It was 30 years ago today, August 5, 1994, when the Cuban people took to the streets in protest and came very close to toppling the Castro dictatorship and breaking the chains of communist tyranny. The Cuban regime was so rattled and scared, it sent out its State Security agents to shoot into the crowds to disperse them and quash the protest.
Via Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:
#5A Maleconazo at 30: When Castro’s secret police shot into crowds of non-violent Cuban protesters with live ammunition
Five hundred Cubans had gathered at the Havana sea wall (El Malecon) to join a launch thought to be heading to Miami. These folks did not wish to overthrow the regime, but rather to live in freedom elsewhere.
They were met by the secret police of the Castro dictatorship, who ordered the throng to disperse.
Rather than defusing the situation, another 500 Cubans joined in and began marching along the Malecon, yelling “Freedom!” and “Down With Castro!” A hundred Special Brigade troops and plain clothes police assaulted the protesters after marching for a kilometer, firing live rounds into the gathering.
30 years later and the full details of what transpired remains mostly silenced despite the pictures of regime officials pointing their handguns at the demonstrators combined with reports of the sounds of gun shots and wounded protesters echoing down through the years in anecdotal stories about that day.
Eyewitness account
Ignacio Martínez Montero posted on la Voz del Morro a first hand account of what happened that day that is translated to English below:
Then came the year 94 One hot August of that year’s day, I’d arrived at my mother in laws home in Cuba and Chacón in the heart of Old Havana, near the Malecón, for that reason alone, after visiting my mother in law, I sat , like many, on the wall of the bay, very close to where still today the famous Casablanca launch travels in and out. That year was turbulent, constantly talking about boats diverted to Miami, and the tugboat. Maybe that’s why the special brigade trucks arrived and attacked all of us who were sitting.
Our response to this aggression was only to clamor for freedom. It has been said that we threw stones; but all that is a lie, the truth was that we were tired of so much aggression and without agreeing to we began to walk together screaming, Enough, Down with the revolution … And before reaching Hotel Deauville, a battalion waited for us that attacked us with sticks and iron rods. It was they who made the big mess. They broke my left eyebrow and left me semi-lame. Yes, there were assaults and the aggressors had guns, but not among the civilians. One of the boys who went with us, who was called the Moor, even while handcuffed, they shot him in the torso and it was a miracle that he did not die. Who do you think paid for that? No one.
They put us in a truck where they received us with beatings only to convince us to scream “Viva Fidel.” They took us to the police station located at L and Malecon. Hours later I was taken to Calixto García hospital. There they attended to my foot and I treated the eyebrow wound; the medical certificate, never appeared. From there we boarded another bus and were taken to the prison 15/80, I could say “kidnapped” because nobody knew where we were. Some kids and nephews of my dad, who were with us, were released immediately. A boy could not take it and ended up hanged. No one learned of this; but we are many the witnesses who know what really happened that August 5th 1994, the day of Maleconazo.
Thirty years later, the Communist dictatorship in Cuba remains in power, terrorizing, torturing, and murdering nonviolent dissidents in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. This includes shooting young black men in the back. Despite all of this some Progressive Americans want to implement Cuban-style policing in the United States, claiming that we can learn a lot from them. They have no idea what they are saying. Unless, of course, they desire a totalitarian police state.
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