Body of South American Youth Mutilated Near Guantanamo! U.S. Officials Rebuff Inquiries! Bereaved Family of Young Idealist Demand Answers!
Havana is 500 miles from Guantanamo so “near” is a relative term. And U.S. officials haven't been grilled on the matter. But everything in the above headline is true. Nonetheless, allow me to apologize to the Bolivian family of the victim for my flim-flammery as an intro. If I 'd started this column with what this family strongly suspects: that the mutilation and possible death of their daughter in Cuba was the handiwork of Cuba's Stalinist regime, no major media organ--it goes without saying-- would deign to report the crime, as they've ignored Castroite crimes for half a century. Hence my mountebankish intro in the hope (undoubtedly vain) that the MSM's 50 year old tradition might suffer a brief hiccup.
Bolivian newspaper La Razon reports that the body of Beatriz Porco, a 22 year old Bolivian who won a scholarship to study medicine in Cuba two years ago, was returned to her family on April 2nd , minus several internal organs, including the girl's brain, kidneys, lungs, and uterus.
Interestingly, the article reports that the family had been warned of such practices in Cuba. “The day before her corpse arrived,” says the victim's sister, Sofia Porco, “we met with Cuba's Ambassador to Bolivia, Rafael Dausa, and my father specifically asked him if such a thing was likely. The ambassador assured us that her body would be returned to us absolutely intact.”
As is usually the case with Cuban “ambassadors,” Dausa has been identified by Cuban defectors as a high-ranking DGI (Directorio General de Inteligencia, Cuba's KGB and STASI trained secret police) officer.
Sofia Porco adds that her families' suspicions were aroused when they asked for an autopsy on her sister and the Cuban doctors (who infest Bolivia due to Castro's much-heralded “Doctor Diplomacy” ) were adamant that the autopsy be conducted in Bolivia's El Alto clinic, which is run and staffed exclusively by Cuban medical personnel.
Instead the family dug in their heels and managed to have it conducted at Hospital de Clinicas in the town of Curahuara de Carabgas by Bolivian doctors, where the discovery was made that among other horrors, her sister's skull contained only toilet paper.
Sofia adds that the town's major offered to help her family investigate the matter until Dausa threatened him. Sofia's uncle also reports that their family was threatened with reprisals by Cuban officials (who walk tall in Bolivia thanks to Evo Morales) if they dared report the incident to the media.
Bolivia's La Razon also reports that this isn't the first time Bolivians have been subject to such Cuban practices. On October 21, 2002 the family of Miguel Bastos, another Bolivian studying medicine in Havana, got a phone call from Cuban officials reporting that Miguel had died in Cuba of an accident. When his body was delivered to Bolivia, an autopsy revealed that 18 internal organs had been extracted. Miguel's mother promptly requested the organs, a record of his Cuban autopsy and the police report on his accidental death.
The Bastos family is still waiting. Miguel's girlfriend who accompanied him in Havana reported that, in fact, three days prior to his death, Miguel had been threatened by Cuban police because he'd been complaining of conditions and requesting to be sent back home.
Actually, there's nothing novel about this Cuban revolutionary attitude towards Bolivians. In his own diaries, for instance, Che Guevara sneered at rural Bolivians as “little animals.” Guinea Pigs, might be a more specific Cuban definition for them nowadays.
The article in La Razon reports that Cuban embassy personnel responded to the Bolivian queries quite succinctly: “we have behaved in strict accordance with Cuba's internal policies.” And they may have a point.
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