The purges in Castro's totalitarianism

By: Pedro Corzo - 18/12/2024

Guest columnist.
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It is constantly being said that the regime in Cuba headed, at least on paper, by the inept Miguel Diaz-Canel is immersed in a purge of officials who offer no guarantees of continuity to totalitarianism. There are many who have been ousted and, it seems to indicate, the list will grow.

Periodically, regimes of force resort to the dismissal of their officers, not because they have committed a crime - they are all criminals - but because they have lost the trust of the supreme leader, the most important guarantee for forming these governments.

In Cuba, the first purges took place in the remnants of the insurrectional process. In July 1959, Fidel Castro carried out a coup against the nominal president Manuel Urrutia Lleó; then there was the dismissal and imprisonment of Commander Huber Matos and his men, followed by the cleansing of less notable personalities, until the micro-fraction process.

Months after Fidel Castro declared, in 1961, that the revolution was communist—he had emphatically denied this in the first years of the insurrectional victory—the first great purge took place within the framework of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, ORI, 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 absolute authority of Fidel Castro.

The micro-faction was very useful to the top leader because it sent a strong message to the Kremlin about who was the master of the game. Moscow broke with its historical subjects in the Popular Socialist Party and allied itself with an upstart who guaranteed it a new and more effective servitude.

The microfraction scandal was a huge scandal in which Raúl Castro served as the main accuser. The defendants, more than thirty, were sentenced to various prison terms, among them a man who became aware, like few others, of the damage that the new regime would cause to Cubans, Ricardo Bofill Pagés, who years later and in prison, would lay the foundations for promoting new forms of struggle against totalitarianism.

The constant struggles within Castroism, genuine wolf fights, led to the dismissal in 1968 of Ramiro Valdés, the once all-powerful and bloodthirsty Minister of the Interior. According to reports at the time, it was due to rivalry with Raúl, the pharaoh's brother. However, "Ramirito" was irreplaceable in his role as executioner, which is why he has never ceased to be in the front row of power.

It is appropriate to recognize that the bloodiest purge of Castroism, without reference to the numerous and inexplicable deaths of generals and doctors that have occurred in recent years, was the one that occurred in 1989, in which General Arnaldo Ochoa and three high-ranking officers of the armed forces, Antonio de la Guardia, Jorge Martínez and Amado Padrón Trujillo, were sentenced to death and shot, in addition to the prison sentences given to others implicated in the process.

A well-known consequence of this process was the death of Jose Abrahantes, a top Castro hitman who was serving 20 years in prison. According to reports, the former official was given a heart attack.

Political purges are closely related to the insecurity that the government leadership is suffering and are as bloody as the fear that grips it. That is why the inept Miguel Diaz-Canel has, in recent months, ousted several important figures from the government and the party.

A key figure in the regime was the former Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, who was dismissed in February and subsequently accused of corruption. However, the most important dismissal hierarchically has been that of the Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Perdomo Di-Lella, a young man with vast government experience, who was considered a potential candidate of the Castro leadership to be president in 2028, if the regime survives until that date, because the cork on which it has been supported all these years also seems to be leaking.

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