International Day of Non-Violence 2023: Join Cubans' non-violent movement for restoring democracy and human rights to Cuba

 "Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer, and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it." - Mohandas Gandhi

"Era tanto el hambre que nos comimos el miedo." - "The hunger was so much that we ate the fear."

Juan Enrique Pérez Sánchez, father of four and former phone technician, was arrested and badly beaten on July 12, 2021 after participating in the 11J protests in Nueva Paz, Mayabeque. He carried a poster that read "Down with the dictatorship" on one side, and "The hunger was so much that we ate the fear."  Juan Enrique was sentenced to eight years in prison on December 15, 2021. He suffers from asthma and a herniated disc. Reports emerged over social media that Juan Enrique sowed his mouth shut with a wire, as a sign of protest.

Today in Cuba there are thousands of Cubans, like Juan Enrique, jailed for their nonviolent demand for an end to the Castro dictatorship expressed most widely during the July 2021 protests. Over a thousand have been identified that were jailed or disappeared. It is known that some have resorted to going on hunger strike to protest their unjust imprisonment. This is part of the movement's repertoire of nonviolent tactics to resist the dictatorship in Cuba.

The men and women in Cuba who have led protests across the island have maintained their non-violent posture, continue to call for civic resistance as the method to challenge the dictatorship, and are asking for active nonviolent solidarity from people of goodwill living abroad. 

On July 27, 2021 the Christian Liberation Movement tweeted: "For solidarity with the freedom of Cubans. Eleven specific actions to isolate the regime."  This Cuban based movement, with its national coordinator, a former Amnesty prisoner of conscience living in Cuba, said that although statements criticizing the dictatorship are welcome that now is also the time for actions to isolate the Castro regime internationally, and sanction both on the dictatorship collectively, and individual bad actors in the regime are needed. These efforts to raise the cost of repression too are part of strategic nonviolence, and requires international solidarity. Please share and support this campaign with others.

Por la solidaridad con la libertad de los cubanos. Once acciones concretas de aislamiento al régimen. Movimiento Cristiano Liberación https://t.co/upvduDXpZu

— MCL (@oswaldopaya) July 27, 2021

This is a moment in which many that have not been following the resistance movement on the island are advocating to do business with the dictatorship, and the children of the nomenklatura. This will only prolong the life of the dictatorship, and increase the likelihood of violence, and Cuba bottoming out as a failed state.

It is important to revisit recent Cuban history.

The opposition in Cuba violently resisted the Castro dictatorship from 1959 to 1966.  In April of 1961 an expedition covertly supported by the United States was not provided sufficient air cover and support leading to their defeat, and the consolidation of communist rule in the island. Many of the Cubans who had fought alongside Castro, but felt betrayed when he installed a new dictatorship instead of restoring the democratic order, took up arms and went back into the hills. The new regime received counter insurgency forces from its Soviet allies that sent  to battle the Cuban resistance in the Escambray after years of struggle in 1967.

Eusebio Peñalver with machine gun and Joaquin Membibre, with M-1 carbin

Eusebio Peñalver (pictured above) opposed the Batista regime and fought with the rebel army to restore Cuba's constitutional democracy. Mary O'Grady wrote about him in 2013 and quoted the Cuban warrior. 

"But when Castro hijacked the revolution for himself, Peñalver broke ranks rather than 'sell my soul to the same devil that here on earth is Castro and communism.'" He took up arms against Castro's military in the Escambray Mountains, he was captured in October 1960. He spent 28 years in Cuban prisons and was banished from the island upon his release in 1988. "From exile in Los Angeles he wrote about the 'naked brutality' and round-the-clock beating and harassment that he had endured: 'They made the men eat grass, they submerged them in sewage, they beat them hard with bayonets and they hit them with fence posts until their bones rattled.'

Total number of dead in this phase of the resistance remains unknown, but tens of thousands were jailed for decades. On January 28, 1976, within the Cuban prisons, dissidents and former members of the resistance came together to found the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.  This initiative to document human rights abuses in Cuba, and report them to the international community marked  the start of a non-violent resistance to the Castro dictatorship.

 

Many movements would emerge over the next 47 years. It would be impossible to list them all. However, it would be worthwhile to highlight some that still exist today on the island. The Christian  Liberation Movement was founded in 1988, and in May 2002 with the Varela Project, a citizen initiative that thousands of Cubans signed, and led the Castro regime to change the constitution in an effort to block it, and brought international attention to Cuba's pro-democracy movement, and the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people.

Oswaldo Payá Antonio Diaz, and Regis Iglesias turn in petition

In 1991 the Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement came into existence calling for free thought in Cuban education, and a return to university autonomy.

Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement

 In 1997 the Lawton Foundation was founded by Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and sought to educate Cubans on human rights and strategic non-violence, explicitly embracing the legacies of Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. 

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet

In 2003 following a major crackdown on the opposition due to the Varela Project initiative and overall growth in the democratic resistance the Ladies in White came into existence and through non-violent actions challenged the Castro regime to free their loved ones and to change the totalitarian penal code that creates prisoners of conscience. In 2011 following his release from eight years in prison, Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia founded the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU).  

In 2018, following the announcement that the Cuban dictatorship would further restrict artistic freedoms with Decree 349, a collective of artists formed the San Isidro Movement to campaign against the repressive law. 

Logo of the San Isidro Movement

What they all have in common is the decision to use nonviolent means and strategies to challenge the Castro dictatorship. However, they are not advocating collaboration or going into business with the oppressors.

Human action is a powerful force that must not to be underestimated, but to maximized it requires knowledge, strategic planning and courage. It also requires an understanding of the real nature of political power.

Professor Gene Sharp, a nonviolent theoretician who passed away on January 28, 2018, in his book, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential, recognized that political power is "the totality of influences and pressures available for use to implement, change, or oppose official policies for a society." This means that political power "may be wielded by the institutions of government, or in opposition to the government by dissident groups and organizations."

According to Gene Sharp the sources of political power include "authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources, and sanctions."

If we look at Cuba, the communist dictatorship there uses propaganda claims, both internally and internationally, to assert that the regime has achieved successes in education and health care. These are pillars of legitimacy and authority for the Castro regime. The dictatorship has also trained and staffed a massive intelligence apparatus to monitor and surveil the populace in Cuba trained by the East German Stasi and the Soviet KGB with 64 years of experience.

There is a large military that is heavily embedded in the Cuban economy, including tourism. In the area of skill and knowledge there is a dictatorship with 64 years of experience of imposing itself through violent means on the populace in Cuba, and overseas in places such as Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. They have had experience in carrying out mass killings that rise to the level of genocide to assist client regimes. These first generation leaders are dying out, but many remain, including Raul Castro that have this knowledge and expertise in repression and terror.

One must consider the best course of action with the greatest likelihood of success while taking into account conditions on the ground.

Conservative activist Morton Blackwell explained a truth often ignored by activists of all ideological stripes in a talk titled "The Real Nature of Politics," which is required reading and offers three conclusions.

"1. Being right in the sense of being correct is not sufficient to win.  You don't win just because your heart is pure, even if you can prove logically that you are right.

2. The winner in a political contest over time is determined by the number and the effectiveness of the activists and leaders on the respective sides.

3. The number and effectiveness of the activists and leaders on a given side in a political contest is determined by the political technology used by that side."

These conclusions work both in a political struggle within a democratic order, and in confronting a dictatorship that does not play by democratic rules.  

These three ideas need to be present when planning resistance to the dictatorship in Cuba.

Providing more resources and legitimacy to the dictatorship and their networks of supporters, while marginalizing democratic forces is a recipe, already witnessed in Communist China for strengthening and modernizing the dictatorship in Beijing that turned into a greater threat to the rest of the world, and did nothing to advance democracy.

Considering that the Cuban opposition in the island over the past 47 years decided to resist the Castro dictatorship using nonviolent means, that the democratic resistance today as evidenced by the start of the July 11, 2021 uprising did so non-violently, and that concrete calls for help from the island are asking for nonviolent solidarity both inside and outside of Cuba now is the time to step up with the support requested, and not resort to the siren call of embracing the dictatorship providing it with more resources and legitimacy that has failed in the past against this regime.

Today, October 2nd is the international day of nonviolence and the 154th birth anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi. On this day let us remember our nonviolent icons in Cuba and share their message with the world, and continue to carry out concrete actions to restore democracy, the rule of law, and isolation and accountability for those engaged in human rights violations.

 

"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’." - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

 

“If we must give our own lives in pursuit of the freedom of our Cuba, so be it.” - Laura Pollán

Cuba’s WASP spy and terrorist network, dismantled by the FBI 25 years ago this week

25 years after their capture: Setting the record straight on the Castro regime's WASP spy network

Adapted from CubaBrief

On Saturday,  September 12, 1998, the FBI dismantled the largest Cuban spy ring ever discovered in the United States. Ten Cubans were charged with spying for the Cuban regime. Cuba’s government has spent 25 years airbrushing and distorting what they did.

South African Bishop and theologian Desmond Tutu understood that covering up past crimes would not lead to authentic reconciliation or lasting peace. In that spirit we review the record of the WASP network.

According to the Defense Human Resources Activity at the U.S. Department of Defense, the ten members of the WASP network captured were: "GERARDO HERNANDEZ, 31 (alias Manuel Viramontes), the spymaster; FERNANDO GONZALEZ, 33 (alias Ruben Campa), and RAMON LABANINO, 30 (alias Luis Medina), Cuban intelligence officers.  The remaining seven were mid-level or junior agents who reported to the three senior agents. Included were ANTONIO GUERRERO, 39, who observed aircraft landings at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station from his job as a sheet-metal worker there; ALEJANDRO ALONSO, 39, a boat pilot; and RENE GONZALEZ, 42, a skilled aircraft pilot and the only Cuban national among these seven. Both joined the exile group Movimiento Democracia to report on its activities -all non-violent- against the Castro regime. Also, two married couples, Americans, worked in the spy network: NILO and LINDA HERNANDEZ, 44 and 41 respectively, and JOSEPH and AMARYLIS SANTOS, both 39."

Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque escaped.

 

JUAN PABLO ROQUE, an eleventh spy also charged and linked to the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, had fled to Cuba one day before Cuban MiGs launched missiles destroying two Brothers to the Rescue planes, and killing four pilots. Three others, identified as John Does, were also charged.

Five defendants -Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and Linda Hernandez, Joseph and Amarylis Santos- accepted plea bargains and cooperated with prosecutors. These five Cuban spies provided information about the other five. These five eventually went on trial, where it was revealed that the Cuban spy ring was engaged in both espionage and terrorism.

The Wasp Network engaged in espionage: it infiltrated two non-violent exile groups; provided information that led to the extrajudicial killings of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996; targeted U.S. military facilities; planned to smuggle arms and explosives into the United States, and carried out other active measures to sow division, shape public opinion, and meddle in U.S. elections. 

Hernandez guilty of murder conspiracy in 2/24/96 shoot down.

The Wasp Network gathered personal information on American military personnel, "compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the top officers of the United States Southern Command as well as hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West."

The spies had received orders from Havana to burn down an airport hangar; sabotage planes; and to terrorize a CIA operative identified as Jesus Cruza Flor, with warnings that he was "nearing execution,'' and then to send a mail bomb to murder him at his Bal Harbour residence.

Cuban spies targeted military personnel at the Boca Chica Naval Station.

On June 8, 2001, the five Wasp defendants who had not entered into plea bargains were found guilty on all counts. In December 2001, three of the spies were sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to commit espionage. Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino, both Cuban nationals, and Antonio Guerrero, a U.S. citizen, were sentenced to life in prison. Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, both Cuban nationals, were sentenced to 19 and 10 years in prison, respectively, for conspiracy and operating as unregistered agents of a foreign power.

The five who pleaded guilty to one count of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign power and cooperated received lesser sentences: Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and Linda Hernandez were sentenced to seven years in prison; Joseph Santos was sentenced to four years, and Amarylis Santos was sentenced to three and a half years. Gerardo Hernandez, the head of the network, was convicted of murder conspiracy and espionage and condemned to a double life sentence.

President Obama commuted Hernandez's double life sentences on December 17, 2014, as part of the concessions made in the effort to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States. Once back in Cuba, Hernandez was promoted to Deputy National Coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in April 2020, tasked with monitoring neighborhood committees to spy on all Cubans on the island. He was also appointed to the Castro dictatorship's Council of State, the 31-member body that oversees day-to-day life on the island, on December 17, 2020. Gerardo Hernández visited Moscow on May 31, 2023, and laid a wreath on a monument to Fidel Castro.

Cuban spy convicted in 2000 of murder conspiracy in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, Gerardo Hernández, is visiting Russia. On 5/31/23 he placed a wreath at a monument erected by Putin to Fidel Castro in Moscow. Mr. Obama commuted his life sentence in 2014. #WeRemember pic.twitter.com/llSlABVT0X

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) May 31, 2023

 The 2009 book Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & The Cuban Five, by Matt Lawrence and Thomas Van Hare provides a compendium of the evidence. It exposes the facts about what happened and who knew prior to the murder of the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots -three Americans and one legal resident- who were volunteers out to save the lives of fleeing refugees what would transpire. Lawrence, one of the authors had volunteered his time, and flown search and rescue missions for Brothers to the Rescue.

 The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down on February 24, 1996, and the influence operation conducted by Ana Belen Montes to direct blame away from the Castro regime, and onto the victims, drew the attention of investigators, and in September 2001 led to the arrest of Montes, a spy for Havana who worked in a sensitive position at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon. This is also explored in the book by Lawrence and Van Hare.

On May 17, 2012 the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere in the U.S. Congress's Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on "Cuba’s Global Network of Terrorism, Intelligence, and Warfare." Among the experts who spoke at the hearing was Mr. Christopher Simmons, founding editor of Cuba Confidential, an online blog and source for news on Cuban espionage worldwide. He is an international authority on the Cuban Intelligence Service and retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency with over 23 years of experience as a counterintelligence officer, and played an important role in the capture of Ana Belen Montes.

Simmons ended his presentation outlining and summarizing the high profile act of state terrorism that killed four Cuban Americans in an operation conducted on orders from highest levels of the Castro regime.

"Last, but not least, of the highlighted issues, I'd like to address Operation Scorpion which was addressed earlier as a shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue. While this mission on February 24, 1996 predates the other information I discussed, it is important because this act of terrorism involves highest levels of the Castro regime. On February 24, 1996, Cuban MiGs shot down two U.S. search and rescue aircraft in international waters. Code named Operation Scorpion, it was led by General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez, the current head of Cuban intelligence. It was personally approved by Fidel Castro and supported by Raul Castro, the current President of Cuba. Four Americans were murdered in this act of terrorism."

  The case of the Cuban WASP Network and its involvement in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down conspiracy, and plotting to terrorize and murder a retired U.S. intelligence agent underscores once again the terrorist nature of the Cuban dictatorship. 

In order to achieve true reconciliation and peace, the regime in Havana would have to recognize its past crimes, repent, and stop sponsoring and engaging in terrorism.  Its continuing repressive actions in Venezuela, and Nicaragua; its ongoing support for the war in Ukraine, and its murder of non-violent dissidents in Cuba demonstrate that the Cuban dictatorship presently is not interested in reforming its behavior, or in true reconciliation, but rather in continuing its international outlaw status that is on a par with North Korea.

Remembering Basilio Guzmán Marrero on the one year anniversary of his passing

Basilio Guzmán Marrero April 15,1937- April 13, 2022

 

Today has special significance for Cuban exiles. One year ago today on April 13, 2022 Cuban exile, former prisoner of conscience and Plantado Basilio Guzmán Marrero passed away after a long illness. He was 84 years old.

Basilio Guzmán Marrero, who was jailed for 22 years, and tortured for most of that time in Cuban prisons, refused his whole life to cooperate with evil, and remained committed to a free Cuba. He fought against the dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista, and Fidel Castro.  

Canadian Professor Peter McKenna characterizes most Cuban exiles as being "anti-Cuba" because of their opposition to the Castro dictatorship. Professor McKenna's claim is at best Orwellian, and at worse perverse. 

The pro-Castro crowd repeats a regime narrative about their opponents that is often an exercise in projection. 

Basilio Guzmán Marrero's life is a refutation of the regime narrative. 

On July 11, 2021 despite poor health Basilio Guzman picketed the Cuban Embassy in DC.

 

Basilio was born on April 15, 1937 into a humble family in the countryside of Havana province near Campo Florido. When he was seven years old his family was evicted from their home.

He had fond childhood memories of spending time at Guanabo Beach.

Shortly after Fulgencio Batista overthrew Cuba's democracy on March 10, 1952, Basilio Guzmán joined the resistance against Batista while still a teenager, and joined the Directorio. He was part of the struggle for a free Cuba.

During these years, he also became a carpenter.

Soon after the revolutionary victory in 1959 he joined with Cubans who felt betrayed by Fidel Castro. They had fought for the restoration of democracy and the 1940 Constitution.

Instead they witnessed the Soviet model imposed in Cuba. Press censored and taken over by the new regime. Forced labor camps modeled after the gulags in the Soviet Union, political show trials and firing squads.

Basilio joined the Frente Nacional Democratico (National Democratic Front) , a resistance movement against Castro.

Basilio's movement was infiltrated, and he was identified, arrested, and in 1962 jailed. He would spend the next 22 years in a Cuban prison.

He was an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.

He was a Plantado, a group of prisoners that refused to take part in any re-education plans, or cooperate with the dictatorship in any way.

Basilio Guzman was freed and exiled in 1984, after 22 years in prison, and flown to the United States along with 25 other Cuban political prisoners with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who had petitioned for their release when he visited Cuba.

Basilio Guzman resuming his carpentry career in 1985 (Barbara E. Joe)

Pamela Doty, an Amnesty International volunteer who focused on Cuba, met Basilio when he arrived at the airport in Washington, DC in 1984 and they eventually married, and had a daughter together who grew up to be an art historian.

Over the next 33 years Basilio resumed his vocation in carpentry, and built a successful business in Northern Virginia, but he never forgot Cuba.

Basilio Guzman would take part in public protests against the Castro dictatorship, looked out for other political prisoners, and was a friend to the Center for a Free Cuba board and staff.

Basilio published an autobiography in 2020 “DESPUÉS DE LA NOCHE: Mis 22 años en el Presidio Político de Cuba” [ AFTER THE NIGHT: My 22 years in the Political Prisons of Cuba ] and gave an extensive interview about his life to Voces de Cuba in January 2022. 

Basilio was not "anti-Cuban" but he was profoundly anti-dictatorship and openly hostile to any manifestation of injustice, especially against the Cuban people. 

Frank Calzon, Sirley Ávila León, Basilio Guzmán, Raudel Bringas, & others carried out a vigil for "13 de marzo" tugboat victims.

Thankfully others in the Canadian academy challege the pro-Castro regime false narrative. Professor Yvon Grenier in his OpEd ”Since when are Cuban exiles anti-Cuba?” published in the Saltwire Network on April 15, 2022 sets the record straight.

In his April 5 opinion piece entitled “Sixty years of a misguided U.S. blockade of Cuba,” Prof. Peter McKenna characterizes many of the 1.3 million Cuban-Americans as being “anti-Cuba.” Do we ever say, by way of comparison, that members of Afghan or Guatemalan exile communities are “anti-Afghanistan” or “anti-Guatemala”? No government is its people — especially when the government is not chosen freely by its citizens.

Opposing the Castro dictatorship is thoroughly pro-Cuba. Bishop Agustín Román in a talk he gave on "The importance of the current internal dissident movement in Cuba" on December 16, 2006 argued love is the driving force to seek change in Cuba.

"If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it. If all of us who want the good of the nation, of the important internal dissident movement and the persevering of exile arm ourselves with these virtues, we will be effective. If we are committed to not let personalism, or the passions dilute them, we will have won. If we keep them and transmit them to all our people, we will have secured for Cuba a happy future."

Basilio would protest the new injustices occurring in Cuba after his release and exile in 1984, the massacre of 37 men, women, and children on July 13, 1994 by Castro agents for trying to leave Cuba on the 13 de Marzo tugboat, the killing of four Brothers to the Rescue members on February 24, 1996 shot down in international airspace, and the killing of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante on July 22, 2012. These are three of many examples.

On Feb 20, 2020 outside Cuban Embassy in Wash DC vigil for Orlando Zapata Tamayo & 4 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down martyrs. Basilio Guzmán Marrero held a poster of Mario De La Peña.

Today it is up to the living to continue Basilio's legacy of integrity, love of country, desire for justice and pursuit of freedom for the Cuban homeland. 

Over 220,000 Cubans entered USA in FY 2022. Commonalities between Iranians and Cubans. Members of Congress question US-Cuba policy changes. 300 Cubans deported over weekend.

Record number of Cubans enter the United States

 

 U.S. Customs and Border Protection have documented 224,607 Cubans left the island in Fiscal Year 2022. This is the latest in a series of large exoduses of Cuban refugees that began over six decades ago.

The main reason for this exodus is that Cuba is under communist rule. Political economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt in his 2003 monograph "Population Aspects of Communist Countries," found one of the features of these regimes is that communist governance generates "enormous streams of refugees, escapees fleeing from the new order, or driven out by some particular policy or practice promoted by the new regime."  Cubans fled on rafts across the Florida Straits, in freedom flights, defected from sporting events, ballet troupes defected in Paris, and today many fly to Nicaragua, and trek through hundreds of miles of jungle to the U.S. Mexican border.

These refugees are fleeing Cuba today due to a number of factors: massive political repression following nationwide protests in July 2021, an economic crisis caused by failed communist central planning generating hyperinflation in the island, and the weaponization of migration from Cuba to the United States by the Castro dictatorship in order to generate a crisis to obtain concessions from Washington.

They also had help from their communist ally Daniel Ortega.

Managua announced on November 22, 2021 it would lift visa requirements for Cubans traveling to Nicaragua. This opened a new path for Cuban migrants to reach the United States, and created an even greater crisis on the U.S. Mexican border. 

Repression worsens

Meanwhile Cubans continue to protest against the Castro dictatorship, and are subjected to systematic repression. At the same time Western democracies are financing the dictatorship. The main source of funding for Havana’s regime is not Russia or China, but the European Union, and now many Cubans fear that the Biden Administration is taking America down the same path.

Iran’s pro-democracy movement resonates with Cubans

Cubans joined Iranians at the 10/22/22 National Mall march to the White House.

Cubans witnessing the ongoing protests in Iran and around the world condemning the brutal repression of the Islamist regime in Tehran, and listening to Iran’s pro-democracy forces, find statements that resonate with their own demands to Washington and the European Union.

Cuban engineer and democratic opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas statement on the death of Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010: "We denounce all those governments and states in this continent and in the world together with the many institutions and persons that prefer a harmonious relationship with lies and oppression rather than open solidarity with the Cuban people. All are complicit with what is happening and what will happen." He was murdered together with the youth leader of the movement he founded, the Christian Liberation Movement, on July 22, 2012.

Iranian journalist and pro-democracy activist Masih Alinejad outside the United Nations in New York on September 21, 2022: “I’m not asking any Western country to bring democracy for us. We the people of Iran are brave enough to bring democracy for ourselves. We don't want them to save us; we want them to stop saving the regime.”

The Christian Liberation Movement's “Eleven concrete actions to isolate the totalitarian and segregationist Cuban regime” drafted in the aftermath of the July 2021 national protests in Cuba mirror the demands listed by Iranian pro-democracy activists.

Yasmin Green in her article “Iran's Internet Blackouts Are Part of a Global Menace“ published in Wired on October 19, 2022 describes how dictatorships learn from each other with regards to controlling the internet and their nationals.

“As we keep our eyes trained on the developing situation in Iran, it is critical to acknowledge that it is not an isolated event. Even since the protests in Iran began, Cuba has cut access to the internet twice in response to protests over the government’s handling of the response to Hurricane Ian. Around the world, a troubling number of nations have severely curtailed internet freedom, including full shutdowns, as their default response to popular protests. The most repressive of these regimes learn from each other, sharing technology and in some cases even personnel to establish an ironclad grip on the web and their citizens.”

Both Iranians and Cubans are battling against brutal totalitarian regimes that are willing to do anything to hang on to power, including work together, and an international community that is too often complicit with these regimes.

Both peoples seek to isolate the dictatorship, end Western democracies financial support for these regimes, recognize the opposition, and bar these dictatorships from participating in international artistic, cultural, or sporting events.

Migration weaponized against the United States

 

 Kelly M. Greenhill, an associate professor at Tufts University in her 2002 paper "Engineered Migration and the Use of Refugees as Political Weapons" described a pattern to use "coercive engineered migration" to create instability in the United States and gain leverage that was first established by Castro in the 1965 Camarioca crisis during the Johnson Administration, repeated in 1980 with the Mariel Crisis during the Carter Administration, and again in 1994 during the Clinton Administration with the balsero crisis. In 2015 an air bridge was set up from Cuba to Central America for thousands of Cubans to travel through to the U.S. Mexican border, and over 123,000 Cubans entered the U.S. during the Obama Administration’s 2014-2016 Cuba thaw. 

Representatives raise concerns and ask questions about changes in Cuba policy 

Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25), Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27), and Carlos A. Gimenez (FL-26) have expressed concern about and raised questions about changes in U.S.-Cuba policy in a letter dated October 24, 2022 and addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

On October 18, 2022, the State Department and USAID announced “$2 million in humanitarian assistance to support shelter needs for the most vulnerable communities who have been affected by the devastating impacts of Hurricane Ian in Cuba,” to be funded from the International Disaster Assistance (IDA) account. According to the announcement, the “humanitarian assistance will be delivered directly to the Cuban people – not through the Cuban government – through trusted, independent organizations operating in the country with a long presence in hurricane-affected communities.” The justification cited for providing this aid was attributed to Hurricane Ian damaging “an estimated 68,370 homes, of which 15,705 have completely or partially collapsed, and another 17,866 have completely lost their roofs. Additionally, the hurricane damaged or destroyed an estimated 9,000 hectares of crops in Artemisa, decreasing already limited food supplies.” Additionally, USAID stated that 43 sets of “firefighting equipment” were provided to a training station in Havana, and an additional 57 sets will be delivered at an unspecified date. According to reports, the Matanzas fire, the disaster for which IDA-funded firefighting equipment was provided, was extinguished by August 9, 2022. USAID explained that the IDA-funded firefighting equipment would replenish supplies that were damaged in combating the Matanzas fire, as none of it would be delivered in time to address that disaster.

In the meantime, we are deeply troubled that the Biden Administration has informed us that it will begin immediately returning Cuban nationals who escaped totalitarian Cuba, and that it is initiating monthly flights for the purpose. This decision seems to be a reversal from President Biden’s statement a month ago, that “there are fewer and fewer immigrants coming from Central America than from Mexico. It’s a totally different circumstance… What's on my watch now is Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, and the ability to send them back to those states is not rational.” The Cuban people endure severe oppression and egregious human rights abuses. Hundreds of activists, including children, remain imprisoned for daring to speak out against the regime. Certainly the situation in Cuba has not improved in the intervening month since the President’s comment, especially in the wake of the devastation from Hurricane Ian that prompted the announcement of $2 million in humanitarian aid. In fact, returning Cuban nationals to Cuba at this time would seem to be even less “rational” today.

On October 19, 2022 Politico published an advertisement placed by the Cuban exile community that explained the ongoing exodus and how it could worsen. "Cubans are fleeing from a vicious regime that does not allow them to have free and productive lives in Cuba. If they see the regime empowered by US government donations they will migrate to the US in even greater numbers." Some in Washington believe that providing resources to the Castro regime will lessen migration from the island, but the opposite is true. If Cubans on the island see the United States legitimizing and subsidizing the Cuban dictatorship, they will lose hope that regime change is possible, and see emigrating as their only option for a better life. There has been a historic correlation between mass exoduses of Cubans to the United States, and episodes of rapprochement between Washington and Havana.

[ Full article in CubaBrief here.]

Join the non-violent movement for democracy and human rights in Cuba

"Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer, and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it." - Mohandas Gandhi

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara on day six of hunger strike in Cuba

Today in Cuba there are thousands of Cubans jailed for their nonviolent demand for an end to the Castro dictatorship expressed during the mid July 2021 protests. Hundreds have been identified that were jailed or disappeared. It is known that some have resorted to going on hunger strike to protest their unjust imprisonment. Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is on a hunger strike that he began on September 27, 2021 and is still weak from a bout of COVID-19, and prior hunger strikes. This is part of the movement's repertoire of nonviolent tactics to resist the Castro regime.

Over the past few months some voices emerged in the diaspora calling for: a military response from external powers, the diaspora to arm themselves and invade Cuba or Cubans on the island to rise up violently against the dictatorship. The men and women in Cuba who have led protests on the island have maintained their non-violent posture, continue to call for civic resistance as the method to challenge the dictatorship, and are asking for active nonviolent solidarity from abroad. 

On July 27, 2021 the Christian Liberation Movement tweeted: "For solidarity with the freedom of Cubans. Eleven specific actions to isolate the regime. Christian Liberation Movement."

Por la solidaridad con la libertad de los cubanos. Once acciones concretas de aislamiento al régimen. Movimiento Cristiano Liberación https://t.co/upvduDXpZu

— MCL (@oswaldopaya) July 27, 2021

They said that although statements criticizing the dictatorship are welcome and needed that now is also the time for actions to isolate the Castro regime internationally, and sanction both the dictatorship collectively, and individual bad actors in the regime. These too are part of nonviolence, and requires international solidarity. Please share and support this campaign.

On August 25, 2021 the San Isidro Movement tweeted: "Help Civil Society - Look at the manual for non-violent struggle" and provided a link to their documents on strategic nonviolence, and how people of good will can help.

Ayuda a la Sociedad Civil - Mira el manual de la lucha no violenta. https://t.co/zbIqx4VpWv#EstamosConectados

— Movimiento San Isidro (@Mov_sanisidro) August 25, 2021

This is a moment in which many that have not been following the resistance movement on the island may believe that a quick violent action can remove this entrenched dictatorship. The opposition that has taken to the streets in Cuba does not advocate this, but are asking for supporters to be non-violent.

The rest of this essay seeks to provide an overview of the opposition's decision to opt for nonviolence, and how adopting violent resistance plays into the hands of the Castro regime.

The opposition in Cuba violently resisted the Castro dictatorship from 1959 to 1966.  In April of 1961 an expedition covertly supported by the United States was not provided sufficient air cover and support leading to their defeat, and the consolidation of communist rule in the island. Many of the Cubans who had fought alongside Castro, but felt betrayed when he installed a new dictatorship instead of restoring the democratic order, took up arms and went back into the hills. They were defeated by the regime and its Soviet allies that sent counter insurgency forces to battle the Cuban resistance in the Escambray after years of struggle in 1967.

Eusebio Peñalver with machine gun and Joaquin Membibre, with M-1 carbine

Eusebio Peñalver (pictured above) opposed the Batista regime and fought with the rebel army to restore Cuba's constitutional democracy. Mary O'Grady wrote about him in 2013 and quoted the Cuban warrior. 

"But when Castro hijacked the revolution for himself, Peñalver broke ranks rather than 'sell my soul to the same devil that here on earth is Castro and communism.'" He took up arms against Castro's military in the Escambray Mountains, he was captured in October 1960. He spent 28 years in Cuban prisons and was banished from the island upon his release in 1988. "From exile in Los Angeles he wrote about the 'naked brutality' and round-the-clock beating and harassment that he had endured: 'They made the men eat grass, they submerged them in sewage, they beat them hard with bayonets and they hit them with fence posts until their bones rattled.'

Total number of dead in this phase of the resistance remains unknown, but tens of thousands were jailed for decades. On January 28, 1976, within the Cuban prisons, dissidents and former members of the resistance came together to found the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.  This initiative to document human rights abuses in Cuba, and report them to the international community marked  the start of a non-violent resistance to the Castro regime.

Many movements would emerge over the next  45 years. It would be impossible to list them all. However, it would be worthwhile to highlight some that still exist today on the island. The Christian  Liberation Movement was founded in 1988, and in May 2002 with the Varela Project that thousands of Cubans signed onto forced the regime to change the constitution to counter it, and brought international attention to Cuba's democratic opposition. 

Oswaldo Payá Antonio Diaz, and Regis Iglesias turn in petition

In 1991 the Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement came into existence calling for free thought in Cuban education, and a return to university autonomy. In 1997 the Lawton Foundation was founded by Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and sought to educate Cubans on human rights and strategic non-violence, explicitly embracing the legacies of Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. 

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet

In 2003 following a major crackdown on the opposition due to the Varela Project initiative and overall growth in the democratic resistance the Ladies in White came into existence and through non-violent actions challenged the Castro regime to free their loved ones and to change the totalitarian penal code that creates prisoners of conscience. In 2011 following his release from eight years in prison, Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia founded the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU).  

In 2018, following the announcement that the Cuban dictatorship would further restrict artistic freedoms with Decree 349, a collective of artists formed the San Isidro Movement to campaign against the repressive law. 

What they all have in common is the decision to use nonviolent means and strategies to challenge the Castro dictatorship.

Human action is a powerful force that must not to be underestimated, but to maximized it requires knowledge, strategic planning and courage. It also requires an understanding of the real nature of political power.

Professor Gene Sharp, a nonviolent theoretician who passed away on January 28, 2018, in his book, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential, recognized that political power is "the totality of influences and pressures available for use to implement, change, or oppose official policies for a society." This means that political power "may be wielded by the institutions of government, or in opposition to the government by dissident groups and organizations."

According to Gene Sharp the sources of political power include "authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources, and sanctions."

If we look at Cuba, the communist dictatorship there uses propaganda claims, both internally and internationally, to assert that the regime has achieved successes in education and health care. These are pillars of legitimacy and authority for the Castro regime. The dictatorship has also trained and staffed a massive intelligence apparatus to monitor and surveil the populace in Cuba trained by the East German Stasi and the Soviet KGB with 62 years of experience.

There is a large military that is heavily embedded in the Cuban economy, including tourism. In the area of skill and knowledge there is a dictatorship with 62 years of experience of imposing itself through violent means on the populace in Cuba, and overseas in places such as Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. They have had experience in carrying out mass killings that rise to the level of genocide to assist client regimes. These first generation leaders are dying out, but many remain, including Raul Castro that have this knowledge and expertise in repression and terror.

One must consider the best course of action with the greatest likelihood of success while taking into account conditions on the ground.

Conservative activist Morton Blackwell explained a truth often ignored by activists of all ideological stripes in a talk titled "The Real Nature of Politics," which is required reading and offers three conclusions.

"1. Being right in the sense of being correct is not sufficient to win.  You don't win just because your heart is pure, even if you can prove logically that you are right.

2. The winner in a political contest over time is determined by the number and the effectiveness of the activists and leaders on the respective sides.

3. The number and effectiveness of the activists and leaders on a given side in a political contest is determined by the political technology used by that side."

These conclusions work both in a political struggle within a democratic order, and in confronting a dictatorship that does not play by democratic rules.  

These three ideas need to be present when planning resistance to the dictatorship in Cuba. 

The decision to confront with a violent strategy a regime with 62 years of expertise in exercising violence as an instrument of control with overseas experience in carrying out mass killings that rise to the level of genocide is a brave but foolish stand with little if any chance for success.

University academics and nonviolent theoreticians Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns.

Even the 26% figure needs to be looked at in the Cuban context.

The above mentioned Stephan, Chenoweth study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.” This depends on the nonviolent opposition movement having a strategic vision and maintaining its non-violent posture even under the worse repression. However, according to Stephan and Chenoweth, the more brutal the regime the better the results with nonviolent resistance and the worse the outcomes with violent resistance. 

Long time Castro ally Bashar Hafez al-Assad with Raul Castro

This can be seen in Syria with long time Castro ally Bashar Hafez al-Assad. The uprising against Assad in 2011 was initially nonviolent and despite brutal repression by the Syrian regime the nonviolent opposition registered great victories. However, when elements of the Syrian military defected and the resistance abandoned its nonviolent posture in the belief that violent resistance would achieve change faster. The end result, rather than undermine the Assad regime, changed the entire dynamic of the struggle to a terrain favorable to Bashar Hafez al-Assad. The body count of the opposition skyrocketed, popular mobilization evaporated, Al Qaeda inflitrated the ranks of the opposition leading to international support drying up, and the Syrian dictatorship consolidated its rule.

Considering that the Cuban opposition in the island over the past 45 years decided to resist the Castro dictatorship using nonviolent means, that the democratic resistance today as evidenced by the start of the July 11, 2021 uprising did so non-violently, and that concrete calls for help from the island are asking for nonviolent solidarity both inside and outside of Cuba now is the time to step up with the support requested, and not resort to the siren call of violence that has failed in the past against this regime.

Today, October 2nd is the international day of nonviolence and the 152nd birth anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi. On this day let us remember our nonviolent icons in Cuba and share their message with the world, and continue to carry out concrete actions to restore democracy, the rule of law, and accountability for those engaged in human rights violations.

"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’." - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

“If we must give our own lives in pursuit of the freedom of our Cuba, so be it.” - Laura Pollán