A University of Minnesota Professor Defends the Criminal

History of the Cuban Revolution of 1959

by
Yamil A. Rodriguez

For fall 2015 semester, I enrolled enthusiastically in a University of Minnesota (TC) class

called The Cuban Revolution Through the Words of Cuban Revolutionaries. As I registered for

the course, I felt that my expectations were simple, modest even. I imagined that I would be

schooled on Cubas rich past, on the events surrounding Fidel Castros guerilla revolutionary

movement, and on the life of the Cuban patriarch, the Spanish-American War hero, and, martyr,

Jose Marti. Instead, Professor August Nimtz, Jr., a declared Marxist and a staunch admirer of

former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, voiced, on the first day of class a biased and distorted version

of the events surrounding the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

Nimtz declared that the Revolution is misunderstood and that its past indiscretions and

misconducts the denial of free elections and freedom of assembly, and mass murder in Cuba

were reasonable, justified even. The lesson depicted the Revolution as altruistic. The teachings,

however, clashed with my understanding of the Revolution's past transgressions, the painful

reverberations, the experiences of my youth living on the communist island.

I am a son of Cuba, a son of an anti-revolutionary rebel, a son of a political prisoner of the

Revolution. In the early 1960s, my father was captured by Castros forces, tried for sedition in a

"Show Trial," tortured, condemned to death for opposing the Revolution. His sentence reversed,

dad was incarcerated for almost a decade kept in sub-human living conditions.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 Course

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As I sat in this lecture, suddenly it all had become clear to me. The theories proposed in this

course were utterly arbitrary. The Cuban Revolution course not only overlooks, dismisses and

ultimately justifies the mass murder, the torture, and the mass incarceration of thousands of

Cuban political dissenters at the hands of the Cuban communist government, but also the Cuban

diaspora.

I would unequivocally reject the ideas presented in the class lecture. The arguments Nimtz gave I

deemed ludicrous, untrue, and deceitful even. I was disappointed. Put yourself in my situation. I

had to set the record straight.

Professor Nimtz believes that Cubas sovereignty today should be respected, and its shameful

acts revered despite its decades-long record of Civil and Human Rights violations, its fifty plus

years of tyranny. Cuba has proven to be far more responsive when it comes to protecting the

lives of its citizens... Nimtz wrote. But, I had lived in Cuba during the late 1970s and early

1980s. I have first-hand experience.

As a child I had witnessed the brutality, the crackdown, how government officials would

persistently and aggressively hound, detain, physically and psychologically attack, arrest, and

eventually, once again imprison dad and unspoken by my father for many years, the daily

beatings, starvation, and the suicides and killings he experienced and endured as a political

prisoner in Cuba's violent prison system.

I could not believe my ears. It was unsettling. Every fiber of my being indicated that this class

was deliberately designed to mislead, to influence young minds of the Revolutions' fabricated

magnanimous, of its so-called greater purpose. But why would the University of Minnesota

permit such teachings? I was eager to learn about my past, so I listened on.

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Then, things took a turn for the worse. When I probed Nimtz vis--vis the Hermanos al

Rescate killing in class, his response was that the slaying was justified. They should not have

been there, Nimtz said, gloating sanctimonious on the MiG-29UB midair assault of the

defenseless, unarmed Cesna-142.

Hermanos al Rescate MidAir Assault

Hermanos al Rescate is a nonprofit organization. During the 1990s the group conducted

humanitarian aerial operations dropping the essentials food, water, and medicinetending to

the "wave" of Cuban rafters making their way through the treacherous, 90-mile, shark-infested

waters of the Florida Straits, en route to the United States, in pursuit of liberty. In 1996, four

Cuban-Americans shepherding these operations, in addition to releasing counter-revolutionary

leaflets, crossed into Cuban airspace, and as a result, the single-engine aircraft, on Castros order,

was blown out of the sky by the Cuban Air Force, killing all passengers on board. Nimtz

pomposity in condoning, praising even, the mid-flight execution of the Hermanos airplane

finally had exhausted my level of tolerance and patience in his marvel of the Revolution.

Defending the Cuban Revolution of 1959

Nimtz philosophy notwithstanding aligns itself with that of the important models instituted by

Civil Rights Leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Marcus Garvey the Jamaican political

trailblazer, author, and theorist. That is, in making known the challenges that the Black race has

faced in more than four-hundred years, their struggle not just to rid themselves of their slavery

past, but also in their pursuit of social equality, acceptance, empowerment, and independence,

not only in America and Cuba but also across all the lands of the World.

Admirable as it may seem what Nimtz emphasizes of the supposed racial equality the Revolution

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has accomplished, still, not only is this not true but his inferences that the Revolution is a source,

a means, a beacon, or a gospel even a tool to counter the afflictions the people of African

descent have suffered is systematically flawed and parochial. The reality is that Nimtz is

bluffed, like many Cubans living on the island and people around the globe, that the Revolution

is benevolent, and that its intentions have been to emancipate people of African origin. It is not!

Conclude

The version of the Cuban Revolution of 1959 Nimtz professes is prejudicial, unsubstantiated,

and embellished. Nimtz nonchalantly overlooks and dismisses the mass killing, mass torture,

mass incarceration and long-term, adverse effects that have burdened the people of Cuba,

stemming from Castros ideology, of its supposed battle for racial, economic and social equality.

Knowing that the regime is responsible for the countless deaths of innocent men, women, and

children many of when to date lie in unmarked graves, Nimtz argues that the regime is

philanthropic.

These statements are untrue, and such lectures should be condemned because they are offensive,

unfitting, preposterous and unthinkable. Would the University of Minnesota tolerate similar

teachings if the subject-matter pertained to that of the Jewish people, the Nazis, and the

Holocaust? Where supposedly a novel idea was uncovered that mitigated the Nazi war machine

to exterminate the Israelis?

That is, would it make the plight of the Cuban people, then and today, that much less significant

than that of the struggle undergone by the European Jews? But instead, validate the Civil and

Human Rights violations, and the killings of innocent lives of Cubans, my people?

Is Nimtz, who has lived under the security blanket of the Rule of Law of the United States of

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America, removed from experiencing real dictatorship, communist rule, even equipped to

understand the plight of my people? Should Nimtz be allowed to speak favorably of, defend

even, a callous regime that has held Cubans in decades-long repression, under tyranny, that

indiscriminately exterminates, tortures, and imprisons its people, even today? Then why does the

University of Minnesota (TC) give Professor August Nimtz jr., a platform?

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