Retratos de fusilados por el Castrismo - Juan Abreu

Emanaciones: Juan Abreu

Un pequeño video aquí está para ver si ayuda en lo de recopilar las fotografías de los fusilados del castrismo necesito un archivo lo más completo posible, como es natural. Se mató a muchos y ha pasado medio siglo y los enemigos de la libertad y los cómplices del castrismo que son lo mismo han hecho todo lo posible para que desaparezcan los fusilados y los asesinados de la llamada Revolución.

Pero no he de permitirlo en la medida de mis fuerzas para ello trabajo con gran persistencia y dedicación devolviendo vida y color a los muertos y poniendo belleza en el espacio absurdo y gris de la muerte como pueden ver.

Arrestados presuntos asesinos de joven rockero en Camagüey

Café Fuerte

Mandy Junco

Por Redacción CaféFuerte

Las autoridades policiales anunciaron el arresto de cinco jóvenes vinculados al asesinato del rockero Pedro Armando Junco Torres, quien fue apuñañalado en plena vía pública en la ciudad de Camagüey, el pasado 16 de mayo.

Un comunicado del Ministerio del Interior (MININT) en Camagüey, divulgado este lunes, indicó que en el término de las 24 horas siguientes al crimen fueron detenidos Carlos Eugenio Álvarez Germán, Dairon Mora Reyes, Yelko Martin Batista Williams, Melson Sergio Varona Oduardo y Raciel Antonio Vázquez Morales, todos con edades comprendidas entre los 17 y 23 años.

Aunque la nota policial no lo consigna, se trata al parecer de una pandilla local con antecedentes de agresiones y violencia callejera.

Como medida cautelar, los cinco implicados se encuentran en prisión provisional en espera de ser encausados por su participación en el hecho criminal.

Confesión de los agresores

“Demostrada la participación de cada uno de los comisores a partir de su confesión, fueron asegurados con la medida cautelar de prisión provisional, y sobre ellos caerá el peso de la justicia revolucionaria”, señaló la información policial.

De acuerdo con el reporte, los agresores transitaban por la vía pública bajo la ingestión de bebidas alcohólicas, dos de ellos el posesión de armas blancas, y antes de apuñalar mortalmente al músico, Yelko Martin Batista Williams había lesionado ya a tres personas en el trayecto.

Fueron Batista Williams y Carlos Eugenio Álvarez Germán quienes agredieron brutalmente a Pedro Armando Junco Torres, causándole la muerte, en presencia del resto de los implicados, señaló el reporte del MININT.

Quedó establecido que ninguno de los involucrados mantenía relación con la víctima.

La investigación policial confirma que el hecho ocurrió en horas de la madrugada del 16 de mayo, cuando Junco Torres, de 28 años, recibió heridas por arma blanca por parte de los agresores en la calle San Pablo, en la capital camagueyana.

Conmoción en la ciudad

Su cuerpo sin vida fue trasladado al hospital provincial Manuel Ascunce Domenech, donde fue certificado el deceso a causa de las heridas y los golpes recibidos.

El esclarecimiento oficial del hecho delictivo se produce luego de que el padre de la víctima, el escritor Pedro Junco López, denunció el asesinato de su hijo y fustigó el silencio de  la prensa y las autoridades gubernamentales en una carta pública, difundida ampliamente en las redes sociales.

El asesinato del músico, guitarrista de la banda de rock Strike Back, conmocionó a la capital camagüeyana.

Junco López dijo que su hijo fue acribillado a golpes y puñaladas. y que el examen forense confirmó 46 contusiones en su cuerpo.

“He sido un fervoroso defensor del derecho a la vida. Pero si es necesaria la aplicación de la pena máxima para salvar a personas inocentes, pues sea aplicada”, escribió el padre en su misiva de denuncia.

Nota relacionada:
Testimonio: Asesinaron a mi hijo en las calles camagüeyanas

Putin’s Russia: Don’t Walk, Don’t Eat, and Don’t Drink

The New Yorker

By Masha Gessen

Vladimir Kara-Murza presents a 2014 report in Washington, D.C., on corruption at Russia’s Sochi Olympics. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX WONG/GETTY

Last Saturday, on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, a friend and I were in Moscow discussing precautions. I confessed to a fear of apartment-building entryways because two people I knew, the parliament member Galina Starovoitova and the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, had been shot dead on their way up to their apartments. “Ever since Nemtsov was killed,” my friend said, referring to the February shooting of a Putin opponent, “I don’t know anything about precautions anymore. What are you supposed not to do now—walk the streets?”

It would also be prudent now to stop eating and drinking. On Wednesday, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a thirty-three-year-old opposition journalist, was hospitalized in critical condition after he collapsed at his office in Moscow. He was diagnosed with renal failure that had resulted from acute intoxication. Put more simply, the problem was poison.

It is not clear when and how Kara-Murza may have been poisoned, but Russian activists and journalists who get enough death threats and take them sufficiently seriously to hire bodyguards are also usually careful about what they ingest. Soon after the chess champion Garry Kasparov quit the sport to go into politics full time, in 2004, he hired a team of eight bodyguards, who not only accompanied him everywhere but also carried drinking water and food for Kasparov to eat at meals shared in public. Three years ago, Kasparov told me that what he liked most about foreign travel was being able to shed his bodyguards for a while. A year after that, threats drove him to leave Russia permanently.

Attacks by poisoning are possibly even more common in Russia than assassinations by gunfire. Most famously, Alexander Litvinenko, a secret-police whistle-blower, was killed by polonium in London, in 2006. Last week, British newspapers reported that a Russian businessman who dropped dead while jogging in a London suburb in 2012 had been killed by a rare plant poison. He had been a key witness in a money-laundering case that had originally been exposed by the Moscow accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured to death, in 2009, in a Russian jail.

Two years before Politkovskaya was shot, she suffered multiple-organ failure after ingesting a poison, still unidentified, with tea served to her on a Russian plane. Yuri Shchekochikhin, her colleague at the investigative weekly Novaya Gazeta, died in a Moscow hospital, in 2003, as the result of an apparent poisoning. In 2008, a lawyer who specializes in bringing Russian cases to the European Court of Human Rights, Karinna Moskalenko, fell ill in Strasbourg; her husband and two small children were also unwell. The cause of their illness was identified as mercury that had somehow found its way into their car.

Moskalenko was one of the lead lawyers in the defense of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon who had become Putin’s most famous political prisoner. He spent ten years behind bars before Putin granted him clemency before the Sochi Olympics; he is now living in Zurich and running an anti-Putin N.G.O., Open Russia, with offices in London, Prague, and Moscow. Last month, the Moscow office was raided by law enforcement, which seized many of the computers. (Some have since been returned.) Kara-Murza runs Open Russia’s multi-city public-lecture program—a difficult job, because most cities in Russia try to shut down his events. The organization itself has so far escaped being shut down because, on paper, it doesn’t exist: using a loophole in the law, it has simply not registered—and hence cannot be liquidated the way many other Russian N.G.O.s have been in the past three years.

Like the Soviet regime before it, the Putin government spreads fear by destroying the illusion that one can protect oneself. So Open Russia’s leaders think that they can use a loophole in the law to keep themselves safe? the message seems to be. Let’s see how safe they feel after one of them is poisoned.

Indeed, the larger message of the Nemtsov assassination and the apparent attempted assassination of Kara-Murza is that no one is safe. Both men are sufficiently well-known to attract the attention of Russia’s dwindling oppositional minority, but neither has the superstar status that would preclude identifying with him. If Litvinenko’s murder made one think, “Well, but who’d be interested in me?,” these attacks put many more people on notice. Don’t walk the streets. Don’t eat the food. Don’t talk.

Speaking of talking, in the past few months, people who work at two Moscow restaurants have warned me, separately, about the precise locations of listening devices at the eateries. The warnings came unbidden. The food at both places was, incidentally, not only very good but also apparently safe. That, along with the springtime sun, helps maintain the bizarre sense of normalcy that has a way of going hand in hand with the mortal danger that has become a fact of everyday life.

Cuba: Matan a pedradas a transexual

14ymedio

Juan Carlos Fernández 

Casa donde vivía Yosvani Muñoz Robaina junto a su madre. (14ymedio)

Un suceso ha estremecido la ciudad de Pinar del Río y puesto en el centro del debate el tema de la intolerancia y la homofobia. En la madrugada del 26 de abril Yosvani Muñoz Robaina, transexual de 24 años de edad y conocido como La Eterna, murió a consecuencia de una andanada de piedras que le lanzó un grupo de adolescentes, mientras la víctima se encontraba en el parque Roberto Amarán. 

El suceso ha provocado la indignación de la comunidad LGBT pinareña y levantado un sinnúmero de rumores, dado el silencio de las autoridades, sobre el carácter del crimen homofóbico o crimen pasional del asesinato. Para aclarar los sucesos, 14ymedio ha visitado a la madre de Muñoz Robaina, quien se encontraba en un estado de tristeza profunda, pero aún así quiso dar su testimonio para este diario.

Berta Robaina es una mujer recia de más de cincuenta años, curtida por el trabajo y que no deja de preguntarse por qué tuvo qué pasarle algo así a su hijo. Vivían juntos en una modesta casa de bajo costo, frente a la Fábrica de Piezas de Repuesto en las cercanías del Reparto Cuba Libre, conocido también como El Rancho. Yosvani era “la alegría de la casa”, según cuenta su madre con las profundas huellas del dolor en el rostro.

El suceso ha provocado la indignación de la comunidad LGBT pinareña

Al preguntarle sobre quiénes fueron los perpetradores del ataque que le costó la vida a su hijo, la mujer aguanta las lágrimas y asegura que “eran un grupo de muchachitos que no tenían algo mejor que hacer que agredir a personas que nunca se metían con nadie”. Lo absurdo de la situación ha dejado a la señora con una mezcla de sufrimiento por la pérdida y confusión ante la realidad de que un hecho así haya llegado a ocurrir. 

Sobre el tema de los muchos rumores que corren por la ciudad sobre la verdadera causa de la muerte, Berta aclara que “Yosvani tenia muchas pedradas en el cuerpo, incluso en la cabeza, fue llevado sin conocimiento para el policlínico Pedro Borras, cerca de las dos de la madrugada del 26 de abril”. Allí moriría una hora después como consecuencia de las heridas recibidas.

"la pedrada que le causó la muerte no fue la de la cabeza, como se creía, sino una que le impactó en el bazo y literalmente se lo reventó"

“Cuando terminaron la autopsia,” cuenta la madre, “sobre las seis de la mañana, me informaron que la pedrada que le causó la muerte no fue la de la cabeza, como se creía, sino una que le impactó en el bazo y literalmente se lo reventó, produciéndole una hemorragia interna. Se quedó sin sangre”, explica la señora casi en un suspiro. “Esto fue lo que me dijo la policía” precisa y refiere que “lo enterramos el día 27”. 

La policía también informó a la madre que “habían tres adolescentes presos y de ellos, dos eran los mayores sospechosos, uno tiene 13 años y el otro 17, este último es el que me han dicho que confesó haberle dado la pedrada fatal”. Aunque aclara que “no sé si esto es así o no, pero es lo que me han dicho en el DTI del km 4 de la carretera a San Juan, que es donde los tienen detenidos”. 

Un hecho así debió dejar muchos testigos a pesar de haber ocurrido de madrugada. Berta asegura que “claro que hay, pero es que muchos tienen miedo, aunque en el velorio y el entierro estuvieron a mi lado, pero aquí nadie quiere problemas”. Explica que hasta el momento nadie ha venido a decirle “yo sé quienes son y lo voy a decir”. La señora sin embargo apunta sobre el silencio de los acompañantes de su hijo esa noche que “los entiendo, porque todos ellos son discriminados y tienen miedo, lo mismo en los trabajos, que en la calle, en donde quiera y eso no es justo, eso tiene que cambiar”. 

“lo único que yo pido es justicia, porque hoy le tocó a mi hijo pero mañana puede ser cualquiera de su comunidad”

El reclamo de Berta es claro, “lo único que yo pido es justicia, porque hoy le tocó a mi hijo pero mañana puede ser cualquiera de su comunidad”. La madre cuenta más detalles del hijo fallecido “era muy pegado a mí, yo tengo tres hijos”,  “bueno, tenía, ahora tengo dos, pero esos otros tienen sus vidas, Yosvani fue el que se quedó conmigo. Tú ves esta casita de bajo costo, él me ayudo muchísimo con ella”.

Se extiende en los valores de esa persona que ya no volverá a traspasar el umbral del hogar, sonriente y bullicioso. “Todo el mundo lo quería porque era muy jaranero y sabía mucho de cosméticos, modas y todo eso, siempre tenía atrás muchas muchachitas de aquí del barrio pidiéndole consejos de belleza y esas cosas”. “Ni sé lo que voy a hacer de ahora en adelante, la casa sin Yosvani ya no tiene alegría, es un golpe muy duro, mi hijo era todo para mí”.

A Yosvani le decían La Eterna e incluso La Invicta “porque estuvo muchas veces al borde de la muerte por el VIH que padecía, pero siempre se reponía y salía adelante, tenía unas tremendas ganas de vivir”, asegura la señora. “Lo que es la vida, mira que batalló contra la enfermedad y mira como muere, de una pedrada”, comenta con indignación. 

Berta no quiere ser fotografiada para acompañar su testimonio con una imagen “¿Una foto mía, pa’ qué? No es que tenga miedo, pero en estos momentos yo no estoy pa’ fotos”.

Asesinan en La Habana a un abogado de Tampa

Diario de Cuba

Alberto Romero, un abogado de Tampa, fue asesinado en Cuba la semana pasada, señaló un portavoz de la familia al diario estadounidense Tampa Bay.

Un portavoz de la familia dijo que recibieron la noticia el viernes, pero cuentan con muy poca información.

"La familia de Alberto Romero está de duelo en privado, por la pérdida de su ser querido, mientras las circunstancias de la tragedia son investigadas", dijeron sus allegados en una declaración escrita.

No estaba claro si Romero fue asesinado en la noche del jueves o el viernes en la mañana.

La oficina de la congresista Kathy Castor, demócrata de Tampa, está colaborando para asegurar el retorno de su cuerpo.

Romero, de 39 años, recibió el título en la Universidad de Illinois en 2001. Era abogado en temas de derecho civil y familiar.

I Was With Fidel Castro When JFK Was Assassinated

New Republic

By Jean Daniel

President Kennedy presided over both the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but when he was shot and killed on that November morning in 1963, Fidel Castro’s reaction was one of shock and sadness. “This is bad news,” he repeated three times. “For us Latin Americans, death is a sacred matter; not only does it mark the close of hostilities, but it also imposes decency, dignity, respect.”
This glimpse into the reclusive Cuban leader’s thoughts is made all the more remarkable by the fact that it only exists due to Kennedy himself. Eager to open another secret channel to Castro, JFK had sent journalist Jean Daniel to talk with Castro privately. Daniel arrived in Havana in mid-October, but was kept waiting and did not manage to deliver Kennedy’s message to Castro until November 19—just days before the president’s death. The president died without ever knowing that the Cuban leader had received his message.
To mark its 100th anniversary, The New Republic is republishing a collection of its most memorable articles. This week's theme: Moments that changed America.
This piece originally appeared at The New Republic on December 7, 1963.

It was around 1:30 in the afternoon, Cuban time. We were having lunch in the living room of the modest summer residence which Fidel Castro owns on magnificent Varadero Beach, 120 kilometers from Havana. For at least the tenth time, I was questioning the Cuban leader on details of the negotiations with Russia before the missile installations last year. The telephone rang, a secretary in guerrilla garb announced that Mr. Dorticós, President of the Cuban Republic, had an urgent communication for the Prime Minister. Fidel picked up the phone and I heard him say: “Como? Un atentado?” (“What’s that? An attempted assassination?”) He then turned to us to say that Kennedy had just been struck down in Dallas. Then he went back to the telephone and exclaimed in a loud voice “Herido? Muy gravemente?” (“Wounded? Very seriously?”)

He came back, sat down, and repeated three times the words: “Es una mala noticia.” (“This is bad news.”) He remained silent for a moment, awaiting another call with further news. He remarked while we waited that there was an alarmingly sizable lunatic fringe in American society and that this deed could equally well have been the work of a madman or of a terrorist. Perhaps a Vietnamese? Or a member of the Ku Klux Klan? The second call came through: it was hoped they would be able to announce that the United States President was still alive, that there was hope of saving him. Fidel Castro’s immediate reaction was: “If they can, he is already re-elected.” He pronounced these words with satisfaction.

This sentence was a sequel to a conversation we had held on a previous evening and which had turned into an all-night session. To be precise, it lasted from 10 in the evening until 4 in the morning. A good part of the talk revolved about the impressions I recounted to him of an interview which President Kennedy granted me this last October 24, and about Fidel Castro’s reactions to these impressions. During this nocturnal discussion, Castro had delivered himself of a relentless indictment of U.S. policy, adding that in the recent past Washington had had ample opportunity to normalize its relations with Cuba, but that instead it had tolerated a CIA program of training, equipping and organizing a counter-revolution. He had told me that he wasn’t in the least fearful of his life, since danger was his natural milieu, and if he were to become a victim of the United States this would simply enhance his radius of influence in Latin America as well as throughout the socialist world. He was speaking, he said, from the viewpoint of the interests of peace in both the American continents. To achieve this goal, a leader would have to arise in the United States capable of understanding the explosive realities of Latin America and of meeting them halfway. Then, suddenly, he had taken a less hostile tack: “Kennedy could still be this man. He still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an even greater President than Lincoln. I know, for example, that for Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with. I have gotten this impression from all my conversations with Khrushchev. Other leaders have assured me that to attain this goal, we must first await his re-election. Personally, I consider him responsible for everything, but I will say this: he has come to understand many things over the past few months; and then too, in the last analysis, I’m convinced that anyone else would be worse.” Then Fidel had added with a broad and boyish grin: “If you see him again, you can tell him that I’m willing to declare Goldwater my friend if that will guarantee Kennedy’s re-election!”

This conversation was held on November 19.

Now it was nearly 2 o’clock and we got up from the table and settled ourselves in front of a radio. Commandant Vallero, his physician, aide-de-camp, and intimate friend, was easily able to get the broadcasts from the NBC network in Miami. As the news came in, Vallero would translate it for Fidel: Kennedy wounded in the head; pursuit of the assassin; murder of a policeman; finally the fatal announcement: President Kennedy is dead. Then Fidel stood up and said to me: “Everything is changed. Everything is going to change. The United States occupies such a position in world affairs that the death of a President of that country affects millions of people in every corner of the globe. The cold war, relations with Russia, Latin America, Cuba, the Negro question… all will have to be rethought. I’ll tell you one thing: at least Kennedy was an enemy to whom we had become accustomed. This is a serious matter, an extremely serious matter.”

After the quarter-hour of silence observed by all the American radio stations, we once more tuned in on Miami; the silence had only been broken by a re-broadcasting of the American national anthem. Strange indeed was the impression made, on hearing this hymn ring out in the house of Fidel Castro, in the midst of a circle of worried faces. “Now,” Fidel said, “they will have to find the assassin quickly, but very quickly, otherwise, you watch and see, I know them, they will try to put the blame on us for this thing. But tell me, how many Presidents have been assassinated? Four? This is most disturbing! In Cuba, only one has been assassinated. You know, when we were hiding out in the Sierra there were some (not in my group, in another) who wanted to kill Batista. They thought they could do away with a regime by decapitating it. I have always been violently opposed to such methods. First of all from the viewpoint of political self-interest, because so far as Cuba is concerned, if Batista had been killed he would have been replaced by some military figure who would have tried to make the revolutionists pay for the martyrdom of the dictator. But I was also opposed to it on personal grounds; assassination is repellent to me.”

The broadcasts were now resumed. One reporter felt he should mention the difficulty Mrs. Kennedy was having in getting rid of her bloodstained stockings. Fidel exploded: “What sort of a mind is this!” He repeated the remark several times: “What sort of a mind is this? There is a difference in our civilizations after all. Are you like this in Europe? For us Latin Americans, death is a sacred matter; not only does it mark the close of hostilities, but it also imposes decency, dignity, respect. There are even street urchins who behave like kings in the face of death. Incidentally, this reminds me of something else: if you write all those things I told you yesterday against Kennedy’s policy, don’t use his name now; speak instead of the policy of the United States government.”

Toward 5 o’clock, Fidel Castro declared that since there was nothing we could do to alter the tragedy, we must try to put our time to good use in spite of it. He wanted to accompany me in person on a visit to a granja de pueblo (state farm), where he had been engaging in some experiments. His present obsession is agriculture. He reads nothing but agronomical studies and reports. He dwells lyrically on the soil, fertilizers, and the possibilities which will give Cuba enough sugar cane by 1970 to achieve economic independence.

“Didn’t I Tell You”

We went by car, with the radio on. The Dallas police were now hot on the trail of the assassin. He is a Russian spy, says the news commentator. Five minutes later, correction: he is a spy married to a Russian. Fidel said, “There, didn’t I tell you; it’ll be my turn next.” But not yet. The next word was: the assassin is a Marxist deserter. Then the word came through, in effect, that the assassin was a young man who was a member of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” that he was an admirer of Fidel Castro. Fidel declared: “If they had had proof, they would have said he was an agent, an accomplice, a hired killer. In saying simply that he is an admirer, this is just to try and make an association in people’s minds between the name of Castro and the emotion awakened by the assassination. This is a publicity method, a propaganda device. It’s terrible. But you know, I’m sure this will all soon blow over. There are too many competing policies in the United States for any single one to be able to impose itself universally for very long.”

We arrived at the granja de pueblo, where the farmers welcomed Fidel. At that very moment, a speaker announced over the radio that it was now known that the assassin is a “pro-Castro Marxist.” One commentator followed another; the remarks became increasingly emotional, increasingly aggressive. Fidel then excused himself: “We shall have to give up the visit to the farm.” We went on towards Matanzas from where he could telephone President Dorticós. On the way he had questions: “Who is Lyndon Johnson? What is his reputation? What were his relations with Kennedy? With Khrushchev? What was his position at the time of the attempted invasion of Cuba?” Finally and most important of all” What authority does he exercise over the CIA?” Then abruptly he looked at his watch, saw that it would be half an hour before we reached Matanzas and, practically on the spot, he dropped off to sleep.

After Matanzas, where he must have decreed a state of alert, we returned to Varadero for dinner. Quoting the words spoken to him by a woman shortly before, he said to me that it was an irony of history for the Cubans, in the situation to which they had been reduced by the blockade, to have to mourn the death of a President of the United States. “After all,” he added, “there are perhaps some people in the world to whom this news is cause for rejoicing. The South Vietnamese guerrillas, for example, and also, I would imagine, Madame Nhu!”

I thought of the people of Cuba, accustomed to the sight of posters like the one depicting the Red Army with maquis superimposed in front, and the screaming captions “HALT MR. KENNEDY! CUBA IS NOT ALONE….” I thought of all those who had been led to associate their deprivations with the policies of President John F. Kennedy.

At dinner I was able to take up all my questions. What had motivated Castro to endanger the peace of the world with the missiles in Cuba? How dependent was Cuba on the Soviet Union? Is it not possible to envisage relations between Cuba and the United States along the same lines as those between Finland and the Russians? How was the transition made from the humanism of Sierra Maestra to the Marxism-Leninism of 1961? Fidel Castro, once more in top form, had an explanation for everything. Then he questioned me once more on Kennedy, and each time I eulogized the intellectual qualities of the assassinated President, I awakened the keenest interest in him.

The Cubans have lived with the United States in that cruel intimacy so familiar to me of the colonized with their colonizers. Nevertheless, it was an intimacy. In that very seductive city of Havana to which we returned in the evening, where the luminous signboards with Marxist slogans have replaced the Coca Cola and toothpaste billboards, in the midst of Soviet exhibits and Czechoslovakian trucks, a certain American emotion vibrated in the atmosphere, compounded of resentment, of concern, of anxiety, yet also, in spite of everything, of a mysterious almost imperceptible rapprochement. After all, this American President was able to reach accord with our Russian friends during his lifetime, said a young Cuban intellectual to me as I was taking my leave. It was almost as though he were apologizing for not rejoicing at the assassination.

Video: Protest at Funeral of Repatriated Young Cuban Rafter

capitolhillcubans
NoticiasCubanet Cuba

Cuba: Sacerdote testigo del fusilamiento de 71 cubanos

Martí Noticias

El Padre Jorge Bez Chabebe es un sacerdote cubano que vivió muy de cerca uno de los capítulos más horrendos de la historia de Cuba ha publicado el libro “Dios Me Hizo Cura” en el que narra a detalle el fusilamiento de 71 cubanos por la llamada Revolución Cubana.

Cuba investiga 4 asesinatos por presunta salida ilegal y detiene a 6 personas

efe

La Habana, 11 jun (EFE).- Cuatro personas fueron asesinadas este martes en la provincia cubana de Artemisa en un caso presuntamente relacionado con un plan de salida ilegal del país "con apoyo del exterior", informaron hoy las autoridades que ya han detenido a seis supuestos involucrados en el hecho.

El Ministerio del Interior indicó hoy en una nota oficial que, en la tarde de ayer martes, "fueron hallados los cadáveres de cuatro personas ultimadas de forma violenta en la finca Niña Bonita, del poblado Playa Baracoa, municipio Bauta, provincia de Artemisa".

"De acuerdo con los resultados preliminares del proceso investigativo que desarrolla un equipo multidisciplinario, el crimen está asociado a un presunto plan de salida ilegal del país con apoyo del exterior", precisa el texto.

Hasta el momento, las autoridades cubanas han detenido a seis "involucrados" en los hechos, afirman las autoridades.

El Ministerio del Interior precisó que "se continuará informando" y no brindó más detalles sobre el suceso de Playa Baracoa, un poblado ubicado en la costa norte de la isla, unos 20 kilómetros al oeste de La Habana.

En Cuba, donde no existe sección de sucesos en los medios de comunicación, todos controlados por el Estado, no es habitual la divulgación de informaciones acerca de hechos violentos como homicidios, robos o asaltos.

En marzo pasado, y de manera inusual, los medios cubanos informaron sobre tres homicidios ocurridos por "un móvil pasional" en La Habana, pero en ese caso las autoridades dieron la noticia cuando el hecho ya había sido esclarecido y el responsable había confesado.EFE

Cuba - Asesinato en via publica en Camagüey [Imagenes brutales]

alejandro gonzalez

Cuba: Capturan a homicida multiple

Granma

Como se informó en la tarde de ayer a través de la emisora Radio Reloj, a las 7 pm del viernes 28 de marzo fueron hallados los cuerpos sin vida de los ciudadanos cubanos Francisco José García Peña, de 49 años de edad, Florencia María Machado Fernández, de 64, y del niño Víctor Manuel García Acosta, de 10, los cuales fueron ultimados con un objeto contundente mientras dormían en su vivienda, ubicada en la calle Bernaza nro. 243, entre Muralla y Teniente Rey, en La Habana Vieja, en la que no se constataron preliminarmente elementos de desorden ni sustracciones de objetos.

Para investigar este caso se constituyó un equipo multidisciplinario del Ministerio del Interior que, de conjunto con el Instituto de Medicina Legal y el apoyo decisivo de nuestro pueblo, en apenas 24 horas esclareció el hecho y detuvo a su autor.

Se trata del ciudadano cubano Adrián Abelarde Varela, de 23 años de edad, sin antecedentes penales ni vínculo laboral, quien mantenía relaciones estrechas con Francisco José García Peña, y tras cometer el crimen huyó hacia la ciudad de Camagüey, donde reside oficialmente. Fue detenido en horas de la tarde de ayer y durante los interrogatorios confesó que su actuación estuvo condicionada por un móvil pasional.

Una vez más se reitera a nuestro pueblo que hechos como este jamás quedarán impunes y que sobre su autor caerá todo el peso de la justicia revolucionaria.

Cuba: La policía pide 'cooperación' para esclarecer el asesinato de tres personas en La Habana

Diario de Cuba

En un llamado inusual, la policía cubana recabó la cooperación de la ciudadanía para esclarecer el asesinato de tres personas en La Habana, entre ellas un niño, ocurridos la noche del viernes.

Los cuerpos sin vida de los cubanos Francisco José García Peña, de 49 años; Florencia María Machado Fernández, de 64; y del niño Víctor Manuel García Acosta, de 10, fueron encontrados a las 19:00 horas locales del viernes, informó la agencia oficial china Xinhua.

El informe del Ministerio del Interior fue difundido por la emisora oficial Radio Reloj.

Los tres cadáveres, hallados en la vivienda de García Peña, presentaban signos de violencia, con múltiples heridas provocadas con un objeto contundente.

Un "equipo multidisciplinario" del Ministerio del Interior investiga el caso de manera conjunta con especialistas del Instituto de Medicina Legal y otras instituciones.

"Debido a la gravedad y sensibilidad del hecho, se recaba el apoyo del pueblo para que comunique a las autoridades policiales cualquier información que contribuya al esclarecimiento de los asesinatos", dijo Xinhua citando a Radio Reloj.

Former Cuban Olympic boxer charged in fatal Minnesota stabbing

Duluth News Tribune

www.myfoxtwincities.com

By: Jim Anderson, Minneapolis Star Tribune 

A onetime Cuban boxer who was on that country’s 1984 and 1988 Olympic teams and later coached its national team now sits in a Minnesota jail, charged with second-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of a co-worker at a Newport business Thursday.

Gregorio Maso Ramirez, 58, of St. Paul, admitted to investigators that he stabbed Uriel Navarro Ortiz, 44, of Fridley, according to a criminal complaint. The two men, who had a history of discord between them, feuded when Navarro declined to give Ramirez a ride home from Bailey Nurseries in Newport.

Ramirez was arraigned Friday in Washington County District Court. According to the complaint, officers arrived about 3:40 p.m. at the nursery’s main offices to find Navarro unconscious and laying in a pool of blood. He had been stabbed several times. He was declared dead at the scene, and Ramirez apparently fled.

Police then headed to Ramirez’ apartment while a search warrant was being prepared, finding blood leading up some stairs, the complaint said. A cellphone, two knives and other evidence were collected at the apartment. In the meantime, Ramirez, with the help of relatives, had turned himself in to authorities at St. Paul Police headquarters about 6 p.m.

He was taken to Regions Hospital, where he was treated for a large cut on his right hand, then transported to the Washington County jail in Stillwater. Police, with the help of a dog, found a bloodstained knife about five blocks from Ramirez’ apartment.

Washington County District Judge Susan Miles set bail at $1 million without conditions, and $500,000 with conditions that the defendant, a recent Cuban emigre, surrender his passport.

Ramirez’ boxing resume includes a silver medal in the 1979 world championships, a bronze in 1981 and a silver in 1982. He was on Cuba’s 1984 and 1988 Olympic boxing teams, but Cuba boycotted the Games in those years. He finished his amateur career with a 228-21 record, finishing his career as Cuba’s national team coach.

Cuban immigrant executed for 1995 murder of Florida boy | Reuters

Reuters

www.news4jax.com

A Cuban immigrant was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 1995 kidnapping, rape and murder of a 9-year-old south Florida boy, a spokeswoman for the governor said.

Juan Carlos Chavez, who confessed to the murder of Jimmy Ryce, was executed at the Florida State Prison at Starke, Florida, at 8:17 p.m. EST (0117 GMT Thursday), said Jackie Schutz, a spokeswoman for Governor Rick Scott.

A Florida law passed in the wake of the killing cleared the way for imprisoned sexual offenders to be held after their release if found likely to repeat their crimes. The law has been replicated across the United States.

The execution, attended by Ryce's father, was briefly delayed by a last-minute appeal that the U.S. Supreme Court denied.

The Department of Corrections said Chavez had a last meal of steak, French fries, strawberry ice cream, mixed fruit and mango juice in the afternoon. He had no visitors, officials said.

In a written statement released by the state after his death, Chavez expressed no remorse, saying that "None of us can pass judgment on another (man's) sins."

Chavez wrote, "I doubt that there is anything I can say that would satisfy everybody, even less those who see in me nothing more (than) someone deserving of punishment."

Chavez, who worked as a farmhand and had no criminal history, kidnapped the boy at gunpoint as he got off a school bus in Redland, an agricultural area of south Miami-Dade County.

He took Ryce to his trailer and raped him. When the boy tried to escape, Chavez shot him in the back, dismembered him and hid his body in plastic pots.

The boy's disappearance shook south Florida and garnered national attention. Hundreds of volunteers signed up for the search and his parents held a stream of press conferences.

Three months after disappearing, Jimmy's remains were found near Chavez's trailer after his landlord found the boy's school bag.

Chavez arrived in south Florida on a raft from Cuba with two others in 1991 and was working as a farmhand at the time of the murder. Little is known about his background or family, who remained in Cuba.

The Florida Supreme Court upheld Chavez's 1998 conviction and death sentence. Subsequent appeals were denied.

After Jimmy's death Don Ryce and his mother Claudine, who died in 2009, became advocates for abducted and missing children. They opened a center for abduction victims in south Florida and have provided hundreds of bloodhounds to law enforcement nationwide to help find missing children.

The Ryces were on hand as President Bill Clinton in 1996 signed an order instructing federal agencies to post missing-children posters in federal buildings.

Don Ryce, a retired lawyer now living near central Florida, told the Miami Herald recently that the loss of his son broke the heart of his wife and his daughter.

"This is the kind of loss that never gets right, that you never completely recover from," Ryce told the paper.

His daughter, Jimmy's half-sister, Martha, committed suicide in 2012.

After the execution Don Ryce told reporters that he had a message for future child predators.

"Don't kill the child. Don't kill the child," Ryce said. "Because if you do, people will not forget. They will not forgive. We will hunt you down, and we will put you to death."

(Writing and reporting by Zachary Fagenson; Editing by David Adams, Sofina Mirza-Reid, Eric Walsh, Richard Chang and Lisa Shumaker)

Turbia muerte de un canadiense de origen cubano en La Habana

ElNuevoHerald.com

Brandon Ross

Juan O. Tamayo

Un ciudadano estadounidense nacido en Canadá murió en circunstancias misteriosas en la azotea del famoso Hotel Nacional de Cuba, afirmó su madre el viernes en Miami.
“El salió el 21 de noviembre por la noche, diciendo que quería encontrarse con su primo. A la mañana siguiente su cama estaba vacía. Yo llamé al primo y él me dijo que no había visto a mi hijo”, dijo Onelia Ross a El Nuevo Herald.
El cadáver de Brandon Ross, de 31 años, fue cremado inmediatamente por el gobierno cubano, impidiendo una autopsia independiente, aun cuando funcionarios canadienses se ofrecieron a tramitar la devolución del mismo, dijo Ross.
Ross dijo que ella nació en Cuba y que conoció a su esposo, un diplomático canadiense, cuando él prestó servicio en La Habana de 1974 a 1976. Ellos viven en Canadá y Brandon nació en Ottawa pero obtuvo la ciudadanía estadounidenses tras estudiar en Estados Unidos, agregó.
La madre dijo que ella y Brandon viajaron a Cuba el 17 de noviembre de vacaciones, el primer viaje de él a la isla, y que alquilaron habitaciones en una casa particular en el barrio habanero de El Vedado, no muy lejos del Hotel Nacional.
El 21 de noviembre, madre e hijo caminaron por el paseo junto al mar conocido como el Malecón, pararon en el hotel para beber un trago y luego regresaron a sus habitaciones, dijo Ross. Luego Brandon volvió a salir, y ella no volvió a verlo hasta que al día siguiente le pidieron que identificara su cadáver.
Ross se echó a llorar y dijo que estaba demasiado desconsolada para continuar hablando con El Nuevo Herald, pero confirmó detalles que había dado al canal de televisión Telemundo51 en Miami, el cual fue el primero en reportar el caso el miércoles.
“Ibamos muy felices y contentos (a Cuba), y todo se convirtió en una pesadilla”, dijo ella al reportero de Telemundo51 Ernesto Morales.
Cuando ella vió el cadáver, dijo a la estación televisiva, “la cara de mi hijo estaba como si le hubieran dado piñazos”. Su ojo izquierdo estaba casi negro y el derecho todo morado, agregó. “La quijada la tenía partida, y se le veía un diente partido”.
Las autoridades cubanas le dijeron que Ross estaba en la azotea del hotel cuando resbaló y se cayó de una altura de unos 20 pies, dijo la madre a Telemundo51. También le dijeron que él había sobrevivido alrededor de 12 horas antes de morir como consecuencia de sus lesiones, afirmó la madre.
Su hijo le había mencionado que quería tomar algunas fotos desde la azotea del hotel, dijo ella al canal televisivo. No hubo explicación de cómo pudo haber llegado a la azotea, que hasta donde se sabe no está abierta al público.
Las autoridades le dijeron asimismo que su hijo había muerto durante la noche, pero no le dieron una copia de su autopsia, añadió Ross. Las últimas fotos en su cámara — la cual, según ella, no mostraba señal alguna de una caída — parecen tomadas al amanecer.
Amigos de la madre han dicho que ella cree que Brandon fue asesinado a golpes, pero no ha explicado cómo llegó a esa sospecha.
“En ese país miserable no existen leyes”, dijo ella a la estación.
El Departamento de Estado confirmó el viernes la muerte de Brandon Ross el 22 de noviembre, y dijo que estaba “brindando toda la asistencia consultar apropiada” a su familia, pero añadió que “por respeto a la privacidad de los afectados no tenemos nada más que decir al respecto”.
Beatrice Fenelon, portavoz del Departamento de Asuntos Exteriores y Comercio Internacional de Canadá, confirmó que un ciudadano canadiense había muerto en Cuba pero no dio su nombre, y dijo que funcionarios consulares canadienses en La Habana habían prestado ayuda a la familia.
Los funcionarios consulares también “han estado en contacto con las autoridades locales”, dijo, pero no se podía divulgar más detalles del caso “para proteger la privacidad del individuo en cuestión”.

Read more here: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2014/01/11/1652834/muere-un-ciudadano-estadounidense.html#storylink=cpy

Venezuela cerró 2013 con récord histórico de homicidios

infobae

Morgue de Caracas/ www.laht.com

El asesinato de Mónica Spear y su esposo parece haber encendido una señal de alerta que tardó en llegar al gobierno de Nicolás Maduro. Tras lo sucedido, el propio presidente asumió parte de la responsabilidad por la escalada de la violencia en Venezuela. Según datos del Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia, 2013 fue el año en el que se registraron más cantidad de homicidios (24.763; unas 79 por cada 100 mil habitantes) desde la llegada del chavismo al poder en 1999.

Incluso desde 2004, se mantiene la tendencia ascendente. En aquel año el número de asesinatos fue 9.719. A partir de ahí, la ola delictiva no frenó y siguió en aumento.

"En los últimos 15 años han caído en el país más de 200.000 venezolanos como consecuencia de la violencia criminal. Sólo en 2013 se produjeron más de 24.700 homicidios en el territorio nacional. El grueso de estos casos, en lo individual, no tiene trascendencia ante la opinión pública y sólo pasan a formar parte de las estadísticas delictivas", señala la Mesa de Unidad Democrática a través de un comunicado.

En lo que va de 2014, 101 cadáveres fueron ingresados en la morgue de Bello Monte. Según consigna El Universal,  de manera extraoficial, se supo que el 90% de los traslados correspondieron a muertes violentas.

Estos datos explican por qué la MUD urgió al Ejecutivo a realizar políticas de fondo en materia de seguridad. A su vez, la organización también exigió al gobierno chavista dejar de evadir su responsabilidad sobre la profunda inseguridad que golpea al país desde hace más de una década.

"Se necesitan aplicar, con carácter de urgencia, medidas estructurales dirigidas a prevenir los delitos, acabar con la impunidad criminal y a facilitar la rehabilitación de los reclusos", agrega el comunicado.

En esa línea, la MUD apela al artículo 55 de la Constitución que señala que la seguridad es un tema que le compete al Estado.

El alcalde  dijo también que este problema que padece Venezuela se da debido a la impunidad por la falta de separación de poderes y agregó que se debe revistar el sistema judicial.

Venezuelan Actress Monica Spear Mootz and Husband Murdered

worldnews

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

A Venezuelan actress and beauty queen was shot to death with her ex-husband during a highway robbery after their car broke down on vacation, police said Tuesday. Their 5-year-old daughter survived.

Monica Spear Mootz, 29, had starring roles in several telenovelas and was Miss Venezuela in 2004. Her former husband was identified as Henry Thomas Berry, 39.

Family friends said that although the couple had split up a couple of years ago they remained close and spent vacations and holidays together for their daughter's sake.

"They were a great couple," said Luis Dominguez, who ran an adventure tour company with Berry and spoke to him Sunday while he was on the road.

"They were having the greatest time. He said, 'I'll see you soon.'"

Late Monday, they got into a small accident on the Valencia-Puerto Cabello highway that stranded their gray Toyota Corolla. Armed men approached the car and the couple locked themselves inside, police said.

The bandits opened fire, injuring the child and killing the parents, police said.

Born in England, Berry moved to Venezuela with his family when he was 7 years old and grew up there. After he was shot about 15 years ago, he moved to Florida, but was too in love with Venezuela to stay away, Dominguez said.

After he returned in 2006, he met Spear Mootz and "it was love at first sight," Dominguez said. She got pregnant and they got married.

"She was a really happy, outgoing person," Dominguez said. "She didn't need luxury. They only needed each other. She wasn't flashy. She was a beautiful person to be around."

Spear Mootz's parents, who live in Orlando, Fla., were too upset to speak about their daughter, who was a graduate of the University of Central Florida and had American citizenship.

After winning the title of Miss Venezuela, the actress appeared in a half-dozen Spanish language soap operas, most recently "Pasion Prohibida" and "Flor Salvaje" on Telemundo.

Former co-star Jencarlos Canela mourned her on Twitter and promised to watch over her daughter.

"I'm without words," he wrote. "I will miss my friend @MonicaSpear. And I love you, beautiful Maya. You are not alone!"

The Monday night slayings near Valencia sparked a wave of shocked reaction in Venezuela, where more than 70 people have been killed in the first week of the year.

Diego Sanchez, who has known the victims for about six years, said the crime has made him think about leaving Venezuela.

"To think there are people who can shoot a mother and father in front of their daughter is very sad and unbelievable," he said. "And it’s shocking when it happens to someone you know."

Dominguez said his partner had an adventurous streak and didn't worry that he might be preyed on, even though he had already been shot once before.

"I think he was kind of naïve because he loved what he did and he loved showing the good side of Venezuela."

NBC News' Erika Angulo and Telemundo's Rogelio Mora Tagle contributed to this report.

Pigs eat man: Mafia boss Francesco Raccosta suffers brutal murder in Italy

ITN

Néstor García Iturbe: A Castroit Brian Latell

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

mexico.cnn.com

By Miguel Fernandez

Retired Colonel Néstor García Iturbe has launched a theory on the Kennedy assassination in the leftwing blogosphere. The hard core argument is that the assasination was a plot by the CIA and the Pentagon with some carefully selected members of the anti-Castro groups. However, García Iturbe moves away from the Castroit official line by asserting that Lee Harvey Oswald was a case of “false flag” recruitment. Oswald would have been recruited “for Cuba” by an FBI agent, who had infiltrated the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). Oswald was actually used as decoy in the assassination, but he aimed his rifle on the belief he was working for Castro. Thus, ex-DGI spymaster García Iturbe concurs with the view of ex-CIA desk analyst Brian Latell, who wrote in Castro´s Secrets (2013) that intelligence officers were winding Oswald up at the Cuban Consulate in México City and turned him into "a fully primed soldier of Fidel" (page 227).

False Flag

García Iturbe seems to be unaware of the classic article “Leftist Lee at Work” (The Third Decade, Vol. 2, No. 5, July 1986, pp. 1-6), where Philp H. Malenson demonstrated that Oswald was working against FPCC, id est, against the very flag under which he had been recruited. For instance, Oswald engaged in a radio debate (“Conversation Carte Blanche,” WDSU, New Orleans, August 21, 1963) versus Cuban exile Carlos Bringuier and American anticommunist militant Ed Butler on the U.S. policy toward Cuba. They revealed Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union in 1959, but Oswald replied that FPCC had absolutely nothing to do either with the URSS or the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). This message was repeatedly delivered by Oswald, who also exaggerated his one-man FPCC chapter in New Orleans. On August 28, Oswald wrote to the CPUSA asking for advice “upon a problem of personal tactics:” whether or not to go underground. He established on paper the very linkage he had denied on the air: “Frankly, I have used my position [in the FPCC] to foster communist ideals.” He never informed the FPCC he had placed such a risky paper-trial linkage (Commission Exhibit 1145) tying the pro Castro group to the CPSUA and, through his background as re-defector, to Moscow.

Crass Ignorance

García Iturbe thinks the job Oswald got at the Texas Book School Book Depository (TSBD), facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, “deserves an analysis.” From his very first question emerges he does not know what he is talking about: “¿Who provided this job to Oswald?” On August 25, 2013, C-SPAN3 broadcasted an interview with Buell Wesley Frazier, the co-worker who gave Oswald the last lift to the TBSD. Frazier reiterated some well-known data available in the Mary Ferrell Chronologies, apparently an alien bibliography for García Iturbe.

Since September 23, 1963, Oswald´s wife had moved with her friend Ruth Paine to Irving, around 21 kilometers of Dallas, for the birth of her second baby. On October 14, Marina and Ruth went to a neighbor´s house (Mrs. Roberts) for coffee. Another neighbor, Linnie Randle, was there. When Paine mentioned that Oswald was looking for work, Randle said there might be a job opening at TBSD, because her brother Frazier had been hired a month ago. Pain called the TBSD and talked with Superintendent Roy Truly, who told her to have Oswald make an application. Paine immediately called Oswald. The next day he went to the TBSD and got a job for $10 daily, from 8 AM a 4:45 PM, with 12 to 12:45 PM for lunch.

García Iturbe confirms his lack of knowledge with this tirade: "What a coincidence that the TBSD was located precisely at a street on the route of the presidential motorcade! Who knew it would go along this street by that time? Usually this is a ‘Top Secret’ in order to protect the President; however, Oswald had foreknowledge and could get his rifle inside the bulding." García Iturbe has not got even a clue about the fact that all the people in Dallas must know in advance the route of the motorcade for greeting the President on the streets. Both The Dallas Morning News and The Dallas Times Herald described it in detail on November 19, 1963. The latter even ran a large map of the motorcade route in the evening edition of November 21.

Coda

As Dr. Latell, García Iturbe tries to connect the dots for making theories, but the crux of the matter is finding facts instead of bringing more factoids, like Oswald being recruited under a “false flag” by the FBI or having not a single unforeseen incident during the days prior to the assassination.

Fidel Castro, el sospechoso habitual

EL PAÍS

Maye Primera 

Lo primero que dice haber hecho Fidel Castro cuando se enteró del asesinato de Jonh F. Kennedy - ocurrido el 22 de noviembre de 1963 en Dallas - fue contactar a las autoridades Estados Unidos para explicarles que él no tenía ninguna responsabilidad en el asunto. El atentado se producía tras dos años de conflicto sostenido entre Washington y La Habana: en abril de 1961 había tenido lugar la invasión de Bahía de Cochinos y en octubre de 1962 se desató la Crisis de los Misiles. Lee Harvey Oswald, el hombre detrás del gatillo, había hecho público su apoyo a la revolución que en 1959 se puso en marcha en Cuba. Castro, preocupado por una invasión de tropas estadounidenses a la isla, se apresuró a despejar las dudas que lo incriminaban y, en los años siguientes, comenzó a elaborar sus propias teorías conspirativas, hasta concluir que Oswald no actuó solo.
“Fue un día muy triste cuando todo esto ocurrió”, dijo hace tres años el expresidente al periodista estadounidense Jeffrey Goldberg durante un almuerzo en La Habana. “Nunca lo olvidaré. Tan pronto como escuchamos la noticia, todos corrimos al radio a escuchar”. No fijaron aquella cita para hablar del asesinato de Kennedy, explica Goldberg en un artículo publicado este 20 de noviembre en The Atlantic, pero fue la oportunidad elegida por Castro para compartir su tesis: “He llegado a la conclusión de que Oswald no pudo haber sido el que mató a Kennedy”.
Para Castro, el resultado de las investigaciones que lideró el jefe de justicia Earl Warren y que indica que Oswald no recibió ningún tipo de asistencia en la planificación o en la ejecución del asesinato, fue “una historia elaborada para gente tonta”. Esta sospecha es tal vez lo único que comparte Castro con un amplio sector de la opinión pública de Estados Unidos, pero con inmensas diferencias: mientras que Castro cree que el crimen fue responsabilidad del propio Gobierno de Washington, muchos estadounidenses creen aún que el asesinato fue planeado por Castro.

“Había gente en el Gobierno de EE UU que pensaba que Kennedy era un traidor porque no invadió Cuba. Él nunca fue perdonado por eso”

Fidel Castro era, en aquella época, el enemigo más enconado de Jonh F. Kennedy en el mapa regional de la Guerra Fría. Su revolución, enclavada en pleno mar Caribe, servía de plataforma física e ideológica a los intereses de la Unión Soviética. Esta rivalidad tuvo dos momentos cumbre en los años inmediatamente anteriores al asesinato del presidente. Pocos días después de su toma de posesión, en febrero de 1961, Kennedy autorizó la invasión de Bahía de Cochinos. Comenzó a planearse en marzo 1960, se ejecutó en abril 1961 y acabó en un rotundo fracaso. Luego, en octubre de 1962, estalló la Crisis de los Misiles: 13 días de amenaza de guerra nuclear que concluyeron con la firma de un pacto entre Kennedy y el líder soviético Nikita Jruschov para retirar de Cuba los proyectiles instalados allí por Moscú.
Lee Harvery Oswald, el autor material del magnicidio de Kennedy, no ocultó nunca sus simpatías por Castro. Solía repartir panfletos a favor de la revolución cubana en las calles de su natal Nueva Orleans. Y pocas semanas antes del asesinato del presidente, visitó la embajada de Cuba en Ciudad de México para pedir una visa de entrada a la isla que le fue negada. Quienes sostienen que la mano de Castro estuvo siempre detrás del plan, creen que fue entonces cuando Oswald pudo haber entrado en contacto con la inteligencia cubana.
Fidel Castro, sin embargo, ha negado siempre su supuesta participación en el complot y ha dicho que, por el contrario, la trama provino de Washington. “Había gente en el Gobierno de Estados Unidos que pensaba que Kennedy era un traidor porque no invadió Cuba cuando tuvo la oportunidad, cuando se lo estaban pidiendo. Él nunca fue perdonado por eso”, afirmó Castro en la misma entrevista con Goldberg, donde dijo incluso haber intentado recrear las circunstancias en las que fueron disparados los proyectiles que mataron al presidente de Estados Unidos y que a partir de entonces concluyó que “fue imposible para un solo hombre hacer esto”.
El periodista estadounidense Philip Shenon, autor del libro “A Cruel And Shocking Act: The Secret History of The Kennedy Assassination” (Un acto cruel e impactante: la historia secreta del asesinato de Kennedy) que salió a la venta el pasado octubre, descarta que el líder cubano haya tenido responsabilidad alguna en el crimen. “No hay ninguna evidencia creíble de que Castro estuviese involucrado personalmente en la orden de asesinato”, sostiene Shenon. De acuerdo a sus investigaciones, Fidel Castro arregló un encuentro con la Comisión Warren, a bordo de un yate estacionado en aguas cubanas, para contar su versión. Porque había elementos para sospechar que era culpable, y él bien lo sabía.