refused blindfolds. These young men all died yelling, “Long Live Christ the King!”
Fourteen thousand young men would join them in mass graves shortly, on the orders of Ted Turner’s chum Fidel and the icon of Burlington Industries’ T-shirts, Che.
Herman Marks’s hound might have found less blood to lap up, but Havana’s birds were gorging on flesh. “Those firing-squad volleys rang like a dinner bell to the birds,” recalls Cuban freedom fighter Hiram Gonzalez, imprisoned in La Cabana at the time of Anderson’s murder, in the documentary Yo Los He Visto Partir . “Those firing squads had been going off daily since January 7, 1959, the day Che Guevara entered Havana. It didn’t take long for the birds to catch on. Flocks of them had learned to perch atop the wall that surrounded La Cabana fortress and in the nearby trees. After the volley they swooped down to peck at the bits of bone, blood, and flesh that littered the ground. Those birds sure grew fat.” 14
Paul Bethel was press attaché for the U.S. embassy in Cuba during the anti-Batista rebellion and the first years of revolution. Later he worked as head of the Latin American division of the U.S. Information Agency, where he interviewed hundreds of the Cuban refugees then landing in South Florida. Bethel also kept hearing accounts of this blood extraction from firing-squad victims. Finally he was able to question Dr. Virginia de Mirabal Quesada, who escaped Cuba through Mexico and had actually fled, horrified, after witnessing the process. “It’s absolutely true,” she told the U.S. Information Agency. “Before being shot, the men are taken to a small first-aid room at La Cabana, where the communists extract between a quart and a quart and a half of blood from each victim. It is then placed in a blood bank. Some of it is shipped to North Vietnam. Sometimes the victims are so weak, they have to be carried to the execution stake. Others, not healthy at the time from the prison ordeal, or with bad hearts, die during the extraction.” 15
On April 7, 1967, the Organization of American States Human Rights Commission finally issued a detailed report on the humanistic Cuban revolution’s long-practiced vampirism. The report was based on dozens of verified eyewitness accounts by defectors.
“On May, 27, 1966, from six in the morning to nightfall political prisoners were executed continuously by firing squad in Havana’s La Cabana prison,” the report read. “One hundred and sixty-six men were executed that day and each had 5 pints of blood extracted prior to being shot. Extracting this amount of blood often produces cerebral anemia and unconsciousness so that many had to be carried to the execution wall on stretchers. The corpses were then transported by truck to a mass grave in a cemetery outside the city of Marianao. On that day, the truck required seven trips to deliver all the corpses. On 13th Street in Havana’s Vedado district Soviet medical personnel have established a blood bank where this blood is transported and stored. This blood is sold at fifty U.S. dollars per pint to the Republic of North Viet Nam.”
Communist Cuba’s innovative blood-marketing program has received no attention from the mainstream media and “scholars” in general, though Cuba’s medical practices usually get no end of fawning coverage. Dr. Juan Clark, sociology professor at Miami-Dade Community College, Bay of Pigs veteran and former political prisoner, is the shining exception. His research included interviews with dozens of Castro’s and Che’s ex-political prisoners and defectors who confirmed the practice. Needless to say, in the thousands upon thousands of pages devoted to their subject, no Che “biographer” mentions Cuba’s blood trade, yet they all play up Che’s role as minister of industries starting in early 1961— just when the blood-marketing campaign began.
Henry Butterfield Ryan, diplomat and scholar, in particular laments that Che’s
Fourteen thousand young men would join them in mass graves shortly, on the orders of Ted Turner’s chum Fidel and the icon of Burlington Industries’ T-shirts, Che.
Herman Marks’s hound might have found less blood to lap up, but Havana’s birds were gorging on flesh. “Those firing-squad volleys rang like a dinner bell to the birds,” recalls Cuban freedom fighter Hiram Gonzalez, imprisoned in La Cabana at the time of Anderson’s murder, in the documentary Yo Los He Visto Partir . “Those firing squads had been going off daily since January 7, 1959, the day Che Guevara entered Havana. It didn’t take long for the birds to catch on. Flocks of them had learned to perch atop the wall that surrounded La Cabana fortress and in the nearby trees. After the volley they swooped down to peck at the bits of bone, blood, and flesh that littered the ground. Those birds sure grew fat.” 14
Paul Bethel was press attaché for the U.S. embassy in Cuba during the anti-Batista rebellion and the first years of revolution. Later he worked as head of the Latin American division of the U.S. Information Agency, where he interviewed hundreds of the Cuban refugees then landing in South Florida. Bethel also kept hearing accounts of this blood extraction from firing-squad victims. Finally he was able to question Dr. Virginia de Mirabal Quesada, who escaped Cuba through Mexico and had actually fled, horrified, after witnessing the process. “It’s absolutely true,” she told the U.S. Information Agency. “Before being shot, the men are taken to a small first-aid room at La Cabana, where the communists extract between a quart and a quart and a half of blood from each victim. It is then placed in a blood bank. Some of it is shipped to North Vietnam. Sometimes the victims are so weak, they have to be carried to the execution stake. Others, not healthy at the time from the prison ordeal, or with bad hearts, die during the extraction.” 15
On April 7, 1967, the Organization of American States Human Rights Commission finally issued a detailed report on the humanistic Cuban revolution’s long-practiced vampirism. The report was based on dozens of verified eyewitness accounts by defectors.
“On May, 27, 1966, from six in the morning to nightfall political prisoners were executed continuously by firing squad in Havana’s La Cabana prison,” the report read. “One hundred and sixty-six men were executed that day and each had 5 pints of blood extracted prior to being shot. Extracting this amount of blood often produces cerebral anemia and unconsciousness so that many had to be carried to the execution wall on stretchers. The corpses were then transported by truck to a mass grave in a cemetery outside the city of Marianao. On that day, the truck required seven trips to deliver all the corpses. On 13th Street in Havana’s Vedado district Soviet medical personnel have established a blood bank where this blood is transported and stored. This blood is sold at fifty U.S. dollars per pint to the Republic of North Viet Nam.”
Communist Cuba’s innovative blood-marketing program has received no attention from the mainstream media and “scholars” in general, though Cuba’s medical practices usually get no end of fawning coverage. Dr. Juan Clark, sociology professor at Miami-Dade Community College, Bay of Pigs veteran and former political prisoner, is the shining exception. His research included interviews with dozens of Castro’s and Che’s ex-political prisoners and defectors who confirmed the practice. Needless to say, in the thousands upon thousands of pages devoted to their subject, no Che “biographer” mentions Cuba’s blood trade, yet they all play up Che’s role as minister of industries starting in early 1961— just when the blood-marketing campaign began.
Henry Butterfield Ryan, diplomat and scholar, in particular laments that Che’s
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