Maleconazo 22 years later: Looking back at Cuba's August 5th uprising and the aftermath. By Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter.
05-08-2016
Maleconazo 22 years later: Looking back at Cuba's August 5th uprising and the aftermath By Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter August 5, 2016
Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future." - Elie Wiesel
Uprising in Havana, Cuba on August 5, 1994
22 years ago on August 5, 1994 there was a social explosion in Cuba called the Maleconazo that threatened the dictatorship, but the opposition both inside and outside of the island was not ready to seize the moment. Instead the Cuban dictatorship cracked down internally and opened the ports turning a political crisis for the dictatorship into an immigration problem for the United States that led to a negotiated immigrationagreement and a new lease on life for the dictatorship. Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez compared this uprising with the events in Beijing in June of 1989:
"Apart from the distances: in China they tried to erase what happened in Tiananmen Square and in Cuba the Maleconazo."
It is important not only to remember how the Castro regime responded to Cubans running through the streets shouting "freedom!" but how the Clinton administration helped to maintain the status quo in Cuba shoring up the dictatorship.
State Security agent points his gun at the crowd on August 5, 1994
State security went out and shot into the crowds. Years later photographs taken by a tourist confirmed the anecdotal accounts of that day. Cuban dissident Regis Iglesias described how the dictatorship militarized the streets in an effort to terrorize the populace:
A convoy of trucks crammed with repressive special troops and a vehicle with a 50 caliber machine gun on top patrolled up and down the long street.
They broke my lefteyebrowand left me semi-lame.Yes, there wereassaults andthe aggressors had guns, but not among thecivilians.One oftheboyswhowentwith us,who was calledthe Moor,evenwhilehandcuffed, they shot himin thetorsoandit was amiracle that he did not die. Who do you thinkpaid forthat?No one.
Cresencio Marino Rivero, Cuban prison chief found in Miami
In November 2012 The Miami Herald reported on former Cuban provincial prisons chief Crescencio Marino Rivero who abused prisoners and ordered guards to abuse others before he moved to Miami. This is in spite of the August 4, 2011 Obama Administration ban on visas for people who the State Department finds have been involved in human rights violations. Cuban human rights violators continue to get a free pass to enter the United States and when identified by their victims, nothing happens.
Thankfully, Vaclav Havel and his ideas on the power of the powerless and living in truth still give some hope for the future even if they are falling out of fashion with certain elements in the Czech Foreign Ministry.