CATHOLIC SCHOOLS CONSPIRE
At time the reactionary student association
in Villa Nueva cancelled festivities for incoming students set for October 13,
claiming that it was, "improper for students to be having fun while the
Cubans were mourning and while there was so much blood being shed"
This attitude on the part of this association
contrasted greatly with the passive attitude they had under the Batista regime;
for while Batista was busily murdering men, women and children, the former
rector of the University, American born Augustine priest John Kelly, never
permitted a strike or spoke out against the violence. They didn't even
raise an eyebrow when, for example, 4 students, José Santacruz 21, Jaime Calvo
Formoso 21, Julián Martínez Inclán 20, and Ramón Pérez Lima 22, were
murdered in cold blood in Pinar del Rio by Batista’s general Jacinto Menocal.
In matter of fact the church has a darken history as the cleric of the Catholic
universities gave lists of students suspected of revolutionary activities to
Batista's bloody Police Bureau of Investigation (this bureau is infamous for
it's use of torture and for it's murders) headed by butcher Ricardo Medina.
Some students were expelled as some
revolutionary students protested and denounced some of the contra-revolutionary
practices being cvarried out at the Catholic Universities. At the University
of
At hearing the criticism and at seeing public
opinion turn against them the cleric at the universities tried to persuade the
people that the movements advocating strikes and the contra-revolutionary groups
were strictly based on the initiatives of the students; they tried to persuade
the people that neither the churches or the Catholic universities had anything
to do with these groups.
As they were trying to portray themselves as
angels, Juan Roque, leader of the Catholic University Association (ACU)
spoke on Radio Swan - clandestine radio station funded by the CIA. In a
speech given in Radio Swan he called upon all the students to go on strike,
"to demonstrate to the world that Porfirio Ramirez was not alone".
The next day the prominent director of ACU and nephew of the then archbishop of
While the cleric was exalting the student
movement to strike against the revolution, monsignor Enrique Serrantes wrote a
pastoral letter entitled, “Rome
or