Beginning in the late fifties, Fidel Castro ordered the burning of Cuban sugar mills, warehouses, buses, factories. He also order bombings in stores, theaters, nightclubs, clinics throughout the island as part of the revolutionary campaign against the Batista dictatorship. The Office of Publications of (Cuba’s) Council of State published in 2015 a four volume chronology entitled “We shall fight until the end” [Lucharemos Hasta el Final].
According to the 1958 volume, in May of that year ” electric transformers that provided electricity to Santiago de Cuba, El Cobre and Contramaestre were blown up [by Castros’ forces] leaving without electricity important urban areas…”. In Havana, a member of Castro’s 26 of July Movement is killed when he was “surprised seting up a bomb.” In “Santiago de Cuba, two rebels fired against a government soldier in the intersection of Trocha and Corona streets. The soldier was seriously wounded.”
Two rebels set on fire ‘La Caridad,” a furniture store. In “Ramon de las Yaguas neighborhood” in Oriente province “an activist from a government political party (PURS) is murdered.” A revolutionary died when a bomb he was placing in front of a movie theater in Marianao (Havana province) went off. And earlier in the month a town near Santiago was left without electricity due a sabotage carried by rebel forces. We are including here some of the terrorist attacks carried out during the month of May 1958. The number of such crimes which took place during 1955,1956,1957 and 1958 were chronicled in 2015 by the Office of Publications of Cuba’s Council of State. The many innocent victims and millions of property loses demonstrate without a doubt the mendacity of Fidel Castro’s claims that “the Cuban revolution never engaged in terrorism.”
The record is clear and Fidel Castro’s words on terrorism cannot be ignored. Quoted in Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party, his speech on the 15th anniversary of the founding of Cuba’s political police and foreign intelligence agency, MININT ( Ministery of the Interior) was broadcast by Cuban television. CUBABrief quotes him below. Please click on the link below to hear Fidel Castro in his own words.
“…”If the Cuban government were to dedicate itself to engage in terrorism, and to respond with terrorism to terrorists, we believe we would be effective terrorists. Let no one think otherwise. If we were to dedicate ourselves to terrorism with all certainty we would be efficient. But the fact that the Cuban Revolution has never engaged in terrorism doesn’t mean that we renounce to it. We warn you.”
The one minute sixteen seconds recording follows: