In the dark for 66 years

By: Pedro Corzo - 09/01/2025

Guest columnist.
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I remember as if it were yesterday, January 1st, 1959 and the following days, I had just turned 16 and there was a collective hysteria, as described by the journalist and historian Enrique Encimosa in the documentary “Al filo del machete” produced by Pedro Suárez “Tintín”, Luis Díaz and the writer José Antonio Albertini in his most recent publication “Memoria constante: relatos verídicos”.

At the end of 1958, the premiere of the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai” was scheduled to take place at the most modern cinema in Santa Clara, “El Cloris”. I don’t think there were any spectators there at the time. Various rebel groups attacked the city, taking the war to the streets, although I do remember that a few months later, the cinema and the building that housed it, the Gran Hotel, the tallest building in the interior of the country, were confiscated by the revolution.

The former owner, Orfelio Ramos, was an entrepreneur, as dictator Miguel Diaz Canel likes to say, who had made his fortune renting out bicycles and driving local buses with such spirit and talent that he became the owner of the buses that provided urban service in the city of Santa Clara.

Hysteria had gripped both men and women. To my knowledge, the majority of the population participated in that carnival that mixed hope for some and fear for others. In the end, the ironclad social control established by Fidel and Raúl Castro terrorized the population in a framework of colossal inefficiency that has led the country to unprecedented spiritual and material misery.

The hope for a better world was dashed, and only fear remained. These contrary feelings were the result of the fanaticism of a few who, by standing out in the revolutionary whirlwind, were the protagonists of a sectarianism that was difficult to free themselves from, even if they had revolutionary credentials, as happened to the insurrectional leader Pedro Barata, a political prisoner for many years, when he testified before some thugs that the person they accused was innocent.

I remember a Castro slogan that went something like this: “It doesn’t matter what you did, but what you are doing,” a clear message to the new and future accomplices in the destruction of the Republic we lost.

The tension in society grew stronger every day because the arbitrary arrests and the roar of the firing squad frightened and deafened us. Arrests based on mere suspicions or unfounded accusations of collaboration with the overthrown regime were factors that encouraged opportunists or the most fearful to become accusers before revolutionary tribunals that did not seek justice but cruel revenge, concealed in a spurious judicial process.

The Revolution as a source of law, a pronouncement by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Republic, as Dr. Ramon Barquín explained in a recent article, gave the final blow to civility, including the conversion of the media, even the private ones, into an instrument of thunderous propaganda that confused beyond description the citizens who were gradually but constantly being transformed into a mass at the service of the Castros and a criminal accomplice.

On the other hand, the massive confiscation of property, without judicial process, deprived many people of well-earned family assets. A Ministry for the Recovery of Misappropriated Property was hastily created, appointing incompetent administrators who destroyed the properties, a kind of precursor to the nouveau riche of today, children of the Moncada followers who today enjoy the power and wealth that their parents and grandparents appropriated.

Days and nights passed by, accumulating 66 years. There have been many accomplices of Castro's totalitarianism, the regime has not lacked executioners who, even if they have not fired a rifle at a fellow human being, are accomplices of the numerous deaths and sufferings endured by the population.

However, to the satisfaction of men and women of dignity, there has been no shortage of compatriots willing to face the disgrace of Castroism with the painful consequences of exile, prison and firing squad, not to mention the internal exile in which many compatriots live, who, for various reasons, remain on the Island.

I am sure that Cuba and the Cubans will be free, but justice must be sought for this vast devastation of 66 years of terror.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».