When Fidel Met Hatuey

by Raymundo Rodriguez-Jackson

Within the last five years, Socialist movements have become quite interested in co-opting aspects of Native cultures to make their platforms seem more Earth-based, and become more acceptable to the suffering populations at large. Generally, the Socialist movements are falling into the same Eurocentric tactics that previous conquistadors have used. The most common flaw is to lump all Native Americans together as one, and then cite specific examples only when they support the political platform. Many times these examples are either grossly out of context, or are cherry-picked bad interpretations. An in-depth focus on a specific culture and how it might have been quite socialist before contact is never done. A solid example of this point would be the Taino of the Caribbean Basin. The Taino were quite socialist (based on mutual compassion, and not materialistic or political power goals.), and yet have been almost entirely ignored by the Socialist and Marxist writers. When Marxists- in the form of the Castro regime of Cuba- finally made contact, the Taino were outlawed and abused, just as the conquistadors had done during the earlier colonial period. Whatever good has come out of the last 60 years of Cuban society has occurred in spite of, and not because of, the Castro regime, and is due entirely to the fact of the survival of the Native Taino mindframe and culture.
A review of the basics of Taino culture is in order, as the Spanish Inquisition has done a magnificent job of all but erasing the memory and information on the Taino from the general zeitgeist. There is even a concerted effort to snuff the rising Taino consciousness and re-emergence that began in the early 1970's, led by Jesuit scholar Antonio Stevens-Arroyo. Stevens-Arroyo has put forth great effort in Catholisicing Taino history and mythology, and bringing it in line with Eurocentric ideas and concepts. Among his more blatant claims is the dominance of a virgin mother goddess, and a re-tooled version of the Psyche and Eros story from Ancient Greece. Serious efforts have been made by others such as Heriberto Dixon and Gabriel Haslip-Viera to Africanize Taino genetics, culture, and history. In Dixon and Haslip-Viera's worlds, the Taino are nothing more than escaped slaves that formed a now-extinct population, with very little cultural impact or importance in world history. Unfortunately, with a drought of popular publications on Taino culture and history, these venomous ideas become standardized, and accepted as truth. The concerted, continuing effort to refuse and deny Taino culture and it's significance is quite damaging. For a Taino descendant who is trying to reclaim their heritage, things have become quite difficult. We are graced by the oral tradition and folkways, which have preserved tremendous amounts of the sacred mythology, vocabulary, linguistics, and mind-frame veneered, but relatively intact.

For the record, and for the reader here who may not be familiar, the Taino are the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean Basin, and they have their roots in both Central America and in the Orinoco and Amazon watersheds. The Taino were great sea-farers, and traded with the rest of the Caribbean Archipelago, the South American mainland, the Central American isthmus, the Yucatan, and Southeastern North America. They also traded along the Gulf Stream, including migrations along the Atlantic Seaboard. 
The Taino culture reached its classical peak on the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean, several hundred years before the Iberian invasion. The culture can claim roots in several places, based on archeology and linguistics- the Eastern slopes of the Peruvian mountains facing into the Amazon River Basin, extreme Southwestern Guatemala and Northeastern El Salvador, and also the Yucatan. These roots merge to form a cultural complex that stretches from the Yucatan and Miskito Coast of Nicaragua, into Cuba, Quiskeya (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamaica, Boriken (Puerto Rico), and the Virgin Islands. Related and influenced groups range down the rest of the archipelago, to Trinidad and Tobago, and into the Orinoco coastline. Major living groups in the NiTaino cultural spectrum are Ciboney, Macorix, Taino, CaciTaino, Carib, Lukkuyo, and Igneri. There are also the Arawak cousins, and even the Korubo and Xingu deep in the Amazon. NiTaino-influenced groups include Garifuna, Miskito, Gullah, and various “creoles”. 
The NiTaino language group (referred to as”Maipurean” by the Rockefeller-funded Pentecostal groups Summer Institute of Linguistics and New Tribes Mission) contain the “R” and “K” phonemes as markers. The other major linguistic phoneme markers in the Americas are “L” and an “L and N”. Because of lack of success with modern missionary conversion activities, these institutes have declared the NiTaino languages “dead”, even though modern English and Spanish are riddled with NiTaino vocabulary, and tens of thousands of people still speak the language in some form as part of their daily, common communications.
Tainos were great fishermen, and worked with many resources from the sea, and flourished. Lacking large mammals, their diet was mostly seafood, fruits, nuts, and root vegetables. They were fantastic seafarers, and were quite adept at long-distance sea-trade. They also apparently had a penchant for collecting antiques and curiosities of other cultures. They worked stone, wood, and shell into any tools or objects needed, and left us a large quantity of exquisitely carved artifacts.
Taino culture is centered around communities which are rooted in appreciation and connection with the natural world, the Cosmos, and their ancestors. Everything in the human world is seen as akin and influenced by the natural world. All extant people, animals, plants, objects, or things are venerated and respected. This leads to a quite different way of not only looking at, but interacting with the world around you. Entirely lacking is the greedy, consumptive “it's all here only for our own use and will” that is present in the current paradigms. 
Food and resources in Taino culture were shared with those who needed them, at the time they were needed. While yucca was kept growing in mounds year round, other foods were truly seasonal, and were only available when they were in season. Being a tropical maritime climate, there were rarely any times of starvation. Even during a drought, the people could turn to the sea.
Socially, the Taino lived in small villages, where bohios (houses) made of the Royal Palm or a Kapok tree were arranged in a sort of circle around the center dance grounds or batey-court. At one point (usually at the end of the center commons area), there was a shell midden with a square kaney house built upon it. In this kaney were stored the zemis and other venerated artifacts for the community. It was a public house in the truest sense of the word- it belonged to everyone. If there was a selected cacique (leader), they may be permitted to live in this house. During arrieto celebrations, the musicians may have been stationed in the doorway of the kaney, so that everyone could see and hear them clearly. The behique healers worked where the patients were, not in a special building, although behiques may have lived a bit isolated from the village proper, to give them a better connection to the spirits who roamed the forests and beaches.
Within this basic local community geographic structure, the Taino culture was an egalitarian, fratrifocal culture. All initiated adults had the same legal rights and inviolable autonomy, and were expected to help keep the society together. Once initiated and recognized as an adult, there were no longer any special mutterrecht or obligation to the parents and elders as overlords; and adult was an adult. A lively true democracy- one person, one vote- was how decisions were made. Experts may have led a certain project or activity, but overall was much more fairer distribution of leadership and power. There were no centralized or regional pyramid structure to politics or leadership, everything was done locally and the reach of a politician was not very far. Behiques (the medicine-men. medicine-women were called Chilanes.) were a lifetime position due to training and knowledge involved, but the political caciques were not. A cacique who failed in their projects could easily be voted out and removed to another village or island where they would be a naboria, or commoner. There was no job security in politics at all, the will and whims of the people were paramount. Being a cacique was not for the easily-bruised ego. Every adult individual was expected to be autonomous and self-actualized, and no adult was responsible for any other adult or their actions. The young ones and infants were the responsibility of the whole community, not just the birth parents.
The Taino culture was openly and joyously erotic, and the resulting polyamory caused paternity to be indeterminable in most cases. Therefore, infants were provided for by the likeliest candidates, his Guatiao, and the rest of the village. These multiple resource streams created healthier, stronger, and more intelligent children. Indeed, a common phrase for this system was “the boy has two fathers”.
The frequent arrietos were town meetings with feasts and dancing, all used to help bond the community together (and even bond them to the neighboring communities when visits were made). During arrietos, the moral codes of the groups present were recited, as were stories of ancestry and sacred mythology. Each group knew a different part of the stories, so to get the entire story, it required different groups to be present. Even within one village unit, different demographics knew different parts of the larger group stories. This is a wonderful way of fostering bonds and interaction without competition or domination. Everyone in this system is important and included. The basic human need for significance was not ignored or left to ego or chance.
The Taino culture took the training and initiation of its adults quite seriously, and encampments were set up so that the young males could be trained outside of the domestic villages. The young females were trained in a separate area of the main village. The village proper was considered the domestic realm because of the children present, which created a responsibility of all who were present to care for them. Males were expected to do childcare, but during the initiation period, they were exempt.
The encampments for the males were called conuco, which is a reference to a garden. This shows an interesting mindframe, that the encampments were literally a “garden for growing men”. Efforts and resources were focused on making autonomous adults, as those adults would make the foundation of a better overall society. When people do not live as underlings- be it due to age, color, gender, etc.- it makes everyone in the society at large stronger. 
There was a similar system for training young females to be autonomous as well, which began at the first menses. The females were trained nearer to the village, but in practical matters and female esoterica well. Because of the Jesuit and Castillian invaders destroying much material and recording only the masculine part of the Taino culture, we are greatly incomplete on the female aspects in many areas. Archeology is beginning to help us piece together what is missing. Surviving vocabulary helps us as well.
Another important aspect of Taino culture is the Guatiao system. Guatiao is a social bonding idea, where two or three males who are not related by lineage of clan do a ceremony for name-exchange, and are then recognized as a full part of the other's family. Since relatives rarely fought, and always shared everything, An individual could then count on assistance and help from his Guatiao's clan members. Guatiao, therefore is a mutually-beneficial, affection-based system that works towards co-operation, cohesion, and benefit for the larger social network of an individual. (The sworn-sisterhood for women was called Sek'quoi'ik.)
Likewise, the status of all members of your village or related groups reflected on you. If anyone in your village or affiliated groups was hungry, cold, sick, neglected, alone, or behaving cruelly, it would reflect negatively on you as well. It was to your benefit for everyone in your group to be well off and provided for. Such a social model is based on compassion, and not materialism. This idea flips all of the modern paradigms with their “he who dies with the most toys wins” attitude on their heads.
The Taino cultural model encourages strong individuals, so that they may be stronger and better for the greater good, and not the usual imbalance of either individuality being crushed for the group, or the individual triumphing at the expense of the many. As throughout my examples, we could learn much here. The Taino culture, while quite capable of battle evidenced by the weaponry and vocabulary that have survived, was quite reluctant to use violence. The encounter with the brutal Iberians shows this clearly. The Tainos would rather die than fight the new visitors, whom they treated with great respect at first. So deeply foreign was the response of the Iberians to the hospitality that the Taino showed, that even del Torres' infamous line: “The people here are naked and defenseless, they will make us good slaves” should be unfathomable even to modern imperial ears.
The Taino cultures also had no currency, everything was gifted, or was directly traded, object or service for another object or service. The whole idea of abstract symbols having value over living things or objects was so foreign, that when the Spanish introduced their economedia system, the Tainos could not figure out why a disc of silver or gold had any value outside of being a wearable pendant, much less the power to purchase a human. When a fiat currency exists, it is already a symptom of a political pyramid power structure- the currency was minted and issued on the authority of a government propped up by a militia and its missionaries. Without such a pathological paradigm, no currency can exist, nor is it ever needed. The Taino were woefully unprepared for the first contact with Eurasian imperialists, and the interaction was devastating. 

A quick review of the Taino history in Cuba is needed to properly discuss the behaviors and effects of the Marxist Castro regime there. In Cuba, the Castillian Invasion had rooted by 
1495, with varying sizes and kinds of permanent settlements attempted almost immediately on Colombo's second voyage. Fueled by the Papal Bull Inter Cetera (1493), which stated that all lands and the people found in them now belonged to the Spanish crown, the cruelties began immediately. The Taino were quickly enslaved in economedias, which would be the models for the later Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay and Uruguay. The Taino were viewed as nothing more than livestock and property. Del Torres' statement at first contact in 1492 that “the Indios here are friendly, naked, and defenseless. They will make us great slaves” had become prophecy. Under Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar and the Jesuit leadership, Taino faith was outlawed as pagan devil worship, and anyone found practicing it was executed quickly. All the extant books, zemis, and important cultural materials of the Taino that could be found were destroyed in great fires, and special efforts were made that it would never have a resurgence. The monotheist Spanish empire could not allow any vestige of an autonomous, non-imperial population to continue to exist, as it would pose a threat to Spanish hegemony. The effect of Taino ideals on the “Great Reformation and Enlightenment” in Europe can not be understated.
As this was going on, a great deal of the Taino vocabulary returned to Europe with the objects and produce being introduced back to the imperial wasteland there. “Spanish” nearly doubled in size from contact to 1550, as all the new words and concepts from the world outside Iberia poured in. Cacao, tobacco, maiz, canoes (canoa), tomatoes (tomatle), and potatoes (batatae), and hammocks (hamaca) are not only all of Taino origin, but the words describing them are as well. The annihilation was not complete, and Europe itself was enriched beyond gold.
The Spanish oppression and outlawing of anything Taino would continue until 1898, when Spain, having lost it's holdings to the EEUU/United States, sued for peace. Under the US domination of the island, the Taino remnant populations, particularly in Pinar del Rio, quickly rebounded and re-emerged. By 1920, a growing US interest in Taino archeology of the region had caused expeditions by several museums to collect and discover, the Heyes Foundation and American Museum of Natural History among them. Both anthropologists and ethnologists descended on the area to record and experience a culture that Spain had claimed had gone extinct. While there was some overlap and cross-pollination with both Eurasian and African cultures, the distinct Taino culture was quickly identified, and it began to thrive without imperial and Church persecution.
This freedom and open-practice in the more-rural areas continued uninterrupted from the 1902 independence from the US, through the lines of presidents and coup d'etat's, through Fulgencio Batista and his mafia-saturated dictatorship. As long as the Taino didn't interfere with business or try and cause a revolution, no one cared. Also, outside of the profits of the sugarcane plantations, the rural areas and people were left on their own, and the Taino autonomy was beneficial.
In pure Marxist fashion, the Taino were, along with homosexuals and dissenters, considered dangers to the central authority, and were imprisoned and severely punished. 1960's coletilla became a pivot, after which the Taino had no hope for open survival under the Castro regime. It comes as no surprise that many Taino participated alongside of former Batista soldiers and US CIA operatives in the six-year-long “War Against the Bandits” in the Escambray Mountains.

To further understand the dynamic of this period, I went searching survivors of the “war”, and through my contacts in the Cuban ex-patriot community, in Union City, New Jersey, I was able to find an elder who was first-hand involved with the skirmishes. He was gracious enough to grant me two lengthy phone discussions, and to share his experiences, memories, interpretations, and ideas.
Antonio was a fourteen-year old living in “the countryside” southeast of Cienfuegos as 1960 dawned. He relays how they had been left alone until Castro had gotten rooted, and then he turned his wrath against any “outsiders”, which was anyone or any group deemed uncontrollable. The Taino were on the top of the list. When I asked Antonio if the Afro-centric practitioners, such as followers of Santeria, Espiritimo, and Palo were targets, he hesitated, and then his response was revealing: “No, they were not. And that caused problems for some families. The Santeros are in charge of their communities, they are Padrinos, Godfathers. To control an entire community, you need only influence the Padrino, and the rest will follow. The Taino are like mariposas, they are free spirits, and would not listen. They would inspire others, even influencing Padrinos to be rebellious. It was not good for the men in La Havana.” 
Antonio and his family were “Ciboney, indigenos”. When Castro's soldiers showed up, he watched his grandfather, father, and two uncles disappear in less than a week's time, and his older brother Esteban shot, and his corpse “violated”. It was at this point he began to seek out the armed rebels. He served as an anti-Castro soldier on and off over two and a half years, before he returned home. Finding his mother had died while he was gone, he and his five-year-junior brother made their way to Pinar del Rio, and on to Yucatan by fishing boat. His brother has since passed on (1998). Antonio does wish to see Cuba again, but refuses to return until the Castros are dead and gone. “Perhaps I can outlive those bastard-devils, then I can go home again!” 
Antonio said that when the soldiers came, they burned any bohio-style homes, which are made from a Royal palm tree. One tree could produce a simple one-room home suitable for 4 people. The soldiers burned the bohios, and then said it was forbidden to build a bohio anymore, that the Royal palm tree “needed to be conserved for the good of Cuba”, and that they “would shoot anyone who tried to make a bohio”. Antonio also related that when the soldiers found an altar near a treeline, they took extra effort to desecrate and destroy the Taino zemis within. The soldiers also informed Antonio's family and neighbors that their “demon spirits” were no longer welcome, and any attempt to worship them “would be met by execution”. Interesting choice of words for an alleged atheistic political movement.
For clarification, I asked if there was a local Santero, and did anything happen to him or his articles. Antonio responded: “Yes, we had two local Padrinos, a man and his nephew, who he was teaching things. The soldiers spent some time in the Padrino's house, and then went to fetch a goat. The Padrino and his nephew blessed the soldiers, and told them they would have good fortune. He promised them protection, and that they would not be molested. To save himself, he turned us in.”
I asked Antonio what life was like before the soldiers came, particularly the food, the education, and the healthcare. I wanted to compare what was there before the “benefits” of Marxism were enforced.
For the food situation pre-Castro, Antonio shared: “No one ever went hungry. Besides each family's kitchen-garden, if you were hungry, you could always visit one of the larger fields, where there was always a lot more than would be used. There were also fruit trees everywhere, and no one minded if you took some. There were many jicoteas in the ponds, and there were so many fowl walking around, they had gone feral. Even if there was trouble, and something failed, there was always something else to eat. There was also a hospitality, where if you were somewhere at a mealtime, they would feed you, they wanted to.”
Education was more of a community affair, informal yet effective: “You'd learn by watching, learn by doing. The little ones were always asking questions, and everyone was you teacher. This way, you learned when you could, and even children could help out. We also learned how to read and write and mathematics, all by doing as we went along. By the age of five, no one was illiterate. Mathematics were practical, part of living. The adults around us were eager to teach us. There was no schoolhouse, you learned as you live.” 
Healthcare was just as open and rural: “We had Behiques (medicine-men) and Chilane (medicine-women). The Chilane would deliver babies, and they knew all the herbs and plants, and could help any condition. The Behiques put their hands on you, and were good if you hurt your bones. Generally, people weren't sick from disease, but hurt from accidents. The few times they sent a government doctor in, no one wanted to be near him.”

The Castro regime has also run a campaign of disinformation on the Taino through their propaganda organ publisher Publigraf. Beginning in 1978 and continuing to the current day, there have been over two dozen “academic” publications espousing very fictitious Taino information on mythology, beliefs, and archaeology. The printing quality is extremely low, as is the content. I have several other books on unrelated topics published by Publigraf in the same time frame, and they are of much higher quality. Clearly, there is no importance given to Taino ideas, even when they are deliberately being misrepresented. The fallacies on the Taino offered range from a simple re-iteration of the Jesuit malice and calumny, to a whole unique vision fabricated in the Publigraf back offices. Mercifully, there are several great published sources on Taino culture in Cuba from the pre-Castro period. 

After hearing a first-hand account from the time before the Castroistas “improved” Cuban life, one must ask exactly what was “improved” and why. The answer is easily figured out by looking at the major difference between the Taino cultural model and the Marxist model. 
The Taino model is an entirely localized, non-centralized social system. The Taino model provides for everyone out of compassion and care, and is automatic, and does not need to be enforced or imposed. The Marxist model, as evidenced by the Ten Planks published in Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie , is all about central control and materialism. Everything in the Ten Planks of Marxism is contradictory to any natural, Native system, and especially to Taino culture and lifeways. The need to conquer and cultivate all land and natural resources, the need to control and redistribute people, the need to imprison foreigners and dissenters, and everything having to be monitored and controlled by a strong centralized power- these are all the antithesis of the Native Taino cultures. Unless Marxism changes and evolves past it's 1850's European fantasy of a worker's revolution to liberate a factory and a bank, it will always be totally opposite of, and incompatible with, Taino cultures on all levels, and will continue to be yet one more oppressor, as has been the case with the Castro regime in Cuba. 
Things are legislated and implemented by force for the “greater good”, and anyone in dissention is removed, re-educated, imprisoned, punished, or destroyed. No alternative or difference of opinion is ever allowed, as it would destroy the hegemony of the ruling elite. Marxism is about consolidation of power into the control and benefit of the few. Stalin, Amin, and Mao have shown this perfectly. So has Castro.
Late in Castro's regime, after the Tainos, homosexuals, and political dissenters had been removed, tortured, and re-educated, and decades after his power had been solidified, Castro began to make token embraces of Native culture. In one interview in Granma in 2007, Castro even claims to be partly of Taino ancestry. This shallow false claim not only does nothing to amend the previous forty years of genocide inflicted upon the Taino, but is deeply offensive as well. In typical Marxist fashion, Castro tried to absorb what he couldn't conquer. This method has been used by the Catholic Church for years. Castro has declared himself a “friend of the Church”, and put on huge displays to welcome Karol Wojtyla when he visited Cuba as Pope. Special audiences and welcomes were also made with Joseph Ratzinger during his tenure as Pope. It must be remembered that Castro and his regime were Marxist, and therefore officially “atheist”. While Castro has recently (2010) made motions to take responsibility for the persecution of homosexuals during his regime, no such effort has been made towards the Taino, outside of his vague claim of lineage. Either activity does not erase the pain and suffering inflicted, no matter how well meaning.

Both the Church and the Castro Marxists attacked and tried to destroy the Taino culture, and by similar methods and wording. As the violence and genocide was being inflicted by both, claims of the destruction being done for the greater good were made. It seems Taino autonomy and compassion are too much for Eurasian-based pathologies of greed and power. Both Castro and the Church have claimed ownership of beneficial Taino principles and ways- the Castro regime's claiming the healthcare and overall sharing principles as their successful innovations when they were Native principles that had been firmly in place for thousands of years; and the Church claiming knowledge of history and local plant uses as their own invention. The fact that the Taino have survived despite all of the oppression of the ruling elites shows not only the strength and integrity of the Taino, but the weaknesses inherent in Marxism and Catholicism.
It must be stated clearly that the Marxist and Taino mindframes and systems are irreconcilably different, and will never become one. Anything centralized and obsessed with power and enforcement can never be Taino, and anything compassionate and decentralized can never be Marxist. The Marxists need to stop co-opting Native ideas and principles, and totally abandon the mid-1800's Eurasian materialism and greed as their model if amends are to be made. Either one will render Marxism more humane, more palatable, and an entirely new animal. At that point, perhaps a real connection between the surviving Native world and the well-meaning but lost Marxists can be made, the Mutterrecht be damned.

Coming from a Native perspective, my writing is not an endless string of footnotes with no original ideas. I will provide references below. Sources for the general topic follow the subject.

On the Taino Culture:

Blasini, Antonio, El Aguila Y El Jaguar: “Autoradiografia de una Civilization”, Primera Edicion, Vol.1. Publigraph, Hata Rey, Puerto Rico, 1985.

Lamarche, Sebastian Robiou, Tainos y Caribes: Las Culturas Aborigenes Antillanas, Editorial Punto y Coma, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2003.

Rosell, Rafael Azcarate, Historia Cubana 1: Historia de los Indios de Cuba, Editorial Tropico, La Havana, Cuba, 1937.

Garcia Valdes, Pedro, La Civilizacion Taina En Pinar Del Rio: Trabajo de Ingreso de Dr. Pedro Garcia Valdes, Academia de la Historia de Cuba, Imprenta <<El Siglo XX>> La Havana, Cuba, 1930.

Atkinson, Lesley-Gail, et al, The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino, edited by Lesley-Gail Atkinson. University of the West Indies Press, Kingston, Jamaica, 2006.

Suarez, Otton A., El Dia y La Noche del Taino- Las Culturas Aborigenes Antillanas, Editorial Gente Nueve, Sevilla, Espana, 2001.

The Attempted Nullification of Taino Heritage:

Stevens-Arroyo, Antonio, Cave of the Jagua: The Mythological World of the Tainos, University of Scranton, Scranton PA, 1988, 2006.

Haslip-Viera, Gabriel, et. al., Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics, edited by Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Markus Wiener Publishers, New York, 2001.

On Fidel Castro's Heritage:

Castro-Ruz, Fidel, quoted in “Reflections of the Comandante”:, Granma, main article, November 18, 2007. The exact quote, as given in the English edition: "I agree with what [Chávez] said, that I am a strange blend of races. I have Taino, Canary Island, Celtic and who knows what other bloods in me."

On Castro-Vatican Relations:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2121398/Pope-Benedict-Cuba-set-historic-meeting-Fidel-Castro.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/cuban-leader-fidel-castro-did-his-homework-for-meeting-with-pope-john-paul-ii-gave-favourable-impression/story-e6frg6so-1226044401409

On the War Against the Bandits:

Quirk, Robert E, Fidel Castro, New York, W.W. Norton & Co , 1995. pp 608-612.

Quintero de Milagro, Antonio, two personal telephone conversations with the author, Rodriguez-Jackson. 2/12/13 and 2/17/13.

On Marxism: 

Marx, Karl Heinrich, The Ten Planks of the Communist manifesto, first published in Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie , Koln, Rhineland, Prussia, 1848.
Castro's Apology to Homosexuals:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/fidel-castro-accepts-blame-for-persecution-of-gays-during-cuban-revolution.html