On historic day, take note of Cuba’s tragic past

On historic day, take note of Cuba's tragic past

After the war for independence from the Spanish colonial regime that
left Cuba completely destroyed and in misery, the nation rose like a
phoenix to become the most prosperous, educated and socially advanced
Spanish-speaking country in the Americas.

Unfortunately, in 1959 it plunged into the abyss of Bolshevik Communism,
a discredited ideology that led to the crumbling of the previously
powerful Soviet Union and the satellite countries of Eastern Europe.
Cuba is now down to the most abject social and political slavery.

Of the old Cuban Republic, we can proclaim its glories and its triumphs,
but to be honest, we must also mention its shortcomings and defects:

Two dictatorships, one that emerged from a democratic election in 1924
that degenerated later in a bloody dictatorship, when President Gerardo
Machado, a prestigious general of our war for independence, failed to
react to University of Havana students' rejection of his authoritarian
government. At the beginning of his administration, Machado arrived with
the enthusiastic approval of the people, but in 1930, a horrible
economic depression spread throughout Europe and the United States, and
Cuba naturally sank in that crisis.

Another dictatorship began when, on March 10, 1952, Gen. Fulgencio
Batista came to power in an unjustified military coup that led Cuba to
its most prosperous and happy period, during the 12 years that followed
the implementation of the Constitution of 1940.

Cuba advanced to high levels of respect for human rights. The government
of that period, the Cuban press — one of the most developed and free in
the continent — openly expressed its opinion, adverse or favorable to
the government, without anybody stifling its voice.

This absurd, unjustifiable dictatorship was the cause of Cubans'
rebellion. They fought to get rid of it, but brought us something worse,
when on Jan. 1, 1959, bearded rebels disguised as liberators came down
from the Sierra Maestra to implement a tyranny a thousand times worse
than the dictatorship that it toppled.

Torrents of blood were shed in horrendous extra-judicial executions. To
this bloody orgy, we have to add what came later: tens of thousands of
executions, hundreds of thousand of political prisoners and the exile of
close to one-fourth of the island's population.

DANIEL F. CALDERIN, MEMBER,

JOURNALISTS' ASSOCIATION

OF CUBA IN EXILE,

MIAMI

Source: On historic day, take note of Cuba's tragic past | Miami Herald
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