The Case of Huber Matos
SAUVAGE, LEO
A VICTIM OF CASTRO The Case of Huber Matos by LEO SAUVAGE Following a succession of developments moving toward what Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had described as Washington's desire for "early...
...The present Cuban Army is still without colonels and generals, but Raul Castro weors fiur stars on his shoulder...
...Until the two men entered Havana together, Matos served as military governor of Santiago...
...Like all the Cubans who fought against the dictatorship of Fulgen-cio Batista, Matos wanted a libertarian revolution...
...He was also a man who disliked militarism, totalitarianism and Communism as much as Matos did, but who would permit no one to challenge Fidel...
...travel restrictions to Cuba has accelerated the talk about a "thaw" in the strained relations between the two countries...
...Camilo's trusted lieutenant, Cristobal Naranjo, who had been present during the conversation between Cienfuegos and Matos on the second floor of the Ignacio-Agramonte headquarters building, was killed "by accident" shortly afterward...
...Exactly six years later, in October 1973, when the arrest of Luis Cor-valan was protested by Soviet UN delegate Yakov Malik with the strong support of Saudi Arabia's Jamil Baroody, Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim interceded for the leader of the Chilean Communist party...
...Castro insists that if this is to happen the U.S...
...Even when the PSP was finally outlawed, its members had no serious trouble with the Batista police...
...Matos' father, now 90 years old and still living in the Oriente province, has made the long journey to Havana several times in the hope of seeing his son...
...Fidel Castro arrived at 5:10 p.m...
...Of peasant stock, Matos had attended Havana University and was a schoolteacher...
...The response to his appeals is always the same: "The prisoner does not wish to receive any visitors...
...must not meddle in the internal affairs of Cuba by demanding that it respect human rights...
...Bread with freedom," it will be recalled, was a philosophy as well as a slogan...
...Kept for long periods in complete darkness, he is almost blind...
...with an armed escort, went directly to the front of the courtroom, strung a microphone around his neck, turned his back to the five judges, and began to harangue the members of the audience and the radio listeners...
...The men had been assembled for the mission by Frank Pais, the anti-Communist head of the 26th of July Movement in Santiago de Cuba (who was later murdered by the Batistianos and is today a national hero...
...Matos was informed in writing, on UN stationery, that according to Paragraph 1 of Resolution 728 F (XXVIII), the Commission was "not entitled to take any measures concerning claims related to human rights...
...Since everybody agrees they should be respected in Chile, however, perhaps it is time to fight for the human rights of former Communist Senator Jorge Montes and, as General Pinochet has suggested, obtain his liberation in exchange for that of Huber Matos...
...It called for the masses to mobilize, for the peasants to take up their machetes, for all Cubans to defend and save the Revolution...
...According to the reports of eyewitnesses...
...He started replacing the 26th of July libertarians with disciplined Communists...
...The next day the Cuban radio announced that a counterrevolutionary uprising had been launched in Camagiiey by Huber Matos...
...He has never succeeded...
...Three days later, Huber Matos was sentenced to 20 years in prison...
...Indeed, until October 31, 1953—a year and a half after Batista established his dictatorship and well after the July 26 attack against the Fort Leo Sauvage, a veteran correspondent, covered the Cuban Revolution and is the author of Che Guevara...
...There were no legally defined charges against him...
...The latest news—just received by his second son, Rogelio Matos, who was 13 years old in 1959—is that last month Matos was suddenly transferred from La Cabana to a prison called Moralitos, some 10 miles to the east of Havana...
...An opportunity to free Matos presented itself at the end of last November, when General Augusto Pinochet's Chilean military junta?having just been denounced once more for human rights infractions by an overwhelming UN majority that included Cuba and the USSR-came up with an unexpected and cunning proposal: It would exchange two of the top Communists it was holding, Luis Corvalan and Jorge Montes, for Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident forced to spend 11 of his 34 years in concentration camps and "psychiatric wards," and Matos, who was confined to a primitive cell in the ancient La Cabana fortress...
...their Partido Socialista Popular (PSP) would have absolutely nothing to do with Castro and his band...
...It seemed for a moment that the young, bearded Rebel Army would be unable to withstand the attack...
...One reason for this, surely, is the almost forgotten case of his former fellow-revolutionary, Huber Matos, whom he has kept in jail for more than 17 years...
...The calm had not been easy to achieve...
...Matos was no exception...
...I do not wish," he wrote, "to become an obstacle to the Revolution, and I believe that having to choose between accommodating myself to the circumstances or getting out of the way in order not to cause any damage, the honorable and revolutionary thing to do, for me, is to go . . ." The letter was sent on October 19, 1959...
...Castro had decided that there would be no generals or colonels in his Rebel Army: The highest rank would be commandante...
...Soon after he returned to the Sierra Maestra with the desperately needed planeload of weapons, Fidel Castro made him a commandante...
...Instead, he merely sent a letter to Fidel asking permission to give up his military command and return to teaching...
...Camilo Cienfuegos disappeared a few days later in what was called "a plane crash during his return flight to Havana...
...He was older than most of the men in the Sierra, having been born November 26, 1919, in the Oriente province town of Yara, where Carlos Manuel de Cespedes in 1868 had uttered El Crito de Yara, the first call for Cuban independence...
...A VICTIM OF CASTRO The Case of Huber Matos by LEO SAUVAGE Following a succession of developments moving toward what Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had described as Washington's desire for "early renewal of contacts" with Havana, President Carter announced at his March 9 press conference that travel restrictions to Cuba were being removed...
...The mystery notwithstanding, Castro decreed a period of national mourning...
...No one knows what the conditions are there...
...Matos' wife, Maria Luisa Araluce de Matos, left Cuba in 1963 with her four children and currently lives in New Jersey...
...Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba that gave the rebel movement its name—the PSP was a legal party in Cuba...
...The main factor facilitating the Communist takeover of Cuba (or, rather, the country's voluntary delivery by Castro into the hands of the Communists) was the blind personal faith Fidel's followers had in him...
...And one theory holds that Castro in fact hoped for a shooting affray that would take the lives of both Cienfuegos and Matos: He would then come in to restore revolutionary order after having gotten rid of two popular anti-Communist comandantes—one would be a dead hero and the other a dead traitor...
...Since 1970 she has had five letters from her husband, two officially and three indirectly...
...But the thrust of the offensive was blunted from the start by the all-out sabotage effort of the Havana underground resistance, led by Manolo Ray, now in Puerto Rico...
...In the spring of 1957 he led the 50-man convoy that brought the first armed reinforcements to the survivors of the 1956 Granma landing hiding out in the mountains...
...Huber Matos does not have the same friends...
...That was more than 17 years ago...
...The last in particular has drawn an outraged response from Fidel Castro...
...The officer who shot Naranjo soon took to the mountains, but was caught and put to death on the spot...
...Camilo was the most popular of the comandantcs...
...The offer met with silence in Moscow and Havana...
...As late as June 28, 1958, Bias Roca, the old Stalinist who has become the new Cuba's Elder Statesman, in another move designed to thwart Castro, appealed for "honest and democratic elections under Batista...
...He talked for seven hours, then departed without waiting for the court to grant the "witness" permission to leave and before the attorney for the defense could ask him any questions...
...By October 1959, just nine months after the flight of Batista, Castro's ambition began to extend far beyond Cuba...
...The Communists continued to denounce the 26th of July Movement as putchismo, and on April 9, 1958, they foiled its general strike...
...On October 21, before flying to Camagiiey himself, Castro dispatched Camilo Cienfuegos and a small group of officers there...
...Huber Matos remains behind stone walls, stonily ignored by the outside world...
...There was, though, a witness for the prosecution...
...Along with 37 of the 38 officers on his staff, he was taken prisoner by Comandante Cienfuegos...
...His left arm is paralyzed...
...many men were ready to fight to prevent the arrest of their leader...
...The following February, in spite of Paragraph 1 of Resolution 728 F (XXVIII), the UN Commission on Human Rights sent a message to the Chilean junta asking for the release of Luis Corvalan...
...When he saw the militants of the 26th of July Movement being progressively replaced by old-time Communists, he did not consider initiating any counter action...
...Not long afterward the Ninth Column obtained the historic surrender of Fort Moncada, giving Castro a provisional capital in Santiago de Cuba...
...The dictator knew what he was doing...
...Matos received the command of the Ninth Column—Columna Antonio Guiteras—the largest unit in the Rebel Army...
...But full resumption of normal relations with the country that lies 90 miles off the coast of Florida, the President has declared, will depend upon such factors as the withdrawal of its troops from Angola and the release of political prisoners...
...Camilo seemed very surprised to find everything quiet at the Ignacio-Agramonte barracks where Matos had his headquarters...
...But on December 18 Bukovsky was exchanged for Corvalan at the Zurich airport...
...Although the Kremlin has never admitted the trade took place, Corvalan has been showered with televised kisses by Party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev, and Bukovsky has been greeted at the White House by President Carter...
...But Comandante Matos' strict orders were to offer no resistance whatever the provocation...
...Some years ago, he was forced to remain naked for several months in his cell: Because he had refused the special uniform worn by prisoners being "reeducated," he was given no clothing at all...
...Matos played a part in the beginnings of the Rebel Army...
...Upon learning that Camilo had arrested Huber, he killed himself with his service revolver...
...Meanwhile Batista, seeking to take advantage of the unsuccessful general strike, launched a big military operation against the barbudos in the Sierra Maestra...
...The trial of Huber Matos opened on December 11 in the auditorium of Campamento Libertad (formerly Campamento Columbia, Batista's headquarters), located a few miles outside of Havana...
...Among the Cuban Communists it struck a totally negative note...
...Information received by the family indicates that Huber Matos' physical survival is very much in jeopardy...
...What enabled Castro and his few hundred men to pin down the Batista forces, however, was the arrival of Huber Matos from Costa Rica with a full planeload of weapons shortly before the fighting got under way...
...No trace of him or the Cessna he was said to have used has ever been found, although the air route between Camaguey and Havana involves no flight over the sea...
...When Matos' role was discovered by the police he took refuge in the Costa Rican Embassy, then fled to Costa Rica...
...He has lost his teeth and suffers from stomach ulcers...
...The 38th officer, Captain Jose Manuel Hernandez, was away from headquarters...
...But the lifting of U.S...
...He was subsequently named chief of the Second Military District, covering the important central province of Camagiiey...
...In October 1967, in response to a letter of complaint to the UN Commission on Human Rights, Mrs...
Vol. 60 • March 1977 • No. 7
