Revolution Betrayed

In the mountains of Cuba, patriots took up arms to fight the ruthless dictatorship of Fhensio Batista. When word arrived from the Sierra Maestra of the revolutionary movement headed by Fidel Castro, the people of the Americas followed its progress with feeling and hope. Food and arms reached the rebel encampments. Funds were collected in the United States, in New York, and elsewhere. At Yankee Stadium, a baseball game was interrupted by a shower of pamphlets appealing for aid. Another major center of support for the revolutionary cause was Miami, where many Cuban exiles found refuge and freedom to plead their cause. In Mexico City, Cuban democracy also found many supporters who gave generously to the fight against dictatorship. The response of the Cuban people themselves was not only to the cruelty and oppression of the Batista government, but also to the clear and moving declarations repeatedly made by Castro concerning his plans and purposes for post-revolutionary Cuba. Castro promised a free and democratic Cuba dedicated to social and economic justice. He promised to honor the Constitution of 1940. Victory came on New Year's Day 1959. The people were jubilant all through the Americas. This was seen as a triumph for democracy. The United States and other republics immediately recognized the new government. The constructive programs announced in the first months of the Castro regime were impressive in their conception. The new housing, schools, medical centers, the promise of land reform. These programs apparently would benefit the people and any future Cuban government can be expected to pursue them. The advertised intention to eliminate graft in government was also in keeping with genuine democracy. The United States accorded a warm welcome to Fidel Castro soon after he came to power. Secretary of State Herder made it clear that the United States would give him every possible assistance in achieving the goals of a democratic revolution. But Castro was not interested in accepting the offer. His regime was soon to engage in a steady and consistent betrayal of his pre-revolutionary promises. The result has been to corrupt the social reforms and make them not means of liberation but of bondage. Prisons were filled once more. This time with men and women who once supported Castro and even fought by his side. At the time of the victory over Batista, Dr. Manuel Uria Ilio became president of the revolutionary government when he protested the spread of communist influence. He was forced to resign and placed under house arrest. Of the members of the first revolutionary government headed by Dr. Uruchio Ilo, twothirds have been killed, sent to prison, gone into exile, or are in Cuba fighting the Castro dictatorship. Never in history has any revolution so rapidly devoured its children. When Castro betrayed the promises of the revolution, he had to destroy the men who took them seriously. Ombberto Sori Marin Castro's first minister of agriculture has been executed. Major Uber Mos Bonitees, revolutionary commandant of Kamagay province, sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Rahul Chibas who fought alongside Castro and raised funds for the revolution. Aelio Duk one of the heroic fighters of the Sierra Escambre. Pedro Das Lance chief of the air force and Castro's personal pilot. Felipe Pazos, National Bank president under Castro. And Ry Rivero, Castro's first minister of public works. Dr. Dr. Manuel Antonio Devarona, President of the Senate under Castro. These and many other Hurst while Castro supporters, prominent among them, Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, prime minister of the first revolutionary government under Castro, have denounced the betrayal of the revolution. The indignation of Castro's former supporters is expressed by Dr. Miro Cardona, who is now chairman of an anti-Castro revolutionary council. The drama of Cuba, now subjected to barbarism, must alert our hemisphere. Either Cuba throws off the yoke that oppresses her with the coordinated force of all the nations of this continent, or this hemisphere will succumb inevitably before the thrust of the Soviet Empire. Castro has rejected the democratic spontaneity of the Cuban Revolution and replaced it with the posturing and trappings of a dictatorship. When Castro first went to the Sierra Maestra, the Cuban communists did not openly support him. in fact pronounced him a bourgeoa. Only when they saw that he had a chance of winning did the communists try to take over his movement. Meanwhile, Raul, brother of Fidel Castro, had been openly active in the international communist student movement. Recently, communist China awarded him a medal. In Castro's rebel camp, a dominating influence was Anesto Che Guavara, a professional revolutionary from Argentina, who had worked with the communists in Guatemala. At first, the agrarian reforms in Cuba were to have given individual farmers ownership of the land. That was the promise of the Castro Revolution. Instead, the land was taken over by the state. The farmers are now hired hands. Captain Nunes Himenez, head of the Agrarian Reform Institute, has long been a leader of communist causes. Premier Castro is pleased with him. And so apparently is Russia's Communist Party leader Nikita Kustau. The fact is that Fidel Castro has become a preacher of hate, a fanatic who will not stand for the slightest opposition. Hitler too spoke like this. Hitler, the Nazi furer, also hurled invectives and called for the destruction of those he made his enemies. Hitler burned the books of the authors he did not like. Tragically, the same is happening in Cuba today. The same kind of propaganda bonfires. Cuban jails like this one are filled with opponents of the regime. All parties except the Communist Party are denied political activity. Justice has become the instrument of tyranny. The charge is always treason against the revolution. Thousands of freedom loving Cubans have been sentenced to long prison terms or death by firing squad. Castro's military judges have made a mockery of the words fair trial and justice. In Castro's Cuba, a man's guilt is not subject to proof. The innocent are executed along with the guilty. More than 600 have died before the firing squads, which have become instruments of terror aimed at all who challenge the Castro regime. Arriving in Buenosaris were these five judges of Cuba's Supreme Court. men of conscience who preferred exile rather than serve the cause of tyranny. Interviewed by Argentine reporters, they said that under Cuba's Castroite communist dictatorship, the judicial process had been destroyed and there was no alternative but to go into exile. In Cuba, freedom of the press and freedom of thought have been completely abolished. These are films of the kind of terror that has engulfed Castro's Cuba. Political prisoners in Principe Fortress riot to protest inhuman conditions in the jails. What about the children in Cuba? They too have become pawns of the state. Instead of being taught to look at the world with spontaneity, they are weighed down with a straight jacket of political indoctrination. >> In his composition, this boy tells us how a group of Soviet writers came to the school and told the children that they had come to Cuba to learn about its revolution. >> The autonomy of the University of Havana has been violated. Twothirds of the faculty are in exile. Students and professors had supported Castro's revolution. This was one of the many demonstrations against dictator Batista. Many students paid with their lives. They believed Castro's promises to restore Cuba's democratic constitution of 1940 with its guarantee of free elections. Castro has betrayed his promises. Now, just as they did under Batista, Cuban students have reasoned to stage a symbolic funeral of the Constitution. Castro has seized all public communications media. Opposition newspapers are harassed out of existence. Official publications, Hoy, the Communist Paper, are supreme. Several periodicals are now published in exile. The magazine Bohemia, early supporter of Castro, is now published in Venezuela as Boeia Libre under its original editor who denounced Castro's suppression of a free press. Is this what Cubans fought for when they protested Batista's censorship? Every program on radio, every program on television is government propaganda. And the star for hours on end is Castro himself. He sets the keynote for the slogans of the regime. No Cuban can hope to escape the monotonous and implacable den of communist propaganda. Nunes Himenez in an effort to compel greater enthusiasm for the regime threatened to change this year's slogan from ano de la education or education year with pageantss of children donating books to the state to an deladon or year of the firing squad. The Cuban people supported Castro's revolution out of a deep yearning for social and economic justice. Castro used their initial support to impose on them a system which alternates promises with threats which keeps itself in power through methods used only by police states whose symbol is the prison watchtower. Cuba's flag has been surrendered to Soviet Russia in more ways than one. These castroite leaders spawn on Nikita Kushchoff. The Cuban people have been cruy betrayed. Anastas Miko and other top Soviet leaders have come to Cuba. Mikoyon came to tie Cuba more closely to the Soviet block. He was received by President Oswaldo Dortikos, one-time secretary of the Communist Party in Senueos. Castro was a genial host. Castro, Gavara, and Dorticos made their Soviet guests feel at home. Givvara smiled at the sight of the Soviet leader wearing a Cuban hat. In the background, were there no memories of Hungary, of the popular revolt so ruthlessly crushed by Soviet tanks? Is this Cuba's new ally, the oppressor of Hungary? A red star at Havana's airport also welcomed emissaries from communist China. They too were chosen by the Castro regime to become Cuba's new friends. They too came to tie Cuba closer to communism. Here too were there no memories of communist China's invasion of Tibet. An invasion against a defenseless people that destroyed their independence, their freedom. The enslavement of Tibet does not bother Raul Castro and Cheay Gavara at the United Nations where so much of the destiny of the world is decided. Cuba votes with the communist block on all major issues. Castro himself upon his first appearance before the general assembly flaunted the dignity of the world body to the delight of his Soviet allies. Castro had to be called to order for his insulting remarks. Castro has embraced the Soviet cause at home and abroad. and Nikita Kushchoff is trying to show his gratitude. Arms have been pouring into Cuba in an ever rising flood. 30,000 tons of arms worth $50 million have come from behind the Iron Curtain in less than one year. Soviet and Czech military advisers and technicians have accompanied the shipments of arms. Cubans have gone to Czechoslovakia and Soviet Russia to be trained as jet pilots and artillery men. Castro has made repeated efforts to export violence and subversion through all of Latin America and his allegiance to the communist cause has given the Soviet government a long sought pretext for threats of direct intervention in the Western Hemisphere. Prime Minister Kush is on record as saying that the Soviet Union would support Castro's Cuba with rocket fire if necessary. History may record that Castro was a man ready to hand over the freedom of the Americas to the Soviet Union. In August 1960, the foreign ministers of the hemisphere meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, condemned this threat of intervention by the Soviet Union. Castro's Cuba rejected all attempts to bring it back to the spirit of interamerican solidarity. Country after country expressed its belief that communism was a system completely alien to the Americans. Argentina says that communism is incompatible with western institutions and is totally ineffective in solving our economic problems. >> In many American republics, arms have been found hidden in secret places by Castro agents toward the day when they could use them to impose a dictatorship along communist lines. The Republic of Panama was the first target of Castro agitators on Panama's Caribbean coast near Santa Isabella. A force of 87 Castro Cubans landed on April 24th, 1959 and occupied the village of Nomere Deios, holding its inhabitants for several days. The prompt action of the Panameanian National Guard and coastal patrols forced the surrender of the Castro soldiers. A delegation came out on a small launch with a white flag of surrender. They said that their fellow Castroites in Nre deios were ready to give themselves up. The surrender negotiations in Numbre deios had been handled by an investigating team of the Organization of American States. It was a case of Cuban aggression against a neighbor Republic of the Americas. The Castro government sent two officers, Captain Torres and Ruiz, to deal with Panameanian officials for a safe conduct for the Cuban prisoners. A brazen performance by agents of the same Fidel Castro, who is on record as offering to trade Cuban lives for tractors. Panama returned the Castro invaders to Cuba without any barter agreement whatever. And these are five Cuban prisoners, survivors of an attempted invasion of Haiti in August 1959. Castro's own foreign minister acknowledged that these men and 25 others had sailed from a Cuban port. These five surrendered to farmers in Haiti's southwest mountains. Most instances of serious civil disturbance in Latin America in recent months show Cuban influence if not direct intervention. The communist tactic is to provoke explosive situations and reap the political benefit. The government of El Salvador made public on March 12th, 1961 documents showing that large sums of money had been coming into El Salvador through the Cuban embassy to finance pro-communist student groups plotting to overthrow the government. In November 1960, during riots in Venezuela, the government announced the discovery of high-powered transmitting and receiving sets found in the possession of Cuban agents. 50 Cubans were expelled. The Venezuelan people spoke out against Castro and communism in no uncertain terms as they rallied to the support of the government of President Betangor, a progressive democratic leader widely respected in Venezuela and the Americas. Castro's Cuba has now completed the construction of a 100,000 watt radio transmitter to facilitate its propaganda assault on the hemisphere. The present strategy of Castroism is to confuse the people and discredit and weaken their governments. The Cuban ambassador to Moscow boasted on March 13th, 1961 that all Latin America would soon be communist. Fidel Castro finances the Peruvian Communist Party. so read the newspaper headlines in December 1960 as they published photographs of a document seized during a raid by anti-Castro rebels in the Cuban embassy in Lima. In this letter addressed to the Cuban ambassador, the Peruvian Communist Party acknowledged receipt of funds to finance the party's activities. further evidence that Cuban embassies all through the Americas are today centers of communist subversion, representing a clear and present danger to the independence of the American nations. As a result of Castro's campaign of provocation, eight American states have severed diplomatic relations with Cuba. Other states have found it necessary to ask that Cuban ambassadors and other official representatives be recalled because of their flagrant interference in domestic affairs. Diplomatic missions of sister republics of the Americas have been leaving Havana. Many of them have been subjected to steady harassment. The fact is that Castro's Cuba has alienated one American nation after another. Cuba has hurled insults at practically every chief of government of the Americas. It has turned its back on the organization of American states. No one contends that the OAS is a perfect institution, but it does represent the collective purpose of the American republics to work together for democracy, economic development, and peace. Castro is bent on destroying Simon Bolivar's vision of the Americas as the greatest region in the world. Greatest not so much by virtue of her area and wealth as by her freedom and glory. 20 years ago, the people of the Americas rejected the attempt of Nazi Germany to gain a foothold in the new world. Hitler did not prevail and neither will Castro. Like Hitler, Castro is a man bent on destruction. But the Nazi tyranny brought to the world in human suffering is only too wellknown. The Americas fought to liberate Europe from Hitler's scourge. Now the tyrants of communism are on the world scene inflaming the passions of war and hate. The leaders of communist Russia and China embrace and make common cause while the masses of their countries toil in the service of the state. Is this what Castro has in mind for the Americas as he too embraces Khushchev? Today, the people of the Americas see Castro for what he is, a man who has betrayed the revolution and is determined to saddle Cuba and the hemisphere with a totalitarian system.