The yells of “DOWN WITH COMMUNISM!” and “LONG LIVE CHRIST THE KING!” would make the walls of the prison tremble!” wrote a 21-year-old poet who’d been imprisoned, tortured and threatened with a firing squad by photogenic U.S. media-hailed “hipsters” who’d recently nationalized most of his nation’s means of production.
The defiant yells the imprisoned poet heard almost daily through the window of his gloomy dungeon were always cut short by another one of “FUEGO!” and a thundering blast -- as Che Guevara’s firing-squads murdered defiant young heroes.
At the time the poet, name Armando Valladares, was younger than Nick Jonas is today, and the defiantly yelling heroes (some seen here: were mostly about the age of Justin Beiber.
“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather)
Women and girls were also being rounded and crammed into dungeons and torture chambers by the photogenic U.S. media-hailed-“hipsters.” Cary Roque, for instance, was captured and jailed by Castro and Che Guevara’s KGB-trained secret police when she was younger than Miley Cyrus is today. She spent 17 torture-filled years in Cuba’s dungeons.
Last year President Trump made a point of presenting señora Roque during one of his speeches in Miami while warmly accepting her hug and kiss on the cheek. When Cary Roque was finally released from her 17 years of prison horrors she was the same age as Ilhan Omar is today.
“Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (Andrea Mitchell.)
But perhaps my term “U.S.-hailed hipsters” strikes some of my amigos as unnecessarily hyperbolic, or even untrue? Fair enough. Let’s have a look:
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“They saw in Castro and Che Guevara the hipster who in the era of the Organization Man had joyfully defied the system, summoned a dozen friends and overturned a government of wicked old men.” (Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Special assistant to President Kennedy, Camelot historian, and Harvard Professor.)
“Castro’s is a revolution of youth,” (Herbert Matthews, New York Times 1961.)
“I’m going back to Cuba to kill Che Guevara!” snarled Jose Castano (then 17) to fellow paratrooper Manel Menedez (then 22). These youths were then in Guatemala training as members of Brigade 2506 for what came to be known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Among Jose Castano and Manel Menendez’s Band of Brothers in Brigade 2506 during the Bay of Pigs invasion was 16-year-old Felipe Rodon who on April 17th, 1961 grabbed his 57 mm cannon and ran to face one of Castro’s Stalin tanks point-blank on that bloody Bay of Pigs beachhead. At 10 yards Felipe fired at the clanking monster and it exploded, but the momentum kept it going and the Soviet tank sent over by the fat and wicked old men in the Kremlin rolled over little Felipe.
Gilberto Hernandez was 17 when a round from a Czech burp gun put out his eye on that same beachead. Soviet-led Castro troops were swarming in but he held his ground, firing furiously with his recoilless rifle for another hour until the Soviet-trained Castroites finally surrounded him and killed him with a shower of grenades.
When he hit the beach at the Bay of Pigs, Jose Antonio San Roman, the Military Commander of Brigade 2506, was 27 years old. His 2nd in command Erneido Oliva was 27. The Political delegate of the Provisional government head, Manuel Artime, was 28. All were younger than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is today.
Among the leaders of the Anti-Castro Cuban underground of the time were Rogelio González, Alberto Tapia, and Virgilio Campaneria. None was older than 26 in 1961 when murdered by Soviet- armed firing squads. Seventeen other college kids were murdered by Castro and Che’s firing squads that week in early 1961. Far from belonging to “Batista’s wicked old men,” all these youngsters had fought the Batista regime. You will search for any mention of this by the New York Times or the media in general in utter vain.
As usual for foreign commentators on the Cuban Revolution, Jean Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, the New York Times et al. weren’t just wrong; they were smugly propounding the very opposite of the truth. Cuban “children” were in positions of power alright, but as armed opponents of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. These youngsters were also paying for their bravery with their lives—and by the thousands. Most of the ones captured stood tall, proud, defiant (and silent) through ghastly torture by Castro’s secret-police, then being tutored by wicked-old men from the Kremlin (KGB). But the Cuban kids went to their deaths by Castroite firing-squad defiantly yelling “Down with Communism!”
“Only through the total eradication of private property will we create the new man.” (Che Guevara)
“Private corporate property is not only wrong, but also nonsensical…we cannot accept capitalism’s conception of economic relations as “free and private.” (Democratic Socialists of America”)
“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible!" (Che Guevara)
“I’m the boss! How ’bout that!” (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)
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