In this episode, we talk about the situation in Cuba and the opposition to Fidel Castro's communist regime. We have Ricardo Lamas, a Cuban-American MMA fighter, and Jose Llamas, an anti-Castro activist, join us to talk about their experiences growing up in Cuba.
00:00:26.000There's some pretty crazy witness reports coming out that people are being beaten and disappeared, and it's hard to know exactly what's happening when the country is silencing people and shutting down the internet.
00:01:06.000It's scary to realize that if we don't pay attention to what is happening in our own country, we might end up suffering the same fate as many of those in Cuba who are trying to fight against this communist regime.
00:01:15.000So we're going to talk about it, and today's going to be a bit more conversational because we've got some excellent guests.
00:01:20.000We've got Ricardo Lamas, who is an MMA fighter who runs a UFC gym, and you're also an activist for Cuban freedom.
00:01:27.000And then we have your dad, Jose Llamas, who was actually an anti-Castro member of the underground movement against Castro in the 1960s in Cuba.
00:01:37.000He's going to tell us all about what he went through, what's happening now, and what we can do, what anyone can do to help Cuba.
00:01:43.000But I will mention one quick thing, just as an aside.
00:01:47.000We actually had to deal with some of the communism here in America because they have some shirts they wanted to share, but we had a conversation about it.
00:03:08.000Yes, in 1940, when the 1940 Constitution was born, I was born right there.
00:03:15.000And maybe because of that, I have always thought about the ruling of our Constitution.
00:03:23.000That was a very advanced constitution.
00:03:26.000Actually, many people considered the 1940 constitution to be too much progressive.
00:03:32.000All political parties in Cuba participated in the drafting of that 1940 constitution, including the Socialist Party of Cuba.
00:03:41.000At that time, it was not known as the Communist Party, which is the only party in Cuba since the revolution took over.
00:03:50.000And so I believe that the return to freedom in Cuba and liberty has to be based on that last constitution that Fidel, when attacking the Moncada barracks, said that he wanted to establish, to bring back, which he never did.
00:04:13.000He ruled the country without constitution, without any constitution, for 17 years.
00:04:20.000Let's, uh, we'll get into all that, uh, you know, for sure.
00:04:45.000Obviously with a very passionate father who, if you heard him talk, these are the stories that I heard growing up my entire life.
00:04:54.000So I always felt a duty because being born here in the United States, I never once felt or had to deal with an oppressive government or, you know, not being able to go out and speak my mind in the street or do anything like that.
00:05:08.000And because of the sacrifices made by people like my father, like my uncles, like my grandfather, And friends of my father, I feel like I have a duty to kind
00:05:17.000of continue the fight for those people in Cuba that don't have a voice.
00:05:21.000Well, you said you didn't have to live under an oppressive government, but that could be changing.
00:05:34.000Yeah, and I am so excited to have both of these guys.
00:05:37.000I'm really excited to have Ricardo, because he fought in the MMA.
00:05:39.000I'm so excited for his dad, because I used to love working with older people and hearing their stories, and I'm excited you guys will get to do that.
00:06:04.000We are working out the bugs, so bear with us.
00:06:06.000We just launched the new site, and we've got a lot of bugs, don't we?
00:06:08.000Because we're growing as fast as we possibly can.
00:06:11.000I mean, this is only six months now we've had the site up, and we've already gotten this new iteration.
00:06:16.000We're gonna have a members-only segment coming up from this show.
00:06:19.000And you're also helping to support our journalists, of which we're gonna have, I think, like six or seven... I think we have six or seven writers now.
00:06:25.000We're gonna be adding more and more people to do more real journalism, do some on-the-ground field reporting.
00:06:29.000We've talked to some local reporters, and we're gonna start ramping things up with your help as members.
00:06:34.000So don't forget, like this video right now, subscribe to this channel, And I'll tell you this, this is going to be a bit more conversational.
00:06:41.000Normally we go through news segments, but we have to have a conversation about what's happening in this country and what happened in Cuba, how they got to that point.
00:06:48.000And we've got some real experience who can break that down for us.
00:06:50.000So share this with your friends, anybody who might be interested in hearing the story from an actual witness and activists who are fighting against communism.
00:07:07.000removes Cuba Libre street painting from in front of the Cuban embassy.
00:07:12.000Embassy located in the same street where Mayor Bowser ordered painting last year of Black Lives Matter.
00:07:19.000I gotta say, I was actually shocked to see this.
00:07:21.000Even though I know the biases of the establishment, I know that they support Black Lives Matter, I know the Black Lives Matter activists say they're Marxists, I was still surprised to see that they would be as brazen as to remove Cuba Libre from the street.
00:08:06.000I can see what's happening here in the U.S.
00:08:08.000I can see the changes that are happening, but I'm interested, you know, so you're both activists, Jose, you were actually born into a free and democratic Cuba.
00:08:19.000How old were you when the communists took over?
00:08:21.000I was 18 years old, not when the communists, when the revolution took over.
00:08:29.000It was never intended to have a socialist revolution taking power and remaining in power for more than 62 years.
00:08:42.000I had just graduated from the Maris Brothers with a degree in Bachelor of Arts, and I was planning to attend Havana University to study journalism and law.
00:08:57.000And so, you know, but basically what took over was a big lie.
00:09:05.000You were 18 when the revolution happened, but that wasn't a communist revolution.
00:09:08.000No, no, when the revolution, when Batista fall down, escape Cuba, and Fidel took all the merits of the revolution that had been also launched by other organizations and by other leaders and by other movements.
00:09:24.000But in 1959, Fidel was able to control all the power of himself.
00:09:32.000And being a great speaker and a huge liar, he gained total support in Cuba.
00:09:51.000And then those same people that were with him fighting Batista, that were with him in Sierra Maestra, like Major Hubert Matos, ten months after he took power, Told Fidel, Compañero Fidel, I cannot continue in the way the revolution is going.
00:10:10.000I don't want to be an obstacle to you.
00:10:20.000I want to be a teacher again, and good luck with the revolution.
00:10:26.000That's when the big lie really became an oppressive totalitarian idea of eliminating anybody who dissent with you.
00:10:37.000And that's when Fidel Castro sent to CamagĂĽey, where Hubert Matos was in charge of the military, Camilo Cienfuegos, the chief of the army, And with orders of apprehending him and taking him to Havana.
00:10:55.000Accusing him on national radio, Fidel, when he sent Camilo over there, that Hubert Matos was a traitor.
00:11:04.000And when Camilo Sin Fuego got to come away and saw Ubermatos peaceful in his home with his family and his kids, he had not rebelled against the revolution, decided to tell Uber, stay here, I gotta go back and talk to Fidel.
00:12:08.000He was actually an elected president in Cuba before he threw his coup d'etat and came into power.
00:12:14.000So that's like a little fact that maybe a lot of people don't, don't know.
00:12:18.000So with an excuse, you know, of saving the country from fraud in the upcoming elections, Batista, a few months before Prio was going to end his presidency and new elections were coming in, he decided to start a revolution based on that, on the coup d'etat.
00:12:50.000And this is why it's sad to say that maybe Batista was not as bad as people blamed him to be during those seven years.
00:13:00.000But the truth of the matter is that without Batista and the good excuse to Fidel to use the coup d'etat as an excuse for his revolution, Nothing would have happened in Cuba because Fidel did not have... Fidel had tried to be in the political atmosphere, to be part of a political party, to be elected in elections for small positions, and he never won anything.
00:13:26.000But when Batista gave the coup d'etat on the 26th of July of 1953, that was in 1952, the coup d'etat.
00:13:31.000the 26th of July of 1953, that was in 1952, the coup d'etat.
00:13:35.000In 26th July of 1953, he attacks the Moncada barracks.
00:13:40.000He brings there a lot of young Cubans who were very idealist, and many of them died there.
00:15:57.000Expand federal resources and power and law.
00:15:59.000I mean, you look at what they've been saying about the far right, about militia groups, and the threat of white supremacy, and of course it's not identical.
00:16:06.000There's just a few things that feel similar.
00:16:10.000You have this guy Trump, they call him a dictator, they call him a fascist.
00:16:13.000But he didn't, aside from insulting the media, he didn't shut down the press.
00:16:19.000He may have banned them from some of his events.
00:16:21.000He didn't call in the military to go and crush protests or anything like that.
00:16:26.000But because of what the media said about him, because of the view people had about him, the Democrats now, you know, getting elected, are using that as an excuse for basically everything.
00:16:36.000Among other things, to be completely honest.
00:16:37.000So my fear is, obviously, we have a lot of different things that are happening in the U.S.
00:16:42.000outside of just the, you know, politics.
00:16:44.000We have COVID, we have the pandemic, you know, lockdowns and things like that are coming.
00:16:47.000But I, you know, I wonder with what we're seeing with the Black Lives Matter supporting the revolution, they call it, the communist dictatorship in Cuba, they call it the revolution.
00:16:58.000These are people who are gaining power and prominence.
00:17:00.000And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on, you know, their activism, what they've been doing and what that might mean for us in the U.S.
00:17:06.000Well for me, Black Lives Matter is one of the worst enemies, because they are from within, that this country is facing.
00:17:19.000And they have means And they have the support of the media and because people are afraid to speak out against them because they are most some of them black but others are not black.
00:17:38.000But for some reason, they have obtained the ability to destroy this country, to burn, you know, to finish things, to destroy cities, to destroy property that does not belong to them, and come out as progressive people.
00:18:01.000It sounds like authoritarian revolutionaries.
00:18:06.000They've got establishment power, they control institutions, and it sounds like they're gaining control.
00:18:12.000Tim, when I see these people that have no power doing the things they do, how much destruction and death they have caused.
00:18:23.000People don't realize in this country that if they ever get real power, a lot of people are going to be dead.
00:18:31.000But they do, they are gaining real power.
00:18:33.000No, no, no. But I mean, when they reach the government, when they take over this country,
00:18:39.000nobody's going to be safe. Only those who with them will continue to oppress the rest.
00:18:46.000I think it might be worse than you realize.
00:18:48.000Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the U.S., is espousing their ideology, saying he's trying to learn about white rage, speaking in support of Black Lives Matter, and condemning conservatives and Republicans as the same as the Nazis.
00:19:07.000This is the highest level of, you know, in the highest levels of our government.
00:19:11.000Joe Biden has, you know, removed bans on critical race theory components, critical race applied principles in government trainings and contracting.
00:19:22.000Maybe, you know, five years ago, you know, I was probably saying the same thing as you.
00:19:26.000If these people ever gain power and enter government, we're in serious trouble.
00:19:35.000And you take a look at what the federal government is now doing with the Capitol Police.
00:19:38.000The Capitol Police, they're just supposed to be for the Capitol.
00:19:40.000They're now expanding nationwide to operate as an intelligence agency.
00:19:44.000So I can't... I wasn't alive in pre-Communist Cuba.
00:19:49.000But, you know, I just... I wonder, based on the things you've been saying already, even before the show, and what I've read, it seems like the U.S.
00:20:56.000And then you see the enemy that is being like into this neighborhood in 20 bus brought security forces dressed in civilian clothing, all of them with sticks and clubs.
00:21:16.000and hitting people you don't even know they are the state security.
00:21:20.000So it's a situation where always our underground for different reasons never got the right
00:21:28.000From the very beginning the United States should have helped us Cubans, not intervene.
00:21:33.000No, no, we had enough combatants inside Cuba.
00:21:38.000Well there was the fear of the Soviets.
00:21:40.000You know, if we intervened, the Soviet Union would have, you know, threatened us or pushed back, maybe even could have ignited nuclear war.
00:21:46.000I wasn't alive back then, so, you know, I can't speak as the sentiment from the people or in the press or anything like that.
00:21:52.000Well, I think that there were plenty of opportunities to help Cubans in different ways.
00:21:58.000That's what the whole Cuban Missile Crisis was about, too.
00:22:24.000And basically it was known that the Soviet Union had established missiles in Cuba and it was discovered.
00:22:38.000And then Kennedy and Khrushchev worked out a treatment, a treat, and then as part of that treat, where the United States was supposed to do this and the Soviet Union was supposed to do that, The sad thing is that the United States, I think, committed not to ever help Cubans.
00:23:12.000You know, in thinking about what you're saying about Black Lives Matter and An Enemy From Within, I mean, they're becoming so prominent.
00:23:19.000It's almost like, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the graphic novel, I Am Legend.
00:23:24.000So, in this story, it's basically, I'll give you the very rough summary, because there's probably a lot of nuance I'm missing as, you know, it's been a really, really long time since I read it.
00:23:32.000He's a vampire hunter, and he goes around, you know, driving stakes through the hearts of vampires.
00:23:37.000But the vampires keep spreading, they keep infecting more people, and eventually, everyone is a vampire but him.
00:23:44.000And then so, when they arrest him, as you know, he's this monster.
00:23:47.000It turns out, when the majority of the society are all vampires, they look to him and they say, you're the bad guy.
00:23:52.000The monster who lurks while we sleep, killing our loved ones.
00:23:57.000So, from our perspective, you know, he's hunting vampires, they're bad.
00:24:00.000But once everyone's a vampire, he's bad.
00:24:02.000So what I mean by that is, the way it feels in the United States is that, sure, we may be freedom-loving individuals who talk about free speech and the rights of, you know, freedom of association movement, the right to keep and bear arms, but it looks like if Black Lives Matter, Bill de Blasio, New York, He paints Black Lives Matter without legal justification, without proper tax appropriation funding, and then he puts police on top of that painting in the street in front of Trump Tower, and they arrest people who dare defy him.
00:24:33.000We're already at that point where the communists, the Marxists, the socialists, they're in the institutions.
00:25:19.000And I always come back with them like, do me one thing, right?
00:25:22.000Go outside your house and go badmouth the president to your neighbors or to whoever will listen to you.
00:25:28.000And if the police don't show up and arrest you or beat you, you're in no position to compare the United States to a country like Cuba.
00:25:35.000So I think, I don't know where this fascination came from.
00:25:38.000It might come from kind of mainstream media.
00:25:40.000It might come from like celebrities who kind of push these ideologies on these younger kids.
00:25:45.000But it's a scary place to be right now and it's even more scary to think about what the future would be like for my kids growing up in this country.
00:25:54.000Well, we're certainly not as bad as Cuba is yet.
00:25:59.000And that's why there's there's hope that, you know, maybe our underground movement or, you know, resistance might actually stop the encroachment of this this communist authoritarian ideology.
00:26:10.000For now, we're able to have these conversations, but you take a look at what's happened to people's careers.
00:26:15.000When they dig up, you know, your history from 20 years ago, they get you fired because of things your parents said.
00:26:19.000We're certainly not at that point where they're gonna come to your house and they're gonna beat and arrest you.
00:26:24.000However, we are at that point where we have seen rioters go to the homes of people, say, in Portland.
00:26:29.000They threatened to burn down a man's home because he had an American flag.
00:26:33.000Many people have started saying that flying the American flag is a sort of underhanded way of showing that you support Donald Trump or that you support this country, the United States.
00:26:42.000And I'm kind of like, well, waving the flag shows you're waving the flag for this country.
00:26:51.000If one of these riots breaks out, if Black Lives Matter has sufficient numbers or Antifa and you're flying that flag, they will beat and attack you.
00:26:57.000In fact, in Boston several years ago, there was a rally against Nazis.
00:27:02.000Of course, there were no Nazis showing up in Boston.
00:27:07.000But you had 40,000 people protesting who they thought were Nazis when it was actually some Indian guy who's, you know, like running for office.
00:27:50.000I don't know if you saw what happened at Evergreen College, where these leftist extremists took baseball bats and were walking around campus attacking people.
00:27:58.000Or what happened at the quote-unquote autonomous zone, the no-go zone in Seattle.
00:28:02.000Where several of the security forces for the Seattle Autonomous Zone opened fire on an SUV with some teenagers in it, severely injuring and killing one.
00:28:12.000If these people are successful in abolishing the police in the way they want, and creating, or I should say, not even abolishing the police, but creating their social justice, as they call it, police forces, then you will have people show up at your house and say, you've bad-mouthed the movement, and they'll start beating you.
00:28:28.000Jose, what was the gun rights like in Cuba in the 40s and the 50s?
00:28:34.000You could have your guns and you could go, you know... Target practice?
00:29:01.000Some illness has to be in the minds of so many people that they use them wrong, probably.
00:29:09.000But the problem are not the guns, are the people.
00:29:12.000And if you have people that hate, whether it's a gun or not, you can go and smash somebody's head or destroy somebody's property, which is the same thing.
00:29:24.000And you can do it with a gun or with no gun.
00:29:56.000Revolutionary organizations and students' organizations, like the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, that, you know, they had fighting fronts, okay?
00:30:08.000And then, in order for Fidel to control the movement, he needed to disarm everybody else.
00:30:17.000And then he asked a beautiful question.
00:31:09.000But he was a charismatic leader that somehow made people think at the end, well, if you say you are communist, if you say you are socialist, put me in the list.
00:31:21.000And that is the mentality that really made it very difficult for us to fight in the 1960s,
00:32:59.000And he lied again, and he lied again, until he found the way to say his truth when the invasion came in, and used that as an excuse to declare the socialist state.
00:33:13.000Let me clarify something about Trump, okay?
00:33:37.000I wanted to remind myself, no matter how good or bad I was, And I started working in factories, in production lines, in a print shop because I love papers and printing and propaganda.
00:34:28.000And my organization said, Bonifacio, I think, if you want, we have the embassy for you, and you can continue working there, and that's what I did.
00:34:37.000But let me finish about Trump something.
00:35:10.000I mean, tell me a couple of those lines.
00:35:12.000I don't know if he lies or not, but he's saying something openly.
00:35:18.000And you can prove he's a liar, then you know he's a liar.
00:35:22.000But the problem is that how many people are here telling us lies and nobody says anything about it?
00:35:29.000I would just say if the media institutions are supporting, you know, Black Lives Matter, the individuals who are praising Castro and right now praising the communist regime.
00:35:38.000And look, I fact check news stories every single day.
00:35:43.000They use deceptive framing techniques and manipulation to present falsehoods, as it were.
00:35:49.000And then when I look at the things they've said about Donald Trump, you know what? He lies.
00:35:54.000But he lies about really dumb things, like how many women he's been with or like,
00:35:58.000you know, how he's the best and everyone knows it. It's like really...
00:37:20.000By 1960, you could not really, you know... For example, I didn't tell you this.
00:37:29.000In 1959, when the revolution took over, I began to think about a figure of the revolution that was very important during the organization of the 26th of July movement that nobody spoke about him anymore.
00:37:47.000And we had a radio program where we started to talk about this Cuban figure.
00:37:57.000And three or four weeks after we were on the air, Fidel asked the director of the radio station that had given us the time to put us off the earth.
00:38:10.000They had already confiscated that radio station.
00:38:14.000They were already putting coletillas, where a newspaper writes a small column, and then the government will put at the end of that column a coletilla, the ending phrase, saying this is a lie and all that.
00:38:31.000And then immediately after that, there was no more, no more.
00:38:58.000That they are currently flagging misinformation for Facebook.
00:39:03.000That they are pushing a list of the greatest misinformation individuals on the internet.
00:39:10.000That they're working with the DNC, the Democrats, and phone carriers to censor private text messages.
00:39:17.000So when I see a bombastic man of Donald Trump, But one who mostly just insulted the press compared to what the current administration is doing in actually trying to circumvent the Constitution to take away the rights of people just to shut down their free speech and their allies, very much progressive leftists in big tech.
00:39:38.000It sounds like we're heading towards a similar direction to what happened in Cuba.
00:39:43.000That's why a lot more people need to look at, you know, Cuba's only 90 miles away from from our shores.
00:39:49.000And it's the perfect blueprint of what happens when you put in place a communist dictatorship or communism and socialism.
00:39:57.000Nothing has moved on that island since 1959.
00:39:59.000That's why People drive around in all these old cars that they literally have to just keep inventing things to keep the cars running.
00:40:08.000You know, buildings are falling apart.
00:40:10.000I believe those last year, there were three little girls playing in the street.
00:40:15.000They were killed just from falling rubble of a building.
00:40:19.000You know, everybody's houses are falling apart, but they're building hotels for the tourists to come and stay at, which Cuban citizens are not allowed to use.
00:40:26.000I was gonna say, the progressives in this country say that's the fault of the U.S.
00:40:56.000They're paid in pesos in Cuban pesos But at the stores where you go and you want to buy something you have to buy it in dollars Wow, so how does that make sense at all?
00:41:04.000You know and it's Man, it's just everything's like upside down.
00:41:15.000During the initial confrontation where people realized, at the beginning I thought that, for example, I went to Sierra Maestra as a volunteer teacher.
00:42:21.000When was the first battle of the guerrilla in Sierra Maestra?
00:42:30.000I remember, December 5th, AlegrĂa del PĂo.
00:42:34.000So they gave us a test, probably to make sure how much we knew about the revolution, and they selected 500 of those kids that volunteered to become teachers of farmers.
00:42:50.000Actually, I would have loved to be a teacher, not only a journalist or a lawyer, but I liked... Actually, in Channel 44, that I ran for 10 years, I developed a cold show, but a cheat, a little path.
00:43:37.000I can tell you a lot of stories about Channel 44, because when I went to Channel 44 for the first time, it was not to run Channel 44, but I bought an hour once a day, and I run a Spanish sub-opera, and I did all my logs and my slides and my production sitting in the cafeteria.
00:43:56.000At that time, Channel 44 was White Sox, Bulls, and Bob Luce in wrestling.
00:44:10.000Yeah, I volunteered because... But the sad thing is that I volunteered myself in 1959 And they called me in 1960, in May, to go to Sierra Maestra.
00:44:24.000I had already been, I had already considered that the revolution betrayed Yuver Matos, but still I wasn't ready to fight the revolution.
00:45:16.000No, I asked the director of the school to allow me to go class by class to investigate where that incident had occurred.
00:45:25.000In third grade, I found two kids that because one wanted to erase the blackboard and the other didn't want after school helping the teacher.
00:45:35.000They got into a little match, and nothing happened there.
00:45:39.000So, I wrote an article called, FALSA, FACIL, Y FATUA, LA DENUNCIA DE JESĂšS SOTO.
00:45:49.000False, easy, or very easy to make a statement that is not true.
00:46:59.000So this is why I went to Sierra Madre.
00:47:03.000I thought that maybe still there was a hope that the revolution wouldn't end up the way I was beginning to see.
00:47:12.000And then my mother said, look, go and talk to your father before you go to Sierra Maestra, because my father, who was a very civic and patriotic person, who had been in jail during Batista, His brother spent time in prison during Batista II.
00:47:30.000His brother ended up being a captain of the Revolutionary Police of Cuba, serving a sentence of 20 years and ended up being 23 years.
00:47:39.000So I went to talk to my father because my mother said, look, you are going to go.
00:47:45.000You haven't asked permission from your father.
00:47:49.000And my father said, niño, he called me boy.
00:47:51.000I was the smaller of the three brothers, although we were apart only one year and a half.
00:47:57.000And he said, niño, why do you want to go as a volunteer teacher?
00:48:02.000I said, Dad, you know, I love teaching.
00:48:06.000This is a commitment I made, you know, a year ago.
00:54:32.000And these are, when you say, you know, the beginning of the revolution, me and I am putting myself only as an example of many people that loved the revolution, that tried to serve the revolution, that tried to wait for the 18 months for having general elections, and that waited for the Constitution to be in place, the 1940 Constitution, which were the two main promises of Fidel Castro.
00:55:01.000To establish the 1940 Constitution, to call for elections.
00:55:05.000When we saw none of that happening, and when me, as a person, me, realized that I was being persecuted, I found myself that the only way that I could get out of that situation was fighting the revolution that I thought at the time that might have been a good thing.
00:56:24.000Send, like, you know, the only reason why he could not do that to Uwe Matos is because Uwe Matos was, I would say, in the five major leaders of the revolution in the Sierra Maestra, Uwe Matos was one of them.
00:56:38.000The biggest shipment of guns that got to Sierra Maestra, Ubermatos delivered from Costa Rica.
00:56:46.000He landed there with a small plane, and he brought the best armament that the guerrilla had seen.
00:56:52.000And Ubermatos, being a teacher, he was a teacher to his soldiers.
00:56:58.000his troops were really committed to ideals, not to following people.
00:57:07.000He spread among his followers in his troop the thoughts of democracy and fighting for freedom, and so he had a very
00:59:04.000I live, I don't know even how, but I live.
00:59:08.000And I was fully embraced by what we were doing with my friends.
00:59:16.000Like Lucia Sanchez that might be listening to this podcast right now in Chicago.
00:59:22.000When she was young, as I was young, I was a little bit older than she was.
00:59:28.000And I was so much in love with our group and we became family.
00:59:37.000Then she married one of our companions that went to jail.
00:59:42.000the brother of a companion of ours that when I was the national head of the student sector of the 3rd of November Revolutionary Movement and I seek refuge at the Brazilian embassy, I gave him the folder that I had kept with all our papers.
01:00:31.000The regime had different ways of destroying the opposition.
01:00:37.000The number one was to infiltrate our groups.
01:00:42.000Our group, the 30th November Revolutionary Movement, Franc Pays, since it was a group that came from the revolution itself, it was very easy that anybody, being an official of the revolutionary government, would come to us.
01:01:01.000Because we were identified throughly with the real revolution and with the real purposes of the revolution.
01:01:08.000So if a G2 guy comes to us and he declares that, you know, he wants to be with us, you know, we were like a perfect target for people that were revolutionaries to join us.
01:01:21.000G2 were like the military police of Castro's revolution.
01:01:41.000On August 30th of 1962, there will be a general insurrection of Cuba.
01:01:49.000And at that time, all those military people and a lot of people still were in power were supposed to join us, join my group and the other groups to rebel against the revolution.
01:02:02.000But that plan was really built by the state security police.
01:02:13.000They really controlled the organization of that thing.
01:02:18.000Because there is no other way of explaining that if there are, let's say, 10,000 people organized to do something on a particular day, a particular night, that that morning everybody gets into prison?
01:02:35.000How in the world could that happen unless that uprising had been planned by the regime?
01:02:57.000No, no, my group was infiltrated before by many other people in many other ways.
01:03:01.000That, that movement... But when they were all arrested.
01:03:03.000Yeah, that movement was something that they created, I don't know from, from where, because in July 28, okay, I participated in an action to disarm, okay, some people.
01:03:36.000And he gave me two ways of getting the arms.
01:03:40.000Go to Oriente Province, where in Cienaguilla, we had a front, and the people that were in the guerrilla force at that place were destroyed and assassinated.
01:03:53.000But it looks like there were some arms that were hiding somewhere in Oriente Province, okay?
01:04:02.000So this guy, that at the time was sort of my boss, said, you go to Campechuela and find those arms.
01:04:12.000And I went to Campechuela with a friend of mine.
01:04:15.000There is another episode of something ridiculous that happened to us, the biggest scare that I had in that trip.
01:04:21.000But anyway, I go to Campechuela, and the lady that I'm supposed to see in this town, she doesn't know nothing about anything, or she didn't trust me.
01:04:30.000So I asked, knowing that I might not find the arms, I asked my boss or my leader, what do I do if I don't find the arms?
01:04:40.000He said, well, take it away from the army.
01:06:12.000Because where the incident happened, near to MalecĂłn, a lot of resonance, a few shots, And all of a sudden, when I am trying to get my friend out of the car that was shot, I didn't know how seriously at the time, I heard boots of people running, walking, cha, cha, cha, cha, like a group of soldiers.
01:07:50.000To jump out of a car as I did once, to run out of my house when the G2 came to get me, and resulted in my parents being under arrest for two weeks because they were waiting, they didn't want my parents to go out, to think that there was nothing wrong in my house, and they thinking that I will come back.
01:08:08.000I escaped on many occasions in many different ways.
01:08:12.000But I never had emotionally been hurt or emotionally felt that I needed to do something else, that I didn't want to continue.
01:08:22.000And that's where, the next day, I called Luis Sánchez Carpente.
01:08:29.000At El Prado, Paseo del Prado, where as a kid, I have been playing in the Iron Lions that are in this Paseo del Prado, beautiful, you know, walk-through with trees.
01:08:40.000And as a kid, my father used to take me there.
01:08:43.000And in one of those benches, with the folder of my organization in my hand that I had collected from all the things that we had done, with Robert Stapp of the organization, I gave it to Luis Sánchez Carpente.
01:09:03.000After that, the next day I met with the coordinator of my organization, a Cuban architect that liked me a lot and protected me a lot and said, I said, Bonnie, I have secured an entrance to the Brazilian embassy in case I need it, but I think you need it.
01:09:32.000And then I went there and there was another story how I had to wait for a minute between two soldiers, when I had been persecuted and when I had participated in so many things, waiting for the guy to open the door in the embassy.
01:09:46.000I tried to get a friend of mine that is listening to, Tony Antilles, who was a lieutenant of Cato's Railroad Army.
01:09:52.000I have to, once I got to the embassy, I got a permit to get him in.
01:09:57.000And when he got there, and stood in front of the same door, and pressed the button, the soldier got him, and that let him get into the embassy.
01:10:16.000Right there, of course, they didn't give me my safe conduct.
01:10:19.000There were a hundred Cubans there, and the strategy of the Minister of Public Relations of Cuba, who should have given us our safe conduct, was not to give anybody a safe conduct, so the embassy could not bring any more people there.
01:11:41.000to go to the United States to San Juan.
01:11:44.000So they flew us in this military plane that we saw at the beginning that was like a sabotage to kill us because it was an old artifact from the Second World War.
01:12:07.000I had a brother in Chicago who sent me the money, and then I flew two weeks after that from San Juan to Chicago, and I have been in Chicago since February of 1963.
01:12:19.000It's been a long time since 1962, but now we're seeing people in Cuba start to protest, sitting down with dictatorship.
01:12:31.000I mean, since he left, I think there hasn't been a day that's passed that he hasn't thought about, uh, you know, the cause of bringing freedom back to Cuba.
01:12:39.000And he, he, every, every single day that I can remember every single chance that he's had, he is, uh, dedicated his life here to that fight for freedom in Cuba, whether it's through his, uh, Cuban civic committee, where they put on, um, events throughout the year to raise money.
01:12:54.000Yeah, but I mean there was tons of stuff that he's been doing so to answer your question There was no spark that needed to come back.
01:13:01.000It was the fire has always been burning since the day he left If I if I understand your question is well, what is my reaction well is is a reaction of Sadness That people had no other chance of surviving than living day by day and could not really free themselves because they, in my case, okay, I had no problem in being in the underground.
01:17:15.000He just was, you know, a good, he absorbed the theory of Marxism.
01:17:21.000He lives in a huge mansion with swimming pool.
01:17:27.000Do you think he's going to give up that?
01:17:29.000His, his actual, you know, he, he was addressing, um, I saw a video he's addressing people about the protests and his exact words were, uh, you know, if they want to face off with the revolution, they're going to have to walk over our dead bodies.
01:17:43.000So, you know, his answer is he, and he gave an order for combat in the streets.
01:17:48.000We're going to go to the streets and we're going to.
01:18:05.000And by the way, when we use the word revolution, really, it was not a revolution with social or nothing.
01:18:15.000It was a movement to get rid of a dictator that we have for seven years and go back To what we were, not jumping with ideas and plans and things that never happened or that would never never achieve their things like the stories of the chickens in the farm.
01:18:34.000Fidel said, oh, we got started with this farm.
01:18:36.000We're going to have so many chickens and then we're going to have a hundred million chickens here soon.
01:18:42.000And there were no chickens and nothing appeared.
01:19:41.000Well, America should get involved in that.
01:19:43.000I think that the American government should help us at this time.
01:19:49.000Do you know what happened in 1961 with the invasion of Iran?
01:19:54.000Okay, there were, you know, in Miami, as young Cubans began to go from Havana, from Cuba to Miami, in Miami when they knew they were going to prepare a force to fight, they already started to volunteer.
01:21:25.000But I do know that the United States had a prestige, an international prestige, that we Cubans were in love with the American dream, that we were living in our own country, and that we relived when ours ended and we came here looking to establish, you know, a new life.
01:21:46.000I came looking for something different, to tell you the truth.
01:21:48.000In Miami, this past election, there was a safe Democrat district in an urban center.
01:21:58.000The continuing pushes from the far left, the Marxists, the Black Lives Matter groups, is turning many of these, you know, in like South Texas, for instance, and in Florida, it's turning Democrat areas into Republican areas.
01:22:11.000And it's very likely because, especially in Miami, obviously, The people who know the horrors of socialism and communism are seeing that within the United States and pushing back against it.
01:22:20.000So perhaps that's a sign of hope for us here, that we won't let it happen.
01:22:26.000And I wonder if people in the United States are willing to do anything to help Cuba.
01:22:31.000You know, here the Cubans are pushing back against the problems here, but will it go the other way?
01:22:35.000I think about the Spanish-American war.
01:22:38.000In 1898, when the Spanish Empire controlled Cuba, and the Americans liberated Cuba, and then let it go.
01:24:28.000Actually, they did a few things that were not right, like not allowing some Mambisa forces to be respected for what they were, and to be given more authority.
01:24:43.000But the Americans, or you know, the United States, end up allowing Cuba to be a republic.
01:24:57.000And they created, with the help of Cubans, a constitution, which in 1940 we changed and became really a Cuban constitution.
01:25:10.000But they gave us the framework, okay, to establish a democratic republic.
01:25:17.000But we cannot give them the credit for winning the war.
01:25:21.000What I get concerned of is that before, when it was independent Cuba, that it was... How did Bautista come to power?
01:25:45.000He gave a coup d'etat, you know, without any bloodshed.
01:25:51.000The bloodshed came, of course, when we Cubans decided that we didn't want to be a republic with a dictatorship.
01:26:02.000We wanted to be a republic with a bad government or with a good government.
01:26:09.000But elected by the people, not a good government.
01:26:12.000We didn't want to have a bad government or a good government.
01:26:15.000But Fidel said it very clearly when he was talking about why we needed to get Batista out of power.
01:26:24.000Because Cuba was a republic, and then we had a president that you elected, and he did bad things, or good things, and then you changed to a new one.
01:26:37.000You have the ability to do good things or bad things, but there was a rhythm, a constitutional rhythm.
01:26:48.000He preached that he wanted to return Cuba to that situation, because it's beautiful to say, you made a mistake, you had a bad, you elected a bad government, or this government was bad, you have the power to change it.
01:27:02.000And that was the biggest lie of Fidel, that he wanted to bring Cuba back to be self-determining by the people in what kind of situation we were, who was going to be the president and all that.
01:29:31.000It happens that Joaquin Badel was the son of a Batista functionary.
01:29:40.000His father had a good job during the Batista regime.
01:29:43.000I know because he lives in my neighborhood, and when you walk by his house, a large open, a large window was open, and you could see a painting, a painting thing of Batista, a general, you know, a nice painting of Batista, so I knew that he was for Batista.
01:30:03.000That was the only kid that followed me.
01:30:06.000A guy that would get in trouble with his father, Because his father was like, wait a minute, what are you joining?
01:30:11.000What strike are you joining against Batista?
01:31:04.000Here, they told me it was going to happen and I just participated on it.
01:31:10.000And then my father ended up the meeting and said, niño, you did right, but you did something wrong.
01:31:20.000Next time you do something, know what you're committed with.
01:31:26.000Don't commit with people that are not really committed.
01:31:29.000So, you know, the day that youngsters in Cuba, in the future, can commit themselves to do something, I don't care if it's right or wrong, but that they have the integrity to follow through in what they think.
01:31:44.000If they are wrong, they will realize they are wrong.
01:31:48.000But I think I did the right thing in committing myself to do something, and my father only gave me a lesson.
01:31:56.000Be sure that you do it with the right people.
01:32:00.000And this is why, when I joined the Underground, I realized that I was with that kind of youth that was committed to the same things that I was committed.
01:32:12.000There are a lot of people who are mindlessly droning on and just following whatever it is the media says and they're putting out these messages and young people just blindly repeat it.
01:32:21.000But let's jump into Super Chats and see what a lot of people probably have questions.
01:32:25.000If you haven't already, give us a like.
01:32:30.000Share this show with your friends if you thought these warnings and stories were very important.
01:32:34.000And we're going to have a members-only podcast going up, usually around 11 or so p.m.
01:32:38.000tonight, after this show wraps up, where we're going to get to talk about the censorship and other things that are affecting this country, because we're certainly dealing with it, so you'll want to see that.
01:33:15.000Our new mayor is a Democrat aligning with our progressive city council.
01:33:18.000He supports SB 145 and doubled his salary while calling people that want to work selfish.
01:33:24.000Yes, and that is an absolutely fair point.
01:33:27.000So to clarify my previous comments, and I did mention this a few times, the data on San Diego's mayor is outdated, and the data on the crime stuff was from a while ago.
01:35:03.000I think this whole CIA talk, I mean, you just have to look at the everyday life of a Cuban and what they've been living for the past 62 years where, you know, basically if you don't have family outside of Cuba, you're not going to survive.
01:35:16.000Like these Cubans that are still on the island are getting a lot of outside help from their family members that have left.
01:36:34.000And it's true that I have not become an American citizen to remind me why I'm here.
01:36:40.000But I am more American and feel more American that many people that really have the certificate were born here, but by their conduct they are traitors to this country.
01:36:55.000So, you know, I really feel that I am a soldier of this country.
01:37:32.000I'm like, you know, you're telling me the story about being in the anti-Castro underground in Cuba, being chased by these soldiers, trying to sneak past them.
01:37:42.000And I'm like, man, this guy is a fighter.
01:37:43.000And his son is a fighter, quite literally.
01:38:16.000But there are many things about Ricardo that people don't know and that I actually sometimes I get surprised that he has been watching me.
01:38:30.000We had in Chicago for 30 years a Cuban picnic.
01:38:38.000And that Cuban picnic, when organizers began to die and the community became not smaller, but more Americanized, it was difficult to organize a big activity where 4,000 or 5,000 Cubans would show up to have lunch with pork and rice and, you know, our things.
01:39:02.000So that activity that also served to raise funds for many Cuban organizations that would come together and organize it, disappeared.
01:39:14.000And about 11 years ago, a young Cuban, half Cuban, a young person, decides to organize using the old name that we had, Festival Cubano, It's an activity but different.
01:39:31.000Not with the purpose of bringing together Cubans to remind us of our culture and our duties and to make a contribution, but he did it to raise money.
01:39:44.000He was an entrepreneur involved in other festivals, and he thought, wait a minute, the Cuban music, let's do the Cuban festival.
01:39:57.000But you could not say there No political talks at a Cuban festival about Cuba that's being oppressed by a dictatorship.
01:40:11.000The way we realize about this is because I was doing a promotion for Ricardo.
01:40:17.000And one of the sponsors of Ricardo, a jewelry store, asked me, Jose, could Ricardo come to my table, to my area in the festival, to my tent, and be there signing posters and letting people take pictures?
01:41:05.000So in a Cuban festival where you cannot say Viva Cuba Libre, I realized... And that means, for those that don't speak Spanish, Long Live Free Cuba.
01:41:45.000So he will pass by my area where I have my desk, where I was working in some flyers, trying to come up with a propaganda thing to distribute there.
01:41:57.000And he, every night that he sees me working there, he looks at me and then he goes up.
01:42:03.000Then the Friday that I decide, the Friday that I started that festival, I had about 10,000 flyers that I was going to go and distribute there.
01:43:28.000So I approached the security people that were there, and I showed them the flyer, and they said, Festival Cubano, and I said, look, I have been distributing this in the front.
01:46:25.000This pilot that was down developed some brain trauma and this torturist thought or wanted to believe that he was acting up so he wouldn't be tortured.
01:46:42.000And then they sat him on a chair and a prisoner saw it from his cell when Fidel, with a big rubber sheet from a truck, smashed this guy on his face.
01:47:10.000To testify about anything when there are information like this?
01:47:15.000That this happened to 17 American soldiers and this country didn't react to that?
01:47:23.000I can go to Congress, but number one is going to be, of course, there will be a translator there and people won't have to go as crazy as those people listening now trying to understand what I'm saying, because when I get to emotional topics, My Spanish culture and my Spanish language permeates my brain and even mutilates more my command of the English language when I get into emotional topics because
01:49:39.000And we paid tribute to Valladares through his wife.
01:49:44.000And yes, everything that Armando Valladares wrote, including another book, Desde Misillas de Ruedas, some people say that he pretended to be paralyzed, okay?
01:49:58.000But he wrote poems, and he wrote that book, and everything that is in the book is true.
01:50:05.000And the problem is that it's hard to understand And how to write when somebody stands in front of the fighting squad, and night by night you hear them saying, Viva Cuba Libre!
01:51:04.000You know, getting the Cubans' message out, number one.
01:51:08.000The regime is constantly cutting off electricity, shutting down the Wi-Fi for the Cubans to kind of get these videos out.
01:51:15.000So the ones that are circulating, to keep circulating them.
01:51:19.000You know, me and my father also raise money to try and help out with these groups that are opposing the regime.
01:51:25.000We've raised money, we've sent to Cuban dissidents.
01:51:28.000We've sent it to other groups like the Ladies in White is another famous group in Cuba who non-violently protest for the release of political prisoners and they're daily, you know, every time they go to protest they're beaten, they're physically harassed in the streets.
01:51:47.000So if they would like to contribute, you know, they can get a hold of me and we can set up something to do that.
01:51:54.000Although I tried setting up like a GoFundMe page or whatever, but because of the sanctions the U.S.
01:51:58.000has on Cuba, when I mentioned the word Cuba, they shut down the page.
01:52:01.000So all the money that I've raised, I've raised by hand through my social media pages.
01:52:06.000And then through contacts that my father has, we were able to get money into Cuba to Cuban dissidents to help them out.
01:53:13.000I've even bought him a tape recorder, the old school tape recorder, because I knew he wouldn't know how to, you know, handle like a digital one with the tapes and all that.
01:53:23.000But I think, you know, you definitely have to sit down and get your story out on tape and we go from there.
01:53:31.000Somebody just, you just tell the story to them and they write it down as you talk.
01:53:34.000That would be one of us, one of his sons, and it would drive us crazy to be there for probably at least 10 years just continuously writing.
01:53:42.000Do it on video when you do so they can record you telling the story as well as the writing.
01:54:11.000We have somebody who's experienced the authoritarian communist revolution, and we need to pay attention to those who have experience in this area.
01:54:22.000I'll tell you, man, There have been conversations for a while now among people I know, like other people who are political activists, other people who are journalists, not necessarily to say that we're at the point where the U.S.
01:54:37.000has fallen and we have to flee into exile or anything like that, but clearly with the level of political tumult in this country and the divide, the conversations have come up where people say, when is that point when you think the U.S.
01:54:49.000is too far gone and you need to leave?
01:54:50.000I mean, just for context, Joe Biden, Said that the Republican voting bills are the greatest threat to this country since the Civil War.
01:55:00.000As if, you know, we have these, we have the Republicans trying to pass voter reform laws, as well as, and the Democrats trying to pass complete voter overhaul, H.R.
01:55:10.0001, both of which are viewed by the other side as the apocalypse.
01:55:57.000He was going to have to be out in the other elections.
01:56:00.000Let's say that Batista would have committed fraud in the elections.
01:56:06.000But after that, probably another regime will come, another president.
01:56:12.000And we could have slowly get out of it.
01:56:16.000When Fidel took the opportunity and precipitated the revolution, he was only looking not for a solution.
01:56:23.000He was looking for him to be the guy in charge after Batista left.
01:56:29.000And he needed to create a convulsion to then to control it.
01:56:34.000I think that we should have peacefully tried to manage the situation because Batista had not destroyed the press.
01:56:47.000Batista has not destroyed the institutions of Cuba, the political institutions and the civic institutions and all the other institutions of Cuba, good organizations.
01:56:59.000He has not touched the social standard of Cuba, the economic standard of Cuba.
01:57:08.000And we made the mistake of trying to come up with a drastic change.
01:57:18.000Whether it's good or bad, sometimes those changes do not work, because they don't have nothing preceding that will allow you to continue in one direction upward.
01:57:31.000So, if we would have been more patient, if we would have been listening to the revolutionary spirit, you know, that Fidel tried to convey, we could have Not ending this stage and never ending a stage.
01:58:01.000I mean, I think, you know, you've basically been telling your story and your experiences.
01:58:06.000And I'm just wrapped up in listening to these stories because they're so important.
01:58:10.000And I think for everybody who's listening, if you agree and you think people need to hear this, then absolutely, please share this.
01:58:18.000Julie Simone says, thank you, Senor Lamas, for sharing your story.
01:58:22.000We should listen to more people who understand what it is not to be free, to truly appreciate why we are so lucky and should keep up the freedom fight.
01:58:34.000Here's something interesting and totally off-topic.
01:58:37.000Ponyboy says, if you go full screen mode on TimCast.com, then swipe out, you can listen to the podcast while browsing your phone or while your screen is off.
01:59:46.000I think that's what they see, you know, and that's why they're more Republican.
01:59:52.000And a lot of these old Cubans are more conservative too.
01:59:55.000It kind of freaks me out when you have people who actually fled a communist dictatorship being like, I'm going to avoid those people because they're communists.
02:00:02.000I'm like, oh, they're telling us something.
02:00:04.000They see the warning signs already and the rest of America isn't paying attention.
02:00:08.000Yeah, I really think that's the reason Alejandro Mayorca said that Cubans would not be welcomed into the U.S., Cubans and Haitians, because they tend to vote conservatively.
02:00:19.000At the southern border, they're bringing kids in, they're shipping them on planes, they're flying around, and then you've got this crisis happening in Cuba, and they're like, let us be clear, if you try and come, we're going to say I'm not saying that he's crazy, but the statement is crazy.
02:00:33.000Cubans and Haitians. Right, right. You know, he's discriminatory and he's actually
02:00:39.000crazy. His statement, I'm not saying that he's crazy, but the statement is crazy.
02:00:45.000How do you, what do you mean when you say that if you come by sea you are not
02:00:51.000gonna reach the United States? It is. So Colombia would never reach the hemisphere, right?
02:01:09.000When you have people coming from, with the border crisis in the U.S., we've had stories of people from Africa flying to Brazil and then traveling up to the southern border of Mexico.
02:01:18.000These are people who are not fleeing political persecution.
02:01:30.000But to leave these places, come to America, I get it, America's awesome.
02:01:33.000But then you have actual Cubans who are desperately trying to build rafts to escape political persecution, torture, imprisonment, and they're like, no, no, you get sent away.
02:01:45.000Imagine how bad your life has to be to risk your life by boarding just a man-made raft to try and float 90 miles across open ocean.
02:01:52.000And Cubans have done this with their children.
02:01:55.000I don't know if you remember in the 90s, but there was a little boy that washed up on shore, Elian Gonzalez, and his mother did not make the trip.
02:02:06.000I've said this about the border crisis in the U.S.
02:02:14.000Every single one of these refugees who are fleeing political persecution should be granted asylum.
02:02:19.000The issue is that most of them, the overwhelming majority, are not actually doing that.
02:02:22.000It's like, I think, you know, something like 95 plus percent, they end up finding out it's just people who want to... They're economic migrants.
02:02:35.000But when I see people who are like, if I stay in Mexico, the cartels will kill me.
02:02:40.000And I'm like, we can't condemn these people.
02:02:43.000And I understand it's not a perfect solution.
02:02:44.000A lot of people probably are not a fan of, you know, America being this place where we're going to bring everybody in for asylum.
02:02:49.000But at least in close proximity to the country, I can recognize that.
02:02:52.000If someone's in, you know, Guatemala or Honduras, well, Mexico is right there.
02:02:56.000If someone is in Cuba, Florida is right there.
02:02:59.000So it's very, very different for Cuban refugees trying to escape compared to people in South America trying to come up through all these different countries and ignoring them.
02:03:08.000I want to go to the members' podcast, so if you haven't already, hit that like button, subscribe to this channel, go to TimCast.com, become a member.
02:03:15.000As a member, you get an ad-free experience, you are helping support our journalists that we've now hired very many and are hiring very many more, and you'll get access to these members' podcasts.
02:03:24.000We're going to talk about censorship and get more into the details.
02:03:26.000And show, you know, what was going on and talk about a little bit what happened earlier with your guys's t-shirt.
02:03:38.000You can follow me personally at TimCast.
02:03:40.000Do you guys have a website or any social media or anything you want to shout out?
02:03:44.000Yeah, people can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Ricardo Lamas MMA and that's where I do most of my fundraising work is through those social media platforms.
02:04:11.000This will be the end of the live version.
02:04:14.000Can I mention that this coming Saturday we have an activity in support of the Cuban people that is going to be bringing together all Latin American residents of the city.
02:04:33.000And we would like them to know that we are expecting them to come and support us.