Arnaldo Ochoa

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Arnaldo Tomás Ochoa Sánchez (* 1930 in Cacocum , Oriente Province , Cuba ; † July 13, 1989 in Havana , Cuba) was a Cuban general who was executed after being tried in a military tribunal for corruption , the fraudulent use of economic resources and drug trafficking found guilty.

biography

Ochoa was born into an old farming family in the Cuban East and initially only received six years of elementary school education. In March 1958, he and several of his brothers joined Castro's guerrilla army in the Sierra Maestra , which fought against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista . In the Revolutionary War he played a crucial role in the fall of Santa Clara . He later became a close friend of Raúl Castro . Ochoa is said to have been the only survivor of the loyalists of Camilo Cienfuegos , who were sent to the Dominican Republic on a failed mission to overthrow the dictator Trujillo in 1959 .

He participated in the successful repulsion of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and fought the insurgents in the Escambray Mountains in the civil war , before becoming one of the most battle-tested commanders of the Cuban armed forces in a long series of missions abroad .

In 1965 he became a member of the Communist Party of Cuba, which was founded as a unity party based on the Soviet model . He was a member of the party's central committee for over twenty years. He graduated from the Military Academy in Matanzas and was later sent to the Frunze Academy in the Soviet Union .

Between 1967 and 1969, Ochoa trained rebels in the Republic of the Congo . He was sent on a secret mission to Venezuela , which ended in strategic defeat and the loss of many lives.

In 1972 he led a 500-strong Cuban contingent that trained the Sierra Leone army . During the 1973 Yom Kippur War , he served as an instructor for Syrian troops on the Golan Heights . In 1975 Ochoa was sent to Luanda , Angola , to wage a critical campaign against the FNLA . There he earned the respect of both Soviet and Cuban military. In 1977 he was appointed commander of the Cuban Expeditionary Forces in Ethiopia , which were under the authority of the Soviet General Vasily Petrov ( Ogaden War ). His successes against the Somali army impressed the Soviet commanders. In 1984 Ochoa, meanwhile a general and already widely known as a great internationalist , was awarded the highest military order as "Hero of the Republic of Cuba" by Fidel Castro.

From 1984 to 1986 Ochoa was as a military specialist in Nicaragua stationed at the the Contra War used Sandinista People's Army in matters of counter-insurgency ( counterinsurgency ) to advise. A close relationship developed with the Nicaraguan commander-in-chief , Humberto Ortega , who benefited greatly from Ochoa's expertise.

1987 and 1988 Ochoa was Commander in Chief of the troops deployed in Angola. During this time, according to Raúl Castro, he had three Cubans executed for murdering Angolans as war criminals. He was honored with the highest military honor Hero of the Republic and was also highly regarded by the population.

When he returned from Angola in 1989, highly decorated, he was supposed to take over command of the western armed forces ( Ejército Occidental ) from June of that year . Instead, on June 12, 1989, the Cuban Ministry of Defense announced the arrest and the initiation of investigations against Division General Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez and other senior military officials for high treason , serious cases of corruption, fraudulent use of economic resources and drug trafficking. At the time of his arrest, Ochoa was Cuba's most senior military officer after the Castro brothers. Ochoa spent a month in prison on a military base in West Havana. He was brought before a military court along with other high-ranking military officials , which on July 12th found him guilty of all charges. Cuban television broadcast recordings of the trial for around a month, which the population followed with enormous interest. The Cuban State Council upheld all four death sentences, including that of Ochoa.

Experts assume that Ochoa and his comrades-in-arms must have acted with the knowledge and approval of both Castro brothers, even if Ochoa confessed in the process that they had acted without commission. Ochoa's main colleague Tony de la Guardia , Colonel in the Ministry of the Interior, like Ochoa a member of the Cuba Inner Leadership Circle, was head of the currency procurement department “MC” (“MC” stands for Moneda Convertible - convertible currency). Its task was, similar to its GDR counterpart Commercial Coordination , bypassing the US embargo, to procure western industrial goods and foreign exchange for weapons purchases, among other things. To this end, they entered the internationally outlawed ivory trade and established close contacts with the Colombian drug cartel around Pablo Escobar . In the USA , the obviously active involvement of Cuba in the drug trade became increasingly public, so that the Castros had to act here in order not to permanently damage Cuba's positive image in large parts of the world.

In the early morning hours of July 13, 1989, Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez ( El Moro ) was executed by a firing squad together with three other officers . Pope John Paul II had previously asked the Cuban leadership for mercy for the condemned. Ochoa was buried in an anonymous grave in a Havana cemetery. In retrospect, there were extensive purges of the armed forces and the interior ministry, which killed at least ten senior officers and the interior minister himself. General Abrantes, the only man who could have said with certainty that Castro had been informed of everything, died, in originally good health, only a few months after his arrest in prison.

See also

Web links

literature

  • Norberto Fuentes: Dulces guerreros cubanos. Seix Barral, Barcelona 1999, ISBN 84-322-0841-8 . (Spanish)
  • Norberto Fuentes: Narcotráfico y Tareas Revolucionarias: El Concepto Cubano. Universal, 2002, ISBN 0-89729-987-6 . (Spanish)
  • José Manuel Martín Medem: El secreto mejor guardado de Fidel: Los fusilamentos del narcotráfico. Catarata, Madrid 2014, ISBN 978-84-8319-949-7 . (Spanish)
  • Andrés Oppenheimer: Castro's Final Hour. The Secret Story Behind the Coming Downfall of Communist Cuba . Part 1: A Crack in the System: The Ochoa-De La Guardia Case. Simon & Schuster, New York 1992, ISBN 0-671-72873-3 , pp. 17-163. (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b William A. DePalo, Jr .: Cuban Internationalism: The Angolan Experience, 1975–1988 ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Parameters. Herbst 1993, p. 67, accessed on August 27, 2014 (English)
  2. ↑ Félix José Hernández: Fidel Castro: la Infancia de un Jefe “Franqui narra como después de la muerte de Camilo, su tropa fue enviada a“ liberar ”a la República Dominicana, osea, a una muerte segura. Sus oficiales de la Sierra pasaron a ocupar puestos de segunda categoría. ¡El único que se salvó en aquel momento fue ... Arnaldo Ochoa! ”
  3. ^ AP: Raul Castro has no qualms over executing general. ( Memento of the original from July 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Houston Chronicle. July 11, 1989, accessed June 3, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.chron.com
  4. ^ A b c Ted A. Henken: Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook. ABC-Clio, 2007, ISBN 978-1-85109-984-9 , Kindle -Edition Pos. 2677 ff.
  5. ^ A b Bert Hoffmann : Cuba. 3. Edition. Beck, 2009, pp. 102-104.
  6. ↑ Cuban War Hero, 3 Others Executed by Firing Squad . In: Los Angeles Times. July 14, 1989, accessed July 26, 2013
  7. ↑ Michael Zeuske : Island of Extreme - Cuba in the 20th Century , pp. 240–243
  8. ↑ Richard Gott : Cuba: A New History , pp. 280-284
  9. ↑ Cubans Defend Death Sentences Of Convicted Drug Smugglers , In: AP News Archive. July 11, 1989, accessed July 26, 1989
personal data
SURNAME Ochoa, Arnaldo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ochoa Sánchez, Arnaldo Tomás (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban general
DATE OF BIRTH 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Cacocum , Oriente Province , Cuba
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1989
Place of death Havana , Cuba