"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’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Cuba's democratic nonviolent opposition has repeatedly engaged in dialogues, including national dialogues, in order to mobilize and coordinate Cubans to reflect on our homeland’s future.
Gustavo Arcos Bergnes and Sebastian Arcos Bergnes called for dialogue in 1990.
In 1990, against the protests of many Cuban exiles, Gustavo Arcos issued
a statement to Castro asking him to convene a "National Dialogue," which
would include all segments of Cuban society, on the island and in exile.
During his address to the Worker's Congress on January 28, 1990, Castro
issued his response noting that "the Cuban people" will take care of those
activists. On March 5, 1990, government sponsored mobs attacked Sebastian Arcos's
home. On March 8, another mob, led by future Foreign Minister Roberto
Robaina, attacked Gustavo's home.
Oswaldo Payá throughout his life called for unity and dialogue between all Cubans, in and
outside the country. His National Dialogue program and All Cubans Forum in 2005- 2006, involved over 15,000 thousand Cubans both inside and outside of Cuba in discussions on a proposal for a nonviolent change towards democracy. I proudly participated in this dialogue that sought a transition from the existing laws of the dictatorship to the rule of law in a restored democratic order. Payá near the end of his life called for a
referendum on basic human rights. He was murdered, together with his movement's youth leader, on July 22, 2012.
Oswaldo Payá shows tentative program for a national dialogue in Havana on Feb 17, 2005.
In November 2020, the San Isidro Movement, a movement of artists founded in 2018 to protest Decree 349 that increased censorship in the arts in Cuba, engaged in a series of escalating nonviolent protests, demanding the release of their colleague Denis Solís González unjustly jailed on November 9, 2020, and in response to increasing regime repression against them for protesting for his release. On November 26, 2020 the San Isidro Movement's headquarters was raided and artists protesting inside taken by the secret police.
Activists under siege at the Isidro Movement headquarters in Havana, Cuba
Young Cubans gathered outside the Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020
Their
numbers continued growing into the evening demanding the Minister meet
with protesters to negotiate terms for a dialogue. Thirty representatives, elected by the hundreds gathered, went in and met with officials.
They
emerged with a commitment to dialogue and to consider the points raised
by the protesters. Meanwhile the dictatorship sent truckloads of
plainclothes security to surround the demonstrators, and to intimidate
them. They also closed off the path to the Ministry of Culture, and
began using tear gas and physical force to prevent others from
continuing to join the protesters. Instead of following through with a
dialogue to resolve the differences that had generated the protests the
regime launched a media assault against the San Isidro Movement against
the protesters.
The Center for a Free Cuba in April 2021 hosted a conversation titled "The San Isidro Movement: Nonviolent Resistance, Power and Dialogue" with Professor Jorge Sanguinetty and Cuban artists Kizzy Macias and Eligio Perez Merino. It is available on YouTube in Spanish. It was moderated by Sebastian Arcos Cazabon.
Do not confuse the dictatorship with the Cuban people
On March 22, 2016, President Obama did the wave with dictator Raul Castro
"National dialogue is an increasingly popular tool for conflict
resolution and political transformation. It can broaden debate regarding
a country’s trajectory beyond the usual elite decision makers; however,
it can also be misused and manipulated by leaders to consolidate their
power."
The Cuban dictatorship's Miguel Díaz-Canel claims that they "want to
strengthen [their] relationships with the United States, regardless of
ideological differences,” but this is not the main problem. The main problem is the abusive relationship between the Cuban dictatorship, and the Cuban people.
The Castro regime has not indicated a desire to dialogue with the Cuban people, but to dialogue with the United States. This is not the first time that has happened, and it is not a game changer, but a tactic to prolong the dictatorship. It has been successfully carried out before.
Lessons for Cuba from the experience in Romania
President Richard Nixon and President Jimmy Carter met with Ceasescu
The United States made this mistake before in Eastern Europe with their "successful" embrace of the Nicolae Ceasescu regime in Romania.
Out of all the countries of Eastern Europe, the United States had the closest diplomatic relations with Romania. This was due to the Nixon administration seeking
to exploit differences between Romania and the Soviet Union. Nicolae
Ceasescu denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and
continued diplomatic relations with Israel maintaining an independent
foreign policy from the Soviet Union.
Richard Nixon visited Romania
in August of 1969. In 1972 Romania became eligible for U.S.
Export-Import Bank credits and in 1975 was accorded most favored nation
status. In 1978 Nicolae Ceasescu and his wife visited Washington, DC on a
state visit and was hosted by President Jimmy Carter who welcomed the dictator and described him in the following glowing terms:
"I've enjoyed being with him. He's a very
good adviser. He's a man who in the past has suffered greatly,
imprisoned, tortured, but because of his courage and because of his
belief in the future of his own country, notable achievements have been
brought to the people who have confidence in him. It's a great
pleasure for me again to express my welcome to him to our country, and I
would like to propose a toast to a great leader, President Ceausescu,
and to the brave and friendly people of Romania. Mr. President, to you
and your people."
Despite having the worse human rights record in Eastern Europe it was not until 1988 that to
preempt congressional action, Ceausescu renounced MFN treatment, calling
Jackson-Vanik and other human rights requirements unacceptable
interference in Romanian sovereignty. Secretary of State Schultz had warned Ceausescu in 1985 to improve his human rights behavior or lose favorable trade status. The Heritage Foundation argued in 1985 that the previous twenty years of U.S. engagement with the regime in Romania had coincided with deteriorating human rights standards.
Ceasescu's regime was one of the nastier dictatorships of the East
block. In addition to the typical accoutrements of a Stalinist regime
this "American ally" managed to reach new lows. Imagine for a moment
being born and placed in a cage as a newborn washed via a hose with cold
water and never experiencing human touch.
10,000 Romanian babies infected with HIV through dirty needles.
Nicolae Ceausescu decreed in 1966 that Romania would develop its “human
capital” via a government-enforced mandate to increase the country's
population. Ceauşescu, Romania's leader from 1965 to 1989, banned
contraception and abortions and imposed a “celibacy tax” on families
that had fewer than five children. State doctors—the menstrual
police—conducted gynecologic examinations in the workplace of women of
childbearing age to see whether they were producing sufficient
offspring. The birth rate initially skyrocketed. Yet because families
were too poor to keep their children, they abandoned many of them to
large state-run institutions.
Hundreds of thousands of children were subjected to this. This was the country that US taxpayers subsidized with US Export-Import Bank credits. Romania under Ceausescu inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid's Tale.
Romania, the country with the closest diplomatic and economic relationship with the United States in Eastern Europe, saw the rule of Nicolae Ceasescuend in a violent blood bath.
The dictator and his wife executed in a show trial on Christmas day and
scores of innocent Romanians shot by the state security services. More
than a thousand people were killed. The communists in power under
Ceasescu remained in power until 1996 in a system marked by continuity until democrats were able to wrest control from them nonviolently.
Relations between the United States and Communist Romania were "great", but the relation with the Romanian people was horrid, and that defined how things would end - not U.S. - Romanian relations. Furthermore, the good relations between the perverse regime in Romania and the United States, is a stain upon the honor of America.
Lessons from Poland
Thankfully, Ronald Reagan took a different approach in Poland, and the rest of Eastern Europe.
Ronald Reagan entered office on January 20, 1981 and on December 13, 1981 the communist regime in Poland had declared martial law
and was cracking down on the Solidarity movement. 10,000 people were
rounded up and about 100 died during martial law. Ronald Reagan in his
Christmas Address on December 23, 1981 denounced the crackdown
(beginning at 4 minutes into the above video) and outlined economic
sanctions against Poland while demanding that the human rights of the
Polish people be respected. He didn't call on Poles from the diaspora to represent American interests in normalizing relations with the Polish Communist regime while Polish dissidents were being rounded up and killed. The United States took a stand recognizing the sovereignty of the Polish people.
The approach being advocated in Cuba, by some policy makers, pursues the approach pursued in Romania, and will likely have a similar, bloody outcome to the shame of those who have advocated it.
We need a real national dialogue in Cuba, and that does not mean the United States siding with the dictatorship in Cuba, downplaying its crimes against the Cuban people as Washington did in Romania under three presidencies. It means recognizing the dictatorship for what it is, and not what you'd like it to be and side with the Cuban people, not their oppressor.
This is my first contribution to the current dialogue.
Cuban refugees wait aboard a boat at the port of Mariel, Cuba in 1980
Fidel Castro overthrew the Fulgencio Batista regime on January 1, 1959 following a
U.S. arms embargo being imposed on the military dictator in the spring of 1958. On January
7, 1959 the United States recognized the new Cuban government ushered in by the Castro brothers and had actively pressured Batista to leave since 1958. With the arrival of communism in Cuba the United States was impacted in unexpected ways.
The honeymoon
The United States thought that it could have normal relations with the
Cuban revolutionary government which was also a reason for recognition
within the span of a week. In comparison it had taken the United States
17 days to recognize the government of Fulgencio Batista following his
March 10, 1952 coup. The United States had not been consulted ahead of time about Batista's coup and this led to the delay in recognition.
How the honeymoon ended
Despite the claims by regime apologists it was not the United States that provoked the souring of relations with Cuba.
On March 3, 1959 the Castro regime expropriates properties
belonging to the
International Telephone and Telegraph Company, and took over its
affiliate, the Cuban Telephone Company.
On May 17, 1959 the government
expropriated farm lands over 1,000 acres and banned land ownership by
foreigners.
On February 6, 1960 talks begin publicly between the U.S.S.R
and Fidel Castro. The Soviet Union
agreed to buy five million tons of sugar over five years. They also
agreed to support Cuba with oil, grain, and credit.
On July 6, 1960 the Castro regime passed a nationalization law authorizing nationalization of U.S.-owned property through
expropriation. Texaco, Esso, and Shell oil refineries were taken.
These expropriations combined with the Castro regime engaging the Soviet Union led
the Eisenhower administration to place sanctions on Cuba on October 19, 1960. The outgoing Administration
explored options to overthrow the new dictatorship that ended being taken up in the Kennedy Administration, first with the Bay of Pigs fiasco and later
with Operation Mongoose, overseen by his brother and attorney general Robert
Kennedy. Trying to destabilize Latin America
The Castro regime beginning in 1959 sent armed expeditions to Panama,
Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to overthrow their governments. The regime's destabilization policy led two thirds of the 21 states of Latin America voting to expel Cuba from the Organization of American States on February 14, 1963. A cache of three tons of weapons was found on a Venezuelan beach in November
1963 that was to be used to disrupt the democratic elections there.
Throughout the 1960s the policy of containment and sanctions were also
supported by much of Latin America because the efforts of the Castro
regime to violently overthrow their governments led to hemispheric unity
for a policy of isolating the dictatorship.
The "low point" in U.S. relations with the Castro regime was during the
Kennedy Administration with the assassination of John Kennedy in November of 1963. The Johnson Administration ended active measures to overthrow the Castro regime and pursued a policy of containment.
As already mentioned above the Cuban embargo was first imposed on the Castro regime on January
3, 1961 by President Eisenhower in response to the confiscation of U.S.
properties and toughened by President Kennedy a short time later. The
logic for economic sanctions was twofold: to punish the dictatorship for seizing U.S. properties and to raise the cost for the Castro regime
to engage in subversion in the hemisphere. Unfortunately, the reasons for it still remain today.
Following the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis Ernesto "Che" Guevara denounced the outcome. [UNESCO that claims to work to "prevent
violent extremism
through education and media literacy" and education for peace is
promoting the writings of Ernesto "Che" Guevara ]. Che was disappointed that the 1962 Missile Crisis was resolved peacefully.
"Here
is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear
immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new
societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles
were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or
thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own
voice."
The
Castro regime's second request for preemptive nuclear war became public
knowledge on September 21, 2009 and the newspaper of record The New York Times quoted the source:
Andrian
A. Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer from 1964 to ’90 and
director of the staff officers who wrote the Soviet Union’s final
reference guide on strategic and nuclear planning is quoted in the early
1980s, saying that Mr. Castro “pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line
against the U.S.
up to and including possible nuclear strikes.” The general staff,
General Danilevich continued, “had to actively disabuse him of this view
by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.”
In 1962 when the Russians refused to go along with the Castro regime's call for nuclear war the Cuban dictatorship responded by contracting Nazis. Fidel Castro personally recruited former Nazi SS Waffen members to train Cuban troops in 1962 and that he also reached out toOtto Ernst Remer and Ernst-Wilhelm Springer, inGermany's extreme right to purchase weapons. Bodo Hechelhammer, historical investigations director at the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)—the German foreign-intelligence agency, in an interview with German newspaper Die Weltsaid: “Evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from
personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its their own
objectives.” Migration as a weapon
Cubans were fleeing the Castro regime prior to and following the
embargo. However in 1965 the Lyndon Johnson Administration was faced
with the Camarioca Boatlift, an migration crisis provoked by the Castro
regime. Kelly M. Greenhill in her February 2002 paper, Engineered Migration as a Coercive Instrument,
gave an analysis of what the Castro regime did and how the Johnson
Administration responded that can be briefly summed up as follows:
In September 1965, Castro
announced that any Cuban who
had relatives living in the US could leave the island via the
port of Camarioca, located on Cuba’s northern shore.Castro also invited exiles to come by sea to
pick up family members who had been stranded on the island, following the
suspension of commercial flights between the two countries during the Cuban
Missile Crisis three years earlier.Two days later he began offering two flights
daily from Havana to Miami. ... By unleashing his
“demographic bomb,” Castro demonstrated to the US government he
could disrupt its immigration policy and the opening of the port at Camarioca
carried with it a “lightly-veiled” threat, namely that Havana, not Washington,
controlled Florida’s borders.Almost overnight, and with little warning,
the Castro regime had presented the US with a major refugee crisis.President Johnson initially
responded with contempt to Castro’s move, making a speech before the Statue of
Liberty in October 1965, in which he proclaimed that the US would continue to
welcome Cubans seeking freedom “with the thought that in another day, they can
return to their homeland to find it cleansed of terror and free from fear.” However,
after the numbers of those leaving the island began to escalate,
Johnson quickly changed tack and began a series of secret negotiations with
Castro. The result, announced the
following month, was a “Memorandum of Understanding,” a formal agreement that
established procedures and means for the movement of Cuban refugees to the US.
All the above took place before the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) even existed. The CAA was brought into existence on November 2, 1966 due to the
humanitarian crisis spurred by the communist dictatorship in Cuba
when hundreds of thousands of Cubans found themselves in a legal limbo that
necessitated the creation of the Cuban Adjustment Act. It also outraged the dictatorship because it meant that Cubans had an avenue to escape their grasp at any time, not just when the Castro brothers wanted to engineer a crisis.
Stokely Carmichael with Che Guevara banner in the background
Che Guevara, The Tricontinental and the Black Panthers Guevara
did not just advocate armed struggle but the kind of mindset that
guarantees war crimes and crimes against humanity. On April 16, 1967 in
his Message to the Tricontinental he embraced extreme hatred
as a revolutionary instrument: “Blind hate against the enemy creates a
forceful impulse that
cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the
soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people
without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.” He also did not fear
the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation to a conventional attack.
Just days after the Cuban Missile Crises, when the world came to
extremely close to nuclear armageddon, he was quoted in November of 1962 in the London Daily Worker :"If they attack, we shall fight to the end. If the rockets had remained,
we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of
the United States, including New York, in our defense against
aggression." According to Guevara nuclear holocaust was something that should not deter a revolutionary affirming "that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”
In his 1967 Message to the Tricontinental
the communist revolutionary proclaimed that to "die under the flag of
Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of
Bolivia, of Brazil — to name only a few scenes of today's armed
struggle — would be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an
Asian, an African, even a European."
Che Guevara's writings were borrowed from Mao Zedong and were all about guerrilla warfare. It is no surprise that in 1967the American radicalStokely Carmichael in Havana, Cuba was declaring that
"[u]rban guerrilla warfare is the only means by which we can win in the
United States because they cannot use bombs against us, since we are
inside the country. They will have to fight us in hand-to-hand combat
and we will defeat them." Shortly after Che Guevara's death in October 1967 Stokely Carmichael placed the Argentine's death in context and was quoted in Andrew Sinclair's Viva Che!: The Strange Death and Life of Che Guevara: "The death of Che Guevara places a
responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their
decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in
essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us."
Carmichael told an audience in Havana:
''We are moving toward guerrilla warfare in the United States. We are
going to develop urban guerrilla warfare and we are going to beat them
in this field because there is one thing the imperialists do not have:
their men don't want to fight, they don't want to fight what they call
guerilla warfare, which is really hand-to-hand combat." The Senate
Permanent Investigations Subcommittee on November 1, 1967 made public
these statistics on riots since 1965:
The
call for guerrilla warfare in the streets of American cities was
generating an escalation in violence and costs in lives lost, injuries,
and hundreds of millions in material losses in what Mr. Carmichael
advocated as revolution. The CIA report "DISSIDENT ACTIVITY: January 1966 through January 1973"
approved for release on June 19, 2003 described a dire situation in
1967 that "[a]lthough severe racial rioting had occurred in U.S. cities
in previous summers, it never had been as widespread or as intense as it
became in 1967. In the two cities hardest hit, Newark (26 dead) and
Detroit (43 dead), conditions of near-insurrection developed in ghetto
areas, and police and National Guardsmen responded with volleys of
automatic weapons fire."
Black Panther Party leader Stokely Carmichael in Havana
Lamentably this pattern was repeated elsewhere. Guevara’s call to action led to the rise of new military juntas in countries
that had not known them before in their history: Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, and Uruguay all had their first military juntas
after the Castro regime began to export guerillas and Guevara's ideology. Other countries such as
Chile, who had only known a military junta between 1924 and 1931, in reaction
to communist threats embraced Augusto Pinochet
in 1973 who remained in power for seventeen years. With the exception of
Nicaragua Che Guevara’s prescription for revolution in Latin America led
to a generation of military dictatorships and harsh repression. In
Nicaragua it led to a Marxist dictatorship, civil war and harsh repression.
Castro's intelligence services tortured American POWs in Vietnam During the Vietnam War, the Cuban government sent advisers to Vietnam who tortured U.S. prisoners of war between 1967 and 1969 in what became known as The Cuban Program in an effort to demonstrate to the Vietnamese how to most effectively break the will of American soldiers.
Terrorism The Cuban government has a long history of sponsoring terrorism beginning in the 1960s with the Tricontinental meetings, mentioned above, where terrorism was viewed as a legitimate tactic.There is also an
ongoing case of amnesia with regards to the Castro regime's history of terrorism.
Terrorism is an action,
usually involving the placement of an explosive or firebomb of great
destructive power, which is capable of effecting irreparable loss
against the enemy. Terrorism requires that the urban guerrilla should
have adequate theoretical and practical knowledge of how to make
explosives. The terrorist act, apart from the apparent ease with which
it can be carried out, is no different from other guerrilla acts and
actions whose success depends on planning and determination. It is an
action which the urban guerrilla must execute with the greatest calmness
and determination. Although terrorism generally involves an explosion,
there are cases in which it may be carried out through executions or the
systematic burning of installations, properties, plantations, etc. It
is essential to point out the importance of fires and the construction
of incendiary devices such as gasoline bombs in the technique of
guerrilla terrorism. Another thing is the importance of the material the
urban guerrilla can persuade the people to expropriate in the moments
of hunger and scarcity brought about by the greed of the big commercial
interests. Terrorism is a weapon the revolutionary can never relinquish.
President Carter visited Cuba in 2002 and met with Castro
President Carter ended Cuba travel embargo and began normalizing relations in 1977
On April 27, 1977 representatives of the Carter Administration and the
Castro regime sat down and personally negotiated an international
fishery agreement. This was the first time since 1958
that any officials of the United States government sat down with
representatives of the Castro regime to formally negotiate an
agreement.
President Carter in an interview with Robert Fulghum on December 19, 1996 quoted on page 310 of the book Conversations with Carter
said: "When I had only been in office two months in 1977, I opened up
all travel for American citizens to go to Cuba and vice versa.
And we opened up an entry section, which is just one step short of a
full embassy in both Havana and Washington. And those offices, by the
way, are still open."
Outcomes of Carter normalization with Castro regime Robert A. Pastor,
of The Carter Center in July 1992 in the report "The Carter
Administration and Latin America: A Test of Principle" summed the
outcome of the Carter policy on Cuba: "In November 1977 there were 400 Cuban military advisers in Ethiopia; by
April 1978 there were 17,000 Cuban troops there serving under a Soviet
general.
The Castro regime also played a crucial role in the Sandinista victory
in Nicaragua while the Carter Administration imposed sanctions on the
Somoza regime when it refused to pursue democratic reforms. According to
Robert Pastor: "Somoza pretended the sanctions had no effect on him. He doubled the size
of the National Guard and evidently believed he was secure. However, by
May 1979, with Cuban President Fidel Castro's help, the three
Sandinista factions had united and established a secure and ample arms
flow from Cuba through Panama and Costa Rica."
During the Mariel crisis of 1980, when over 125,000 Cubans sought to
flee the island, the Cuban dictator sought to save face by selectively releasing approximately 12,000 violent criminals or individuals who were mentally ill into the exodus.
Brian Latell, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and presently an academic at the University of Miami, in a June 8, 2015 oped in The Miami Herald giving an overview of the above book focused on how Castro dealt with the Mariel boatlift during the Carter presidency:
For me, Sánchez’s most appalling indictment of Fidel concerns the
chaotic exodus of more than 125,000 Cubans in 1980 from the port of
Mariel. Most who fled were members of Cuban exile families living in the
United States. They were allowed to board boats brought by relatives
and to make the crossing to South Florida.
But many of the boats
were forcibly loaded by Cuban authorities with criminals and mentally
ill people plucked from institutions on the island. Few of us who have
studied Fidel Castro have doubted that it was he who ordered those
dangerous Cubans to be exported to the United States. He has persuaded
few with his denials of any role in the incident.
Yet Sánchez adds
an appalling new twist to the saga. We learn that prison wards and
mental institutions were not hurriedly emptied, as was previously
believed. Sánchez reveals that Castro insisted on scouring lists of
prisoners so that he could decide who would stay and who would be sent
to the United States. He ordered interior minister Jose Abrahantes to
bring him prisoner records.
Sánchez was seated in an anteroom just
outside of Fidel’s office when the minister arrived. The bodyguard
listened as Fidel discussed individual convicts with Abrahantes.
“I
was present when they brought him the lists of prisoners,” Sánchez
writes, “with the name, the reason for the sentence, and the date of
release. Fidel read them, and with the stroke of a pen designated which
ones could go and which ones would stay. ‘Yes’ was for murderers and
dangerous criminals; ‘no’ was for those who had attacked the
revolution.” Dissidents remained incarcerated.
A number of the criminal and psychopathic marielitos put on the boats to Florida went on to commit heinous crimes — including mass murder, rape, and arson.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article23537077.html#storylink=cpy
Towards the end of the Carter Administration the discovery of a Soviet ground forces brigade operating on Cuban territory
and the ineptness in handling the Mariel boat lift crisis spelled not
only the end of the policy but was also a contributing factor to the
defeat of President Carter during his 1980 re-election bid.
In
1983 the Cuban government provided financial and logistical support for
the Wells Fargo armored car robbery which netted the Macheteros ( a terrorist group) $7.1
million dollars of which $2 million made its way back to Cuba via a diplomatic pouch. The whole story is detailed in a Hartford Courantinvestigative piece published in 1999. President
Reagan appointed Armando Valladares, a former Cuban prisoner of
conscience, Ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva,
Switzerland. Cuba was placed under the spotlight for its human rights
violations. The only time in 58 years when the International Committee
of the Red Cross was able to visit prisons in Cuba was during this
period of time.
Cuba's terrible prison conditions are no secret. In his 1986 memoir "Against All Hope" Armando Valladares cataloged
the brutality he experienced first hand as a prisoner of conscience for
22 years. A steady stream of exiles have echoed his claims. But
another bit of cruelty is less well understood: For a half century the
regime has let political prisoners out of jail only if they sign a
paper saying they have been "rehabilitated" or, when the regime is
under pressure, if they agree to leave the island.
Furthermore the nonviolent Cuban dissident movement in Cuba emerged and expanded during this time and contributed information on human rights violations before and during the visit of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights in 1988.
The
collapse of the Soviet empire between 1989 through the peaceful
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 put the Castro regime into a
crisis. However in the midst of this collapse, the remaining communist
parties from around the world gathered in Brazil at the Sao Paulo Forum and planned their comeback.
General Manuel Noriega with the late Fidel Castro
Castro's link to Noriega and Cocaine During General Manuel Noriega's 1992 trial information emerged publicly implicating the Castro regime that Sun Sentinel reported at the time:
"Federal prosecutors say Noriega traveled to Havana to ask [Fidel] Castro to
mediate a potentially deadly dispute with top members of Colombia`s
Medellin cocaine cartel. They say the cartel chiefs were upset because a
major drug lab had been seized in Panama despite payment of millions of
dollars in protection money to Noriega. According to the Noriega
indictment, Castro negotiated a peace accord between the cartel and
Noriega at the 1984 meeting. The allegation forms a cornerstone of the
racketeering and drug trafficking charges against Noriega."
WGBHFrontline Documentary: Cuba and Cocaine In a 1991 Frontline documentary, Cuba and Cocaine,
U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Commander Jeff Karonis, stated, "We would observe
in the middle of the day an air drop going on inside Cuban waters. The
scenario would be for a sm-ll twin-engine airplane with maybe 1,000 to
2,000 pounds of cocaine to fly over Cuba, drop the drugs to a
predesignated rendezvous point to several boats. Then it would exit back
down off Cuba, and many times a Cuban military vessel would be in the
immediate vicinity, right on scene with them.''
In 1989, a federal grand jury indicted Robert Vesco for arranging safe passage for drug planes over Cuban airspace after obtaining approval from Cuban authorities. According to the 1989 indictment, Reinaldo Ruiz was allowed to land planes in Cuba to refuel after dropping drug
cargo off the Cuban coast. Drug-smuggling motorboats would come from
Florida to pick up the cargo, and Cuban Coast Guard radar monitored U.S.
Coast Guard cutters to help the smugglers evade them. The indictments
demonstrated the foolishness of sharing intelligence on drug operations
with Havana.
The interview seemed to go on forever . . . one hour went by, then
two. And so, as much out of curiosity as to kill the time, I put on the
listening headphones and turned Key No. 1 to hear what was being said on
the other side of the wall. Their conversation centered on a Cuban
lanchero (someone who smuggles
drugs by boat) living in the United States, apparently conducting
business with the government. And what business! Very simply, a huge
drug-trafficking transaction was being carried out at the highest
echelons of the state. Abrantes asked for Fidel’s authorization to bring
this trafficker
temporarily to Cuba as he wanted to have a week’s vacation in his native
land, accompanied by his parents, in Santa María del Mar — a beach
situated about 12 miles east of Havana where the water is turquoise and
the sand as fine as flour. For this trip, explained Abrantes, the
lanchero would pay $75,000 — which, at a time of economic recession,
wouldn’t go amiss . . . Fidel was all for it.
Clinton resurrects Carter's Cuba policy with deadly results
Carter's détentepolicy would reassert itself first during the Clinton
Administration beginning in 1994 when President Bill Clinton authorized the U.S. military to have
permanent contacts and joint exercises with the Castro regime's military.This did not coincide with an improvement in regime behavior. The
attack on and sinking of the"13 de Marzo" tugboat in the early morning
hours of July 13, 1994 is probably one of the worse crimes committed by
the Cuban government under the rule of the Castro brothers and it is
definitely the best documented and widely recognized by international
human rights bodies and is referenced in books on international law.
However, after twenty three years it has been largely forgotten (outside of the Cuban diaspora). The last time a national audience in the United States heard anything about this incident was during Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba in 1998 when Ted Koppel's Nightline did a story and interviewed survivors and family members. Koppel in his program explained how the mainstream media reacted to the massacre:
"Three
and a half years ago, in the summer of 1994, something terrible
happened out there, seven or eight miles out at sea, off the northern
coast of Cuba. it was an incident that went all but unnoticed in the US
media. The Cuban-American community protested but they protest a lot and
as I say, we in the mainstream media all but ignored it. The Vatican,
however, did not.
Three
Cuban families seeking a better life away from the dictatorship
sought passage aboard the Cuban tugboat the “13 de Marzo.” The captain
of the tug was part of the group wanting to leave. The tugboat left
Havana on Wednesday, July 13, 1994 according to reported accounts at
around 3:00am. No sooner had they left the port they were being pursued
by two other tugboats, also of the Maritime Services
Enterprise of the Ministry of Transportation.
Seven miles from the Cuban coast line at a location known as "La Poceta" the “13 de Marzo”tugboat was confronted by two other tugboats . Amnesty International in their 1997 investigation
reported that the vessels which attacked the “13 de Marzo” were Polargo
2”, “Polargo 3″ and “Polargo 5″ and identified as belonging to the
Ministry of Transport. In the IACHR report the attack does not appear
improvised:
"Polargo 2," one of the boats belonging to the Cuban
state enterprise, blocked the old tug "13 de Marzo" in the
front, while the other, "Polargo 5," attacked from behind,
splitting the stern. The
two other government boats positioned themselves on either side and
sprayed everyone on deck with pressurized water, using their hoses.
The Amnesty International report mentions another vessel that "appeared to be directing operations was believed to belong to the
Cuban Coast Guard, which is part of the Ministry of the Interior.”
Despite
the “13 de Marzo” tugboat stopping and passengers attempting to
surrender while
mothers held up their children begging for mercy the other tugboats
continued to ram the tug and use high pressure hoses to blast them
overboard. Following this the attackers began to circle the wreckage
with the aim of creating a whirlpool effect
to ensure that all
would drown. Sergio Perodin, one of the survivors who lost his wife and
young son during the incident, explained how the massacre stopped in the Nightline program:
"We
saw in the distance a boat with a Greek flag that appeared to be what
stopped them. lt looked like the boat was watching what they were doing,
the murder they were committing. So they stopped and decided to pick us
up."
It was then and only then that the
attack was suspended and the survivors picked up by the Cuban Coast Guard.
On August 5, 1994 Fidel Castro made a speech
to the official news media justifying the incident and praising the men
on the ships that attacked and sank the "13 de Marzo"tugboat:
"The
workers' behavior was exemplary, there's no denying it, because they
tried to stop them from stealing the boat.
What are we to say to them now, let them steal the boats, their
livelihood? The actions
of the Coast Guard crews were irreproachable, they saved 25 lives.
So, this is what happened and as soon as information became
available, more details were given.
The Clinton administration stopped calling Cubans refugees declaring them migrants. The General Accounting Office (GAO) explained this change "for over 30 years, fleeing Cubans had been welcomed to the United
States; however, the U.S. government reversed this policy on August 19,
1994, when President Clinton announced that Cuban rafters interdicted at
sea would no longer be brought to the United States." Wet foot, dry foot" was a massive set back for Cuban refugees. At
the same time a 1995 agreement with the Castro regime empowered them to control who would arrive in the United States by registering Cubans for a lottery and up to 20,000 "immigrants" would be eligible to
enter the United States annually.
The WASP network
The
Cuban government infiltrated a network of spies into the United States
that it called the WASP network with the objective of spying on U.S.
military installations, spying on Cuban exiles, identifying locations to
store weapons and explosives on U.S. territory and planned to first terrorize then assassinate a man they identified as a CIA agent living in Bal Harbour, Florida using a mail bomb. Ten spies were captured and charged back in 1998, but five pled guilty and became witnesses for the
prosecution.
The Cuban "WASP" spies arrested in 1998 used coded material on computer disks to communicate with other members of the spy network. From the 1,300 pages taken from those diskettes translated and used during the spy trial
the criminal and terrorist nature of the Cuban regime's operation in
South Florida emerges. The networks primary
objective was "penetrating and obtaining information on the naval
station located in that city." Intelligence
operatives communicated about "burning down the warehouse" that housed the nonviolent organization Brothers to the Rescue and sabotaging their equipment. The spies also helped to identify who would be flying at certain times.
What was broken up
in South Florida on September 12, 1998 was a terror spy network with plans to damage property
and kill persons with the objective of planting terror.According to newspaper accounts in 2008 the Castro regime had rebuilt its spy network.
Ana Belen Montes spent 16 years spying for Castro at the Pentagon
Ana Belen Montes worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and spied for the Castro dictatorship from 1984 until her arrest in September of 2001 following the 911 attacks.
She was arrested without having her handler identified because it was feared the information she would provide to Cuba could be sold to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, when the average well informed person is asked about her
nine times out of ten no one has heard of her. The Washington Post published an extensive article on her and highlight the impact she had on U.S. security:
Like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen before her, Ana Montes blindsided
the intelligence community with brazen acts of treason. By day, she was a
buttoned-down GS-14 in a Defense Intelligence Agency cubicle. By night,
she was on the clock for Fidel Castro, listening to coded messages over
shortwave radio, passing encrypted files to handlers in crowded
restaurants and slipping undetected into Cuba wearing a wig and
clutching a phony passport.
Montes spied for 17 years, patiently, methodically. She passed along so
many secrets about her colleagues — and the advanced eavesdropping
platforms that American spooks had covertly installed in Cuba — that
intelligence experts consider her among the most harmful spies in recent
memory.
In 2003 in the aftermath of the Black Cuban spring in which
75 dissidents were jailed following show trials the Bush administration
responded by tightening sanctions limiting travel by Cuban exiles to
Cuba and remittances.
In 2006 the Sandinistas return to power in Nicaragua
with the old dictator Daniel Ortega now winning a democratic election
with 38% of the vote. Despite all of this, under the Bush
Administration, the
United States became the fifth leading trade partner with the Castro regime in 2008.
President Obama shakes hands with General Raul Castro in Havana in 2016
President Obama's normalization drive with the Castro regime
On April 17, 2009 President Barack Obama said
that his Administration sought "a new beginning with Cuba" and stated
further that he was “prepared to have my administration engage with the
Cuban government on a
wide range of issues — from human rights, free speech, and democratic
reform to drugs, migration, and economic issues.” Less than eight months
later Alan Gross was taken hostage in Cuba. Nevertheless, the
Administration continued its policy of unilateral concessions.
Take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Waive probation for one of five Cuban agents
convicted of espionage in the United States that planned at least one
terrorist attack in the United States and provided intelligence that led
to the downing of two US civilian planes over international airspace on
February 24, 1996 killing four
Cuba democracy programs would no longer be about promoting democracy but "building civil society."
The White House and Senator John Kerry pushed to unilaterally cut money for the Cuba democracy programs and freeze their funding.
Mr. Gross was returned to the United States in on December 17, 2014 following the release of the Cuban spies serving long prison sentences in Cuba, including murder conspiracy.
American Alan Gross missing teeth and emaciated following incarceration in Cuba
In 2012 there were reports in the media
of Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan officials meeting in Mexico to discuss
cyber attacks on U.S. soil allegedly seeking information about nuclear
power plants in the United States. Supposedly the FBI had opened an
investigation into the matter, but there was no mention of this in the
State Department's 2012 report.
Panama captured North Korean -flagged ship from Cuba with undeclared military cargo
The Cuban government was caught red handed on July 15, 2013 trying to smuggle tons of weapons hidden under bags of sugar to North Korea through the Panama Canal. Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli tweeted
the above photo with the following text on July 15, 2013 at
7:47 p.m.: “Panama captured North Korean-flagged ship from Cuba with
undeclared military cargo.”
Cuba caught trying to smuggle tons of weapons to North Korea in 2013 In the the shipment of smuggled weapons sent by Cuba to North Korea in part, was found the following: "A
total of 25 standard shipping
containers (16 forty-foot and 9 twenty-foot) and 6 trailers were found,
for a total of about 240 tons of arms and related materiel." The Cubans
provided the North Koreans with surface to air missile systems, two MiG
21 jet fighters, and 15 MiG-21 engines, eight 73 mm rocket propelled
projectiles
(PG-9/PG-15 anti-tank and OG-9/OG-15 fragmentation projectiles) to be
fired with recoil-less rifles, as well as a single PG-7VR round, a high
explosive antitank tandem charge to penetrate explosive reactive armor,
were also in the shipment.
In addition to the war planes, heavy weapons and projectiles outlined above, the Castro regime provided technology that could aid
North Korea's efforts to develop a delivery vehicle for their
nuclear weapons. This was confirmed by a March 6, 2014 report by a panel of experts for the United Nations Security Council reported:
6. In addition, various parts for three SA-2 and six SA-3 missiles were
in the cargo, such as the nose cones housing proximity fuses,
auto-pilots and transponders, transmitter antennas and some actuators
(figure 4). 4 __________________ 4 The Panel notes that some of the
SA-2 and SA-3 parts could also meet the criteria defined in the list of
items, materials, equipment, goods and technology related to ballistic
missile programmes (S/2012/947), whose export and import by the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are prohibited. See in particular the Category II, Item 9 of S/2012/947 covering “instrumentation, navigation and direction finding”
Colombian government seizes smuggled weapons shipment bound for Cuba in 2015 On March 2, 2015 news broke
that the government of Colombia had seized a shipment of ammunition
bound for Cuba on a China-flagged ship due to a lack of proper
documentation. The BBC reported that
"Officials said about 100 tons of gunpowder, almost three million
detonators and some 3,000 cannon shells were found on board. The ship's
records said it was carrying grain products." Blogging by Boz,
founder of Hxagon, a consulting and technology company that provides
risk assessments and predictive analysis in emerging markets, reached
a reasonable conclusion: "Two big shipments of weapons seized in 20
months means that this is probably a regular occurrence."
Missing U.S. missile taken by Castro regime for 18 months
On January 7, 2016 The Wall Street Journal broke the story that in June 2014 an inert US Hellfire missile sent to Europe for a training exercise was wrongly shipped on to Cuba when it was supposed to be on its way back to the United States. Since 2014 the United States had been privately asking the Cuban dictatorship to return the missile but refused to do so when first discovered.
Despite a request from the Administration, Cuba refused to return the missile, until it became a public embarrassment, over a year and a half later in February of 2016. This was happening while the Obama Administration and the Castro regime
were in secret negotiations to normalize relations.
The White House marginalized dissidents and downplayed their importance early on in 2009 refusing to meet with them; the Kerry State Department threatened the daughter of
a martyred dissident in order to protect the sensibilities of the
Castro regime's foreign minister in 2015. Not to mention claiming that
there was no room for dissidents at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana later that same year.
Official visit to Cuba
President Obama went to Cuba with his family in March of 2016, in the midst of a human rights
crackdown, and legitimized Raul Castro's regime before an international
audience. In October of 2016. Less than a year after a fleeing refugee
was shot in the back in the spring of 2015 by a Cuban state security agent. Mr. Obama issued a Presidential Policy Directive
ordering U.S. intelligence agencies to share information with the
Castro regime's secret police.
Raul Castro on March 21, 2016 in the joint
press conference with President Obama said that there were no political
prisoners in Cuba, and if any were identified they would be released
immediately. A list of current Cuban political prisoners was provided,
but they were not freed.
Military cooperation and intelligence sharing with North Korea
In March 2016, the month that President Obama visited Cuba, the Castro regime signed a confidential military cooperation
and intelligence-sharing agreement with North Korea reported the Paris based publication Intelligence Online. The Cuban dictatorship, under Raul Castro, has had extensive relations with the Hermit Kingdom.
Venezuela
On May 15, 2016 Henry Ramos Allup, the head of the National Assembly of Venezuela was complaining over social media of the leadership role played by a Cuban general and 60 Cuban officers over the Venezuelan military to maintain Maduro in power and continue exploiting Venezuela's natural resources. Despite this reality Secretary of State John Kerry in August of 2015 said "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the
Venezuelan crisis."
U.S. diplomats suffer mysterious attacks in Havana causing brain damage American diplomats started being
harmed in attacks in November of 2016. On December 7, 2016 the United States
and Cuba held their fifth Bilateral Commission
meeting where they celebrated progress on U.S.-Cuba relations, and
signed 11 non-binding agreements on health, the environment, counter-narcotics,
and other areas of cooperation. No word on these attacks. On January 2, 2017 Cuban troops in
Havana marched in a parade over which Castro presided chanting that they would
repeatedly shoot President Obama in the head so many times that they would make
a “hat of lead to the head.” Despite that on January 12, 2017 the Obama
Administration provided further concessions to Cuba gutting the Cuban
Adjustment Act and ending the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program that
had bothered General Castro for years. On January 16, 2017 the Obama State
Department issued a statement that "the United States and Cuba [had]
signed a bilateral Law Enforcement Memorandum of Understanding to deepen law
enforcement cooperation and information sharing." American diplomats were suffering
serious harm, including mild traumatic brain injury, permanent hearing loss
that included loss of balance, headaches, and brain swelling. Yet, according to
The Wall Street Journal no complaint was made until February of 2017 but
the attacks on American diplomats continued until August 2017. Cuban officials
say they don't know what is going on.
Cuban troops in military parade chant they'll shoot President Obama in the head
Cuba troops on military parade say they'll shoot President Obama in the head On January 2, 2017 Raúl
Castro presided over a military parade in Havana where marching troops
chanted about shooting the American President in the head:“Obama! Obama! with what fervor
we’d like to confront your clumsiness, to give you a cleansing with
rebels and mortar, and send you a hat of lead to the head.”
In January of 2017, in one of his final
acts, President Obama further gutted the Cuban Adjustment Act ushering in the wholesale deportation of Cubans fleeing to the United States. The President also ended the Cuban medical parole program that offered Cuban doctors asylum if they reached a U.S. embassy in the country that they were being exploited as slave labor by the Castro regime.
On the economic front the Obama White House repeatedly claimed to have achieved $6 billion in trade with Cuba
under the new policy but the actual number according to the U.S. census
bureau is $380.5 million dollars in trade in goods with Cuba.
Trade collapsed with Cuba during the Obama Administration
The consequences in the region
have also been negative. The Castro regime's military and intelligence
services have been heavily involved in the attempt to build and impose a
totalitarian regime in Venezuela for the past 18 years. Furthermore in
Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Ecuador regimes with links to
Havana pursue an anti-democratic agenda. Yoani Sanchez, the Cuban
dissident blogger journalist, wrote a May 28, 2017 entry titled "The Kremlin is Back." The Russians returned to Cuba, and made new inroads into Latin America during the Obama years.
How increased U.S. tourism in communist Cuba impacts Cubans
The New York Times has a terrible track record
in Cuba and its editorials continues that lamentable tradition
trying to make the case for the Trump Administration to continue the
failed policies of the Obama Administration on Cuba. However, even a
broken clock is right twice a day and The New York Times on December 8,
2016 reported how increased U.S. tourism to Cuba
has meant more food shortages for Cubans because food production is
geared to tourists. The record indicates that the case for tightening
sanctions, and pushing a human rights centered policy will best serve
both U.S. national interests and the prospects for a non-violent
democratic transition. Second part of October 26, 2017 lecture sponsored by the Young Conservatives of
Texas held in the
Escondido Theater of the Student Union Building at Texas Tech University. The talk was entitled
'How Communism Arrived in Cuba.
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