Periodically, despotic regimes resort to purging their officials because they are no longer trusted by the supreme leader
14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 15 December 2024 — It is constantly mentioned that the leader of the regime in Cuba, at least on paper, the inept Miguel Diaz-Canel, is immersed in a purge of officials who do not offer guarantees of continuity to totalitarianism. Many have been fired, and by all indications the list will grow.
Periodically, despotic regimes resort to purging their officers, not because they commit some crime – they are all criminals – but because they are no longer trusted by the supreme leader, the most important endorsement to be part of those governments.
In Cuba, the first purges took place in the remnants of the insurrectionary process. In July 1959, Fidel Castro committed a coup d’état against the nominal president Manuel Urrutia Lleó. Next came the dismissal and imprisonment of Commander Huber Matos and his men, followed by the cleansing of less notable personalities, up to the process of the microfaction.*
Months after Fidel Castro declared, in 1961, that the revolution was communist – he had emphatically denied it in the first years of the triumph- the first great purge took place within the framework of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, ORIs, with the dismissal, in 1962, of Aníbal Escalante, leader of the Popular Socialist Party. This situation was repeated in 1966-68, as my admired colleague and friend Luis Cino wrote, in the largest legal action against the communists in the history of Cuba, and this did not occur under the mandates of Gerardo Machado or Fulgencio Batista, but under the omnipresent authority of Fidel Castro.
The constant struggles within Castroism, genuine wolf fights, led to the dismissal in 1968 of Ramiro Valdés, the once almighty and bloodthirsty Minister of the Interior
The microfraction was very useful to the maximum leader because it sent the Kremlin a resounding message of who was the master of the game. Moscow broke with its historical subjects of the Popular Socialist Party and allied itself with this upstart who guaranteed it a new and more effective servitude.
The microfraction was a great scandal in which Raúl Castro served as the main accuser. The accused, almost forty of them, were sentenced to different prison sentences, among them a man who became aware, like few others, of the damage that the new regime would cause to Cubans. Ricardo Bofill Pagés,** years later and in prison, would sow the foundations to promote new forms of fighting against totalitarianism.
The constant struggles within Castroism, genuine wolf fights, led to the dismissal in 1968 of Ramiro Valdés, the once almighty and bloodthirsty Minister of the Interior, for rivalry with Raúl, the brother of the pharaoh. However, “Ramirito” was irreplaceable in his role as executioner, which is why he never stopped being in the front row of power.
It is appropriate to recognize that the bloodiest purge of Castroism, without alluding to the numerous and inexplicable deaths of generals and doctors that occurred in recent years, was the one that occurred in 1989, when General Arnaldo Ochoa and three senior officers of the armed forces, Antonio de la Guardia, Jorge Martínez and Amado Padrón Trujillo, were sentenced to death and shot. Others involved were given prison sentences.
The political purges are closely related to the insecurity and fear suffered by the leadership of the government
A known sequel to this was the death of Jose Abrahantes, a famous Castro hitman who served 20 years in prison before they killed him by inducing a heart attack .
The political purges are closely related to the insecurity and fear suffered by the leadership of the government. Thus, the inept Miguel Diaz-Canel, in recent months, has dismissed several important players in the Government and the party.
A key figure in the regime was the former Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, who was fired in February and subsequently accused of corruption. However, the most important dismissal hierarchically, has been that of Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Perdomo Di-Lella, a young man with vast government experience who was considered a potential candidate for president in 2028, if the regime survives until that date. The cork on which it has been floating all these years seems to be taking in water.
Translator’s notes
* In 1968, a group of almost 40 officials in the Cuban Communist party and other organizations known as the “microfaction” was completely purged from the government. They endorsed Soviet-style material incentives over “moral enthusiasm” to encourage workers. Accused of conspiring against the state, they were sentenced to prison.
** Bofill and a group of friends founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976. He passed away in Miami in 2019.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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