THE REVOLUTION

Castro’s Revolutionary government started in 1959.

There was a surge of enthusiasm, great fanfare, and a new terror. A veritable hunt had started, against Batista’s soldiers, against supposed informers, against military men of the fallen regime, and against the Masferrer “tigers.” Masferrer was a Cuban politician as well as a gangster, not mutually exclusive occupations. In the last few years he had organized a private army; most of his soldiers were killed on the streets or in their homes, or on the Hill of the Cross, where many had fled in a desperate attempt to get out of town. By this time, Masferrer was already on a boat making his escape to the United States. In those first days, many people were murdered without any kind of trial. Later, the so-called Revolutionary Tribunals were set up and people were quickly executed; an informer’s accusation before a provisional judge of the new regime was enough. The trials were a kind of theatrical entertainment where people would enjoy watching how some poor devil was condemned to be shot, whose worst crime may have been that he had slapped someone who now was taking advantage of the circumstances in order to get even. The innocent died with the guilty. Many more were dying now than during the war that never was.

In spite of the euphoria, many did not agree with those executions. I vividly remember this: A man was being taken to be executed for having killed a young rebel. The man was marched along the highway under an escort of rebel soldiers who were to prevent the mob from tearing him to pieces, so that he would at least get to the place of execution alive. Suddenly a woman in black appeared and stopped the march. She started shouting that the man should be punished but not put to death, that she was the mother of the rebel this man had murdered. Nobody paid any attention to the woman; her plea for mercy did not count; there was only the new order and the need for vengeance, so long repressed. The man was escorted out of town and shot. Those executions were a daily occurrence.

In Holguín the trials took place in the auditorium at La Pantoja, a huge military academy built by Batista and now occupied by the rebels. The trials, often shown on television, were oral, spectacular, and summary.

More than thirty years have gone by, and Fidel Castro is still staging those show trials and, of course, televising some of them. But now Castro is no longer executing Batista’s henchmen; instead, he executes his own soldiers and sometimes even his own generals.

Why is it that we, the great majority of the people, and even the intellectuals, did not realize that this was the beginning of a new dictatorship, even bloodier than the previous one? Perhaps we did realize it, but the enthusiasm of knowing that now one was part of a revolution, that a dictatorship had been overthrown and the time had come for vengeance, outweighed the injustices and the crimes that were being committed. Not only were injustices being inflicted; the executions were being conducted in the name of justice and freedom, and above all, in the name of the people.

There was still a lot of collective rejoicing during 1960. “Henchmen” were still being executed, but we must admit that in the midst of that euphoria nearly everybody approved of the executions. Who can forget that impassioned multitude of over a million people marching at Revolutionary Square (which, by the way, was not built by the Revolution but by the tyranny just overthrown), yelling the words “Execution wall!” In those days I was part of the Revolution; I had nothing to lose, and it seemed then that I had much to gain. I could study, get away from my home in Holguín, start a new life.