By José Luis Méndez Méndez on August 11, 2025
Cuban Diplomats martyred by the Argentine dictatorship.
In these times when recent memory is eroded, national history is denied and divided into camps, and patriotism is questioned and relegated to a synonym for material well-being and temporary shortages, it is an act of justice to evoke the epic deeds of two young Cubans diplomats, aged 22 and 26, who 49 years ago left us a legacy of courage. They chose to die rather than betray the dignity of the Cuban people and their revolution.
After being kidnapped off of the streets of Buenos Aires by agents of the military dictatorship, they faced unimaginable torture and ultimatley suffocated and crammed in metal drums and thrown into a garbage dump where their remains waited for decades to be rescued. Despite the terror not a word passed their lips to their captors.
They defied martyrdom with values, convictions, and Mambi patriotism.
Sharing the example of Jesús Cejas Arias and Crescencio Galañena Hernández two young dedicated Cuban sons, transmitting it and preserving it, is the obligation of present and future generations. We are our history, which becomes our identity when it is known and defended.
plaque at the location where Jesus and Galanena where abducted, photo: Bill Hackwell
Jesus and Crescencio were kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 9, 1976, during Operation Condor. They had arrived in Argentina with the dream of two young men who would fulfill a diplomatic mission for their country. No one could have imagined that they would become alongside over 30,000 Argentines through the “night and fog” of forced disappearances, sharing that Dantesque tragedy, so difficult to recount and so necessary for the world to know so that it never happens again.
After their abduction, they were taken to the Clandestine Detention, Torture, and Extermination Center “Automotores Orletti,” one of 500 such centers set up in the Argentine capital, where they were tortured to death without revealing any information to their captors. Their bodies, as the final destination of their lives, were placed in metal tanks filled with cement and then dumped into a garbage dump on the outskirts of the city of San Fernando, in the province of Buenos Aires, where, after more than thirty-six years, including a decade of intense Cuban investigation to find their remains and repatriate them, they were finally found in 2012 and 2013.
After a long process of scientific identification and repatriation proceedings with the Argentine authorities, their remains arrived in Cuba, where they received the honors they deserved and were laid to rest in the Pantheon of the Fallen in Defense of the Homeland in the cemetery of Yaguajay, Sancti Spíritus province, and in one in the city of Pinar del Río, their respective places of birth.
Eternal glory to the more than 30,000 victims of fascism in Argentina, few found, most disappeared, but all present in the memory of the peoples where there is no room for oblivion and beyond the pain, the commitment to always find them.
José Luis Méndez Méndez is a writer and university professor. He the author of several books and is a frequent contributor to Cubadebate and Resumen Latinoamericano
Source: Cuba en Resumen