Learn about the Cuban government's close working relationship with racist and fascist regimes

“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres”. ["Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are."] - Spanish proverb

Kim Jong-Un shakes hands with Jose Ramon Balaguer, head of the Intl Dept of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee in Pyongyang. (2013)

Over the years well meaning people at the United Nations Human Rights Council have asked:  "Is Cuba changing?" The response provided has been: Have you seen any changes in their behavior here? The response continues to be "no." The confusion is understandable especially if one gets their "news" from The New York Times.

However, thanks to the internet and Google news one has access to a wide range of information and the facts underline the continuing brutal and repressive nature of the dictatorship in Cuba at home and abroad.

For example the Castro regime's "solidarity" with brutal repressive regime's crosses ideological boundaries. In the 1970s and early 1980s the Cuban government had a solid working alliance with the Argentine military dictatorship at a time when the military junta was disappearing 30,000 leftists in Argentina. This is in the news again now because of new declassified documents that have emerged confirming the sordid relationship.

Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón with Fidel Castro Ruz

At the same time at the United Nations General Assembly the Cuban dictatorship worked hard to defend the regime in North Korea leading the fight, but thankfully failing to block, the regime's referral to the International Criminal Court for its gross and systematic human rights violations. The dictatorships in North Korea and Cuba do not only cooperate together at the United Nations but also engage in arms smuggling violating international sanctions against shipping arms to North Korea.

While discussing North Korea government and the Cuban government's close working relationship one should also recall that in May of 2014 the official press engaged in a racist screed against President Obama. Below is a complete translation of the article in question taken from the blog One Free Korea:

May heaven’s punishment be visited on Obama, the world’s sole juvenile delinquent

(KCNA, Tokyo) The DPRK’s official news agency, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), announced a variety of reactions of citizens of the DPRK to the National Defense Commission’s statements on Obama’s visit to South Korea.

Hideous monkey-man

My innards were twisted and torn when I saw Obama’s ugly mug.

Dark head-dome and dull gray eyes, cavernous nostrils, thick-lipped maw, the more I gaze at him, the more I see him as a monkey in a primeval African forest.

His shape is like a beanstalk, and he scampers about with his arms flailing beside him, and scurries whenever he rides on a airplane or stands on a platform. It’s phenomenal how similar he looks to a monkey.

I am sure Obama is a monkey and doubt he is a human, because he behaves badly at every occasion, like a monkey who can’t stay calm and swings his red butt, and climbs up this and that tree and picks fruit, or picks up food from the ground.

He is unworthy to gorge himself in the south [Korean] land he has crawled into. Now he is casting his greedy eye at the north [Korean] land.

The more I see of him, the more convinced I am from his looks, behavior, and his cross-breed blood, which is impure blood, that Obama is born of a monkey.

One who is far from being a politician, and is instead an ugly sub-human, should not dare stab his finger at our dignified independent state, our republic the people’s paradise, like a raven arguing that he is whiter than the heron.

Obama is a failure and the scum of the ages without any status or right to speak filth (literally, chew the rag) about us.

Obama remains like a monkey even though the human race has evolved for millions of years. What is the habitat of such a man?

He is suitable to live among a troop of monkeys in the world’s largest African animal park, and licking at the bread crumbs tossed by onlookers.

Obama must immediately go into a monkey’s nest, carrying food over his shoulders, before he falls into contempt in the divine human world.

That is the only good way to hold on to the remainder of his life. 

 Following a formal complaint by the Obama Administration the dictatorship doubled down and defended the racist screed as the proper response to President Obama's addressing the human rights situation in North Korea during his visit to South Korea.

Communists have a long history of unsavory alliances with racist regimes stretching back 75 years to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, therefore the racist rants of the North Koreans should not come as a great surprise. However, that the dictatorship in Cuba that rules over an island with a populace which in its majority is of African descent would be defending this openly racist dictatorship and collaborating so closely with it should give one pause in the media campaign to rehabilitate the image of the Castro regime.

Human Rights Watch: "New Castro, Same Cuba"

Cuba's repressive machinery remains intact under Raul Castro.

"Despite significant obstacles to research, Human Rights Watch documented more than 40 cases in which Cuba has imprisoned individuals for “dangerousness” under Raúl Castro because they tried to exercise their fundamental rights. We believe there are many more. The “dangerous” activities in these cases have included handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, staging peaceful marches, writing news articles critical of the government, and attempting to organize independent unions." - Human Rights Watch (2009)

A decade after Human Rights Watch released their CUBA'S REPRESSIVE MACHINERY: Human Rights Forty Years After the Revolution which offered a well documented overview of how Cuba's legal system serves as part of the apparatus of repression and how it operated and operates today in Cuba the human rights organization released a report documenting Raul Castro's tenure as "President" titled New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era and the complete report is available in pdf format online. The report offers a breakdown of repression against dissidents, but also offers insights into the regime's totalitarian nature :

The Raúl Castro government has applied the “dangerousness” law not only to dissenters and critics of the government, but to a broad range of people who choose not to cooperate with the state. We found that failing to attend pro-government rallies, not belonging to official party organizations, and being unemployed are all considered signs of “antisocial” behavior, and may lead to “official warnings” and even incarceration in Raúl Castro’s Cuba. In a January 2009 campaign called “Operation Victory,” dozens of individuals in eastern Cuba—most of them youth—were charged with “dangerousness” for being unemployed. So was a man from Sancti Spíritus who could not work because of health problems, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in August 2008 for being unemployed.

One must participate in the propaganda exercise and in some cases carry out acts of repression against fellow citizens in the Cuban dictatorship's version of Orwell's 2 minutes hate which is the act of repudiation that in Cuba can go on a lot longer than two minutes or risk being on the receiving end. You can see and hear a sampling of how they operate in the video below beginning at 00:50:



A word about Human Rights Watch
When a totalitarian regime is criticized it must attack the critic and question their motives. It is standard operating procedure. It has been repeatedly used against Amnesty International, UN Human Rights experts such as Christine Chanet, and against Human Rights Watch. Following the release of the report the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington released a statement in which it described Human Rights Watch's "evaluation of human rights in Cuba is illegitimate and illegal." First who and what is Human Rights Watch? There vision and mission statement is clear as is the fact that they have a track record of being verbally attacked by numerous governments across the ideological divide. First Human Rights Watch does not recieve directly or indirectly any government funding and rely on private donations. Secondly, the organization arose out of Helsinki Watch which monitored Soviet and Eastern European compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords after their founding in 1978 and Americas Watch founded in 1981 which monitored authoritarian and military dictatorships in the Hemisphere and was criticized at the time for bias against El Salvador, Guatemala, by the Reagan Administration and was accused by The Wall Street Journal of "a gentler standard to U.S. adversaries in Central America than to U.S. friends." Now this version of events is provided by the self described"progressives" at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. The organization Human Rights Watch was to formally come into existence in 1998 as a fusion of these two organizations and similar counterparts in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Now that we have a better perspective on Human Rights Watch and in the spirit of the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words. Around the same time that Helsinki Watch and Americas Watch were doing their job on behalf of human rights Fidel Castro was hosting leaders of the Argentine military junta in Havana.

Fidel Castro, the Argentine Military Junta and the Dirty War

On the picture on the right is Fidel Castro with Argentine foreign minister Nicanor Costa Mendez of the Argentine military junta that according to a number of sources extrajudicially executed and disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentines between 1976 and 1983 in the Dirty War meeting in Havana at the Non-Aligned Movement gathering.


That is not the only member of the junta that he commiserated because he was also photographed here on the left with "President" Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón who, like Fidel Castro then and Raul Castro today , was"President" in name only, but in reality a brutal military dictator. In 2009, he is on trial for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of 56 people in a concentration camp. Sadly, whereas groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International sought to expose the Dirty War and stop it and to later document the crimes committed and along with the victims demand justice the Cuban government did everything at the time to block efforts to investigate the disappearances from their perch at the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The Castro Brothers Crimes in Ethiopia

Raul Castro & Fidel Castro with close ally Mengistu Haile Mariam

In the case of Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam or as Fidel Castro referred to him "Comrade Mengistu" there is a lot of information demonstrating the close working relationship between Mengistu and both Castro brothers. Cuba sent the first wave of what would become 5,000 Cuban troops to fight government rebels in December 1977-January 1978. In September of 1978 Fidel Castro arrived in Ethiopia to address both Ethiopian and Cuban troops and claim both victory and the Ethiopian revolution's popular support:

"Comrade Cubans, I can recall those days of December 1977 and January 1978 when we said farewell to the first Cuban internationalist combatants who were leaving for Ethiopia. [...]Eighteen months later we have returned to a Ethiopia which is victorious be cause of its combative sons' heroism and the support of international solidarity, as Comrade Mengistu stated 2 days ago. Moreover, it is also an already powerful Ethiopia. Tuesday's popular parade confirmed the enormous popular support for this revolutionary change. Yesterday's military parade tells us of the degree of organization and discipline achieved by the combative and courageous fraternal Ethiopian people. The rapid revolutionary offensive of the Ethiopian and Cuban troops practically annihilated the enemy. [...]Ethiopian brothers, together with you we have fought and we have won. Together with you we are ready to fight again and to win again. Together with you we pledge: Fatherland or death, we shall win!

Fidel Castro addressing Cuban and Ethiopian troops in Ethiopia September 1978

Castro's September 1978 speech places Cuban combatants on the ground in December of 1977. The importance of these dates will become evident later on. The next excerpt is from a conversation with the then East German dictator Erik Honecker discussing the situation in Ethiopia and Fidel Castro's assesment of Mengistu in February of 1977 following a visit and meeting with him:

Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual personality who showed his wisdom on 3 February. The rightists wanted to do away with the leftists on 3 February. The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on 3 February in Ethiopia. The political landscape of the country changed, which has enabled them to take steps that were impossible before then. Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints.

Fidel Castro with close ally Mengistu Haile Mariam

The dates are important because it coincides with the beginning of the "Red Terror" in which 2,000 Africans were slaughtered. This was a purge of political opponents. According to press accounts: "Suspects were rounded up, some shot, others garrotted. The bodies were thrown on the streets." There would be a Cuban military presence on the ground until 1988. In December 2006 Ethiopia's former dictator was found guilty of the extrajudicial killing of thousands of political opponents and his involvement in a famine which killed one million people and found guilty of genocide in absentia. A Reuters video report on the 2006 trial is available below:



Naturally the Cuban government would not have been pleased with Reed Brody Human Rights Watch's legal counsel's reaction to the trial and verdict at the time: "This is a man whose regime was marked by some of the worst atrocities of our time. Thousands of political killings [were carried out and] over 100,000 people died as a result of forced relocations."

No doubt the Castro brothers and all those officials in the dictatorship who have committed gross human rights violations feel a little uncomfortable when they see their close allies being tried and condemned for crimes against humanity and genocide as the ultimate condemnation by history. Not to mention that groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International "would very much like to see [Mengistu] physically brought to justice--not justice in absentia." Has anyone given any thought to what responsibility Cuban leadership shares with the events in Ethiopia? Difficult questions that the dictatorship in Cuba would rather not answer truthfully or be held accountable.