Excerpts of testimony given by Caridad Martínez, to Tania Díaz Castro while sitting on a bench in Martyrs' Park, between San Lázaro and Infanta Streets in Havana in December of 2000. Reproduced from CubaNet.org
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When Caridad was 10 years old, during the first days of march of 1959 she learned that her father had been executed by firing squad. She never was normal again. Neither were her five brothers and sisters, some younger than herself.
Her childhood days ended the day that a neighbor approached her house in the city of Pinar del Rio, in the western part of Cuba, and in somber tones informed them that Jacinto Martínez-Conill (her father) and his brother Manuel Martínez-Conill had been executed by firing squad by orders of the Revolution of Fidel Castro.
At once, starting from that moment, the image of her father began to get stronger inside her soul. He was the one who helped her when she was taking her first steps; he was the one who lifted her in his arms as if she was flying and then laughed in the enjoyment.
"Why did they shoot my father?," she asked many times, but nobody answered. Her young mind could not accept such a grim reality and she used to go to the corner of her backyard to cry alone, in a place where nobody could see her. The sound of laughter ended in her home. The radio was not turned on anymore. Her mother moved around like a shadow, surrounded by forlorn children. Life began to unfold like a macabre movie that Caridad does not want to see again.
The worst part was when a group of Rebel soldiers arrived with the two sealed caskets and deposited them in the middle of the living room. The orders to the family, they said, were to not open the caskets, to make sure that not many people would go to the cemetery, and not to talk about this outside the house. Several soldiers remained in the house making sure that the orders were followed.
The execution of the brothers took place in the first days of the month of March, 1959, just a few days after they were arrested and after a "summary trial." Thousands of additional executions took place shortly thereafter. Caridad's father, Jacinto, had been in the Army for years in Puerto Esperanza, on the north coast of the province of Pinar del Rio. His brother Manuel had joined the Police force just a few months before his death.
After the funerals, when the family requested the death certificate of the brothers, they discovered that they listed as "unknown" their cause of death. Forty one years have gone by, but Caridad remembers it all as if it happened yesterday. All throughout her testimony, tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.
Translated by Margarita Garcia, March 6, 2001
Article appeared in http://www.cubanet.org