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Ches røde terror på Cuba - øjenvidner og instrukser

[Se ligeledes: Kronologisk oversigt - Che-citater - Det sagde venstrefløjen]

1959: Konsolidering af magten og oprettelse af en totalitær stat

 Pierre San Martin om Ches henrettelse af en dreng
Thirty-two of us were crammed into a cell…Sixteen of us would stand while the other sixteen tried to sleep on the cold filthy floor. We took shifts that way. Actually, we considered ourselves lucky. After all, we were alive. Dozens were led from the cells to the firing squad daily. The volleys kept us awake. We felt that any one of those minutes would be our last. …One morning the horrible sound of that rusty steel door swinging open startled us awake and Che’s guards shoved a new prisoner into our cell. His face was bruised and smeared with blood. We could only gape. He was a boy, couldn't have been much older than 12, maybe 14. ’What did you do?' We asked horrified. 'I tried to defend my papa,' gasped the bloodied boy. 'I tried to keep these Communist sons of bitches from murdering him! But they sent him to the firing squad.'" [Drengen hentes atter ud af cellen] We all rushed to the cell's window that faced the execution pit…We simply couldn't believe they'd murder him! Then we spotted him, strutting around the blood-drenched execution yard with his hands on his waist and barking orders – the gallant Che Guevara. "Kneel Down!" Che barked at the boy. ”Assassins!” We screamed from our window. ”Murderers!! How can you murder a little boy!" "I said, kneel down!" Che barked again. The boy stared Che resolutely in the face. "If you're going to kill me," he yelled. "you'll have to do it while I'm standing! Men die standing!" ”Cowards! Murderers! Sons of bitches!” The men yelled desperately from their cells. ”Leave him alone! How can…?!" And then we saw Che unholstering his pistol. It didn't seem possible. But Che raised his pistol, put the barrel to the back of the boy's neck and blasted. The shot almost decapitated the young boy. We erupted. We were enraged, hysterical, banging on the bars. 'Murderers! Assassins!' His murder finished, Che finally looked up at us, pointed his pistol, and blam-blam-blam! emptied his clip in our direction. Several of us were wounded by his shots.
- P. San Martin: ”Como asesinaba el Che Guevara”, El Nuevo Herald, 28. dec. (1997) om sine oplevelser som Ches fange slutningen af 1959

Luis Ortega om Ches henrettelsesinstrukser
We have to work at night, he tells Duque Estrada, a young lawyer from Santa Clara province […] The human mind offers less resistance at night than during the day. In the stillness of night, the moral resistance weakens. Do all interrogations at night. -Yes, Major. - It isn't necessary to find whether the man is innocent or not. We only need to know if it is necessary to shoot him. That is all. - Yes, Major. – [….] The prisoner should always have the opportunity of arguing his innocence before shooting him. And this means, listen to me, that the prisoner will always be shot, no matter what his defence is. We should not go wrong on this. Our mission is not to give a due judicial process to anybody, our mission is to make the revolution happen, and that is why we should start with a judicial process.
- L. Ortega: Yo Soy El Che (1970) citeret af E. Echerri: ”El màs auténtico retrato” El Nuevo Herald, 11. okt. (2001)

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1960: Undertrykkelse af befolkningen og oprettelse af koncentrationslejre

Ches gamle kammerat fra Bolivia, Régis Debray, om Che
En fuldblods tilhænger af et autoritært styre. […] Det er ham, og ikke Fidel, der i 1960 på halvøen Guanaha har opfundet den første ”forbedringslejr” (vi ville sige tvangsarbejdslejr)…
- R. Debray: Loués soient nos seigneurs. une éducation politique. Paris (1996) s.184

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1961: Fortsat terror

S.M. Smith om en eksil-cubaners oplevelser med Che i 1961
Her father was a professor of physics and mathematics at a religious school in Havana. Like many at the start of the revolution, he supported Castro and believed he heralded an emergent democracy. The Batista regime was corrupt, repressive and wildly unpopular. However, when Castro declared that he was a follower of the Marxist ideology, many of those professionals who once supported him started to conspire against him. On October 21st, 1961, her father was taken away. His family did not know where he was taken, or if he was alive, for an entire year. With neither an attorney nor a trial, he was given 20 years in prison, escaping a longer sentence (or execution) only because of the weakness of the evidence against him. Most of his colleagues and co-conspirators were executed or given 30 years, also without anything resembling due process. During his first months in prison, he was tortured by being kept in a small closet where he could not stand up straight or sit or lay down, and without any food or water. They played tapes of a woman screaming, and he was told that it was his wife being tortured. He remained in prison for the next 18 years. In La Cabana, he witnessed firsthand the horrors of Che Guevara. Raul Castro and Che frequently called all of the prisoners to a lineup. They would both walk up and down in front of the line of men for a while until Che would stop randomly and say, “From here to the end of the line, execute them all.” Those spared were sent back to the cells to listen to the firing squad. It was often Che himself who fired the last bullet into the heads of the dying.
- S. M. Smith: ”The Mystique of Marxism. How Che became a windfall for global capitalists” Brainstorm NW, juni (2005)

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