By Humberto Fontova
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Was it remotely conceivable that someone with Jeremiah's Wright's
worldview and connections had somehow avoided a pilgrimage to the
world capitol of Yankee-hatred, to worship and commiserate with its
high priests?
Not a chance. Reverend Wright was part of Revered Jesse Jackson's 300
person entourage to Havana in 1984. =93Viva Fidel!=94 bellowed Reverend
Jackson while concluding his speech at the University of Havana. =93Viva
Che Guevara!..Long Live our cry of Freedom!=94
=93He (Jesse Jackson)is a great personality,=94 reciprocated a beaming
Fidel Castro, =93a brilliant man with a great talent, capable of
communicating with people, very persuasive, reliable, honest.
Jackson's main characteristic is honesty. He is sincere and there is
not a single bit of demagoguery in his conversations.=94(italics mine)
As mentioned, this was summer of 1984, so at the time the world's
longest-suffering black political prisoner suffered his incarceration
and tortures in stoic defiance. =93Nigger!=94 taunted his jailers between
tortures. =93We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!=94
I do not refer to Nelson Mandela. No, this prisoner was being tortured
a few miles away from the Revs. Jackson, Wright and their entourage of
black American luminaries. The prisoner was a black Cuban named
Eusebio Penalver and he was being tortured by Reverend Wright's
gracious hosts. Mr Penalver's incarceration and tortures stretched to
29 years which makes him the longest-suffering black political
prisoner in modern history, surpassing Nelson Mandela's record in time
behind bars and probably doubling the horrors suffered by Mandela
during this period.
Eusebio Penalver was bloodied in his fight with Castroism but unbowed
for almost 30 years in its dungeons. He's what Castroites call a
"plantado"--a defiant one, an unbreakable one. "Stalin tortured,"
wrote Arthur Koestler, "not to force you to reveal a fact, but to
force you to collude in a fiction."
"The worst part of Communism," wrote Solzhenytzin, "is being forced to
live a lie."
Eusebio Penalver refused to collude in this lie. He spit in the face
of the liars. He scorned any "re-education" by his jailers. He knew it
was THEY who desperately needed it. He refused to wear the uniform of
a common criminal. He knew it was THEY who should don it. Charles
Rangel, Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright all toast his torturer. But
through 30 years of those tortures Eusebio Penalver stood tall, proud
and defiant.
"For months I was naked in a 6 x 4 foot cell," Eusebio recalls.
"That's 4 feet high, so you couldn't stand. But I felt a great freedom
inside myself. I refused to commit spiritual suicide."
Sr Penalver served several months of this 30 year sentence naked in a
"punishment cell" barely big enough to stand in, where he languished
naked and in complete darkness. Shortly before his death in 2006,
Senor Penalver told this writer, "Castro's apologists, those who
excuse or downplay his crimes-- these people be they ignorant, stupid,
mendacious whatever--they are accomplices in the bloody tyrant's
crimes, accomplices in the most brutal and murderous regime in the
hemisphere."
Imagine, say, Jesse Helms or Pat Buchanan, visiting South Africa at
the same time Wright and Jackson visited Cuban, then yelling =93Viva
Botha!=94 Our ears would STILL be ringing from the media uproar.
But have you ever heard of Eusebio Penalver? He lived in Miami for
almost 20 years and would have been a cinch for the media to track
down. Ever see a CNN interview with him? Ever see him on 60 Minutes?
Ever read about him in the New York Times? The Boston Globe? Ever hear
about him on NPR during Black History Month? Ever hear the NAACP or
Congressional Black Caucus mention him?
Why do I bother asking?
Jackson and Wright's Cuban pilgrimage was arranged by the Cuban
Council of Churches, who sprang for the full $300,000 tab. =93 I have
been affiliated with the Cuba Council of Churches since the 1980s,=94
boasted Reverend Jeremiah Wright in a sermon just last year. =93I have
several close Cuban friends who work with the Cuba Council of Churches
and you have heard me preach about our affiliation and the Black
Theology Project=92s trips to Cuba.=94 And naturally the kicker: =93Our
denomination=92s Global Ministries is committed to calling for an end to
the U.S. sanctions against Cuba.=94
This same denomination, needless to add, clamored FOR sanctions
against South Africa.
The Cuban Council of Churches, according to Cuban intelligence
defector, Juan Vives, is an arm of Cuba's ICAP (Instituto Cubano de
Amistad con los Pueblos) itself an arm of Cuba's DGI, Cuba's secret
police, founded and mentored by the KGB and East German STASI. the
ICAP's long-time chieftan was Rene Cruz Rodriguez whose meteoric rise
through Cuba's Stalinist bureaucracy was facilitated by his diligence
as an early executioner, often beating out Che Guevara and Raul Castro
themselves in his zeal to shatter the firing-squad victim's skull with
a coup d' grace from his .45. Also, on Nov. 5, 1982 a Dade County,
Fla., grand jury indicted Rene Rodriguez Cruz, for drug smuggling.
Courtesy of Cuban-American professor, Tony de la Cova, we have
dramatic proof of how some of Jeremiah Wright's =93close friends=94
distinguished themselves as Cuban Revolutionaries.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the
Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him and Fidel;
Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant.
-C-
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