Humboldt 7 massacre

Havana police at Humboldt 7 massacre, April 20, 1957

Eleven days after the assault on the Presidential Palace, on 24 March 1957, some of the surviving members of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil met at the home of Andrés Silva ("Cheo" Silva) on Calle L, between 15 and 17, in el Vedado, with the aim to discuss and analyze the recent actions of the attacks. Present were Fructuoso Rodríguez, Joe Westbrook, Faure Chomón, Julio García Oliveras, and Enrique Rodríguez Loeches.

The DRE agreed to appoint Fructuoso Rodríguez as Secretary General of the Revolutionary Directorate; to appoint Luan Pedro Carbó Serviá and José Machado as members of the Executive Board; and publish a document addressed to the country explaining the events of March 13. It was further agreed that Faure Chomón should go abroad in order to secure arms, and that the rest of the Directorio should, despite of persecution by Batista, remain in Havana.

After a week, the Directorio met again in the basement of a house on 19th Street between B and C, in el Vedado, the place from where the Radio Reloj assailants had departed for the failed attack on March 13.

This would be the last meeting that Fructuoso Rodríguez would preside over. On April 20 he would, together with Juan Pedro Carbó Serviá, José Machado and Joe Westbrook, be assassinated by Ventura. They were the victims of a denunciation by Marcos Rodríguez Alfonso , a.k.a. “Marquitos.” As a result, on April 20, Esteban Ventura Novo would attack the apartment where they were hiding on number 7 Humboldt street.

According to the plans, those that attacked the Radio Reloj station at the Radiocentro CMQ Building would regroup later at the University of Havana, with the aim of re-installing the headquarters of the Directorio. When Fructuoso Rodríguez and Joe Westbrook, along with Julio García Oliveras, Enrique Rodríguez Loeches, and other colleagues arrived, it was decided to place a 30-caliber machine gun on the steps of the university, and in two more strategic places within the campus.

A short time later, Faure Chomón arrived wounded, and reported on the failure of the assault on the Palace. For this reason it was decided that the best thing would be to withdraw from that location before the forces Batsta, far superior in men and equipment, surrounded the university.

Fructuoso and García Oliveras seized a truck of the "Cafeteras Nacional" and proceeded to a house located on 6th street and the corner of Calle 21, in Vedado. Fructuoso hid in another house in el Vedado, and later in that of the leadership of the Moviviento de 26 de Julio. From there he moved to the basement of the house on 19th Street, meeting other colleagues there.

Fulgencio Oroz attempts to lift Fructuoso Rodriguez after the Humboldt Massacre.

The situation of the group became difficult with each passing day. Little by little the apartments that the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil had used on March 13, as well as others that they had in reserve, were falling into the hands of the Batista police. In the midst of enormous tension, some of the youth who were being persecuted, and for security reasons, began to seek refuge elsewhere. On April 9 or 10, Fructuoso and another member of the group moved to a house on Calle 17 between Calles 26 and 28, in el Vedado. Fructuoso saw his wife Marta Jiménez for the last time, she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy.

Shortly thereafter, they went to an apartment on Calle Ayuntamiento at the corner of San Pedro, in El Cerro. Later they went to a house on Calle Tercera between A and B, in Vedado and then spent the night one day in a doctor's office, on Calle 25 at the corner of I, also in el Vedado.

On April 14, both companions moved to an apartment on General Lee Street, in La Víbora, where Fructuoso would meet Carbó and Machadito. Joe was staying elsewhere.

For his part, Joe Westbrook left the university along with other classmates, first going to a boarding house and then to the house of a journalist where he separated from his companions. In a few days he would go to the basement of the house on 19th Street. Joe had been hiding in Marianao, he also hid at his girlfriend's house, on 18th Street, in el Vedado.

Juan Pedro Carbó Serviá and José Machado (Machadito) after retiring, injured in the Presidential Palace attack, circumventing the harassment of the police, had taken different paths, and after many vicissitudes and constant change of reguge, both arrived in the basement of the house on 19th Street.

When they decided to leave this place for security reasons, Rodríguez Loeches moved Carbó and Machadito to a house on Calle Aramburu between Jovellar and the old Espada Cemetery in the Barrio de San Lázaro. Then, García Oliveras took them to the apartment on calle General Lee, in La Víbora, where they were be united with Fructuoso.

At dawn on April 15, Machadito observed that a patrol car was guarding the block, and immediately raised the alarm to the others, but the event had no consequences. The next morning he saw the patrol car again, this time its occupants were talking with the night watchman and it seemed to him that he was pointing to the apartment window.

Machadito thought that they were surrounded and that a clash with Batista's police was inevitable. Quickly, the three combatants dressed, and armed with pistols, went out into the street ready to confront the police, but nothing happened, it had been a false alarm, the police had not detected them. There were too many coincidences, and they no longer felt safe in the apartment and they agreed to leave for a house reserved for emergencies that Machadito had in Zapata on the corner of 2, in el Vedado. At that time, late in the morning, the three student leaders, after walking several blocks, took a bus to house in Zapata.

The situation was worsening every day. The police tried to locate the Palace attackers by making surprise searches, arresting innocent citizens, torturing them, looking for any clue that would lead them to the attackers. There were many days and hours of insomnia and tension; Machadito was restless. He traveled by bus to make an asylum request with a journalist from "El País", a failed effort.

Again they moved, this time to a house on 30th Street between 35 and Kohly Avenue, in Nuevo Vedado. Then they got the three of them a shelter in the premises of the Pharmaceutical College, which was located on Malecón, between Galiano and San Nicolás, where they stayed until the night of the 19th.

Meanwhile, García Oliveras on Monday the 22nd informed Machadito that he could take refuge in an embassy. Joe Westbrook, meanwhile, secured the 7 Humboldt apartment, where the three revolutionaries finally went at midnight on the 19th.

In the morning of the 20th nothing foreshadowed what would occur in the afternoon. García Oliveras had arranged to pick up Joe Westbrook that afternoon at his girlfriend's house and take him to Humboldt #7, but it took him longer than expected and Joe, eager to meet with his comrades, asked his girlfriend to take him. At that time, and due to an informer (punished later by the Revolutionary governtment), the Batista police knew of the location where the four leaders of the Directory were hiding.[7][8]

Havana police at entrance door of apartment 201 Humboldt 7 masacre on 20 April 1957.

At approximately five thirty in the afternoon, Esteban Ventura Novo and a group of policemen surrounded #7 Humboldt, with the butts of their weapons the policemen banged on the door of apartment 201.

Joe Westwood managed to get to the neighboring apartment on the ground floor, 202 and with the neighbor's permission, he sat on a sofa in the living room and pretended to be a visitor and hoping to avoid detection. When there was a knock on the door, Joe Westbrook reassured the woman and calmly she got up and opened it. The police jumped on him, the neighbor asked not to hurt him, but it was useless. When he had barely walked a few feet down the hall, they opened fire. The machine-gun burst brought him down, he was killed instantly. He was in his early twenties.

The other revolutionaries slipped through a vent arriving at another apartment on the ground floor, number 101. Unaware that they were surrounded from outside and inside the building, they went out in different directions. Juan Pedro Carbó, tried to get to the elevator, the police recognized him and fired. Through a window, Fructuoso and Machadito jumped into the downstairs hall. The height was great, when they fell to the ground, Fructuoso was knocked unconscious and Machadito broke both ankles. When the latter tried to get up, one of the policemen fired his machine gun through the bars of the gate that closed the corridor.

The bodies of the four student leaders of the Directorate were dragged along the sidewalk to the corner, to the outrage of the people, who from the balconies of their houses shouted to the police: "Assassins! Assassins!" [9]

Nicolás Águila argued in 2015 that Marquitos was sentenced with no solid evidence presented at the trial regarding his alleged denunciation. Apart from suspicions and inconclusive circumstantial evidence, the only "evidence" at work in the summary was the defendant's confession, extracted after three years of detention and under the pressure of strong interrogations and confrontations with high-ranking leaders of the regime; including a confrontation with Fidel Castro in the role of interrogator. Marquitos was sentenced to capital punishment after a long politicized process, one plagued by irregularities and arbitrary procedures. The ex-officio appeal to the Supreme Court in practice turned into a second trial.

Marquitos was accused, seven years after the fact, of having been the informer who handed over to the Police four members of the Revolutionary Directorate (DR) who were refugees in an apartment on 7 Humboldt Street, in Havana, after participating in the assault on the Presidential Palace and in the seizure of the Radio Reloj station on March 13, 1957. The four young militants were mercilessly massacred on April 20, 1957, by the police forces under the command of the then-captain Esteban Ventura Novo, a repressor with a notorious bloodthirsty record in Havana.

It was not in Batista's time and much less after that denunciations have never been classified as a criminal offense in the Cuban penal code, on the contrary, it has been encouraged and even rewarded (paid) by both dictatorships. It can be understood as a civic duty to report to the police if the existence of a group of fugitives hiding in a home is known.

Águila argues that the young people of Humboldt 7 may be considered idealistic revolutionaries, according to the romantic perception of the time, but taking over a station (Radio Reloj) at gunpoint and attacking the Presidential Palace through a commando operation, with the balance of many dead and wounded, constitute facts of extreme gravity under any government, dictatorial or not. The alleged denunciation of Marquitos, as disgusting as it may be, was not in itself a crime that deserves such a drastic penalty.

Marquitos, again, Águila argues, should not have been sentenced to death under any legal concept as whatever law they were following was retroactively applied, in a trial without procedural guarantees, a sanction that on the date of the alleged crime was not contemplated in the legislation in force in the Republic and not even in the criminal regulations of the Sierra Maestra. Which constitutes an unmitigated legal monstrosity.

They applied retroactively to Marquitos, as they did to the so-called Batista henchmen in 1959, a sanction that was not in force on the date of his alleged crime. The Cuban Constitution of 1940 had abolished the death penalty in its article 25, except for cases of "crimes of a military nature and persons guilty of treason or espionage in favor of the enemy in time of war with a foreign nation."

Likewise, the alleged denunciation of Marquitos is even prior to the death penalty law enacted in the Sierra Maestra on February 21, 1958, through Regulation No. 1 of the Rebel Army, based on the criminal laws of the Republic on Arms during the Second War of Independence. So Marquitos was retroactively applied a sanction that was based on the Mambisa procedural legislation of 1896. It goes without saying that the retroactive application of a law only proceeds if it favors the defendant and never if it harms him.

It was grossly unfair and disproportionate. Even admitting that the denunciation was a serious crime, the death penalty was an obviously excessive sentence. Marquitos cannot be held directly responsible for the Humboldt 7 massacre. In fact, he paid the blame for the heinous crime of Ventura Novo with a vengeful execution that also has the overtones of burning the files. Marquitos knew first-hand the dirty insides of the old Communist Party (PSP), its transversal espionage and its infiltration in the other revolutionary organizations of the time. They applied the old maxim of pirates: "Dead men tell no tale".

Marquitos stated at the beginning of the trial that he was 17 years old on the day of the 7 Humboldt massacre; that is to say, on April 20, 1957. Which meant that he was underage and thus could not be charged with /capital punishment. However, later, responding to a cross-examination question by the defense about his age on the present day, he rectified and declared a date of birth that made him of legal age in 1957 for the purposes of criminal responsibility.

So, with 20 years not yet completed on the date indicated (if we consider valid that he was born in 1937, a fact that some question), the accused was of legal age to be shot (more than 18 years), but he was under the age of marriage (under 21 years old). A glaring contradiction that the public defender took advantage of in his timid final argument, citing the young age of the accused as a mitigating circumstance of the death penalty. His plea for clemency was naturally ignored. Already before, Fidel Castro himself, doubled as a prosecutor, had requested the death penalty for Marquitos. Which means that he was sentenced to death beforehand.

After a long politicized process, plagued by irregularities and arbitrary procedures, Marquitos was sentenced to capital punishment. To make matters worse, the ex-officio appeal to the Supreme Court in practice turned into a second trial.

Marquitos should not have been sentenced to death under any legal or human concept. Laws were retroactively applied, in a trial without procedural guarantees, a sanction that on the date of the alleged crime was not contemplated in the legislation in force in the Republic and not even in the criminal regulations of the Sierra Maestra.

Furthermore, the minority of Marquitos was not taken into account. The execution of Marquitos was a crime comparable to the Humboldt 7 massacre itself. Or even worse. In that trial, not only was Marquitos condemned to the firing squad but Cuban Justice, which had already been shot in January 59, received with that vengeful sentence the final coup de grace. Technically, Marquitos was innocent.[13]