The San Juan Hill massacre or the Massacre of the 71 occurred on January 12, 1959, in Cuba. It was the shooting of 71 collaborators of the Fulgencio Batista regime. After being summarily convicted, the 71 accused were subjected to torture and a mass killing.
Background.
After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, dozens of Fulgencio Batista's supporters and members of the armed forces and police were arrested and accused of war crimes and other abuses. According to the American magazine Time, the majority of those accused:"were proved killers whose twisted minds drew pleasure from pain. To extract secrets from captured rebels, they yanked out fingernails, carbonized hands and feet in red-hot vises. Castration was a major police weapon..."Although, according to the Cuban organization Archivos Cuba, which is in charge of collecting information about the victims of the dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro, the organization alleges that the majority of those accused had not committed any crime. The 1940 Cuban constitution prohibited the death penalty, but that constitution was recently abolished.
Judgement.
On January 11, a revolutionary court in Santiago de Cuba sentenced 4 individuals to death after a 4-hour summary trial at the rate of 4 minutes for each sentence. It was directed by Belarmino Castilla Mas, Jorge Serguera acted as prosecutor and everything took place in a frenzied atmosphere, without defense lawyers or evidence that would incriminate them in previous crimes.
The court was also presided over by Rebel Army Commander Raúl Castro, who was in command of the Oriente province. The Santiago rebels sentenced 68 more men to the death penalty, Raúl Castro declared that "if one was guilty, all were also guilty." Ten men were also sentenced to 10 years in prison and 47 were acquitted. In the Boniato prison, 6 priests heard the last confessions of the condemned. Then, tied with ropes and in pairs, they were taken in trucks to a shooting range at San Juan Hill. Time magazine states:“The buses arrived at the shooting range before dawn and the condemned men dismounted, their hands tied and their faces haggard. Some claimed they had been rebel sympathizers all along, some cried, most went silent. On a hill overlooking the mountain range, a crowd cheered at each volley. “Kill them, kill them,” the spectators shouted.”The overwhelming public opinion urged the firing squads to move forward. No Cuban voice was raised in protest, although it is impossible to say if there were or weren't private doubts.
Shootings and testimonies.
On January 12, 1959, around 2:00 AM, the massacre began. The men were lined up, one by one, and shot in front of a 40-meter ditch. Between 71 and 73 Cubans were executed and buried in a mass grave that had been dug some time before the trial. Raúl Castro directed the massacre.
The list for the firing squad contained 72 names, but one managed to evade the squad, presumably thanks to personal contacts. He was a 15-year-old boy nicknamed El Fiñe. Three other prisoners of the total reconcentrated in galley No. 8 of the Boniato prison also managed to escape. Father Jorge Bez Chabebe accompanied each of the victims to their execution and confirmed that the shootings continued until ten in the morning. Father Jorge Bez Chabebe rebuked his rebel companion:“Mr. Captain, can't you stop this? It goes against all laws, against the constitution of the republic for which we have confronted Batista.”And the rebel responded, “Father, do your duty... if I don't shoot, they will shoot me.” The journalist Antonio Llano Montes, a witness and knowledgeable person of what happened, revealed that he had seen hands on the surface of the earth, reinforcing the hypothesis that there were live victims among those shot, who died of asphyxiation trying to get out. Antonio Llano Montes has stated on Radio Mambí:
“We went to report the trial that was being carried out on 72 unfortunate people. We were present when Raúl Castro interrupted the court and said: “If one is guilty, the others are too. “We condemn them all to be shot".
The Massacre was particularly announced and glorified by the official press at the time, in order to create terror, quell opposition and quickly consolidate power. The victims were deprived of the most basic legal process. The international community was stunned by the bloodshed. Uruguay's delegate to the United Nations, the Cuban ambassador to Argentina, the liberal US senator Wayne Morse and the governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, protested. Fidel Castro's response was:“We have given orders to shoot every last one of those murderers, and if we have to oppose world opinion to achieve justice, we are willing to do so".In 1963, Hurricane Flora unearthed some of the bodies, removing them above ground and leaving them visible to everyone. The government relocated the bodies in heavy concrete tombs and thrown into the depths of the Cayman Trench.