The Cuban Regime Celebrates Batista’s Generosity
It’s been 70 years since Fidel Castro was pardoned, a privilege that today’s political prisoners cannot dream of.
HAVANA TIMES – The top brass of the regime celebrated this Thursday the 70th anniversary of the release, thanks to an amnesty granted by Fulgencio Batista, of Fidel Castro and other attackers of the Moncada barracks in 1953. The commemoration, held on the Isle of Youth, carries an inescapable irony: in the regime’s prisons, far more sinister than the old Presidio Modelo, hundreds of political prisoners are currently serving sentences and have been systematically denied pardon.
The officials who delivered the tribute speeches emphasized the “popular pressure” that Batista could not avoid when he released those “young men.” Tired of the bloodbath that followed the Moncada assault, many Cubans called on the government to show clemency to Castro and his followers, rather than sentence them to death.
Emboldened by what he saw as a sign of public support for his cause, the then-lawyer—who had failed in politics and turned to gangster-style violence—had the release from Presidio Modelo of himself and his companions filmed. The images of the young men leaving the “Cuban Siberia” would be replayed endlessly by revolutionary propaganda.
Castro had been sentenced to 15 years in prison following the opening of Case 37 in 1953, which handed down similar sentences to his fellow attackers. The women who participated in the assault—Melba Hernandez and Haydee Santamaria—were sent to the Guanajay prison, where artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara is now imprisoned, and according to some rumors, so is the ousted Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil.
It was at Presidio Modelo, according to many of Castro’s interviews, that his “conversion” to Marxism took place, until then, only his brother Raul Castro had studied it. Supposedly, the inmates organized themselves into study circles or “academies” to read communist literature, some of which is now preserved in a museum at the site.
Fidel Castro would later confess that thanks to the free time he enjoyed and the books his family brought him, he read more than ever before in his life. He also enjoyed lavish meals delivered by Naty Revuelta, a woman of high standing in Republican Cuba, whose affair with Fidel cost both of them the end of their respective relationships.
Castro summarized his prison life with a daily schedule reminiscent of the discipline of the Jesuits, with whom he had studied: “We are allowed into the yard from 10 to 10:30 a.m. and from 1 to 4 p.m.” As for the daily routine in prison: “In brief: 5:30 a.m., breakfast; 8 a.m., classes until 10:30; 10:45, lunch; 2 p.m., classes again until 3; recreation until 4; 4:45, dinner; 7 to 8:15, political economy classes and group reading; 9:30, lights out.”
They did not suffer hardship, were not tortured, and were not denied medical care or family visits—something that today’s Cuban prisoners, both political and common, cannot say. Nonetheless, Castro always complained about being placed for a few days in a separate cell without electricity—another “privilege” that is denied not only to prisoners, but to any Cuban in any province for several hours a day.
Ramiro Valdes, 93, one of those sent to the then-called Isle of Pines seventy years ago, returned this Thursday alongside Miguel Diaz-Canel and “6,000 residents of the special municipality.” Raul Castro, another of the former inmates, did not participate in the ceremony. He too had been filmed that day with suitcase in hand, dressed in a suit and heading for Mexico, a stark contrast to the emaciated prisoners who today manage to leave Castro’s prisons. That day, Fidel gave a press conference in a local hotel.
According to official media, the celebration of Castro’s release is “not an exaltation of the past but a call to the present”—a phrase also full of irony: several of the 553 prisoners the regime promised the Vatican it would release have been returned to prison for “failing to comply” with the draconian conditions imposed on them.
Now, as in 1953, “popular pressure” speaks volumes about the urgent need to release Jose Daniel Ferrer, Felix Navarro, Maria Cristina Garrido, Sayli Navarro, and hundreds of others. However, if Thursday’s ceremony made one thing clear, it’s that the Batista regime is a thing of the past. And apparently, so are amnesties.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.