trade unionist without a high school diploma. Nicolás Maduro proved to be an excellent investment. The 24-year-old Maduro was flown across the Caribbean to Havana, where he joined other Latin American leftists studying the basics of Marxism, American imperialism, and socialist revolution.
Mr. Maduro’s all-expenses-paid year was spent at the Communist Youth League’s Escuela Nacional de Cuadros Julio Antonio Mella. Named after the founder of the Moscow-line Communist Party of Cuba in 1925, the school taught promising Latin American leftists how to seize power — and how to keep it. The curriculum did not feature free speech and multi-party elections.
At this institute a few blocks from Havana’s historic port, the young Venezuelan found a mentor in one guest lecturer, Pedro Miret Prieto. At age 59, this stalwart of the Cuban Revolution was one generation ahead of Mr. Maduro. A trusted friend of Fidel Castro and a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo, Mr. Miret ended up holding high posts in the Cuban government for 50 years.
Mr. Maduro was recruited by the Castro government to serve as a “mole” for Cuba’s main intelligence agency, the Dirección de Inteligencia, according to a book by a former Venezuelan Army commander-in-chief, Carlos Peñaloza. Mr. Maduro’s assignment was to bond with a charismatic, rising officer in Venezuela’s army, Hugo Chávez.
After a failed coup attempt in 1992, Chávez went on to win four presidential elections, starting in 1999. Always nearby was Mr. Maduro, his eventual political successor. After succeeding Chávez as president of Venezuela in 2013, Mr. Maduro maintained close ties with Cuba and with Cuba’s intelligence services.
On Monday, that link was visible when a congratulatory call came from the dean of Latin American political survivors, Raúl Castro. Now 93 years old, Mr. Castro first came to power with his older brother Fidel 65 years ago. Although Raúl Castro stepped down three years ago as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, he is still considered the ultimate power on the island.
“Army General Raúl Castro Ruz spoke by phone with comrade Nicolás Maduro Moros to congratulate him on the electoral victory achieved in the elections held today in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” reads a statement by Cuba’s Foreign Ministry. “The Leader of the Cuban Revolution reaffirmed to Comrade Maduro the solidarity and affection of Cuba.”
Matching words with actions, Cuba reportedly has sent 32 plane loads of aid and advisors to Venezuela in the week since the contested election. Included in the aid are believed to be hundreds of “Avispa Negras” or “Black Wasps.” Formally called Cuba’s Mobile Brigade of Special Troops, these soldiers are descended from special forces units airlifted to Angola in 1975. Over the years, these units have been trained by Soviet Spetsnaz, North Korean, and Communist Chinese instructors. Wearing black balaclavas, the “Black Wasps” carry automatic weapons, generally assault rifles of Soviet design.
With mass demonstrations planned across Venezuela this morning, Mr. Maduro worries about the loyalties of his own police and army. Demonstrators charge that Mr. Maduro is trying to steal the presidential election and give himself a third, six-year term. Exit polls and tallies of 82 percent of the vote indicate that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia beat Mr. Maduro by a margin of at least two to one.
Last night on state TV, Mr. Maduro blamed Elon Musk and “the international fascist right” for the inability of the government’s National Electoral Council to provide precinct by precinct tallies. He said that, with technical advice from Russia and Cuba, Venezuela’s election officials will get to the bottom of the computer breakdown.
So far the governments of America, Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay say Mr. Maduro lost the election. Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are pushing for Mr. Maduro to meet with Mr. González. Yesterday, Secretary Blinken called Mr. González and fellow opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and expressed concerns about their physical safety.
Mr. Maduro’s Cuban advisors may be mystified by the Venezuelan dictator holding a multi-party election. Cuba’s last multi-party election was in 1948. Since 1959, it has been a one-party state where opposition candidates are not allowed. Cuba’s constitution calls the Communist Party “the superior driving force of the society and the state.”
Unlike Cuba, Venezuela is not an island. It is surrounded on all sides by functioning multi-party democracies. Many Venezuelans have memories of democratic freedoms enjoyed in the not so distant past.
Yesterday, sons and daughters of Venezuela’s last seven democratically elected presidents signed a letter demanding that last Sunday’s election results be honored. Addressed to “Members of the Armed Forces,” the letter appealed to soldiers to “respect the free and democratic decision of the people.” In the presidential election, the letter said, Mr. González “was clearly elected President of the Republic as shown by the voting acts known throughout the country and the international community.”
The signers covered 40 years of Venezuelan democracy. They stretched from Virginia Betancourt Valverde, daughter of Rómulo Betancourt, who was elected President in 1959, to Andrés Caldera Pietri, son of Rafael Caldera, president from 1994 to 1999.
Betancourt replaced Venezuela’s last dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez. In that turnover, cracks appeared in the military, there was a national strike, and then rioting. Fleeing Miraflores Palace, Pérez drove seven miles east to the capital’s downtown airport, La Carlota. There, he boarded a lumbering Douglas C-54 Skymaster and flew 500 miles north to the Dominican Republic. Appropriately, the cargo plane was named La Vaca Sagrada or The Sacred Cow.
None of this history appeals to Mr. Maduro. At age 61, he apparently is determined to follow a core lesson in revolution he learned as a 24-year-old in Havana: never give up power.