6 days ago
In Mexico City, two icons of Cuban repression are banished
But for all the radical chic they inspired, and despite the swooning of countless
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Yet even after all these years, they are still celebrated as
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When Castro and Guevara came to power in Cuba in 1959, they quickly consolidated their control through terror. Political opponents were hauled before kangaroo courts and executed at what became known as 'el paredón,' the wall where executions took place. Those they killed, recounted '
At the Havana fortress of La Cabaña, Guevara personally oversaw mass executions. 'A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate,'
Even after the revolution's early days,
This month — July — evokes a particularly
On July 13, 1994, more than 70 Cubans crowded onto an old tugboat, the '13 de Marzo,' and set out from Havana under cover of night, desperate to reach Florida.
Seven miles off the Cuban coast, they were intercepted by government vessels. The security boats rammed the tug repeatedly, smashed its hull, and trained high-pressure hoses on the passengers —
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The tugboat massacre is only one entry on the long list of
A row erupted after the sculpture was removed from the park in Cuauhtémoc last week. Among those complaining was Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who insisted that the 'historic moment' represented by the statues merited a public tribute of memory. As the Mexican journalist Carlos Bravo Regidor
Symbols matter. Statues and monuments help shape a society's collective memory, and to enshrine Castro and Guevara in bronze was to enshrine the lies they told and the suffering they caused. Their sculptures on a bench in the heart of Mexico's capital was a declaration that their partnership was something admirable and worthy of commemoration, perhaps even something to emulate. In reality, it was a partnership in despotism, and it brought misery to millions.
Rojo de la Vega's order to cart away the monument was an act of moral hygiene. May the removal of the statues in Mexico City be only a prelude to the removal of their dictatorship in Havana — and to the day when the Cuban people can finally breathe free.
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Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
