Cuban revolution victims now listed online

Cuban revolution victims now listed online
After more than a decade of research, a nonprofit group has released an Internet database of documented cases of victims of the Cuban revolution.
Posted on Fri, Jan. 04, 2008
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The last time Juan Mario Gutiérrez spoke to his grandfather, the 10-year-old held up a homemade fishing rod fashioned from a tree branch and promised to catch a whopper of a fish during his refugee crossing from Cuba to Miami.

The boy died shortly afterward in a clash with the Cuban Coast Guard just eight miles from Havana Bay, his 1994 death becoming case No. 8500 in a newly released database of victims of the Cuban revolution.

Juan Mario shares space with 9,093 other people who lost their lives fighting for, battling against -- or simply fleeing -- the Cuban revolution.

After more than a decade of painstaking research by two Cuban exiles with the nonprofit group Cuba Archive, for the first time their results are available in a searchable database on the Web. The Truth and Memory Project database at www.cubaarchive.org was launched Jan. 1, thanks to a $52,000 grant from Freedom House, an advocacy organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt.

''This is one more way to shed light on something a lot of people do not know about,'' said Juan Mario's grandfather, Jorge A. García Mas, who arrived here from Cuba in 1999. ``The first thing I did was look for my family's names. How is it not going to hurt to see their names on there?''

García lost several members of his family in July 1994, when the tugboat 13 de Marzo, loaded with would-be refugees, was rammed and sank. The database includes García's son, four in-laws, five nieces and nephews, and three cousins.

It also chronicles the deaths of people shot by firing squad, killed in prison, drowned at sea, killed by terrorist bombs and other causes.

''The nature of the crimes is horrifying,'' said Maria Werlau, executive director of Cuba Archive. 'You don't need to say anything. You don't need to editorialize. Here it is. It's like that news network that says: `We report it. You decide.' ''

PROJECT'S INCEPTION

The database was born more than a decade ago, when economist Armando Lago was struck by paralyzing strokes. 'I thought, `What am I going to do with the rest of my life from this wheelchair?' '' said Lago, a former champion swimmer. ``I found what I could do.''

He started combing newspaper archives, history books and Cuban media for documentation of anyone ever killed in the name of Fidel Castro's revolution. He said his work is different from other such lists because he insists on two sources of documentation.

Lago's tally begins with fighting between Castro supporters and forces loyal to dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The list includes 300 killed by anti-Castro forces, 4,090 executed by Castro's firing squads, 13 who died by hunger strikes and 196 rafters killed by Cuban forces while trying to flee.

The original list Lago compiled was much larger, but some categories such as combat deaths in Africa were eliminated due to lack of specific information.

''My fear is that this work will never end,'' he said.

THE PARTNERSHIP

Lago, 69, refuses to use the Internet (he's afraid of viruses), does not have e-mail and uses a computer so old he doesn't have Microsoft Excel.

He joined forces with Werlau, a New Jersey-based former business consultant whose father died in the Bay of Pigs invasion, and who worked on the project full-time for four years to secure the funding needed to create a usable database open to the public.

She said between her time and Lago's, the project was worth at least $500,000.

''It's very important everyone have access to this,'' she said. ``It's not just names on a list.''

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