“I have been affiliated with the Cuba Council of Churches since the 1980s,” boasted Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a sermon on July 16th 2006. “I have several close Cuban friends (italics added) who work with the Cuba Council of Churches and you have heard me preach about our affiliation and the Black Theology Project’s trips to Cuba. The Cuban Council of Churches has been a non-partisan global mission partner for decades. I have worked with them for two decades.”
“Non-partisan,” Reverend Wright? Not according to Cuban intelligence defector Juan Vives, who from hands-on experience reports that the Cuba Council of Churches is in fact an arm of Cuba's ICAP (Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos) itself an arm of Cuba's KGB-founded and mentored DGI (Directorio General de Inteligencia.) The ICAP's long-time chieftan was Rene Cruz Rodriguez, by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's own admission perhaps one of his “friends."
Rodriguez' meteoric rise through Cuba's Stalinist bureaucracy was facilitated by his diligence as an early executioner, often beating out Che Guevara and Raul Castro themselves in his zeal to shatter the firing-squad victim's skull with a coup d' grace from his .45. (Here is some dramatic proof of Rene Cruz Rodriguez' zeal. That's him on the right giving the firing squad their order of “FUEGO!”)
On November 5, 1982 a Dade County, Florida, grand jury indicted Rene Rodriguez Cruz for smuggling drugs into the U.S.
This murderer headed a Cuban agency that Jeremiah Wright “worked with for decades” by his own admission, and whose staff he regards as “friends.” These “friends,” arranged the visit for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's and his 300 person entourage to Havana in 1984, which included Rev. Wright.
“Viva Fidel!” bellowed Reverend Jackson while concluding his speech at the University of Havana during that visit. “Viva Che Guevara! Long live our cry of Freedom!”
“He (Jesse Jackson) is a great personality,” reciprocated a beaming Fidel Castro, “a brilliant man with a great talent, capable of communicating with people, very persuasive, reliable, and honest. Jackson's main characteristic is honesty. He is sincere and there is not a single bit of demagoguery in his conversations.”
As mentioned, this was summer of 1984, so at the time the world's longest-suffering black political prisoner suffered his incarceration and tortures in stoic defiance. “Nigger!” taunted his jailers between tortures. “We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!”
I do not refer to Nelson Mandela. No, this prisoner was being tortured a few miles away from the Revs. Jackson, Wright and their entourage of black American luminaries. The prisoner was a black Cuban named Eusebio Penalver and he was being tortured by Reverend Wright's gracious hosts. Mr Penalver's incarceration and tortures stretched to 29 years which makes him the longest-suffering black political prisoner in modern history, surpassing Nelson Mandela's record in time behind bars and probably doubling the horrors suffered by Mandela during this period.
In fact, most who climb to positions of authority in Castro's regime did so as accomplices in mass-murder. Its part of the deal, named El Compromiso Sangriento (The Blood Covenant.) This tried and true Soviet scheme was presented by Soviet GRU agent Angel Ciutat to Che Guevara just days after he and Fidel entered Havana in January 1959. The scene was a meeting at Che's palatial (and recently stolen) estate in Tarara just west of Havana. Every candidate for regime officer, suggested Soviet officer Ciutat, would take his place in a firing squad and pull the trigger with live ammo.
From his prison-cell window Tito Rodriguez Oltmans, a former Cuban freedom-fighter and political prisoner, watched this blood covenant in action. "Every evening the military cadets and regime officials would be bused in and armed with Belgian .308 caliber FALs as they lined up for the firing squad," recalls Mr. Oltmans, a prisoner in La Cabana prison in the early 1960s. “As darkness fell the condemned patriot -- shirtless and gagged -- would be dragged to the execution wall and bound. The cadets and officials would line up only four meters in front of the patriot and all had loaded weapons." ... FUEGO!
A brief aside: historically and almost universally, most members of a firing squad shoot blanks, to assuage their conscience. But such assuaging would contradict the Cuban firing squads' most vital purpose.
The point of the Blood Covenant was to bond the murderers, especially those in line for future leadership, with the murderous regime. The more shooters the more murderers. The more murderers thus manufactured the more people highly-motivated to resist any overthrow of their system. After 16,000 firing-squad murders (according to the Black Book of Communism) Cuba's officer and regime official corps (Jeremiah Wright’s “friends”) was plenty "bonded" to the regime.
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