The Declarations of Havana

Fidel Castro

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781788731386
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788731393
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In response to the American administration's attempt to isolate Cuba, Fidel Castro delivered a series of speeches designed to radicalize Latin American society. As Latin America experiences more revolutions in Venezuela and Bolivia, and continues to upset America's plans for neo-liberal imperialism, renowned radical writer and activist Tariq Ali provides a searing analysis of the relevance of Castro's message for today.

I

HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE ME¹

I

Honourable Magistrates:

Never was a lawyer compelled to practise his profession under more difficult conditions; never against an accused have more overwhelming irregularities been committed. Here, counsel and defendant are one and the same. As attorney for the defence, I have been denied even a look at the indictment. As the accused, I have been, for the past seventy-six days, shut away, in solitary confinement, held incommunicado, in violation of every legal and human consideration.²

He who is speaking abhors, with all his being, childish conceit, and neither by his temperament nor by his present frame of mind is he inclined towards oratorical poses, or towards any kind of sensationalism. I am compelled to plead my own defence before this Court. There are two reasons: first, because I have been deprived almost entirely of legal advice; second, because only he who has been outraged as deeply as I, and who has seen his country so forsaken, its justice so reviled, can speak on an occasion like this with words made of the blood of his own heart and the very marrow of truth.

There was no lack of generous colleagues who would have defended me, and the Bar Association of Havana appointed a courageous and competent jurist, Dr Jorge Pagliery, Dean of the Bar in this city, to represent me in this case. But he was not permitted to perform his duty. The prison gates were closed to him whenever he tried to see me. Only after a month and a half, and through the intervention of the Court, was he finally granted a ten-minute interview with me in the presence of a sergeant of the Military Intelligence Agency (SIM).³

It is taken for granted that a lawyer should talk privately with his client. This right is respected all over the world, except here, where a Cuban prisoner of war is in the hands of an implacable tyranny that abides by no code, legal or humane. Neither Dr Pagliery nor I was willing to tolerate such spying upon our means of defence for the oral trial. Did they, perhaps, want to know in advance how we would reduce to dust the elaborate falsehoods they had woven around the events of Cuartel Moncada⁴ and how we were going to expose the terrible truths they would go to such very great lengths to conceal? It was then decided that I would make use of my professional right as a lawyer to assume my own defence.

This decision, first overheard by the sergeant and then reported to his superior, provoked a singular panic; it seemed as though some mocking little imp were hinting that all their plans might come to naught. You know well enough, Honourable Magistrates, how much pressure has been brought to bear upon me to strip me of this right, which has been ratified by long tradition in Cuba. The Court could not support the government’s machinations, for that would have left the defendant altogether undefended. The accused who is now exercising this right to do his own pleading will, under no circumstances, refrain from saying what he ought to say. I consider it essential to explain, at the outset, the reason for the relentless isolation to which I have been subjected; what the motive was for keeping me silent; what prompted the plot to kill me — a plot with which the Court is familiar; what grave facts are being hidden from the people; and the secret behind all the strange things that have taken place during this trial. All this I propose to do with the utmost clarity.

II

You have publicly called this case the most significant in the history of the Republic. If you sincerely believed so, you should not have allowed the trial to be degraded, time after time, by the flouting of your authority.

The first court session was held on 21 September. Machine guns and bayonets, scandalously invading the courtroom, surrounded the more than a hundred persons seated in the prisoner’s dock. Most of these accused had in no way been involved in our action. They had been under preventive arrest for many days, while suffering all kinds of outrage and abuse in the chambers of the repressive organizations. The rest of the gallant and determined accused were eager and proud to confirm their roles in the battle for freedom, to offer an example of unusual self-sacrifice, and to deliver from the jaws of jail those who, in deliberate bad faith, had been included in the trial. Men who had fought each other came face to face once more. Once again, with the cause of justice on our side, we would wage the mighty battle of truth against infamy. Surely, the regime was not prepared for the moral catastrophe in store for it.

How could the regime maintain all its false accusations? How could it keep secret what had really happened, while so many young men were willing to run any risk — jail, torture, death, if need be — to denounce it before the Court?

In the first session, I was a witness. For two hours I was questioned by the Court’s prosecutor as well as by twenty defence attorneys. I was able to prove with exact facts and figures the sums of money that had been invested, the way in which this money was collected, and the arms that we had managed to assemble. I had nothing to hide since all this was achieved by a self-abnegation unsurpassed in the struggles of our Republic. I spoke of the aims which inspired us in our struggle and of the humane and generous treatment that we had at all times accorded to our adversaries. If I accomplished my purpose of demonstrating the non-involvement, direct or indirect, of those men who were falsely implicated in this trial, I owe it to the complete support and backing of my heroic comrades. For, as I said, mere concern over consequences would not make them regret or repent being rebels and patriots. I was never allowed to talk with them in prison; yet we were in full accord as to how to act. When men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can keep them isolated: neither walls of prisons nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity, will sustain them all.

From that moment on, the structure of lies the regime had erected about the happenings at the Moncada barracks began to collapse like a house of cards. As a result, the prosecutor understood how absurd it was to keep in prison all those persons named as instigators. Immediately he demanded their provisional release.

At the close of my testimony in that first session, I asked that the Court allow me to leave the dock and sit among the counsels for the defence; this permission was, in effect, granted to me. At this point began what I considered my most important mission in this trial: utterly to discredit the cowardly, base and treacherous slanders that the regime had hurled against our fighters; to reveal with irrefutable evidence the frightful, repulsive crimes they had practised on those of our companions whom they captured; and to bring before the nation and the world the infinite misfortune of the Cuban people, who are now enduring the most cruel, the most inhuman oppression in all their history.⁵

The second session convened on Tuesday, 22 September. Only ten witnesses had testified, and they had already cleared up the murders in the Manzanillo region, specifically establishing and placing on record the direct responsibility of the captain commanding that post.⁶ There were three hundred more witnesses to testify. What would happen if — with a staggering mass of facts and evidence — I should proceed to cross-examine the very Army men who were directly responsible for those crimes? Could the regime permit me to go ahead before the large audience in attendance? Before journalists and jurists from all the island? And before the Opposition party leaders, whom it had stupidly seated right in the prisoner’s dock where they could hear so distinctly all that might be brought out here? The regime would have dynamited the courthouse — with all its magistrates — rather than allow this!

They devised a plan to eliminate me from the trial and proceeded to do so manu militari. Friday night, 25 September, on the eve of the third session of the trial, two prison doctors visited me in my cell. They were visibly embarrassed. ‘We have come to examine you,’ they told me. I asked: ‘Who is so concerned about my health?’ Actually from the moment I first saw them, I realized what they had in mind. They could not have treated me with greater chivalry, and they explained their predicament to me. In the afternoon, Colonel Chaviano had appeared at the prison and had told them I ‘was doing the government terrible damage at the trial’. He had said they must sign a certificate declaring that I was ill and was, therefore, unable to appear in court. The doctors told me that they, for their part, were prepared to resign from their posts and to risk persecution. They put the matter in my hands, for me to decide. I found it hard to ask those men to destroy themselves without hesitation. But neither could I, under any circumstances, consent that their orders be carried out. To leave the matter to their own consciences, I answered only: ‘You must know your duty; I surely know mine.’

After leaving my cell they signed the certificate. I know they did so believing in good faith that this was the only way they could save my life, which they considered to be in the greatest danger. I was not obliged to keep our conversation secret, for I am bound only by the truth. Telling the truth in this instance may jeopardize those good physicians in their material interests. But I am removing all doubt about their honour, and that is worth much more. The same night, I wrote the Court a letter denouncing the plot; requesting that two forensic physicians be sent to certify my excellent state of health; and informing you that if to save my life I should need to collaborate in such a deception, I would a thousand times prefer to lose it. To show my determination to fight alone against all this low conniving, I added to my own words a thought of El Maestro: ‘A just cause from the depths of a cave is stronger than an army.’⁷

As the Court is aware, Dr Melba Hernández submitted that letter at the third session of the trial, on 26 September.⁸ I managed to get it to her despite the unrelenting watch under which I was kept. That letter, of course, caused immediate reprisals: Dr Hernández was subjected to solitary confinement, and I — since I was already incommunicado — was sent to the most inaccessible part of the prison. From that time on, all the accused were painstakingly searched, head to foot, before they were brought to the courtroom.

Two court physicians certified on 27 September that I was, in fact, in perfect health. And yet, in spite of the Court’s repeated orders, never again was I brought to the trial sessions. Moreover, every day, anonymous persons circulated hundreds of apocryphal pamphlets which announced my rescue from jail. This stupid alibi was invented to explain as an escape the abduction they intended. Since the scheme failed as a result of timely exposure by my alert friends, and after the first affidavit was revealed to be false, the regime could keep me away from the trial only by open and shameless contempt of court.

An unheard-of situation had arisen, Honourable Magistrates. Here was a regime afraid to bring an accused man before the Court; a regime of blood and terror which shrank in fear of the moral conviction of a defenceless man — unarmed, slandered and isolated. Thus, having deprived me of all else, they finally deprived me of the trial in which I was the principal accused. Bear in mind that this was during a period of suspension of rights of the individual and while the law of public order as well as censorship of radio and press were in full force. What dreadful crimes this regime must have committed to fear the voice of one accused man!

I must dwell upon the insolence and disrespect which the Army leaders have, at all times, shown towards you. As often as this Court has ordered a stop to the inhuman isolation in which I was held; as often as it has ordered my most elementary rights to be respected; as often as it has demanded that I be brought before it, this Court was never obeyed! One after another, all its orders were disregarded. Worse yet: in the very presence of the Court, during the first and second sessions, a praetorian guard was stationed beside me to prevent me completely from speaking to anyone, even during the brief recesses. In other words, not only in prison, but even in the very courtroom and in your presence, they ignored your decrees. I had intended to mention this matter in the following session, as a question of elementary respect for the Court, but I was never brought back. And when, in exchange for so much disrespect, they bring me before you, to be sent to jail in the name of a statute which they — and only they — have been violating since 10 March, sad indeed is the role they would force upon you. The Latin maxim cedant arma togae has certainly not been fulfilled on a single occasion during this case. I beg you to keep that circumstance firmly in mind.

Furthermore, these devices were, after all, quite useless; my brave comrades, with unprecedented patriotism, did their duty to the utmost.

‘Yes, we set out to fight for Cuba’s freedom and we do not regret having done so,’ they declared, one by one, on the witness stand. Then, addressing the Court with imposing courage, they denounced the hideous crimes committed upon the bodies of our brothers. Although absent from Court, I was able, in my prison cell, to follow the trial in all its details; for this I must thank the convicts at Boniato prison. Despite all threats, these men found ingenious means to get newspaper clippings and all kinds of information into my hands. In this way, they avenged the abuses and immoralities of both the warden Taboada and his supervisor, Lieutenant Rozabal, who drive them from dawn to dusk building private mansions, and moreover starve them by embezzling the prison food budget.

As the trial progressed, roles were reversed: those who came to accuse found themselves accused, and the accused became the accusers! It was not the revolutionaries who were judged there; judged once and for ever was a man named Batista — monstrum horrendum! It matters little that those worthy and valiant young men have been condemned, if tomorrow the people will condemn the Dictator and his henchmen. Our men were consigned to the Isle of Pines prison, in whose circular galleries the ghost of Castells lingers on, and where the cries of countless victims echo yet; there our boys have been sent to expiate their love of liberty in bitter confinement, sequestered away from society, torn from their homes and banished from their country.⁹ Do you not believe, as I said before, that in such circumstances it is difficult and thankless for this lawyer to fulfil his duty?

As a result of so many obscure and illegal machinations, due to the will of those who govern and the weakness of those who judge, I find myself here in this little room of the City Hospital, to which I have been brought to be tried in secret; so that my voice may be stifled and so that no one may learn of the things I am going to say. Why, then, do we need that imposing Palace of Justice which the Honourable Magistrates would without doubt find rather more comfortable? I must warn you: it is unwise to administer justice from a hospital room, surrounded by sentinels with fixed bayonets; the citizens might suppose that our justice is sick — and that it is captive.

I remind you, your laws of procedure provide that trials shall be ‘public hearings’; however, the people have been barred altogether from this session of court. The only civilians admitted here have been two attorneys and six reporters, whose newspapers’ censorship will prevent printing a word that I say. I see, as my sole audience, in this chamber and in the corridors, nearly a hundred soldiers and officers. I am grateful for the polite and serious attention they give me. I only wish I could have the whole Army before me! I know, one day this Army will seethe with rage to wash away the awful, the shameful bloodstains splattered across the uniform by the present ruthless clique in their lust for power. On that day, oh, what a fall awaits those mounted, in arrogance, on the backs of the noble soldiers! — provided that the people have not pulled them down long before!

Finally, I should like to add that no treatise on penal law was allowed to be brought to my cell. I have at my disposal just this tiny code of law lent to me by my learned counsel, Dr Baudilio Castellanos, the courageous defender of my comrades. In the same way they prevented me from receiving the books of Martí; it seems the prison censorship considered them too subversive. Or is it because I named Martí the inspirer of 26 July?

I was also prevented from bringing to this trial reference books on any other subject. It makes no difference whatsoever! I carry in my heart the teachings of the Maestro and in my mind the noble ideas of all men who have defended the freedom of the peoples of the world!

I am going to make only one request of this Court; I trust it will be granted as a compensation for the many abuses and outrages the accused has had to tolerate without protection of the law. I ask that my right to express myself be respected without restraint. Otherwise, even the merest semblance of justice cannot be maintained, and the last episode of this trial would be, more than any other, one of ignominy and cowardice.

I must confess that...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: The Sling of David
• Suggested Further Reading
• Chronology of Cuban History and the Revolution
• 1. History will Absolve Me
• 2. First Declaration of Havana
• 3. Second Declaration of Havana
• Notes