UNIVERSAL Studios newsreel cameraman Abelardo Domingo very nearly found himself before a firing squad for doing his job, reported the Daily Worker on June 25 1935.

Domingo had been rash enough to film the execution of Cuban revolutionary Jose Costiello Y Puentas, sentenced to death for murder after leading a rebel troop against the regulars during major turmoil, when a range of unity forces had come together in a general strike to topple the US-backed fascist Batista.

The defeated strike was followed by a period of intense suppression in which free speech was banned and many civilians were executed by firing squad.

Oblivious to any difficulties, Domingo had simply walked into the prison courtyard one morning, set up his camera and photographed some grisly scenes. Prison officials simply didn’t notice Abelardo or his movie camera.

But after he sent the negative of the film to New York, whence it returned about a week later as part of the regular newsreel shown in Cuban cinemas, Cuban authorities were incensed and he only escaped execution himself through the intervention of Universal’s Cuban manager.

British gossip magazine Film Weekly was unsympathetic to what it thought base taste. Domingo would “think twice” about filming executions, “which is a very good thing, really,” wrote the editor, who could see no “possible justification for taking pictures of the death of an unimportant Cuban rebel … being of purely local significance.”

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