Humberto Fontova: A Genuine Hero for Black History Month

“Since 1976, every American president has designated February as Black History Month and endorsed a specific theme,” Reports The History Channel. “The Black History Month 2023 theme, ‘Black Resistance,’ explores how ‘African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms.'”

Fine. In light of this worthy goal, here we’ll explore resistance against a lily-white regime—that in the process of jailing and torturing at a higher rate than Stalin’s during the Great Terror and murdering more people in its first three years in power than Hitler’s murdered in its first six—jailed and tortured the longest suffering black Modern history has seen many political prisoners. Nelson Mandela did not get the same fate as these black political prisoners. They were sentenced to longer terms and suffered from more severe conditions. 

But I’ll bet that from The History Channel (or any other media venue) you’ve never heard of any of these black political prisoners—much less of today’s featured black hero who fought to his last bullet against their oppressors.

Let’s see, among the black political prisoners who suffered longer and more horribly than did Nelson Mandela we have:  Ignacio Cuesta Valle, (29 years) Eusebio Penalver, (28 years) Antonio López Muñoz, (28 years) Orestes Perez, (28 years.) Do you know any of them? 

No? These names don’t ring a bell. Yet, their suffering occurred only 90 miles away from U.S. shores in an area absolutely lacking international press bureaus. “investigative reporters.” The Castro regime welcomes everyone, from CNN to NBC to Reuters to the AP to CBS to ABC to NPR and CBS. “embed” “report” From his fiefdom. 

Gosh. It makes me wonder about the kind of thing that this is. “reporting” Do these media agencies?

This is not what you will find from The Congressional Black Caucus or Black Lives Matter, nor any other mainstream media. PBS or History Channel. However, Erneido Oliverva, a black Cuban national and subsequent U.S citizen was second in command of freedom-fighters who attacked the Bay of Pigs shorehead 63 years back. Oliva was promoted to major general in 1993 after he retired from the U.S. military. In 1987, President Reagan made him deputy commander of District of Columbia National Guard. General Erneido Oliva, who was 87 years old, died in 2020.

In April 1961, The Knights of Camelot dumped Oliva and his men on that beachhead with mostly light arms and virtually no air cover—then abandoned them. Castro’s Soviet-led, supplied troops outnumbered Oliva’s men 10 to 1. They had swarms upon them of Soviet T-34 Tanks. Oliva’s men were almost out of ammunition by the third day of relentless battle. The battlefield horrors were starting to take their toll. 

“Where are the U.S. planes?!” They continued to bellow into their radios. “Where’s our ammo?!” Afraid of hunger and thirst, they were awakened at 3 AM and had been shooting and loading for three days. Many of them were hallucinating. They realized that they were being abandoned by Knights of Camelot. 

Castro’s Soviet Howitzers broke open huge 122mm guns, four batteries’ worth. Over a period of four hours, they pounded 2,000 rounds into Oliva’s men. “It sounded like the end of the world,” One can say it later. “Rommel’s crack Afrika Corps broke and ran under a similar bombardment,” Haynes Johnson wrote this in his book, The Bay of Pigs. The freedom-fighters were drowsy, fatigued from hunger and thirst, and too deafened from the bombardment to hear orders. 

These men weren’t in the mood to follow Rommel’s crack Afrika Corps and retreat. Instead they were fortified by a resolve no conquering troops could ever call upon—the burning duty to free their nation, to free their very families. They had seen Castroism in action: stealing and lying, imprisonment, poisoning minds, torturing and murdering. They had seen the midnight raids and the drumbeat trials. They had heard the chilling “FUEGO!” Che Guevara’s firing teams murdered thousands of brave countrymen. But they also heard the “Viva Cuba Libre!” These were the blindfolded and bound patriots just before the Soviet bullets tore them apart. 

They set their teeth and determined to end the barbarism that was ravaging this country. They went at it with vengeance. Oliva, their commander had to scream at the Soviet bombardment. But he made his point: “THERE IS NO RETREAT!” Oliva stood up and bellowed at his dazed, outnumbered men. “WE STAND AND FIGHT!” 

And so they did—and wrote as glorious a chapter in military history and the annals of freedom as any you’d care to read. 

His army of mostly volunteers battled valiantly against a Soviet-trained force 10 times their own size for three days, inflicting 20 to 1 casualties. They still have their ashes today Arms feat It amazes military professionals. That’s what morale can do for a fighting force. You can’t get morale up like watching Fidel Castro ravage your country and families. 

His betrayed, decimated and thirst-crazed men were finally defeated (but not defeated!). Castro’s Soviet bumblers at The Bay of Pigs had defeated Castro’s betrayed, decimated, thirst-crazed and ammo-less men. Oliva grumbled at Jose Fernandez, technically a Spaniard, for his brainless eunuch of Castroite opposition: “the only reason you’re holding a gun on us right now, Fernandez, is because we ran out of ammo.” 

Oliva and his companions lived almost two years in Castro’s dungeons under a daily death sentence. Escaping that sentence would have been easy: simply sign a confession offered to them daily by their guards denouncing the U.S.—which is to say: repeating what Danny Glover, Jeremiah Wright, and all BLM members constantly snarl and bellow about the U.S. 

These men might have thought they had good reason to sign it, considering their betrayal. But Castro and Che Guevara got their answer from Oliva and his men as swiftly and as clearly as the Germans got theirs from Gen. McAuliffe and his men at Bastogne during the Battle of The Bulge—”NUTS!” 

Oliva and his men repeatedly spat on the Castroite document—convinced this defiance would doom them to death by firing-squad. “No man in Cuba is as free as a political prisoner in rebellion,” said longtime Castro political prisoner Francisco Chappi. We were tortured, and we were starved. We lived in complete defiance.” 

“We were all free within our souls.” said another late Bay of Pigs freedom-fighter (also black and subsequently a proud U.S. citizen) named Sergio Carrillo, a paratrooper at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and later a Catholic priest in Florida.  Neither Oliva nor any of his men signed the document. His hundreds of men stood solidly with their commander. “We will all die with dignity” snapped Oliva at the furious Castroites again, and again, and again. To a Castroite, such an attitude not only enrages but baffles. 

“These Cuban exiles are a bunch wimps for all the terroristic chest-thumping they do!” Michael Moore writes in his book “This can be reduced!” That’s right. “Wimps!” Moore’s insults target the Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters for particular scorn. “Ex-Cubans sporting a yellow stripe down the backs of their backs” he calls them, on top of “crybabies!” Reminder: Michael Moore was the guest of honor for the Democratic Party at their 2004 Convention. 

“A soldier to the bone,” Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State General, referred to Erneido Oliverva in this way. He worked with Oliva in the early 1960s. “One of the most fiercely honorable men I have ever known.”