Los hermanos Castro tienen sus manos manchados con sangre boricuas. Son unos asesinos, cobardes y mentirosos.

Puerto Rican victim of 1959 massacre ordered by Raúl Castro
EXECUTED ONE INFAMOUS NIGHT WITH DOZENS MORE

Benito Cortés Maldonado, Age 41

Executed by Firing Squad on January 13, 1959 in Santiago de Cuba. U.S. citizen by birth born In Ponce, Puerto Rico.
Policeman and pilot. Resident of Reparto Aguero, Santiago de Cuba.

Both Benito's mother and father were from Puerto Rico. The family was well off and his father wanted to extend his enterprises to Cuba. Benito left with his father for Cuba to establish businesses there. They did very well, owned three coffee plantations and even their own private plane. Benito loved the police force and when he came of age, decided to join. He married a Cuban woman and had five children. The family lived in Palma Soriano, Oriente province.

Benito was a pilot. Guillermo, his oldest child, remembered how hearing him circling the family home from above. He would get so excited knowing his father was coming to get him. Benito was very dashing and loved the life of uniform. He joined the police force and served under Batista, the man who happened to be in power, but his family says he was a good and respected man who did harm to no one.

When Batista fled and the revolutionaries came to power, on January 1, 1959, a fellow policeman had gone into hiding and asked him to join in. He had declined, saying he was well known and regarded, has always done his duty, never committed any crimes, and had nothing to fear. But, he was detained and on January 11 or 12 and taken to Santiago, falsely accused of raping a woman. Raúl Castro decided to have scores of "Batistianos" killed. They fabricated charges and executed on the night of August 12th and until the next morning, executed dozens, some say up to 164 men.

They took them to an old airfield, dug trenches, stood them in front, and shot them. A witness , someone who participated but later turned against the government, told the family he had fallen down, shot in the leg. A lieutenant walked over and shot him on the head.

Guillermo was 14, an intern at the Escolapios de Guanabacoa school, when they notified of his father’s death. The family left Cuba in 1960 for New York. Guillermo enlisted in the Army, served during the Cuban Missile Crisis, married, had children, and is a Protestant Chaplain. He adored his father and all his life he wanted to be like his father, becoming for example a pilot, like him and living Puerto Rico for ten years. He often serves a Chaplain on cruise ships that circle Cuba. He stares at the island, with grief in his heart. He cannot go to Cuba, is on a government black list.

When he attended the Memorial Cubano 2004 in Miami and saw the cross with his father's name, he broke down, sobbing. He had never had a chance to mourn his father at his tomb.

Source: Personal and telephone interviews with Reverend Guillermo Cortes, son, living in Miami, 2006 and 2007. Copies of birth and death certificates.

Falta La foto de otro boricua cuyo nombre está registrado en la página de La Cuba Real como Rafael Díaz Beacon.