Word: rebel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...last week, and around the world voices hopefully cheering for a new democracy fell still. The men who had just won a popular revolution for old ideals-for democracy, justice and honest government-themselves picked up the arrogant tools of dictatorship. As its public urged them on, the Cuban rebel army shot more than 200 men, summarily convicted in drumhead courts, as torturers and mass murderers for the fallen Batista dictatorship. The constitution, a humanitarian document forbidding capital punishment, was overridden...
...bulldozer ripped out a trench 40 ft. long, 10 ft. wide and 10 ft. deep. At nearby Boniato prison, six priests heard last confessions. Before dawn buses rolled out to the range and the condemned men dismounted, their hands tied, their faces drawn. Some pleaded that they had been rebel sympathizers all along; some wept; most stood silent. One broke for the woods, was caught and dragged back. Half got blindfolds...
...priest led two of the prisoners through the glare of truck headlights to the edge of the trench and then stepped back. Six rebel executioners fired, and the bodies jackknifed into the grave. Two more prisoners stepped forward, then two more and two more-and the grave slowly filled. Lieut. Enrique Despaigne, charged with 53 murders, got a three-hour reprieve at the request of TV cameramen, who wanted the light of a full dawn...
...show his scorn and nerve-to shout the order for his own execution. On a hill overlooking the range, a crowd gathered and cheered as each volley rang out. "Kill them, kill them," the spectators bellowed. As the death toll reached 52 and the pit was halfway full, one rebel muttered: "Get it over quickly. I have a pain in my soul...
Bodies were left in sun-speckled streets as police warnings. One Santiago cop of the Batista regime, trying to break down a rebel woman, brought one of her brother's eyeballs on a platter to her cell. Other rebels were forced to watch their wives raped by cops. A U.S. resident of Santiago, who chanced upon Police Chief Rafael Salas Canizares shooting four young rebels dead in the street, reported: "He was in a state of maniacal ecstasy-face flushed, eyes bright, breathing hard...