Manuel Prieto Gómez
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 Manuel Prieto Gomez  | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Cuban |
| Known for | Claimed US forces tortured him on the Guantanamo Naval Base, in the early 60s |
Cuban tortured by US in Guantanamo Naval Base in the 1960s. | |
Manuel Prieto Gomez was one of the citizen of Cuba who worked at the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base at the time Fidel Castro overthrew the American supported Batista government.[1] He had worked there for three years when he claims he was seized by US officials, on January 5, 1961, and tortured, with the intent of making him confess that he was spying for the new Cuban regime.[2] He reported he had also been offered rewards if he agreed to spy on Cuba on behalf of the USA.
Prieto's story was repeated in Granma, Cuba's official newspaper, in 2004.[1]
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References
- ↑ a b Jana K. Lipman (2009). Guantánamo: A Working-Class History Between Empire and Revolution (in English). University of California Press. pp. 160–161. ISBN 9780520255395. Retrieved 2012-12-19. Quote=Base workers who were fired for their political leanings could also be recast as revolutionary players. In the years immediately following the Cuban revolution, several base workers cast their lot with the nationalist project. For example, base workers Manuel Prieto Gomez and Rolando Quintero were dismissed from GTMO in 1961. On January 5, 1961, the base police detained Prieto and accused him of being an agent for the Cuban government and stealing U.S. documents. Prieto later claimed that intelligence officers beat him, threatened him with death, and hooked him up to a lie detector. He insisted that he supported the revolutionary government, but was not an agent for anyone. Then the base officials tried the opposite tack, offering Prieto good work, money, and access to the United States, if he would cooperate with them. Prieto again insisted, "I have already chosen the place where I want to be, in Cuba, my country." A month later, in February 1961, Quintero was also interrogated and placed under duress. He expressed particular scorn for the Puerto Rican translator, Maldonado, who participated in his interrogation. Quintero described Maldonado as "despicable" and a "traitor to his country." Quintero formally resigned from the base in protest during the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The Cuban government constructed Prieto and Quintero as victims of U.S. imperial agression. This image remains today. Rolando Quintero recounted his experience in perfect English for a British documentary in 1991, and in 2004 Cuba's official newspaper, Granma, profiled Manuel Prieto Gomez's experiences of detention and torture. The article concluded that Caimaner was an expression of the Cuban people's resistance against imperialism, and it would never suffer being a North American colony again.]
- ↑ http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19610114&id=58oVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6RAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6778,1525121
