CATHOLIC SCHOOLS CONSPIRE

In this environment full of tension and confrontations the directors of Catholic schools, most of who were mostly ultraconservative Spaniards who supported Franco, began to use the centers of learning against the revolution. 

In the front of all the attacks against the new government was the University of Villa Nueva.  As a response to the attacks a few students from this institution, among them, Salvador Gomila, Narcisco Menocal, Rafael Pardo, Alejandro Roca, Jorge Grau, Hilario Roca signed a petition denouncing the administration directed by a Spanish cleric and American Augustine priests for their hostile position.  The petition declared that "While the classes of the poor are in power Villa Nueva cannot rise to meet them.  They want the church to confront the revolution; they want to create a conflict...we denounce what they want to do...and we affirm that we are here to support the revolution."  The student petition concludes:  Remember always that those that double cross the poor double cross Christ". 

To cause provocation and to promote conflict the churches and contra-revolutionary groups started to use radio Swan.  Radio Swan was clandestine station funded by the CIA whose sole purpose was to disseminate false information such as: the new government was going to end private schools by nationalizing them, that the priests, nuns and teachers were going to be simple servants of the state, that classes on religion was going to ended and replaced by classes using Communist texts.  Finally, to plant more terror they started spreading a slander campaign that the state was going to take their children away.  

They propagandized that the Communists were going to win over the hearts and minds of the children and that Fidel was going to replace God; they went on to say that the Communist would tell them the children that, "the love of their mother, brother or anyone in the family were feelings that man should not know".  "Mother, take your children to church and make them believe in God". 

In the middle of heightened political tension, on November 14, 1960, the church took on the cause of Porfirio Ruíz, Catholic student leader and president of FEU (University Student Federation); the church was trying to make him a martyr as he was tried and sentenced to death for being one of the heads of the armed group of Sinesio Walsh Rios.  It should be noted that in these times armed groups operated in the Escambray Mountains and that they brutally murdered farmers and their families.  

It is also important to note that Porfirio Ruíz was one of the signers of the Provisional Pact (Sept. 1960).  The Pact was an agreement of cooperation between the different murderous armed groups that operated in the Escambray Mountains.  All of these groups received arms through plane drop-off.  It should be added that all of these groups were financed and directed by the CIA and contra-revolutionary groups in Miami .

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