San Juan Hill massacre

Following the final rebel victory in the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, dozens of supporters of ousted president Fulgencio Batista, including members of the armed forces and police, were arrested and accused of war crimes and other abuses committed under the former regime. Time magazine reported that many of the accused were described as having tortured captured rebels, including pulling out fingernails, burning hands and feet in vises, and using castration as an interrogation method. Although the 1940 Cuban constitution had prohibited the death penalty, that constitution had recently been overturned amid the revolutionary transition.

On January 11, 1959, a revolutionary court in Santiago de Cuba conducted a summary trial lasting four hours, at a rate of about four minutes per sentence. The tribunal was directed by Belarmino Castilla Mas, with Jorge Serguera acting as prosecutor. No defense lawyers were present, and no evidence tying the accused to specific prior crimes was introduced. The proceedings were presided over by Rebel Army Commander Raúl Castro, who commanded Oriente province at the time. The court sentenced 68 men to death (in addition to four sentenced the same day), sentenced ten men to ten years in prison, and acquitted 47 others. Prisoners were transported by truck from Boniato prison to a shooting range at San Juan Hill, where a crowd gathered to watch the executions.

The executions began around 2:00 a.m. on January 12, 1959. Men were lined up one by one and shot in front of a 40-meter ditch that had been dug in advance. Between 71 and 73 people were killed and buried in the resulting mass grave. Raúl Castro directed the massacre. Of 72 names on the firing-squad list, one person—a 15-year-old known as "El Fiñe"—reportedly evaded execution, apparently through personal contacts, and three other prisoners held in a separate section of Boniato prison also escaped. A priest, Father Jorge Bez Chabebe, accompanied each victim to execution and stated the shootings continued until 10:00 a.m. A journalist who witnessed the event, Antonio Llano Montes, believed some victims were still alive when shot and died of asphyxiation while attempting to dig their way out of the grave.

The executions were publicized and promoted by the official press at the time, reportedly to satisfy public demand for retribution. International figures, including Uruguay's delegate to the United Nations, the Cuban ambassador to Argentina, U.S. Senator Wayne Morse, and Puerto Rico's governor Luis Muñoz Marín, condemned the killings. Fidel Castro responded that orders had been given to execute "every last one of those murderers," regardless of international opinion.

In 1963, Hurricane Flora unearthed some of the bodies from the mass grave. The government subsequently relocated the remains into concrete tombs and disposed of them in the Cayman Trench.