IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 132

the people, not of the military class
brought to the reins of power by a bad
historic exercise.
Notes:
1- For many years, the Spanish crown
referred to Havana as synonym of Cuba.
See Moreno Fraginals, Cuba in SpainSpain in Cuba, Grijalbo Mondadori, 1995.
2- At the end of the conflict, about 65, 000
combatants of the Liberation Army were
demobilized (See Jorge Ibarra, Cuba:
1898-1921 Political parties and social
classes, Ciencias Sociales, 1992). On the
Spanish side, 50, 000 guerrillas and about
100, 000 volunteers put down their weapons. In total, a quarter of a million men, the
sixth of a population [1,573,000] according
to the 1899 Census.
3- The author was an eyewitness of such a
self-promotion at a military unit in February 1980, after being mobilized by force
during one of the most stressing forced
call-up to the Army Reserve. Yelling
threats against a latent revolt in society
(the upcoming mass-exodus from Mariel),
the professional military, many of them
veterans of Angola War, tirelessly repeated
to the numb ranks (a strong cold from was
entering) that the armed forces were “the
most sacrificed” in the country, id est,
worthy of admiration, considerations,
privileges, and obedience by the civilians.

4- In a public speech (1991), the Commander in Chief said, apparently exulting,
the imminent transfer of all the citizens to
barracks in the fields, organized into battalions to compulsory labor in agriculture.
Luckily for all Cubans, it never happened.
A few years before, Pol Pot had managed
to implement a similar plan in Camboya.
5- A recurring phrase of Fidel Castro was
something like "I believe in young people;
I trust them". It was never clarified whether the framework of reference was his own
family or the Cuban society.
6- In 1980 the Cuban population totaled
9.7 million inhabitants. About 126, 000
were members of the armed forces:
100,000 in the Army, 11,000 in the Navy,
and 16,000 in the Air Force. During the
16-year war in Angola, 450, 000 Cubans
went over there, among them about
300,000 soldiers. In 2006, Cuba reported
650 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants
(75,000 in total). No verifiable figures are
available, but the budgetary allocations
suggest that the apparatus of political
repression, following the most sophisticated model of the STATSI in the GDR and
the KGB in the URSS, employed around
80-90 thousand people.

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