Pope Inspires Dissent, Castro Quashes

“Viva Christ the King! –Down with Communism!” The defiant yells “made the walls of La Cabana prison tremble,” wrote Armando Valladares, an eyewitness to these firing squad massacres who suffered 22 torture-filled years in Castro’s prisons and was later appointed by Ronald Reagan as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

The La Cabana prison and killing field wasn’t far from where Pope Benedict gave his speech this week in Havana, while hosted by the killers.

After the yell came, “FUEGO!”, the volley shattered another young patriot. By mid-1961, the defiant yells started unnerving the trigger-pullers, and many shots were going wild. The coup de grace, recalls some eyewitnesses, was often delivered to a man (or boy) fully conscious, with eyes open but convulsing in agony. In the early days of Castroite rule Che Guevara himself reveled in applying these final shots. Earlier while in Cuba’s mountains, Raul Castro specialized in gleefully blasting the skulls apart, say eye-witnesses now in exile.

Most patriots murdered in La Cabana were buried in unmarked graves not far from where Pope Benedict gave his speech this week in Havana, hosted by Raul Castro and with a huge Che Guevara image as backdrop.