Recovering Cuba's Pre-Castro human rights legacy

"We feel great pride that the first, very modest draft officially submitted to serve as the basis for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was written by Dr. Ernesto Díhigo, an eminent professor at the University of Havana and a member of the Cuban delegation." - Guy Pérez-Cisneros

Cuban diplomats in 2018 disrupt discussion on Cuban political prisoners.

 The Miami Herald, December 8, 2019

Can Cuba’s human rights legacy be recovered?

By John Suarez
Freedom House
 

Over the past 15 years, I witnessed how Cuban diplomats undermined international human rights standards, first at the United Nations Human Rights Commission and later at the UN Human Rights Council.

• On April 15, 2004 when the UN Human Rights Commission decided by a single vote to censure Cuba for its human rights record, a Cuban human rights defender attending the session, Frank Calzon, was physically attacked by a Cuban diplomat.
• On March 28, 2008 the Castro regime’s delegation, together with the Organization of Islamic Congress, successfully passed resolutions that turned the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression into an investigator into abuses of freedom of expression.
• On Feb. 2, 2009 during the Universal Periodic Review of China, Cuban Ambassador, Juan Antonio Fernandez Palacios, recommended that China repress human rights defenders with more firmness.
• On March 17, 2014 at the UN Human Rights Council, Cuban diplomats defended the North Korean regime’s human rights record.
•  On Sept. 21, 2018 Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, during the Universal Periodic Review on Cuba at the UN Human Rights Council stated that “our country will not accept monitors. Amnesty International will not enter Cuba and we do not need their advice.”

Less than a month later, Cuban diplomats led an “act of repudiation“ at the UN to prevent a discussion on political prisoners in Cuba.

Artists are now being arrested in Cuba for protesting Decree 349, a law that would eliminate the few artistic freedoms remaining there.

Prisoner of conscience Eduardo Cardet marked two years in prison on Nov. 30 for speaking critically of Castro’s legacy.

International Human Rights Day in Cuba will be a day that the Cuban secret police harass, detain, and assault human rights defenders attempting to exercise their rights.

It was not always this way.

Seventy years ago, a democratic Cuba helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and establish the UN Human Rights Commission.

Cuba’s last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected in free and fair elections and assumed office on Oct. 10, 1948. President Prio respected human rights, and this was reflected by the actions taken by his diplomats at the founding of the UN.

Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters to the Commission. Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.

Cuban delegate Guy Pérez-Cisneros addressed the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 proposing to vote for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cuban Ambassador celebrated that it condemned racism and sexism, and also addressed the importance of the rule of law:

“My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.”

This democratic Cuba was overthrown on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista and hopes of a democratic restoration frustrated by the Castro brothers in 1959.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros died of a stroke in 1953.

Ernesto Dihigo, like Pérez-Cisneros, left the diplomatic corps following the 1952 coup, but returned as Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States in January of 1959 retiring in 1960. He left Cuba in 1989 and died in Miami in 1991.

Democrats should share this history with Cubans on the island to demonstrate that civil and political rights are an intrinsic part of a shared Cuban heritage that in 1948 made world history and that the regime in the island today would like erased.

On  Tuesday, December 11th in Washington, DC at 1pm we will revisit this human rights legacy with Cuban human rights defenders. Register here to join us and to obtain more information on the event.



John Suarez is a program officer for Latin America Programs at Freedom House in Washington, D.C.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/article222862140.html#storylink=cpy

The Concert of Europe: Conservatism's successful seven decade frustration of communist aims

"Every country has the government it deserves." - Joseph De Maistre, diplomat  (1753 - 1821)

A street of Paris in May 1871: The Commune by Maximilien Luce (painted 1903-05)

Earlier today was visiting the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France and the collections of art that span 1848 through 1914. Coming upon this work by Maximilien Luce some questions arose in my mind: "What would Paris be like if the communists had succeeded in 1848? Would this museum even exist?" Think of the loss in lives, art, and treasure over the past century when communist regimes killed over a 100 million and plunged hundreds of millions more into lives of squalor.

Karl Marx announced in his 1848 manifesto the arrival of communism in Europe in the midst of ongoing revolutions. There were multiple reasons for the unrest: poor grain harvests, blight in potato crops, and depressed economies across Europe over the previous three years and conditions were ripe for revolt and radical new doctrines to be well received. Conservatives in Europe, following the disastrous French Revolution of 1789 and the continent wide blood bath of the Napoleonic wars, organized against revolution creating a conservative order. In the United Kingdom, conservatism was manifested in the writings of Edmund Burke and his critical reflection on the French Revolution. Policies of reform successfully countered revolutionary impulse.

Visiting France once is confronted with a different conservative tradition. On the European continent the conservative ideas of Joseph de Maistre held sway. De Maistre represented a counter-revolutionary and authoritarian strain of conservatism that rejected the French Enlightenment and the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke. Having suffered the effects of the Revolution of 1789 in France de Maistre "argued for the restoration of hereditary monarchy," and "for the indirect authority of the Pope over temporal matters as a prerequisite for stability in Europe." Unlike Burke, his writings are a reaction to the destruction of his way of life in the French Revolution. Nevertheless his ideas would have a profound impact on French conservatives. De Maistre died 27 years before Marx's Communist Manifesto,  but his ideas lived on to resist the bolsheviks.

Joseph de Maistre in Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg wrote in 1821: "False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing."  This can still be seen today by those who continue to circulate the writings of Karl Marx, despite the disastrous human cost this theory has exacted upon the world.

Marx and the communists organized into revolutionary transnational networks to overthrow the existing order but following the French revolution, a conservative counter-revolutionary network already existed to resist the new threat.

Édouard Dubufe (1819-1883), The Congress of Paris, 1856, Musée national du château de Versailles

 The end of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars led to an enduring peace forged by conservative European statesman. It was a peace that endured without a major war, more or less, until 1914. The architects of the peace were Klemens von Metternich of Austria, Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (usually known as Lord Castlereagh), Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord of France. Out of the ruin of a continent wide war emerged the Concert of Europe.  Wikipedia described it as follows, "[t]he Concert of Europe, also known as the Congress System or the Vienna System after the Congress of Vienna, was a system of dispute resolution adopted by the major conservative powers of Europe to maintain their power, oppose revolutionary movements, weaken the forces of nationalism, and uphold the balance of power."  The last gathering of the Concert of Europe was in 1878 in Berlin. These were statesmen who understood the necessary relationship between freedom and order. Metternich gave it context, "[t]he word 'freedom' means for me not a point of departure but a genuine point of arrival. The point of departure is defined by the word 'order.' Freedom cannot exist without the concept of order."

"Lamartine, rejects the Red Flag," Feb 25, 1848. By Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux

The Concert of Europe had no formal structures and operated as a powerful network to counter both nationalists and communists from 1815 to 1914. The weak point turned out to be France. The monarchy was restored on April 6, 1814 with Louis XVIII and was succeeded by Charles X in 1824 but the new King of France was driven out of office by the July Revolution of 1830 on August 2, 1830. The King of France was replaced by a King of the French within the constraints of a constitutional monarchy. Louis Philippe I was the new king under the more liberal Orléans line, replacing the Bourbons. 18 years later he would abdicate his rule on February 24, 1848 and flee to England. The second Republic would be declared on February 26, 1848. This was the end of the French monarchy in France. Conservative forces were able to shut down radical revolutionary projects using violent repression combined with reforms to meet the demands of the populace preventing a repeat of 1789. Metternich explained the conservative need to accommodate and shape change as follows, "[t]he events which can not be prevented, must be directed."

Barricades in Paris in 1848

Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and French provincial nobility, at a critical point in the February Revolution rejected the red flag of the revolutionaries and made the case for maintaining the French Tricolor flag:

"I spoke as a citizen earlier, well! Now listen to me, your Foreign Minister. If I remove the tricolor, know it, you will remove me half the external force of France! Because Europe knows the flag of his defeats and of our victories in the flag of the Republic and of the Empire. By seeing the red flag, they'll see the flag of a party! This is the flag of France, it is the flag of our victorious armies, it is the flag of our triumphs that must be addressed before Europe. France and the tricolor is the same thought, the same prestige, even terror, if necessary, for our enemies! Consider how much blood you would have to make for another flag fame! Citizens, for me, the red flag, I am not adopting it, and I'll tell you why I'm against with all the strength of my patriotism. It's that the tricolor has toured the world with the Republic and the Empire with your freedoms and your glory, and the red flag was that around the Champ-de-Mars, dragged into the people's blood."

The painting by Emmanuel Philippoteaux, depicting the moment Lamartine rejects the red flag is on display at the Museum Carnavalet in Paris. This "revolution" brought General Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, to power. He was the President of France from 1848 to 1852. The French Constitution barred him from running for re-election so he organized a coup d'état in 1851 and became Napoleon III, the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. His rule ended due to his defeat in the Franco - Prussian war.

In 1853 Napoleon III ordered Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann to transform Paris from a city of a dense network of streets, overcrowded, dingy, dirty, riddled with disease and lacking an effective sewage system. What today makes Paris so distinctive, "the grand, wide boulevards that march in straight lines through the city, lined with bustling cafés and tempting patisseries" is Haussmann's creation.

"Conceived and executed in three phases, the plan involved the demolition of 19,730 historic buildings and the construction of 34,000 new ones. Old streets gave way to long, wide avenues characterised by rows of regularly aligned and generously proportioned neo-classical apartment blocks faced in creamy stone."

It also made it more difficult for the revolutionaries to set up barricades and made it easier for the military to move quickly to crush any uprisings with the wide boulevards. However the Franco-Prussian war that brought an end to the Second Republic and the rule of Napoleon III gave an opportunity for the communists to take hold of Paris and set up a commune that survived two months from March 1871 to May 1871 before the French Army crushed the communist project and restored order.

Barricade boulevard Voltaire and Richard-Lenoir1871

Tragically the horrors of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars that followed were largely forgotten and in 1914 the forces of nationalism, the breakdown of the balance of power arrangement set up in the Concert of Europe, and rising militarism plunged the world into a great war.  This destroyed the last vestiges of the conservative transnational network that prevented the rise of Bolshevism. Communism would arrive in Russia in 1917 and over the next century claim a 100 million lives and ruin countless more.

However, thanks to conservative statesmen in Europe the 19th century offered a space of peace and prosperity for seven decades that led to a great out pouring of art, technology, and also the remaking of Paris into the remarkable city that it is today. This would not have existed if the communists had triumphed in 1848 or 1871.

There are important lessons for statesmen to learn from this period of time for the 21st century.

Human Rights Crises and turning points: Valladolid, Spain (1550), Paris, France (1948), and ???? (2018)

“All have understanding and will and free choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God . . . Thus the entire human race is one.” - Bishop Bartolomé De Las Casas (1550)

Jacques Maritain

We are in the midst of an international human rights crisis. Will we rise to the occasion once again?

Human Rights are in crisis around the world and have been for some time. At such a moment it is important to return to and reflect on first principles.  The idea that human rights predate the rules set out by governments, some important thinkers argue, is based on natural law.  In 1951 the Christian Democrat philosopher Jacques Maritain published Man and the State and on pages 84-85 of his book explored the historic and rational foundation of human rights in the natural law that remains relevant today:

Shall we try to establish our faith in human rights on the basis of a true philosophy?  This true philosophy of the rights of the human person is based upon the true idea of natural law, as looked upon in an ontological perspective and as conveying through the essential structures and requirements of created nature the wisdom of the Author of Being.

The genuine idea of natural law is a heritage of Greek and Christian thought. It goes back not only to Grotius, who indeed began deforming it, but, before him to Suarez and Francisco de Vitoria; further back to St. Thomas Aquinas (he alone grasped the matter in a wholly consistent doctrine, which unfortunately was expressed in an insufficiently clarified vocabulary, so that its deepest features were soon overlooked and disregarded); and still further back to St. Augustine and the Church Fathers and St. Paul (we remember St. Paul's saying: "When the Gentiles who have not the Law, do by nature the things contained in the Law, these, having not the Law, are a law unto themselves ...") and even further back to  Cicero, to the Stoics, to the great moralists of antiquity and its great poets, particularly Sophocles.  Antigone, who was aware that in transgressing the human law and being crushed by it she was obeying a better commandment, the unwritten and unchangeable laws, is the eternal heroine of natural law: for, as she puts it, they were not, those unwritten laws, born out of today's or yesterday's sweet will, "but they live always and forever, and no man knows from where they have arisen."

Jacques Maritain played an important role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and  in the above mentioned book described how individuals of radically different and traditions were able to come to a consensus on a fairly detailed document.

"How  is  an  agreement  conceivable  among  men  assembled  for  the  purpose  of  jointly  accomplishing  a  task  dealing  with  the  future  of  the  mind,  who  come  from  the  four  corners  of  the  earth  and  who  belong  not  only  to  different  cultures  and  civilizations,  but  to  different  spiritual  families  and  antagonistic  schools  of  thought?  Since  the  aim  of  UNESCO  [United  Nations  Educational,  Scientific  and  Cultural  Organization]  is  a  practical  aim,  agreement  among  its  members  can  be  spontaneously  achieved,  not  on  common  speculative  notions,  but  on  common  practical  notions,  not  on  the  affirmation  of  the  same conception  of  the  world,  man,  and  knowledge,  but  on  the  affirmation  of  the  same  set  of  convictions  concerning  action.  This  is  doubtless  very  little,  it  is  the  last  refuge  of  intellectual  agreement  among  men.  It  is,  however,  enough  to  undertake  a great  work;  and  it would  mean  a  great  deal  to  become  aware  of  this  body  of  common  practical  convictions."

Timing is also key and in the aftermath of World War II where the crimes of the Nazi Holocaust were exposed to the world, and the failure of the nation state not only to protect the lives of its citizens but to systematically slaughter them created a shock to the conscience of the international community that made the drafting of such a document possible. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified in Paris, France on December 10, 1948. It had happened before.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Four centuries earlier in the midst of a clash of civilizations beginning with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492 and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in 1519 and the Inca empire in 1532.  Native Americans were enslaved and mistreated by the Spanish conquerors, but this led to the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas publishing "The Devastation of the Indies" outlining Spanish cruelty against the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Artistic rendering of Columbus's expedition to the Americas

On July 3, 1549 the Council of the Indies declared to the King of Spain that the harm to the Indians and to the King’s moral standing by the ongoing conquest required an examination of what was taking place. The Council declared:

The greed of those who undertake conquests and the timidity and humility of the Indians is such that we are not certain whether any instruction will be obeyed. It would be fitting for Your Majesty to order a meeting of learned men, theologians, and jurists … to … consider the manner in which these conquests should be carried on … justly and with security of conscience.

In April of 1550 the King, Charles I of Spain and Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, ordered that all New World conquests be suspended until a special group of theologians and counselors would decide upon a just method of conducting them. This led to a debate regarding the treatment of Native Americans by the Spanish conquistadors that took place in the Spanish city of Valladolid between the lay scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and now Bishop de Las Casas that same year. It was the first time that the morality of conquest was formally debated and a universal conception of human rights discussed that challenges assumptions today.

"The Devastation of the Indies" Bartolomé de Las Casas

 In 1550 and 1948 two international human rights crises led to two debates and reflections that first during the Spanish conquest of the Americas generated the idea of universal human rights and following the carnage of WWII and the Nazi Holocaust led the international community to agree on a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

School of Salamanca

Today in 2017, human rights have been in decline worldwide for more than a decade and all signs point to continued deterioration. Will this lead to another round of debate and reflection that will turn the tide in 2018?

Auschwitz

Will a world leader stop a foreign action in order to examine the moral implications as King Charles V did in Spain in 1550? Will the international community come together as they did in Paris in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust in 1948 and forge a new commitment to human rights? 

Questions one ponders on the eve of the possible arrival of  Hurricane Irma.

Partial Chronology of Cuban Diplomatic Malfeasance 1962 - 2015

The case against opening Cuban Consulates in the United States

Cuban diplomats denied U.S. re-entry visas following this plot being discovered

Cuban diplomats for more than 50 years have plotted and facilitated terrorist attacks, beaten up peaceful protesters, threatened and bitten protesters using homophobic language, and participated in the cover up of extrajudicial killings. In the ongoing conversation surrounding engagement with the Castro dictatorship some inconvenient facts are being overlooked.

Castro's Cuba even by the standards of a totalitarian regime does not behave as expected. The Castro regime has explicitly viewed terrorism as a legitimate tactic to advance its revolutionary objectives. In 1970 the Cuban government published the "Mini Manual for Revolutionaries" in the official Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO) publication Tricontinental and translated it into many languages, written by Brazilian urban terrorist Carlos Marighella, which gives precise instructions in terror tactics, kidnappings, etc. and translated into numerous languages which were distributed worldwide by the Cuban dictatorship. There is a chapter on terrorism that declares, "Terrorism is a weapon the revolutionary can never relinquish." This manual is still circulating today and the Cuban dictatorship has trained terrorists that targeted the United States and other countries in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s with acts of violence with the objective of altering political behavior. John Hoyt Williams in a 1988 article in The Atlantic reported: "In the Arab world some 3,000 [Cuban advisers] can be found in Libya and Algeria, among other things training terrorists and Polisario guerrillas."

Below is a partial record of Castro's diplomats, who are often spies, in their diplomatic posts around the world engaging in actions that should give White House policy makers pause before green lighting Cuban consulates across the United States.

New York City, USA (1962)
Cuban diplomats Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband and wife team at the Cuba Mission in New York City, who in reality were State Security agents who plotted to murder large numbers of Americans. Both were expelled for their role in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962 which sought to detonate 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

New York City, USA (1969)
A Black Panther plot to bomb five Manhattan department stores on April 3, 1969 during the Easter shopping rush was broken up by the indictment of 21 members of the militant group on April 2nd. The Chicago Tribune reported that they had planned to "set off bombs in the midtown stores of Macy's Alexander's. Bloomingdale's, Korvette's and Abercombie & Fitch. The bombings were to be accompanied by gunfire in the crowded stores." They had also planned to dynamite the tracks of Penn Central railroad at six location and bomb a police station in the Morrisania section of the Bronx to divert police from the railroad bombings. On April 10, 1969 Andrew Tulley reported in the Reading Eagle that that the Communist Cuban mission to the United Nations has become a financial and propaganda headquarters for promoting revolution by black militants and white radicals. ... Specifically, it was said, these include the Black Panther Party. The United States denied re-entry visas to two Cuban U.N. diplomats ..."as a normal reaction to evidence that the Cuban mission is engaged in extensive subversive activities. One of the two diplomats, Jesus Jimenez Escobar, a mission counselor, is described as one of the Havana regime's leading experts in the export of revolution."  Tully had met one of the five other Cuban diplomats then under investigation in Cuba in  1959: Lazaro Espinosa, third secretary at the U.N. missions was introduced to him by Che Guevara at the Havana Hilton Hotel as Castro's "leading technician in terrorism." The judge presiding over the Black Panther trial on February 21, 1970 had three gasoline bombs explode in front of his home. On May 13, 1971 a jury with five African American members acquitted the thirteen Black Panther members of murder conspiracy charges.

New York City, USA (1994)
 The United States expelled two Cuban diplomats on April 12, 1995, for having assaulted people last August (1994) protesting in front of Cuba's mission to the United Nations. The diplomats, Edmundo Suarez Hernandez, a counselor, and Saul Hermida Griego, an attache, and their families were told are to leave by midnight Sunday. The Cuban Foreign Ministry responded with a statement that the incident in August had been "provoked by terrorist groups who go around unpunished because of the inefficiency of the New York police." On August 30, 1994 anti-Castro protesters chained themselves to the Cuban Mission door. Cuban diplomats attacked them with sticks, screaming, "Cuba Our Way!" Two diplomats wielded a crowbar and ax handle. More than a dozen police officers suffered injuries. Four Cuban Mission employees were arrested on assault charges. All four were released after claiming diplomatic immunity.  US officials said it's unusual for diplomats to be expelled for violent behavior.

Mexico City, Mexico (1996)
On March 8, 1996 a group of Mexican students belonging to various universities,  a federal representative of the PAN Cristián Castaño Contreras, and a Cuban journalist were brutally assaulted by officers and employees of the Cuban embassy during a peaceful demonstration outside of the embassy. The attack left many injured. The Cuban embassy staff even attacked a student displaying a Mexican flag and tried to destroy it. The behavior was reminiscent of a Rapid Response Brigade in Cuba used to beat down dissidents in the island.

Washington, DC (2000)
On April 14, 2000 nonviolent protesters gathered in front of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington DC. In the early evening, a band of about 10 Cuban diplomats, alleged to have been drinking took off their coats, ties and jewelry, began screaming obscenities and yelling threats, and indiscriminately attacked 20 peaceful protesters  with fists and sticks, even injuring a Secret Service officer. Among the Cuban diplomats engaged in the violent assault, according to one of the victims, was Gustavo Machin Gomez.

Paris, France (2003)
At the Cuban embassy in Paris on April 24, 2003 Cuban diplomats engaged in the brutal beating of nonviolent protesters with iron bars and threatened them with deadly force. "Not only did members of the embassy come out with iron bars to hit us, but one of them was carrying a firearm, which he loaded while outside the embassy," RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. "This new element is extremely serious. It is unacceptable that persons linked to a foreign embassy should commit such offences on French territory."

Geneva, Switzerland (2004)
On April 15, 2004 when the United Nations Human Rights Commission  decided by a single vote to censure the communist regime for its human rights record a Cuban human rights defender Frank Calzon was physically attacked by members of the Cuban diplomatic delegation. According to Freedom House: "Witnesses said a Cuban delegate punched Mr. Calzon, knocking him unconscious. UN guards reportedly protected him from further assault by additional members of the Cuban delegation."

San Jose, Costa Rica (2004)
Costa Rican members of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba led by former president Luis Alberto Monge invited other Latin American and European leaders as well as representatives of civil society to hold a “International Forum for Democracy in Cuba” on the eve of the Ibero-American Summit on November 16, 2004.  The Cuban government learned on November 9 that the event was being planned and attempted through diplomatic channels to have the event suspended, accusing participants of being: CIA agents, terrorists, and servants of the North American government, and requesting that Costa Rican authorities inform them of the steps taken to cancel the event. When Costa Rica refused to suspend the event on November 10 the Costa Rican consul was called to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations and once again the demand to have the event cancelled was made.  A diplomatic note was sent on November 11 followed by a second one on November 12 with the aim of canceling the forum. Having failed to stop the event Cuban diplomats organized an act of repudiation inside the Legislative Assembly. Costa Rica's governing institutions are open to the public. The Cuban counsel Rafael Dausá Céspedes utilized groups with ideological affinities with the Cuban revolution in Costa Rica to physically storm the event to use physical intimidation and threats of violence to shut it down after it had started. Six activists including the vice-president of the Czech Senate, Jan Ruml began a “sit-in” to protest the actions of the mob. They refused to depart the room under a threat of violence. . This led to a two and a half hour stand off. Meanwhile in another part of the same building the event went off without a hitch, because the sixty did not want to surrender the room to the six.

Oslo, Norway (2010)
On May 22, 2010 Norwegian media reported that Cuban diplomat, Carmen Julia Guerra, insulted, threatened, and bit a young Norwegian woman, Alexandra Joner age 19, of Cuban descent on her mother's side while she was across the street from the Cuban embassy in Oslo. She was filming a non-violent demonstration in solidarity with the Ladies in White and in remembrance of martyred Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The main national newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten,  photographed the young girl with bite marks on her hand.

Mexico (2012)
In January of 2012 there were reports in the media of Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan diplomats meeting in Mexico to discuss cyber attacks on U.S. soil and allegedly seeking information about nuclear power plants in the United States. 

Dominican Republic (2012)
On January 28, 2012 in the Dominican Republic the Cuban ambassador physically assaulted a 70 year old Cuban exile who had screamed "Down with Fidel! Down with the Castros!" This same diplomat had been already expelled by the United States in 1995 for beating up peaceful demonstrators in New York City. 

Injured in Panama by Cuban diplomats

Panama (2015)
On April 8, 2015 Cuban diplomats streamed out of the the Cuban Embassy in Panama attacking civil society representatives who at the time were laying flowers at a bust of Jose Marti in a public park nearby. Several activists were injured and at least one required surgery. During the Summit of the Americas Cuban diplomats disrupted official meetings in order to block Cuban and Venezuelan dissidents from taking part, despite being officially accredited. 

Havana, Cuba (2016)
 Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine and Commissioner Ricky Arriola, had a highly publicized meeting in Cuba to discuss opening a Cuba consulate on Miami Beach with Gustavo Machin Gomez a Cuban diplomat who took part in a violent attack on peaceful demonstrators in 2000 in Washington DC. He was expelled from the United States for his espionage activities in 2002. Chris S. Simmons, a 23-year Counterintelligence Officer, from 1996-2004 involved with the majority of US Counterintelligence successes against the Castro regime provided the background on the Cuban Foreign Ministry's, deputy director of North American affairs. According to Simmons, Machin was involved in the operation to "spin" the death of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in 2012. Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero were killed in an incident in which state security agents hit their car in a second vehicle, on July 22, 2012. These are the kind of individuals we will have in our community if a Cuban consulate is opened.

Cuba Consulate in South Florida: Continuing the dialogue

On April 1, 2016 The Miami Herald published my letter to the editor which discussed why a Cuba consulate in South Florida would be a bad idea. The response by a critic was that:

 "We have consulates from countries we don't necessarily like but they're here."

This did not respond to the issue raised which was the concern that Cuban diplomats are often in reality intelligence officers, as was the case with the individual that the Miami Beach mayor and commissioner met with during President Obama's visit to Cuba. Furthermore that intelligence operations in the past in South Florida had crossed the line into sabotage, and murder conspiracy. Finally that these practices by Cuban intelligence agents stretches back over decades.

Cuban diplomats expelled in 1962 plotting terror attack in NYC

Cuban "diplomats" Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband and wife team at the Cuba Mission in New York City, who in reality were State Security agents who plotted to murder large numbers of Americans. Both were expelled for their role in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962 which sought to detonate 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

This un-diplomatic behavior is not limited to the United States. At the Cuban embassy in Paris, France on April 24, 2003 so-called Cuban diplomats engaged in the brutal beating of nonviolent protesters with iron bars and threatened them with deadly force.

"Not only did members of the embassy come out with iron bars to hit us, but one of them was carrying a firearm, which he loaded while outside the embassy," RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. "This new element is extremely serious. It is unacceptable that persons linked to a foreign embassy should commit such offences on French territory."

The behavior of Cuban diplomats in other countries should also serve as reason for caution in opening consulates across the United States, and especially in South Florida with a population of Cuban-Americans that would be specially targeted by the dictatorship.

Norwegian girl of Cuban descent on her mom's side was bitten by a Cuban diplomat

On May 22, 2010 Norwegian media reported that Cuban diplomat, Carmen Julia Guerra, insulted, threatened, and bit a young Norwegian woman, Alexandra Joner age 19, of Cuban descent on her mother's side while she was across the street from the Cuban embassy in Oslo. She was filming a non-violent demonstration in solidarity with the Ladies in White and in remembrance of martyred Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The main national newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten,  photographed the young girl with bite marks on her hand. The video is embedded below.


The fact of the matter is that on occasion due to political and security issues consulates and embassies are closed by the United States. For example, on March 18, 2014 the Obama administration ordered the closing of the Syrian embassy in Washington DC and the closing of Syrian consulates elsewhere in the United States.

The United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea. North Korea does have a permanent UN mission in New York City but no embassy in Washington DC or consulates in the rest of the United States. This is a reasonable policy due to the Hermit Kingdom's outlaw behavior. Considering Cuba's extensive history of sponsoring terrorism North Korea is an appropriate comparison for U.S. policy makers considering opening up embassies. 

Opening Cuban consulates around the United States is a bad idea that will come back to haunt those who are now advocating this.

Je suis Cuba

"I know what this is, I have lived it. The families of the more than 120 fatally wounded victims will never recover." - Rosa María Payá Acevedo

Artwork by Jean Jullien on the left and Rosa María Payá  on the right

Je suis Cuba

By Rosa María Payá Acevedo

Diario de Cuba, November 15, 2015 - Two years ago in Paris, at exactly this time, I had the satisfaction of meeting in person a renowned Cuban writer who lives there. I was there only a few days and traveled little around the city. They were days of work, meetings and interviews before flying to Strasbourg, to attend the Sakharov Prize ceremony for the child activist Malala Yousafzai, who had suffered an assassination attempt at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban in an attack that shocked the world.

I remember that at the foot of the most famous tower in the world I could hear all the languages  echoing. I imagine that this is the sound of freedom of movement. Something thousands of Cubans have not had, Cubans who escape the island on rafts, ready to die and in many cases dying in the sea. The same freedom of movement that made possible the terror in the City of Light this Friday, when eight boys started shooting at dozens of other boys.

I know what this is, I have lived it. The families of the more than 120 fatally wounded victims will never recover. This November will not be easy for the French people to overcome. Like the Christian refugees, who have been lucky enough to escape the ethnic cleansing occurring in the Middle East with less media coverage, will not return to their countries.

And again it is repeated: attacks on human dignity are no longer circumscribed by geographical boundaries, call it jihadism or the Castros’ totalitarianism. Terror has shown the power to cross the Mediterranean, like authoritarianisms are reproducing in Latin America.

I fear that the crime that took the life of the young activist Harold Cepero on a Cuban highway should warn us of the deaths of teenagers on the streets of Caracas two years later.

Solidarity is no longer a question of altruism but of survival. We do not ask for whom the bell tolls. As in Paris and so in Havana, it tolls for all of us.