The TRUTH about La Cabaña - and the executions

[Guerrilla Manila]

One of the first tasks of the triumphant Cuban revolutionaries in 1959 was to establish justice for the thousands of Cuban families whose sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, and neighbors had been tortured and slaughtered on the streets and in the dungeons of the Dictator Batista's regime. The martyred dead numbered at least 20,000 in a country then of 6 million. Justice had already begun with the end of the regime as spontaneous retributions took place against known torturers and murderers whose cover and protection had vanished.

Che was assigned the task of establishing a just and fair but also transparent justice and to bring the process under revolutionary control, ensuring due process, defense lawyers, and fair proceedings. Popular, public 'revolutionary tribunals' were organized in large stadiums and courthouses. Volumes of public testimony were given, with horrific testimony of the most vile tortures and bestial murder recorded and made public. Che was assigned the role as "Supreme Prosecutor" at La Cabaña fortress, and reviewed those cases and handled the appeals of those ... ALREADY sentenced to death for their deeds. Duque de Estrada, whose job it was to gather evidence, take testimonies, and prepare the trials, also sat with Che, the "supreme prosecutor", on the appellate bench, where Che made the final decision on the men's fate." Duque has stated that the two of them "were in agreement on almost 100 percent of the decisions which they did not come to lightly" and that they "got a lot of flak" for giving each case due and fair consideration.

Some 200 or so of the worst torturers and murderers of the US-backed Batista tyranny were shot by firing squads. No one has ever offered a shred of credible evidence that anyone innocent was executed.

It is also important to note that Jon Lee Anderson, author of the 814 page definitive biography - "Che: A Revolutionary Life", has stated that in his 5 years of research: "I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed an innocent." Anderson also notes that "Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder."


... THE END



:che:


furthermore ...
__________________________________________________ ______


---> After WWII the US had the Nuremberg trials and hung the guilty Nazis.

---> After the ouster of the brutal dictator Batista ... Che was put in charge of their own tribunal and had the guilty torturers, goons, and henchmen shot.

= SAME THING

[Guerrilla Manila]

SUPPORTED BY SCHOLARLY PEER-REVIEWED ACADEMIC JOURNALS ...



The application of the death penalty in Cuba against war criminals and others followed the same procedure as that seen in the trials by the Allies in the Nuremberg trials. Had the Revolutionary Government not applied severe legislation against the few hundred torturers, terrorists, and other criminals long employed by the Batista regime, the people themselves would have taken justice into their own hands--as happened during the anti-Machado rebellion--and thrown the society into chaos. It was only the population's confidence in the government's effective and cautiously selective administration of revolutionary justice that kept the society in order. The death penalty was imposed on the enemies of the people--those who had killed, tortured, and committed crimes against humanity during the revolutionary war and continued to conspire against the revolution. These were the traitorous elements that supported and participated in the Batista regime and received shelter in the United States or Falangist Spain and those that feared fulfillment of the promise to the end of class privilege, exploitation, and all abuses of the Batista regime maintained by the overthrown Cuban bourgeoisie, American corporations, and the U.S. regime.[1]

1. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-582X(199121)18%3A2%3C114%3ATYOCRP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V


Thirty Years of Cuban Revolutionary Penal Law
Raul Gomez Treto
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 18, No. 2, Cuban Views on the Revolution (Spring, 1991), pp. 114-125

[Guerrilla Manila]

Cuba's Revolutionary Tribunals — Separating Fact from Fiction
Nov 12, 2007
By Tony Saunois



The 40th anniversary of Che’s death also witnessed numerous charges that he was a “butcher,” owing to his role in overseeing the trials and executions of counter-revolutionaries following the Cuban revolution. Below we reprint an excerpt from Che Guevara: Symbol of Struggle by Tony Saunois replying to these attacks.

You can read the book on-line at
www.socialistalternative.org/publications/che (http://www.socialistalternative.org/publications/che)


From La Cabaña, Che oversaw the Revolutionary Tribunals that were used as a means of purging the army of its most pro-Batista elements. The trials centered on those who conducted torture and murder under the Batista dictatorship…

The Tribunals provoked a massive attack by U.S. imperialism, which denounced such measures as criminal. However, the reprisals had the support of the mass of Cubans, especially the poor, who had suffered horrific crimes at the hands of Batista's thugs.

The Tribunals were not elected committees of workers, soldiers, and representatives of local communities as would have been advocated by Marxists during such revolutionary conditions.

However, the measures taken by the Tribunals were to defend the revolution and to try to exact some justice for the victims of Batista's sadistic torturers. Those accused were given defense lawyers and the right to disprove or justify their actions…

[In the main,] only in the cases of brutal torture or death, which involved hundreds of cases, were executions the verdict. Former prisoners and the families of the dead or “disappeared” were asked to give evidence and show the scars they were left to carry for life.

These elementary rights are in marked contrast to the "justice" given during the 1980s throughout Latin America as military regimes fell one after another across the continent. Unlike in Cuba after the fall of Batista, the new pro-capitalist governments have permitted a conspiracy of silence to take place to protect the military and police … Despite hundreds of thousands suffering torture and death, few prosecutions have been made against those responsible for such crimes in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, and other countries…

The friends and families of "los desaparecidos" (the disappeared) still get no reply to their simple question, carried on placards throughout the continent: "¿Donde Están?" (“Where are they?”). In Argentina, after more than a decade of weekly protests in front of the Presidential Palace, the mothers of the disappeared are still asking this same question and still get no reply.

The silence of U.S. imperialism about these crimes, in which it and its agencies such as the CIA are directly implicated, has been deafening. It has been in marked contrast to its reaction to the tribunals headed by Che in Cuba.

A gruesome picture was painted by U.S. imperialism of what was taking place in Havana. The “terror” of the new regime was hypocritically denounced and Che was presented as Public Enemy Number One…

Che was determined to carry through this policy … Che repeated endlessly to his Cuban comrades during this period that [left-wing President Jacobo] Arbenz had failed in Guatemala because he failed to purge the armed forces and allowed the CIA to penetrate and overthrow his government [in 1954 after he nationalized the lands of the United Fruit Company]. He was determined not to allow history to be repeated in Cuba.

On January 22, 1959, a mass rally was called in Havana to support the government's “war trials” policy. Estimates vary, but anywhere between half a million and one million participated in this mass demonstration…

Banners denounced U.S. imperialism for its double standards, compared the trials of Batista's assassins with the Nuremberg trials of convicted Nazis after the Second World War, and demanded “revolutionary justice.”

Castro asked all those who agreed with revolutionary justice to raise their hands. Up to one million hands were raised to a cry of “¡Sí!”

Castro commented: “Gentlemen of the diplomatic corps, gentlemen of the press of the whole continent, the jury of a million Cubans of all ideas and all social classes has voted.”



http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article20.php?id=640 (http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article20.php?id=640)

[Bright Banana Beard]

I hate the word TRUTH, why not use "History Materialism Conclusion" of La Cabana?

[Guerrilla Manila]

I hate the word TRUTH, why not use "History Materialism Conclusion" of La Cabana?

... Because that wouldn't make any sense.


Do you mean "materialist conception of history" ?

[Bright Banana Beard]

... Because that wouldn't make any sense.


Do you mean "materialist conception of history" ?

That exactly I trying to say