Assata Shakur’s Death and Its Political Reverberations
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry announced on September 26th: “On September 25, 2025, U.S. citizen Joanne Deborah Byron, ‘Assata Shakur,’ passed away in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health ailments and her advanced age.”
Her full name was Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard, and she was a terrorist who escaped justice in 1979 while serving a life term for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. Over 40 years she sided with the oppressive regime in Cuba, and remained silent when black Cubans were tortured, shot in the back and killed by Cuban police, and executed by firing squad.
Her death, in the midst of a national debate on political violence in the United States following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, came at an inopportune time for the Left.
Revolutionary Rhetoric and Armed Struggle
Efforts to whitewash Shakur’s image, underway for decades, have intensified in the aftermath of her death in cultural, activist, and political spaces. Assata Shakur advocated the overthrow of the existing capitalist system, dismantling what she viewed as an oppressive government in the United States and the establishment of a socialist system by whatever means necessary. Shakur also called for a radical restructuring of society.
Assata Shakur spent over 40 years in Cuba, and never spoke up for black Cubans who were mistreated, tortured, or murdered by the police or executed by firing squad.
She was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an even more militant offshoot of the Black Panther Party, during the 1970s. The BLA was guided by Marxist-Leninist ideology and communist figures such as Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara.
Killing police officers was viewed as an act of self-defence and revolution. The Black Liberation Army communiqué, issued following the May 19, 1971 murders of NYPD officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini in Harlem, exemplifies this view shared by Shakur.
“The armed goons of the racist government will again meet the guns of oppressed Third World Peoples as long as they occupy our community and murder our brothers and sisters in the name of American law and order… We are moving to disarm and capture pigs in order to stay their wanton murder and brutality.”
Their message was even more explicit in this other communique.
“The importance of psychological war against the pigs can be seen in the pandemonium immediately following the people execution of pigs. Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini.”
The 1973 Shootout and Foerster’s Killing
In her 1973 letter written from Riker’s prison Assata Shakur fully embraced this approach.
“The main function of the Black Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples, to struggle for Black freedom, and to prepare for the future. We must defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We must gain our liberation by any means necessary.”
She had ideological motivations to kill the police officers. Some of her apologists ignore that she was a fugitive for her involvement in other armed robberies, prior to the 1973 shootout that claimed the life of State Trooper Werner Foerster. The FBI’s description of what took place on May 2, 1973 is damning.
“Chesimard was an active, prominent member of the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army, which was described as one of the most violent militant organizations of the 1970s. During this same time, the Black Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the murder of several police officers throughout the United States.
On May 2, 1973, Chesimard and two accomplices were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by Troopers James Harper and Werner Foerster for a motor vehicle violation. All three subjects possessed fictitious identification, and, unbeknownst to the troopers, all three were armed with semi-automatic handguns.
From the front passenger seat, Chesimard fired the first shot, wounding Trooper James Harper in the shoulder. As Harper moved for cover, Chesimard exited the car and continued to fire at both troopers until she was wounded by Harper’s return fire.
The rear seat passenger, James Coston, also fired at the troopers and was mortally wounded by Trooper Harper. Trooper Werner Foerster was engaged in a hand-to-hand combat with the vehicle’s driver, Clark Squire.
Black Cubans are living in extreme poverty at much higher rates than their white Cuban counterparts.
Foerster was severely wounded in his right arm and abdomen and then executed with his own service weapon on the roadside. Chesimard’s jammed handgun was found at Foerster’s side.
The three assailants returned to their car and drove down the road approximately five miles before abandoning the vehicle.
Within half an hour, Chesimard was arrested by New Jersey State Troopers. Coston was found to have died near their vehicle, and Squire was found 40 hours later within a mile of their car.
Chesimard and Squire were charged, convicted, and sentenced for the murder of Trooper Werner Foerster, as well as on additional charges.”
Her conviction was upheld on appeal (New Jersey v. Chesimard, 1977), with ballistic evidence tying her .375 Magnum to the shootout that took the life of Werner Foerster.
The FBI provided the following description of her 1979 escape.
“In 1979, Chesimard escaped with help from a coalition of radical, domestic terror groups who took two guards hostage during an armed assault at the facility where she was being lodged. She later fled to Cuba. Since this time, she has been classified as a federal fugitive and the subject of an unlawful flight to avoid confinement warrant.”
One could argue that she was a committed communist revolutionary, but one cannot in good faith, when properly informed, conclude that she was innocent of these crimes. Nor can one claim that she was a civil rights activist or an anti-racist.
Silence on Cuba’s Repression of Black Citizens
Assata Shakur spent over 40 years in Cuba, and never spoke up for black Cubans who were mistreated, tortured, or murdered by the police or executed by firing squad. In her autobiography, written in Cuba and published in 1988, she claimed Cuba was a refuge from U.S. racism.
She celebrated Cuba’s international missions in Africa, but failed to mention their involvement in bloody purges of black revolutionaries in Angola, to favor lighter skinned regime elites there, or Havana’s role in carrying out war crimes, and genocide in Ethiopia for Mengistu Haile Mariam in the 1970s and 1980s.
Three young black Cubans, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, were among a group who hijacked a Cuban ferry with passengers on board on April 2, 2003. They tried to flee Cuba. The incident ended without bloodshed, after a standoff with Cuban security forces. Nevertheless, they were executed nine days later, following a summary trial, by firing squad. There was an international outcry, but Assata Shakur remained silent.
She called herself a “20th-century escaped slave” and expressed gratitude to her Cuban hosts. Nevertheless, in a 2005 CNN interview, Assata Shakur recounted being stopped by police due to being black—similar to racial profiling faced by Black Cubans—but due to her privileged position as a foreign tourist was immediately released but acknowledged: “Look, there’s racism here, there’s racism in the United States.”
However, in the United States racism led her to join groups that advocated the “physical liquidation of police” and to take up arms, and get into shootouts with them, and the murder of at least one police officer. In Cuba, she spoke about her own experience, but remained silent in terms of what Black Cubans were, and are suffering.
She rationalized it by claiming that “[t]he difference is that the people at the top in the United States are the ones perpetuating that racist system and the leadership here are trying to dismantle it.”
This belief required ignoring that the Revolution’s leadership had stripped Black Cubans of agency, and that the elite are predominantly white in a country that is predominantly Black.
It also required ignoring the plight of Black Cubans on the island.
Overlooking Racist Violence in Cuba
On March 22, 1959, Fidel Castro announced that racism no longer existed in Cuba; to doubt this was to be counter-revolutionary, and punishable by prison. After six and a half decades of communism, the regime continues to maintain that there is no racism in Cuba, despite the fact that poverty disproportionately affects black Cubans, with 95% receiving the lowest wages compared to 58% of white Cubans, and independent black voices remain silenced.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Black Cuban prisoner of conscience was subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture between 2003 and 2010 in Cuba, and after his death in custody on February 23, 2010 was subjected to a campaign of vilification by regime officials. Orlando’s mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, denounced her son’s mistreatment and held up a blood-stained shirt that belonged to her son, who had been tortured by prison guards, for denouncing human rights violations while incarcerated. Assata Shakur said nothing about it, although it was international news.
Both Luis Manuel and Maykel have been jailed since 2021, but Shakur said nothing about it.
On June 24, 2020 in Guanabacoa, Cuba a 27 year old unarmed Black Cuban, Hansel E. Hernández, was shot in the back and killed by the police. The official version claims that he was stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop when he was spotted by two Revolutionary National Police (PNR in Spanish). Upon seeing the police Hansel ran away and the officers pursued him nearly two kilometers. PNR claimed that during the pursuit Hansel threw rocks at the officers. Police say they fired two warning shots and a third in his back killing him. Hansel’s body was quickly cremated. This prevented an independent autopsy to verify their claims. Again Shakur said nothing.
Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020, in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was also quickly cremated by the dictatorship. The anti-racist activist did not denounce it.
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Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas died in a Cuban prison on November 30, 2024, of asphyxiation by hanging being the official cause of death. However, dirty footprints and urine-soaked jeans were among the evidence of torture found on Manuel’s body and clothing. In the video that went viral, his mother, Dania María Esplugas, asserts that jail guards killed her son.
She believes Manuel was beaten to death and that his hanging was staged to hide the torture, rather than killing himself as officials claim. After noticing marks on his arms, back, and neck, Dania deduced that he had been tortured with a baton and military belt before being hanged. No comment from the former Black Panther and BLA member.
Black artists have embraced Assata Shakur in their music, but too many ignore their counterparts rotting in Cuban prisons today, such as prisoners of conscience Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. Maykel has won two Latin Grammys for authoring and singing the song Patria y Vida, and his call for freedom and justice has landed him in prison. Both Luis Manuel and Maykel have been jailed since 2021, but Shakur said nothing about it. However, it is not too late for those who speak for the African diaspora to speak up for them.
Will racial solidarity trump Marxism-Leninism?
Black Cubans are living in extreme poverty at much higher rates than their white Cuban counterparts, who are also not doing very well when compared to the rest of Latin America. Nevertheless the revolutionary military junta is sitting on an $18 billion hoard of cash, and regime elites live lives of luxury.
What is the difference between the capitalist United States and communist Cuba? The late gay author Reinaldo Arenas provided a brief explanation when he arrived in the United States. “The difference between the communist and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream. And I came here to scream.”
Assata Shakur, on the other hand, learned quickly that in Cuba, under Communism, to survive you have to remain quiet in terms of criticism, and applaud those in power. She was no truth teller for Blacks in Cuba. She ignored that part of the African diaspora for reasons of self-preservation.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Politics and Rights Review.
