From left. to right .: Ramon Lamadrid, Alex Hernandez, Juan Miguel García, Octavio and crouch, Carlos Bidot. Gardens Restaurant 1830, Havana, December 25, 1965. (COURTESY OF ALEX HERNANDEZ)
At the end of the year 1965, Ramon Lamadrid seemed a cheerful boy. Christmas Day met with friends in the restaurant habanero 1830, in whose gardens he took to be his last photos. A month later, the young man of 18 years was a rebel on therun, escaped from a concentration camp. And as such, he received a shot in the belly.
"He was the first altar boy at St. John Lateran. I went there at 59 or 60 and he was the one who taught me to assist at Mass , " I wrote his friend Alex Hernandez from Miami. The boy "made his living as a messenger of Rojas pharmacy, whose owner was Célida Rojas and was right next to the winery La Mascota, in [the streets] G and 17. His bike was similar to that in the film Pee Wee".
"A Ramon was shot when leaving the house of his mother in Marianao, 24 January 1966. They threw and caught the underbelly janissaries of Castro 's military police because he had escaped from the concentration camp of UMAP in Camagüey few days before. " Malherido "took him to the Naval Hospital, where two weeks later he died. The only that he was going to see there were Sweet, Regina and Rosalia Alvarez" who frequented the church of San Juan and were neighbors of the pharmacy where the boy worked.
Ramon Lamadrid was one of the 30,000 young Cubans considered disaffected by the regime that were sent between 1965 and 1968 to the camps of the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP).
"I never met the family of Ramon and I went to his house and knew exactly where he lived, but studied at the same primary G between 15 and 17, in what had been the Baldor School. I lived there in 17 between F and G, with my grandparents and parents until we moved to Mexico in 1973 , "says Hernandez, who can not forget the story of the dead companion. "He was buried in the pantheon of Dulce María González-Lanuza, who at the time was director of the catechism in San Juan de Letran."
According to unofficial sources, the balance of the horror of the UMAP left 72 deaths from torture and executions, 180 suicides and 507 people sent to psychiatric hospitals as a result. The writer Norberto Fuentes has been the spokesman for those figures.The Cuban regime has preferred instead to keep those numbers in secrecy.
Cuba Archive, a draft register of victims of the repression of the Cuban regime, has documented the story of Ramon Lamadrid nine cases of extrajudicial executions or deliberate and disappearances related to the UMAP.
Knowing that have not been the only deaths that occurred there, recording the names of the victims, their stories or some graphics memory, is a difficult task because of the lack of press freedom and the lack of justice independent on the island, so the secrecy of the Cuban regime, which has not allowed an investigation or opening files adds.
The story of Ramon Lamadrid is just one example of the cover-up that have been associated violent deaths of UMAP. Among the few documented nine cases, theirs is the only one that is accompanied by graphics memory: photographs provided by a friend are the only faith life of what he looked like the young man of 18 years in the distant Christmas of 1965. In its tab File Cuba noted what appears to be another unknown: the cause of death is not reflected in his death certificate.
'War Councils'
A speech by Fidel Castro on the steps of the University of Havana on March 13, 1966 had already alerted the Cuban population of the existence of those camps. The Maximum Leader had expatiated, threatening.
Just a month later, public opinion was so unfavorable to the government UMAP walked propaganda machine, the official press, the only one allowed in Cuba. Thus on the same day, April 14, 1966, editions of newspapers El Mundo and Granma published two full - page reports on the camps.
While praising the virtues of the UMAP, the Granma report noted that there were abuses solved by war tribunals.
"Upon arrival of the first groups that were nothing good, some officers did not have the patience or the required experience and overreacted. For those reasons were subjected to court martial, in some cases they were demoted and others expelled them from the Armed Forces , "he wrote journalist Luis Baez ruling.
In the report of Granma he was not spoken of the nature of the abuse, or how many officers were punished with demotion or expulsion from the Army. Neither the name of Ramon Lamadrid, died violently so long ago was even mentioned. In that paragraph it was put start and end the cruelty of UMAP: that was what the newspaper the only party allowed to talk about the crimes committed in those concentration camps Cubans.
More than three decades later, the professor and Cuban - American researcher Emilio Bejel write in the book Gay Cuban Nation: "Although it is not easy to obtain accurate documentation, it is known that initially some recruits were treated so inhumanely that some officers responsible were then executed." [ "Although required documentation is not easy to obtener, it is Known That INITIALLY some recruits That Were Treated so inhumanely some of the later Officials Were Executed responsible."]
In September 2012, Bejel participated in a panel on the situation of gays under Castro, organized by the New York Public Library.Intrigued by those executions mentioned by the teacher and knowing the story of Granma where it was said that the only sentence that had those officers was the expulsion or military degradation, I went over to ask what their sources Bejel. Made in his book emphasizes how difficult to obtain documentation, but pointed out executions followed as made "known".
Q : How knew these alleged executions of those responsible? --I asked for.
--I Did not say that all those responsible be executed. Only a few --me replied, correcting memory.
--Of The war tribunals mentioned in Granma did not say that. It is said that those responsible for abuses were demoted or expelled from the army. Where do you read were executed?
--no Know, go figure. It is very difficult to obtain documentation. Send me --and that document was dismissed.
A foreign correspondent sneaks into camp
By August 1966, the existence of those labor camps was the talk among diplomats and foreign correspondents in Havana. Only the official press had curtly informed of the abuses, but it was vox populi that injustices were not finished with the Councils of War, nor the expulsion of some military command. The English writer Graham Greene, who then visited the Cuban capital, narrate about it.
But the most intrepid correspondents was, without doubt, Paul Kidd, who used his credential Canadian journalist to travel throughout Cuba and enter one of the 200 camps of UMAP "located near the Batey El Dos de Céspedes" in Camagüey.
In a letter, Kidd define that experience as unique to a Western journalist, "to be able to keep track of a forced labor camp hidden in a lush field of sugar in central Cuba".
After 12 days in the country, the correspondent for Southam News Services was expelled for allegedly shooting anti - aircraft weapons in the Havana seawall and pretend to be a Canadian diplomat, according to the Cuban regime, which was careful inthe extreme to mention the clandestine visit Kidd to the UMAP camp.
Contact Judy Creighton, widow of Paul Kidd, knew he had died on 13 February 2002. "As a foreign correspondent for Southam News of Canada, Paul traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East and was a reporter in Washington and the United Nations before being sent to Latin America. I think that designation loved six years like no other ", I wrote Creighton.
"After he was ordered his departure from Cuba, traveled to Mexico from which transmitted the pictures to news agencies around the world. I understand that received wide coverage , " said Kidd's widow.
And indeed. On November 9, 1966, the news agency United Press International (UPI) transmitted the world's first news about the UMAP camps. The office, signed by Paul Kidd, was accompanied by photographs of his own, "without censoring the first images taken inside one of those establishments."
A more complete version of the news circulated years later in an article by the same author.
"By work an average of sixty - hour weeks --escribió-- inmates received 7 pesos per month, just the price of a half - decent meal in Cuba. Except when struggling working under the gaze of an armed guard in a nearby field, inmates usually remained in the camp for at least six months. Supposedly eligible for a brief leave after ninety days, a few recruits from the UMAP were allowedto visit their families until they had been in the camp twice that time " .
He added:... "The discipline system was simple Inmates who were not working, not receiving food And unless your work reach the assigned rule, they are not authorized leave On the second Sunday of each month, confined were allowed to receive visits from their families, who could bring cigarettes and other small items. If an inmate did not obey orders, these objects were retained. the reports of physical brutality in the camps were widely circulated in Cuba ".
The correspondent summed up the existence of the UMAP labor as a source of almost slave labor, made to measure.
Paul Kidd received the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes 1966, awarded by the School of Journalism at Columbia University. The Canadian PEN writers awarded every year an award with his name, Paul Kidd Courage Prize.
Verde Olivo and other mysteries
After the Canadian correspondent was expelled, the magazine Verde Olivo, propaganda organ of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, published a report extolling the virtues of these camps and reseñaba an act that "desbarataba once again the pack of lies thrown to roll down the enemies of the Revolution trying to present it as an institution of subjection ".
The singular act consisted of awards to some "macheteros" of the UMAP with the delivery of "motorcycles, refrigerators, radios and clocks" in addition to the imposition of medals to "dashboards". This would be the tone of the next reports of the Cuban military publication. In its pages no room for the victims.
Scarce official documentation has circulated on those labor camps. But between I found one that catches my attention: a letter from the Office of the Prime Minister in which notifies a mother who "is provided to account for its request to the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces" to his request for an investigation by the death of his son.
This letter is reproduced in the book The UMAP: Castro 's gulag (Universal, Miami, 2004) by Enrique Ros, and documents what appears to be another case of mysterious death of Cayetano Berto Rafael Ramirez Rodriguez, a young man of "weak complexion "which was located in the UMAP camp of" junction of Cunagua "and was" repeatedly punished by sergeant Biscet. " "Under strong nervous condition was taken to Central Pina and thence to the psychiatric hospital in Camagüey, where he died."
"The Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces never responded to the request of the mother of Berto Rafael , " says a note from Ros at the foot of the facsimile of the official letter dated October 20, 1967 and bears the signature of Celia Sanchez, Fidel Castro aide.
Those names are dead which none of the brothers Castro wants to say. Neither Mariela Castro, director of the National Center for Sex Education, who had promised a thorough investigation of those crimes.
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