Author: Somos+

2. Free and democratic elections after a year of provisional government.

As it happened, Fidel could not forget that as a member of the University Student Federation (FEU) he had never been able to secure enough votes for anything. And in the 1952 elections he had to falsify internal documents of the Orthodox Party in order to get his name on the ballot. With these experiences in mind, he began coming up with excuses to postpone the elections.

In April 1959 he claimed, “First we must tackle unemployment and illiteracy.” Other setbacks came later. On May 24 the Humanist Workers’ Front defeated the Communists for control of the Worker’s Central Union.

Afterwards, Fidel was forced to work behind the scenes to remove Pedro Luis Boitel, who was backed by the 26th of July Movement (and who later died in prison during a hunger strike), from the FEU presidency and to replace him with Rolando Cubela (who later was exiled to Spain).

By May of 1960 a significant proportion of those who opposed Fidel were dead, in exile or in prison. Only then did he pose the famous question, “Elections. What for?” The same reply we get today.

3. Freedom for all political prisoners.

Slowly but surely the jails began filling up with a new batch of prisoners, many of whom were not Batista supporters. One former prisoner, who had been released, later returned. Strange accidents also began to occur, like the plane crash that killed Camilo Cienfuegos. There were strange suicides, like that of Commander Félix Pena. Others fled into exile, like the commanders Luis Díaz Lanz and Raúl Chibás Ribas. Among those imprisoned, Commander Huber Matos comes to mind, and we certainly cannot forget Mario Chanés de Armas.

Chanés de Armas was a revolutionary through and through. He was born in Havana, where he was a labor union leader. He knew Abel Santamaría and joined a group “organized” by Fidel. He participated in the assault on the Moncada Barracks and was imprisoned on the Isle of Pines (now the Isle of Youth). He was released, along with Fidel, as part of the general amnesty (though his image was airbrushed out of the release photo until 2015).

He took part in the Granma expedition — from Mexico to Cuba — and survived the battle at Alegría de Pío. He got to Havana on his own initiative and joined the clandestine groups that made up the 26th of July Movement. He was taken prisoner and on January 1 he was in jail.

For a time he held a position of responsibility but resigned in protest because he did not like where the Revolution was heading. He was arrested and accused of conspiracy. Is spite of there being no evidence, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison, though he served longer. He was naked or dressed only in underwear for almost his entire captivity because he refused to wear the uniform of a common criminal. (As we know, in Cuba “there are no political prisoners.”) He founded the movement of the plantados,* constantly organizing strikes and protests over prison uniforms and the conditions of their incarceration.

Eventually, he was released and allowed to leave the country. For the rest of his life, he continued to denounce Fidel Castro, encourage peaceful opposition and promote Cuban reconciliation. But I was forgetting a small detail: Chanés de Armas was the 20th century’s longest serving political prisoner, serving a longer sentence than even Nelson Mandela.

4. Absolute freedom of the press.

Again, yes, true in theory. The examples below are from print media, but there are similar examples from radio and television. Now, you be the judge.

Because of their ties to the Batista regime, Tiempo en Cuba and Alert y Ataja ceased publication immediately. Mañana and Luz y Pueblo disappeared in 1959 but Alerta, Revolución, Combate, Verde Olivo, Adelante, La Calle and others were born (though most no longer exist).

The assumption was that these new publications would be “loyal” but that turned out not to always be the case. La Calle was “refounded” as La Tarde and re-refounded as Juventud Rebelde. Revolución and Lunes de Revolución, edited by Carlos Franqui and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, have since disappeared.

Bohemia, under the directorship of Miguel Ángel Quevedo, supported Fidel, going so far as to concoct a story that 20,000 were killed under the Batista regime. It never provided any proof; it could only come up with a list of 700 names. It also initially boasted of 1,000,000 people being set free on January 1 itself. A year later Quevedo went into exile and committed suicide in 1969 after confessing his remorse.

To gain control over privately owned media, advertising was banned and a system of subscription by raffle was invented. Deprived of funding, publications began to close and their owners to emigrate. Those who resisted were forced to add a “tagline,” which authorized the communist-controlled unions to add commentary attacking articles, photos, jokes and other items that were not to their liking. By 1961 there was no media outlet in Cuba that was not controlled by the state, at which point publications were no longer required to publish a tagline.

One might say the death certificate of the free press was signed on May 11, 1960, the day Diario de la Marina was shut down. Founded in 1844, the newspaper was considered the dean of the Cuban press. Its facilities were attacked and destroyed, and it was symbolically interred in a “celebration” at the University of Havana.

This discussion only addresses the four promises I have highlighted. I urge you to read the manifesto yourselves and draw your own conclusions about the rest.

*Translator’s note: Los plantados, or the planted, were prisoners who were confined to cells so small there was only room to stand upright, like trees.

This was written by Raúl Gómez García and is excerpt from the so-called “Manifesto from the Moncada Revolutionaries to the Nation.” It amounts to a statement of conscience, assuming they had one, that has not been fulfilled.

The first revolutionaries to enter Havana on New Year’s Eve 1958 were not the forces of the 26th of July Movement, a claim that is not disputed when the subject comes up. The first to go in were men and women of the Second National Escambray Front.

Nor were Camilo Cienfuegos nor Ché Guevara the ones who occupied the Columbia or La Cabaña military barracks. It was a Ramón Barquín, a native of the city of Cienfuegos and an army colonel, who took command of those installations. He had been imprisoned on the Isle of Pines (now the Isle of Youth) since 1956 for leading a rebellion of Los Puros (“the pure”) against Batista. After he was liberated, he flew to Havana, where he became de facto commander of the army and president of the republic. However, he put aside any personal ambition and on Day 3 handed over command to Cienfuegos on the orders of the acting president, Manuel Urrutia Lleó. Colonel Barquín died in exile on March 3, 2008.

Speaking of Manuel Urrutia, he was a key figure in the trials of Frank País and many other prisoners after the Santiago uprising, as well as the trials of various men captured from the Granma expedition. They were found innocent and released because, as Urrutia reasoned, the 1940 constitution recognized the right to take up arms against anyone holding power illegally.

But it was not just in Havana where things were happening. Santiago de Cuba had been taken by a column led by Huber Matos. The city was serving as the provisional capital of the country and it was there on January 1 that Urrutia was sworn in as acting president based on previous agreements made among the various anti-Batista organizations.

Urrutia began appointing a government, the first post revolutionary government and one which did not include either Fidel or Raúl Castro, or Ernesto Guevara, or any number of the future “great leaders.” Of its nineteen members, which included Urrutia, eight held no government positions at the times of their deaths in Cuba. Six died in exile, one died in a traffic accident, one was shot, one committed suicide, one died in office, and one still lives in Cuba, though in a low-level government position.

It is quite striking how lethal being a member of that first government turned out to be. Those who died in exile were the president (Manuel Urrutia), the prime minister (José Miró Cardona), the minister of state (Roberto Agramonte Pichardo) the minister of public works (Manuel “Manolo” Ray Rivero), the minister of social welfare (Elena Mederos Cabañas) and the minister of housing (Rufo López Fresquet). The one who was shot was the minister of agriculture (Humberto Sori Marin).

And speaking of the 1940 Constitution, the fact that it outlawed the death penalty did not stop one “gentleman” named Ernesto Guevara and another named Raúl Castro from making good use of it in Havana and Santiago.

And speaking of manifestos once again, we might conclude with another one: the “Manifesto to the People of Cuba,” published by Bohemia magazine on July 26, 1957. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Cuba’s “capitalist and bourgeois” press was allowed to publish manifestos by those fighting in the mountains.). This manifesto — signed by Fidel Castro, Raúl Chibás (who died in exile) and Felipe Pazos (who also died in exile) — promised four things:

• Restoration of the 1940 constitution.
• Free and democratic elections after one year of provisional government.
• Freedom for all political prisoners.
• Absolute freedom of the press.

But since Fidel did not enter Havana on January 1 but rather on January 8, shall we wait a few days to discuss these four points?

It is to Judeo-Christian, Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean cultures that both America and Europe owe much of their identity and values. But it is to France, to Paris, to which we owe such fundamentally modern ideas as popular sovereignty, separation of powers, human rights, representation through periodic elections, freedom of assembly, of expression, of the press, of movement, as well as the sanctity of the person, of his family and of property.

Paris continued to grow as a symbol of peace, democracy, and human rights. At the city’s Universal Exhibition, held in 1889, the Eiffel Tower made its debut. Three-hundred meters tall and made entirely of iron, a new symbol of the city had been born. A little before that, the surrender of Napolean III to the Prussians led the people of Paris to rise up once again. They took up arms and proclaimed the Third Republic in 1870. In 1871 they proclaimed the Commune, the predecessor to the workers’ struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Franco-Prussian war had not ended well. France was forced to accept an armistice against the wishes of its people. Parisians, now surrounded, preferred to die of starvation rather than surrender.

During the First World War the troops of the not exactly democratic German Empire advanced towards the city. France was bleeding after the battles of Lorraine and Charleroi, where many of its finest youth had fallen. Stopping the advance depended on being able to bring five British divisions and all the French reserve forces to the front. Once again Paris came to the rescue! After sending its youth into the battlefield, Parisians stepped up, and exerted the force and effort necessary to repel this new German army back towards the Marne. The city’s taxi drivers — yes, taxi drivers — tirelessly drove to and from the front, some 160 kilometers each way, ferrying men, arms and munitions.

A short-lived peace was followed by a new invasion from the same point of origin by — as one might expect — the enemies of democracy, now calling themselves Nazis. This time they did invade the city. Intent on humiliating it, they staged constant military parades along the Champs Elysées and raised their red flag with its broken cross above the Eiffel Tower. Rather than humiliating the city, these actions only served to stoke its rage.

At almost the same time that an armistice was signed in June 1940, General de Gaulle crossed the English Channel and announced in London that the Free French would continue fighting. By August 21, 1941 the French Resistance was strong enough to launch an attack in Paris, killing a cadet of the occupying navy. Initially, the invaders did not make much of it, but opinions changed when three days later two officials in Lille were killed. On the same day there was another attack on two soldiers at the Belgian border. And August 29 saw an attack against a barracks of collaborationist French troops headed for the front, which injured Pierre Laval himself.

Little by little, the tide of World War II began shifting in favor of the Allies and victory was achieved in August 1944. The Resistance in Paris was headed by a communist, Henri Rol-Tanguy, and a Gaullist, Jacques Chaban-Delmas (later the French prime minister from 1969 to 1972). Both were fixated on one idea: to hand over to the Allies a self-liberated Paris. This was also General de Gaulle’s idea but one with a broader vision: to hand over his capital to the French Republic and to launch from it, as soon as possible, the Free French Second Armored Division to finish the work of the Resistance.

Destruction is always on the minds of evil people. If Paris were to revolt or was in danger of being liberated, Hitler ordered that it be razed to the ground, exactly as he had done to Warsaw on August 1 after the Polish Home Army uprising. But there were three things the Great Dictator had not counted on.

The first was the Swedish consul-general, Raoul Nordling, who was not willing to see the city destroyed. While he was trying to save as many lives as possible, he served as a tireless intermediary between the Resistance and the military commander of Paris, arranging pacts and truces to give the Allies more time.

The second factor was the commander of Paris himself, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who was appointed specifically to oversee the destruction of the city. But when he saw Paris, he refused, the first time in his military career that he disobeyed an order. After putting up a token resistance to avoid reprisals by the Nazis against officers’ families, he surrendered the city.

But the most important factor was the people of Paris themselves. On August 13 the subway workers and the National Gendarmerie revolted. On August 15 the police joined the revolt. On August 16 postal workers did the same. On that same day all civilian vehicles capable of being used in the uprising were commandeered. On August 17 the National Council of the Resistance agreed to launch a full-scale offensive. On August 18 a general strike was called and the General Prefecture of Paris was occupied. Finally, on August 22 the Ninth Armored Company, an advance unit of the Second Armored Division, entered the city.

At this point history and legend converge. (Afterall, this is Paris.) There is a story that the driver of a Sherman tank, whose side had been painted with the name Madrid, reached his commanding officer by radio and a conversion in Spanish  ensued, which went something like this:

“Sir, I have arrived at the center of Paris!”

“So what the hell do you see in the center of Paris?”

“It must be Notre Dame in front of me and the gun range finder tells me it’s a hundred fifty yards away!”

Whether this conversation actually took place or not, the story goes that it was conducted in Spanish because the commanding officer, Captain Raymond Dronne, was married to a Spaniard from Burgos while the tank driver, Carlos Gutierrez Menoyo, was born in Madrid. What the latter did not yet know was that thirteen years later he, as military commander of the Cuba’s Revolutionary Directorate, would die in a failed assault on Havana’s Presidential Palace on March 13, 1957.

For all this and much more. For the writings of Voltaire’s, for the kisses of lovers, for sidewalk cafes, the breeze along the Seine, its beautiful women, Les Invalides, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré Coeur, the Latin Quarter, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries, the paintings of Picasso and Toulouse Lautrec, for the Central Hammam Mosque Hammam and for many other reasons Hemingway described Paris as “a moveable feast.” Paris is a symbol, a banner for all democrats and people of good will. This is why the wicked want to destroy her. They will not succeed. Parisians of all colors, religions and democratic political ideologies will prevent it. And if those efforts are not enough, there are all the people of France. And if those efforts are still not enough, then there are all the democratic-loving peoples of the world.

As its motto “fluctuat nec mergitur” says, “She is tossed by waves but does not sink.”

They will never be able to destroy Paris.