Fidel Castro meets with French President François Hollande during his visit to Havana, Cuba, on May 11, 2015. Hollande is France's first head of state to visit Cuba. File Photo by Alex Castro/Granma

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro during meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on September 29, 2015. Pool Photo by Anthony Behar/UPI | License Photo

Father Domingo Lorenzo performs the last rites for Cuban Army Cpl. Jose Cipriano Rodriguez on Jan. 17, 1959. Rodriguez, who had served in Fulgencio Batista's army, was executed by firing squad after being found guilty for the deaths of two brothers. His tribunal lasted just one minute. UPI photographer Andrew Lopez won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for a series of four photos from the scene, including this one. UPI file

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- People should remember what the dictators have done.

This month marks the 57th anniversary of Fidel Castro's triumphant march into Havana after dictator Fulgencio Batista fled in 1959.


Castro entered the city on Jan. 8; a few days earlier, his brother Raul had taken control of Santiago, Cuba's second-largest city. On Jan. 10, Raul Castro, now president of Cuba, ordered a long, deep trench dug near the historical San Juan Hill, site of the U.S. skirmishes against the Spanish led by Teddy Roosevelt, which took place on Jan. 11.

His army's trucks hauled 70 Cuban nationals to the site, lined them up and executed them. Their bodies fell into the trench and were buried. There were no trials or "due process."

That action ought to enlighten Americans today as to nature of the Castro regime and the character of the man who inherited the Cuban presidency from his ailing brother and is now engaged with U.S. President Barack Obama in making decisions affecting Cuba's future and relationship with the United States.

While Fidel Castro enthralled Habaneros with long speeches, the most important promise of the Castros' revolution was immediately betrayed and abandoned. Fidel Castro had repeatedly said that once Batista was gone, Cuba's Constitution would be reinstated. Millions celebrated the departure of Batista and arrival of Fidel Castro's self-declared "democratic revolution."

Cuba's Constitution prohibits the death penalty. Fidel Castro's promise of democracy rapidly disappeared, and neither brother shows any new respect for the rule of law.

Cuban Army trucks hauled the doomed Cubans to the hill. Some cried, others pleaded to live professing support for the Castro Revolution. Some were blindfolded. Many remained silent. One execution was delayed several hours to accommodate TV crews who wanted better lighting to film the grisly event.

As in Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union's communist rule, where similar mass executions took place, there is no marker indicating where the Cubans' remains lie. There is also no marker at the cemetery in Havana where Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa is buried.

Ochoa joined the Castros' rebel army in the Oriente mountains as a young boy, eventually becoming part of Fidel Castro's personal guard. He became a general leading the Cuban armies in Angola, was very popular with the enlisted men and known for cracking jokes about Fidel Castro's leadership. After all, none of Fidel Castro's skirmishes against Batista compared with the bombing campaigns and the tank warfare that the general directed in Africa.

In a speech, Cuba's minister of defense Raul Castro, Ochoa's longtime friend, warned him that jokes about Fidel Castro were "not funny."

Fidel Castro ordered the general's home wired and taped everything said. In a kangaroo-court trial, the general and "Hero of the Revolution" was sentenced to die, marched to the infamous "paredon" (execution wall) and buried in an unmarked tomb. Perhaps, after the Castros are no longer in power, his name will be inscribed on the door, and the tomb will become a tourist attraction at Colon Cemetery.

These are the Castro brothers that Obama hopes to embrace during his planned visit to Havana this spring. Indeed, the smiling Raul Castro shown in a photograph taken at the United Nations with the president and Michelle Obama is the same man who, in 1996, ordered Cuban MiGs to shoot down civilian Americans flying in international airspace and searching for refugees adrift in the Florida Straits. Raul Castro awarded the MiG pilots medals and hailed as a "hero" one of the Cuban spies, Gerardo Hernandez, who was convicted in U.S. courts of helping to plan the murders.

Obama ordered Hernandez released in 2014 as part of a deal to restore diplomatic relations.

The president argues that much of what happened that triggered American animosity toward Cuba happened before he was born.

Yet it does matter to Cuban Americans today. And it will matter to Cubans tomorrow when they learn the real history of the island and the story of the American president who meant well and inspired their hopes and then turned his back on the people of Cuba to embrace another dictator, as so many of his predecessors did.

Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, based in Washington D.C.