"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)
As the death toll climbs, outrage continues to build in Nicaragua, and tens of thousands continue to protest.
Tens of thousands protested against Ortega regime on Saturday
Thousands of Nicaraguans congregated outside of Managua's Cathedral during a massive march called by the Catholic Church
as a day of prayer, in Nicaragua, Saturday, April 28, 2018.
This gathering was called following the largest protests Nicaragua has seen in 40 years.
(AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga)
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article210061224.html#storylink=cpy
The sounds and images of resistance to the Sandinista regime were seen across social media and a selection of these images can be seen below.
So this has mostly been a vigil for those killed, with very few calls for Ortega to step down, or that he’s Somoza, etc. Except for when this guy gets going and I’m kind of here for it pic.twitter.com/4qGXN4AlOb
Death toll in Nicaragua has risen to 43 dead confirmed with other reports placing the number of dead at 58. Video evidence shows that Ortega's police were killing non-violent protesters. The Washington Post published a series of videos provided by the family of Maroni Lopez, a 22-year-old student who was killed by the police on April 20. Video includes the final moments before Maroni was killed.
#Nicaragua
"Supe de tres jóvenes... les arrancaron las uñas de las manos. Las historias son terribles y nuestra juventud no merece eso”, expresó llorando el religioso. https://t.co/48r0UQQ0qa
La Prensa has provided sketches of 34 of the victims and photos of 24 of them. They were murdered for peacefully protesting against the Sandinista regime. Jonathan Valerio, a twenty year old was shot twice in the neck and killed for saying "I do not agree with this regime." Michael Humberto Cruz, age 29, was a graduate student at the Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua (Upoli). He was shot in the chest by an AK-47 wielded by Ortega's thugs. Journalists in Nicaragua continue to fear for their lives and continue to work through the fear. Sandinistas tried to burn a radio station to the ground with 12 persons inside.
It is time for Ortega to go. It is time for Nicaragua to be free of the Sandinista dictatorship.
Christian Liberation Movement demands release of Eduardo Cardet and questions seizure of 10,000 signatures.
Eduardo Cardet Concepción and Rosa María Rodríguez Gil
Rosa María Rodríguez (MCL) presents the case of Eduardo Cardet in the offices of the Council of State On
April 26, 2018 at 8:30 am Rosa Maria Rodríguez Gil, member of the
Coordinating Council of the Christian Liberation Movement, presented
herself at the offices of the Council of State where she had
arranged an appointment.
She was received by Felicia
Martínez Suárez who explained that she is the one who attends to citizens for the Council of State.
Rosa Rodríguez
explained that on April 5th she and her husband Alejandro Febles were
detained for 24 hours and they seized 10,000 signatures for the freedom
of Eduardo Cardet that the MCL had collected and precisely planned to
deliver at this meeting.
Update.04/26 The situation of Eduardo Cardet remains unchanged.He can only call 5 minutes a week, without privacy so it is very difficult to know his real state.
Update 04/17 Eduardo Cardet received a visit from his wife yesterday. He was not allowed to deliver letters addressed to his children and his mother, this for no reason, another unjust imposition.The
lawyer informs that the application for parole is going through the
"corresponding channels" but there are still no answers. In relation to his health, a specialist in maxillofacial surgery, indicated a biopsy
and thinks that in all probability his case requires surgeryeven a skin graft is probable.
Eduardo Cardet Concepción's health is deteriorating
Background Eduardo Cardet Concepción,
successor to martyred founding leader of the Christian Liberation
Movement, Oswaldo Paya, and unjustly jailed since November 30, 2016 was
badly beaten, subjected to a political show trial, sentenced to three years in prison on March 20, 2017, and stabbed twice by three prisoners on December 19, 2017.
This attack was most probably engineered by Castro's State Security in
order to permanently silence him. The seriousness of the attack was only learned on January 15, 2018 when his wife was finally able to visit him in prison and see the extent of his injuries. His health has been worsening and he has been refused religious assistance. It is feared that an injury on Eduardo Cardet's nosemay require surgery because it could be cancer.
Nicaraguan authorities have cracked down on coverage of the protests and independent media outlets, censoring news broadcasts and blocking TV broadcasts, as multiple journalists have been injured while covering the protests. More: https://t.co/6zvgW6eSp2
Furthermore, students are being arbitrarily detained, mistreated and tortured according to testimony by some of them who have been released. Additionally there continue to be many who are detained.
"When life goes wrong, a wet sponge erases the whole picture."- Cassandra, from Agamemnon by Aiskhylos
Carlos Alberto Montaner (Left) warns of the threat AMLO presents to Mexico
Tonight my concerns for the future of Mexico deepened when a thinker that I greatly admire, Carlos Alberto Montaner, retweeted my tweet and added a cautionary prediction on the July 1, 2018 Presidential election in Mexico. He warned that, "AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador] leads the polls in Mexico. The people commit suicide. Venezuelans and Cubans can attest to that. The Czechoslovaks also committed suicide after the Second World War. They paid with 40 years of communist totalitarianism. Until 1989 they did not breathe freedom again."
AMLO encabeza las encuestas en México. Los pueblos se suicidan. Los venezolanos y los cubanos pueden dar fe de ello. Los checoslovacos también se suicidaron tras la II Guerra mundial. Pagaron con 40 años de totalitarismo comunista. Hasta 1989 no volvieron a respirar libertad. https://t.co/dtyfTxF8AY
Montaner is well informed, wise and his opinion has considerable weight. Amazon provides the following biography on this scholar and defender of freedom which is excerpted below.
Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1943. Has lived in Madrid since 1970. Has
been a university professor in various institutions in Latin America,
the United States and Spain. He is a writer and journalist. Dozens of
newspapers in Latin America, Spain and the United States have published
his weekly column for the past 40 years at least. He has been described
by the magazine ‘Poder’ (‘Power’) as one of the most widely read and
most influential columnists in the Spanish-language world. The number of
readers who have access to his articles every week is estimated at 6
million.
He has participated as an observer at several elections
in Latin America and in numerous seminars devoted to the strengthening
of democracy and the diffusion of the concepts of liberty.
Montaner
received the Tolerance Prize awarded by the Comunidad de Madrid in
2007. In 2010 he was awarded the “Juan de Mariana for a life dedicated
to the defense of freedom”. In 2009 the Universidad Francisco Marroquín
in Guatemala was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa. Previously,
the University of Applied Sciences in Peru (UPC) had appointed him a
Visiting Professor. In 2007, during the democratic government of Enrique
Bolaños, Nicaragua's government gave him the “Orden Rubén Darío”.
Montaner
has published more than 25 books. Several of them have been translated
into English, Portuguese, Russian and Italian. Among the better known
and re-edited titles are Journey to the Heart of Cuba; How and Why
Communism Disappeared; Liberty, the Key to Prosperity, and the novels
Perromundo, A Dog's World, and 1898: The Plot. Some of his most
controversial and most widely distributed essays are the best-sellers
Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot and Manufacturers of Misery,
both co-written with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza and Álvaro Vargas Llosa. The
Return of the Idiot, also by the three authors, has been published.
Some claim that AMLO is no Hugo Chavez, but like the late Venezuelan despot, Lopez Obrador has distanced himself while following the same playbook and calling for a rewrite of the Mexican constitution. This is what Chavez did in 1998. Chavez even called Fidel Castro a dictator during the campaign, and pledged that he would turn over power prior to his five year term. Five years earlier the Venezuelan president turned dictator had been received in Cuba by Fidel Castro and celebrated as a hero. Let us hope and pray that history does not repeat itself in Mexico.
"Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them." - Elliott Abrams
Thousands of anti-government protesters take to the streets of Nicargua
Call for investigations and an end to the killings
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States issued a statement today in which they condemned "the deaths of at least 25 people in a context of repression of
protests against plans to reform the social security system in
Nicaragua." The IACHR also made known that "four TV channels that were reporting on the protests were taken off the air following government orders."
#Nicaragua: We have received reliable reports that at least 25 people were killed during nationwide protests against planned social security reforms. We call on authorities to ensure transparent investigations into these deaths. https://t.co/9OSAVZkREdpic.twitter.com/8VVKqgy3XW
The United Nations Human Rights Council issued a tweet and statement on the killings in Nicaragua calling for transparent investigations and questioning their legality.
Anti-government protesters on the march in Nicaragua on April 23, 2018
Tens of thousands take to the street and call for Daniel Ortega to resign
On Monday, April 23, 2018 tens of thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets in nonviolent protests against the violent repression of the Ortega regime and demanded the resignation of the president. The Economist's bureau chief in Mexico tweeted video of protesters tearing down images of Daniel Ortega and his wife (and Vice President).
Totally unthinkable even a week ago: protesters demolish a billboard of Daniel Ortega and his wife as thousands of people openly cheer them on #SOSNicaraguapic.twitter.com/i8il7QL79q
How this crisis flared up
On April 16, 2018 an unpopular reform is passed that increases contributions to the pension system while at the same time cutting benefits to existing beneficiaries. Two days later Nicaraguans opposed to the "reform" take to the streets in protest. Rather than address grievances the Ortega regime send out the national police and "Sandinista youth" to destroy commercial establishments, take over the university and crush the protests. At the same time mass media are ordered to shut down their signals in a blatant act of censorship.
The Ortega government continues to ratchet up repression and the death count mounts. Later Sunday night early Monday morning this blog publishes the available information at the time. On Sunday, April 22, 2018 with over 25 confirmed dead Ortega rescinds the "reform." This would have ended the protests on April 18, 2018, but after the thuggish behavior of the regime combined with the wholesale violation of freedom of the press, freedom of expression and association the citizenry was aroused.
Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela
The Ortega-Maduro axis
This should not come as a surprise. Ortega's return to power in 2006 was fueled by support from Hugo Chavez and the relationship with Caracas under Nicolas Maduro remains strong. It is equally important to remember that behind both regimes one finds the Castro regime and its intelligence services hard at work to maintain their outposts in the region.
Sadly, the United States is funding this regime in Nicaragua with U.S. taxpayer dollars and that needs to come to an end. Meanwhile it is important to get humanitarian assistance to Nicaraguans.
Spoke on @HouseFloor to condemn the actions of #Ortega and his cronies against the people of #Nicaragua. I urge the Senate to pass my #NICAAct to cut funding streams to the Ortega regime + to stand with the Nicaraguan people. We must not let his actions go unpunished. pic.twitter.com/aF11vgUNdY
Nicaragua's Ortega has returned to his dictatorial roots.
"Curse the soldier who turns the guns on his people!We do not want more dead. Long live the students!"
On April 18, 2018 long standing frustrations with the Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega erupt across Managua in response to a "reform" of the pension system that reduces them for current recipients while raising the amount taken from salaries of current workers. At 5:00pm "Sandinista youth" and national police attack protesters, destroyed commercial establishments and took over the Central American University. The following day classes were canceled across the country and the government continued to call on the police and the Sandinista youth to counter-protest.
Nicaraguan journalist shot dead while filming confrontation between demonstrators and police, amid wave of protests against the government which have left 11 people dead https://t.co/w9VIGK0IEE#Nicaragua#Bluefields
Committee to Protect Journalists reported that "[i]ndependent news channels 15, 12, 14, 23, and 51, which were covering the protests, went off air after the government ordered cable television providers to cut their signals, reports stated. In a Facebook post, Channel 15 director Miguel Mora called the action a "clear violation of freedom of the press."On April 21, 2018 Miguel Angel Gahona, a journalist, was shot and killed by a regime sniper while filming a confrontation between protesters and the police.
Police began to gather around Central American University before taking it over
Communist fellow travelers are already echoing on social media Ortega's conspiracy theories to justify the violent crackdown and silencing of the press. Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo, stepdaughter of Daniel Ortega, and daughter of Rosario Murillo addressed what was going on in Nicaragua to La Nación:
“The president comes out to invent that there is a conspiracy because he
does not have the lucidity nor the audacity to admit that the people
are claiming autonomy, without external political leadership. For his
inability to accept mistakes, for that fundamentalism in the exercise of
power, he believes that there must always be an external conspiracy,
ignoring the intelligence that the people have to know how to face the
moments of history that have touched us.”
Rumors are rampant but the timeline of what sparked the protests was posted on social media by CARivas on April 22, 2018 and is reproduced below.
Ortega's rise, fall, and rise
Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista party overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in July of 1979 with the help of Cuban strategy, aide and arms. They ruled Nicaragua from 1979 through 1990 and were driven out following a prolonged guerilla struggle, carried out by the Contra, a negotiated peace and free elections in 1990. Ortega spent the next sixteen years running for re-election and finally succeeded returning to power via the ballot box in 2006 with a minority of the vote, but with a splintered and divided opposition.
Recycled Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
In 2009 President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Daniel Ortega and embraced him. In 2011 Ortega "reformed" the constitution under dubious circumstances to be able to run for a third term. In 2015 Nicaragua was behaving aggressively on Costa Rica's border violating the country's frontier. Luckily it was resolved in an international court.
Since returning to office nearly a decade ago, Ortega has methodically
and completely dismantled Nicaragua’s fragile institutional democracy
from within and reshaped the laws in a way that support his personal
aspirations to create a one-party system that he can govern unopposed
till death do they part. By hook and crook, Ortega and his lackeys have
taken control of all four branches of government, implemented a
repressive zero-tolerance policy for street protests, and rewritten the
constitution to eliminate checks and balances.
Ortega put the final nail in the coffin of Nicaragua’s democratic
pluralism on Friday, when his sycophants in the Supreme Electoral
Council ordered the ouster of 28 opposition lawmakers and substitute
lawmakers from the National Assembly. Now Ortega doesn’t face any
political opposition, symbolic or otherwise, and can run unopposed for
another re-election in November. The Sandinistas argue that the death blow to the opposition was
legal, and they should know since they wrote the laws. So
congratulations, comandante, you’ve finally got your dream of turning Nicaragua into your family farm.
The consequences today are measured in lives lost and a country plunged in chaos. Rosa María Payá Acevedo, who leads a Latin American youth network, on April 21, 2018 tweeted: "[t]here are 12 youth who this Thursday had a future, love and a dream for their country. Today there are 12 families traversed by pain because of two dictators' pride Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, students of Castroism repudiated by their people." Attached to the tweet was a list of 12 young Nicaraguans murdered in the protests over the previous 48 hours and reproduced below.
On the evening of April 22, 2018 reports indicated that the number of dead had increased to 25. The nationwide protests and failure to silence them with political terror led Daniel Ortega on Sunday to announce that the "pension reform" had been scrapped. NPR international correspondent Carrie Khan tweeted at 11:49pm on April 22nd tweeted the photo of a protester weeping as the names of the dead were read out.
Protester weeping as hundreds gather peacefully on Managua street singing national anthem, reading the names of killed protesters and calling for Ortega’s removal. pic.twitter.com/ZRtapNnlgh
The hubris of the Ortega regime after 12 years in power has generated this crisis. Time will tell how it well end. However, of one thing we can be sure there has been an awakening in Nicaragua.
“Me ha enviado a sanar a los quebrantados de corazón;
A pregonar libertad a los cautivos,...
A poner en libertad a los oprimidos”Lc.4:18
La Iglesia Nicaragüense junto a los jóvenes y a un pueblo que se levanta contra la opresión.
Gracias Monseñor Báez, obispo auxiliar de Managua. pic.twitter.com/YLtgY9peeK
Big factual error
It has been a painful month reading the "news" on Cuba, and basic factual errors that could be corrected on a major story continue to be repeated as fact. CNN, The South China Morning Post, NBC6, and many more outlets are repeating the falsehood that "It's the first time in nearly six decades that Cuba is being led by a man not named Castro."
For the record: Raul Castro handed over the office of the presidency
to his hand picked successor Miguel Díaz-Canel on April 19, 2018. The Castro regime is using this
to give the impression that there is a transition underway in Cuba. This is
not the case. General Raul Castro will remain head of the communist
party and in control of the military. General Alberto Rodriguez
Lopez-Callejas, Raul's son-in-law, runs the Cuban economy. Raul Castro's son, Colonel Alexandro Castro, who negotiated the normalization of relations with the Obama Administration is an intelligence officer with close ties to the secret police. Diaz-Canel, like Osvaldo Dorticos
who was president of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, will most likely be a puppet controlled
by the Castros.The succession is not to make Miguel Díaz-Canel the new dictator but to maintain the Castro dynasty in control of Cuba.
The press has also been far too kind in the assessment of Raul Castro's tenure as President. No mention of the murdered dissident leaders, increased violence, and a dramatic increase in arbitrary detentions.Nor any mention made of Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Eduardo Cardet, whose life hangs in the balance today or that 10,000 Cubans petitioned the Castro regime to free him. Misrepresentation
On April 16, 2018 Michael Weissenstein and Andrea Rodriguez of the Associated Press's Cuba bureau reported on Raul Castro's legacy a couple of days prior to the communist dictator's departure from the presidency and the arrival of communist apparatchik Miguel Díaz-Canel and made a number of claims that need to be placed in context or risk misrepresenting the reality on the ground.
Claim: "In 2008 Raul Castro took over a country where most people couldn’t
own computers ..., leave without permission, run most types of
private businesses or enter resort hotels."
Context: The Castro regime altered regulations to allow Cubans to travel without requesting prior permission in 2013. However restrictions are still in place,
that violate international rights standards to the right to enter and exit your homeland, and many Cubans are restricted from traveling abroad or being allowed
to return. This includes cases where a family member is dying or having
died refused entry to attend their loved ones funeral service.
Claim: "Cuba has nearly
600,000 private entrepreneurs, more than 5 million cellphones, a
bustling real estate market and one of the world’s fastest-growing
airports."
Context: Castro regime drafted new rules in February of 2018 curtailing the private sector. This would not be the first time. In the 1980s and 1990s following economic crises the private sector was temporarily expanded only to once again be restricted when the economic need to subsidize political objectives subsided.
Claim: "Limited internet use is expanding fast, with thousands of
Cubans installing new home connections this year."
Cheapest home internet connection in Cuba costs $15 per month (which is more than half the average monthly salary) and according to PanAm Post you get " 256 kilobits per second, similar to the internet services offered in the United States in the late 1990s; ... "The fastest connection price offers a download speed of four megabits
per second and will cost US $70. That’s two and half times the average
Cuban salary." Not to mention that it is all run through a government monopoly and censors web sites critical of the government.
Claim: "Foreign debt has been
paid."
Context: Mark Frank of Reuters offers a more accurate picture on October 18, 2017: "The Paris Club agreement forgave $8.5 billion of $11.1 billion in
official debt Cuba had defaulted on through 1986, plus charges.
Repayment of the remaining debt was back-loaded through 2033, with
around $40 million paid last year and nearly $60 million due by Oct. 31."The Castro regime still owes $2.5 billion dollars to the Paris Club. The "foreign debt" has not been paid off.
An old problem
Sadly, this is not a new problem. In September of 2011 Cuban opposition activist Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas called attention to important information omitted by reporters from the Associated Press bureau in Havana. This caught my attention at the time and led me over the years to take a closer look at AP reporting and possible bias or omissions
over the next seven years. In 2014, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez raised
the concern that news bureaus in Havana, in order to maintain their
presence in Cuba, compromised their ethical obligations. and risked crossing the line to become regime collaborators. In 2017 while reporting on the mystery of what is harming U.S. diplomats in Cuba the Associated Press, once again left out pertinent information regarding the expert they selected to interview who downplayed the significance of what was going on.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana
General Raul Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel
A decisive moment in the Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is at a crossroads, but not for the reasons touted in the press. Raul Castro will hand over the office of the presidency to Miguel Díaz-Canel on April 19, 2018. The Castro regime is using this to give the impression that there is change underway in Cuba. This is not the case. General Raul Castro will remain head of the communist party and in control of the military. Diaz-Canel, like Osvaldo Dorticos who was president of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, will be a puppet controlled by the Castros. Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas warned of this on March 30, 2012 that there was a fake change underway in Cuba. Some believe that this warning led to his extrajudicial killing on July 22, 2012. The Christian Liberation Movement leader spoke plainly at the time:
"Our Movement denounces the regime's
attempt to impose a fraudulent change, i.e. change without rights and
the inclusion of many interests in this change that sidesteps democracy
and the sovereignty of the people of Cuba. The attempt to link the
Diaspora in this fraudulent change is to make victims participate in
their own oppression. The Diaspora does not have to assume attitudes
and policies in entering the social activity of the island.' The
Diaspora is a Diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to which the regime
denied rights as it denies them to all Cubans. It is not in that part
of oppression, without rights, and transparency that the Diaspora has to
be inserted, that would be part of fraudulent change."
A presidential election will be held in Venezuela on May 20, 2018. The Venezuelan opposition has already boycotted the election and it will only serve to further consolidate the Maduro dictatorship. The election that may be a game changer in the region is the Presidential election in Mexico to be held on July 1, 2018.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an admirer of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, is the current front runner. Lopez Obrador claims to be a democrat, who will respect democratic norms, but this was the same line used by Hugo Chavez during the presidential election in Venezuela in 1998.
The next three months in Latin America may set the course for the next
generation by further legitimizing the dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela while Mexico's democracy is taken over by another populist, in the Chavez mode with links to Havana. To understand the full extent of the danger requires some historical
context and understanding the out-sized role played by Cuba in the hemisphere during the past six decades.
Communism took power in Cuba through deceit and intrigue in 1959. While
Fidel Castro denied he was a communist, promising to restore democracy
in the island, he began consolidating totalitarian rule, threatening and shuttering the free press, and exporting
revolution in Latin America and Africa.
Fidel Castro in January of 1959 with Huber Matos on the far right.
Past is prologue Cuba
had problems, an authoritarian dictatorship imposed in 1952 that was
unwanted, however it did have numerous newspapers, radio and television stations that challenged the Batista regime along with a vibrant civil
society that struggled and protested against the dictator.
Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement successfully lobbied Washington to impose an arms embargo
on Batista on March 14, 1958, and the old dictator seeing that
Washington was siding with the enemy made the calculated decision to
flee on December 31, 1958.
Now with the arrival of the Castro regime in 1959 promising the restoration of democracy and the rule of law – the exact opposite was done. Mass executions were broadcast and filmed to terrorize the population.
While Fidel Castro claimed to be a defender of freedom of expression, independent newspaper editors, were first warned that their lives were at
hazard if they wrote critically against the regime and by May 13, 1960 all of the independent newspapers were shutdown, on
occasion by violent mobs organized by the dictatorship. They were replaced with
regime publications subordinated to the communist party line to the present day. The same was done with all radio and television stations. This took place while Cuba and the United States had normal diplomatic relations. Relations did not end until January 3, 1961.
The United States attempted to overthrow the dictatorship in Cuba in April of 1961 at the Bay of Pigs with a force of Cuban exiles that failed and instead consolidated the Castro regime, but that did not end the Cuban resistance to the communist regime.
On December 2, 1961 Castro explained the reason for the lie that he was not a communist: "If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists
while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that
we would never have been able to descend to the plains." Communism and the communist party were deeply unpopular in Cuba because of its links to the Batista regime.
Huber Matos, Marta Frayde, Mario Chanes, Gustavo Arcos, Aramís
Taboada & Jesús Yanez Pelletier
Cuba's democratic resistance
As the totalitarian dictatorship
became evident, Cuba's democratic resistance defied the Castro regime
in two phases: 1959-1966 (violent resistance) and 1976 - present
(non-violent resistance).
Those who had fought by Castro's side in good faith believing it was a
struggle to restore democracy became uneasy with the course of the
revolution. Some, like Huber Matos, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga, and Mario Chanes de Armas who spoke out spent decades in prison. Many, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro, returned to the hills of the Escambray to carry on the struggle for the democratic restoration. This resistance was crushed in 1966 after the Castro regime had five years of assistance from 400 Soviet counterinsurgency advisors.
Finally,
in 1976, half a dozen Cuban opposition activists with leftist backgrounds
were summoned by Professor Ricardo Bofill and founded in Havana the
Cuban Committee for Human Rights, the first political organization in
the nation's history to expressly renounce violence as a method of
struggle. The group decided to abide by the rule of law to reclaim the
rights quashed by the dictatorship. Meanwhile, in exile in
Washington, about the same time, Mrs. Elena Mederos, former minister
in the revolutionary government, and activist and political scientist Frank Calzón, founded Of Human Rights with the same objective: to defend, by nonviolent and legal means, persecuted individuals, dissidents and
political prisoners in Cuba.
These groups documented human rights violations in Cuba, and distributed copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Their reports reached the United Nations Human Rights Commission and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Over time this dissident movement went from documenting abuses to mobilizing Cubans to demand their rights.
On September 8, 1988 the Christian Liberation Movement was founded
in Havana in the neighborhood of El Cerro by Catholic laymen. Oswaldo
Payá Sardiñas was the first leader of this movement that in 2002 would
express the desire of millions of Cubans to be free with a petition
drive called the Varela Project.
Over 25,000 Cubans would sign the petition and have their signatures
confirmed and turned into the rubber stamp National Assembly of Peoples
Power demanding that their rights be respected in Cuba, but the response of the Castro regime was to declare the
constitution unchangeable and in March of 2003 to round up many of the
organizers of the petition drive, along with other human rights
activists and independent journalists in a crackdown that became known
as the Black Cuban Spring. 75 activists were sentenced to long and unjust prison terms.
In the midst of this crackdown a new movement arose. The wives,
sisters, daughters and mothers of these activists formed the Ladies in White. Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a former school teacher, was the first leader of this movement. Sunday after Sunday braving violent repression
from the agents of the Castro regime these women marched with white
gladiolas in their hands demanding the freedom of their loved ones. By 2010 all of their loved ones would be out of prison.
Fidel Castro and Augusto Pinochet
Castroism's international impact From the start the Castro regime planned to turn the Andes into the Sierra Maestra of South America with the aim of achieving a hemisphere wide projection of power to spread their revolutionary project. Fidel Castro was skeptical of democratic elections ushering in revolutionary change and preferred training and exporting weapons and armed guerillas to undermine existing governments.
The Castro regime's interest in Venezuela began from the earliest days of the dictatorship. Venezuelans understood the threat poised by the
Cubans by 1960 when Ernesto "Che" Guevara was giving unsolicited advice
to Rómulo Betancourt, the democratically elected president of
Venezuela. Guevara called for Betancourt to use the firing squad against
his "rightist opponents." In 1963 Congressional Quarterly reported on how:
"Riots led by Communists and other pro-Castro elements in Caracas [in the
autumn of 1960] took the lives of 13 persons and injured 100. Venezuela recalled
its ambassador to Cuba, and Betancourt ordered out the army to end the
rioting, which he termed an attempt to “install a regime similar to that
in Cuba.”
Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca, told a Havana rally on January 23, 1963 that when the communists gained full control and “make themselves owners of the great
riches in oil, aluminum and everything their earth imprisons, then all
of America shall burn.” 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.
Fidel Castro would continue to agitate for revolution in Venezuela. A
well documented incident occurred on May 8, 1967 and was reported by
Francisco Toro in The Washington Post who described how:
"two small boats carrying a dozen heavily armed fighters made landfall
near Machurucuto, a tiny fishing village 100 miles east of the
Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Their plan was to march inland and recruit
Venezuelan peasants to the cause of socialist revolution." An all night
gun battle with the Venezuelan military led to nine guerrillas dead, two
captured, and one who had escaped. This led, at first, to American governments seeking to isolate Cuba in order to protect themselves from armed expeditions.
The Castro regime achieved only one success in Latin America with armed interventions: the overthrow of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and the installation of the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista regime. Robert A. Pastor,
of The Carter Center in July 1992 in the report "The Carter
Administration and Latin America: A Test of Principle" explained the crucial role played by the Castro regime in the Sandinista victory
in Nicaragua, "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." The Sandinistas drove out the Somoza regime on July 19, 1979 and would remain a force there to the present day. Efforts to subvert the Colombian government through a combination of training and arming communist guerilla groups while funding them through drug trafficking did not lead to the overthrow of the Colombian government but it led to the Castro regime being placed on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism on March 1, 1982
The Castro regime's efforts in Venezuela would not begin to bear fruit until December 1994
with the arrival of Hugo Chavez in Havana to a hero's welcome following
two years in prison for a 1992 coup attempt in Venezuela. Four years later
Chavez had won the presidency of Venezuela and the Castro regime finally
had its entry to Venezuela. By 2007, Chávez had declared that Cuba and Venezuela were a single nation. “Deep down,” he said, “we are one single government.” When Hugo Chavez died in 2013 the succession to Nicolas Maduro was planned in Havana.
On July 19, 2017 the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro testified before US lawmakers that “[t]here are currently about 15,000 Cubans in Venezuela ... It’s
like an occupation army from Cuba in Venezuela.” The Castro regime in Africa
However the Castro regime's international objectives extended beyond Latin America to Africa and Asia.
Fidel Castro lounging with war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam, in Ethiopia in 1977
In the case of Africa, Cuba projected its military forces on the continent for decades with two high profile “victories”
according to government news sources: Ethiopia and Angola. The reliance
on military force and successes on the battlefield obscured some hard
truths that over time are revealed by history.
Fidel and Raul Castro were both deeply involved in sending 17,000 Cuban
troops to East Africa in assisting Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam in consolidating his rule
and eliminating actual and potential opposition in Ethiopia.
Charles Lane of The Washington Post in the December 1, 2016 article "Castro was no liberator" raises the following question that touches heavily on Ethiopia:
Mengistu participated in a
successful military coup against the U.S.-backed Emperor Haile Selassie
in 1974, eventually seizing power on Feb. 3, 1977,by massacring his
rivals in the officer corps. Castro admired this bloody deed as a
preemptive strike against “rightists” that showed “wisdom” and cleared
the way for Cuba to support Mengistu “without any constraints,” as he
explained to East German dictator Erich Honecker in an April 1977
meeting whose minutes became public after the fall of European
communism. [...] With the Cuban forces watching his back, Mengistu wrapped up
his bloody campaign of domestic repression, known as “the Red Terror,”
and sent his own Soviet-equipped, Cuban-trained troops to crush a
rebellion in Eritrea. The last Cuban troops did
not leave Ethiopia until September 1989; they were still on hand as
hundreds of thousands died during the 1983-1985 famine exacerbated by
Mengistu’s collectivization of agriculture.
In December 1979, a new Ethiopian military offensive, this time
including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, “was more specifically
directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning
and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”
The last Cuban troops
did not leave Ethiopia until 1989 and were present and complicit in the
engineered famine that took place there.
The case of Angola is not as clear cut. Non-violent scholar Michael Nagler on page 43 of his important book "The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action" offers the following analysis of the
decision to embrace violence in South Africa and its consequences:
“When sixty peaceful demonstrators were shot dead at
Sharpeville, South Africa, in 1960, the African National Congress leaders
decided that nonviolence was not enough to overcome the apartheid regime. They
subsequently lost nearly thirty years trying to fight the regime with acts of
violence before Nelson Mandela was released from prison and they regained their
nonviolent momentum.”
It was not the African National Congress and the armed struggle that
brought the Apartheid regime to the negotiating table but the United Democratic Front (UDF) and mass civic nonviolent action combined with international sanctions. The inspiration for violent resistance arose from the example of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
I've been to South Africa
and met with members of the African National Congress (ANC) and engaged
some of them in civil discussions on the nature of the Castro regime
and found differences of opinions within the ranks. However, the open letter by the ANC to the Cuban Communist Party released in July of 2014 re-writes South African history and the end of Apartheid ignoring that it was the nonviolent struggle that freed Nelson Mandela
and brought the racist regime to the negotiating table. Mandela's greatness, in my opinion, is that he presided over a
nonviolent transition and left office after serving out a full term as president following a free election.
The legacy of violence that did not succeed in defeating
Apartheid may in the end destroy South African democracy by glorifying a regime such as the one that exists in Cuba. Time will tell what the end result will be in South Africa. However, in Angola the Cuban involvement left another Marxist autocrat, José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Angola for thirty eight years from 1979 through 2017.
Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with ally Mengistu Haile Mariam
Castro's intelligence services tortured American prisoners of war 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. An account of what took place is found in Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973 by Stuart I. Rochester, Frederick T. Kiley and published by the Naval Institute Press in 1999. In 2008, Senator John McCain said that American POWs imprisoned with him in Hanoi had been tortured "by a couple of Cubans."
Fidel Castro visiting Vietnam in 1973
In May of 2005 official media of the Castro regime revealed that Cuban military engineers "took
part in the widening of the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail in the midst of
Vietnam's war with the United States," and a former participant retired Cuban colonel Roberto Leon who called it "one of the greatest secrets" of the 1965-1975 war, "when he
led a team of 23 Cuban military engineers and about 50 Vietnamese
nationals in work on the trail over seven months." According to Leon, Cubans began work on the trail in 1973 after Fidel Castro's September 1973 visit, when Vietnamese authorities asked the Cuban dictator for technical
help on expanding the trail. On December 2, 2015, the Ambassador of Vietnam in Havana, Duong Minh spoke to Granma, the official publication of the Cuban Communist Party, and went into greater detail:
The government of Cuba also helped in the construction of major works
in Vietnam in the midst of the war, including the Victory Hotel in
Hanoi, and a highway stretching over 40km close to the capital, vital in
linking strategic points during the conflict. “Our Cuban brothers also contributed to the building of the historic
Ho Chi Minh Trail, used to transport food, medicine, arms and ammunition
from north to south, and a 400-bed hospital in the midst of the
conflict zone.”
The Tricontinental and International terrorism
The CIA library has a three page document that was approved for release on November 1, 2001 titled "Foreign Intervention by Cuba" that explains the nature of a 1966 gathering in Havana that set the course for international terrorism in the 1970s:
"The current phase of Cuban intervention outside Latin America began with the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in January 1966, attended by more than 500 delegates, which created the African-Asian-Latin American People's Solidarity Organization (AALAPSO) to assist and coordinate the activities of assorted insurgent and terrorist groups. ... Cuban pilots flew combat as well as training missions in Soviet-supplied MIGS for the "People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) during active phases of that country's conflict with North Yemen in 1973--74. A Cuban armored brigade using Soviet vehicles, later turned over to the Syrian Army, was on the Golan Heights front in Syria in the wake of the Yom Kippur war [against Israel]."
The Castro regime views 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), a publication of the
Tricontinental and translated it into many languages. The manual is written by Brazilian urban terrorist Carlos Marighella, and it gives precise instructions in terror tactics, kidnappings, etc.
and 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."
The Cubans
were caught trying to provide the North Koreans with surface to air missile systems (SA-2 (C-75 Volga) and SA-3 (C-125 Pechora), 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.
Colombian government seizes smuggled weapons shipment bound for Cuba (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."
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 long time 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."
Fidel Castro conversing with Argentine military dictator and ally
On March 28, 2008 the Castro
regime’s delegation together with the Organization of Islamic Congress (OIC) successfully passed resolutions undermining international freedom of expression standards at
the United Nations Human Rights Council.
On March 17, 2014 the UN Human
Rights
Council “was divided” in its discussion of the
atrocities in North Korea between
those who want the case to be elevated
to the International Criminal Court and those who reject outright the
existence of a commission of inquiry and conclusions. The Castro regime vigorously defended the
North Korean regime and denounced the inquiry.
The cost in lives under Castroism in Cuba In The Black Book of Communism in chapter 25 "Communism in Latin America" by Pascal Fontaine
states that in Cuba between 1959 through the late 1990s "between 15,000
and 17,000 people were shot." International human rights bodies such as
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) documented some of what was taking place during this period of time.
Cuban exile activist Frank Calzon writing in National Review
on November 10, 1978 about the six year peasant uprising in the
Escambray (1960 - 1966) and numbers killed citing official and non-official sources.
"Raul Castro estimated that five hundred government soldiers died in
order to kill or capture 3,591 "bandits." Writing in 1971, the British
historian Hugh Thomas put the total slightly higher: "Minor guerrilla
skirmishing has gone on most of the time in Oriente and other
mountainous districts in an unsung war; rumors abound but probably at
least four thousand guerilleros have been killed since 1962."
Columnist Mary O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal on November 12, 2017 reported on the beginning of "howthe Soviets crushed the Escambray
rebellion, which at one point numbered 8,000 insurgents. Castro had sent
12,000 soldiers and 80,000 militia to the region in late 1960, but
they’d made no headway. So in January 1961 the Kremlin stepped in. It
sent a contingent of Soviet coaches to a military compound near the city
of Trinidad. That compound became a “KGB redoubt. ..."From there, the Soviets secretly directed a major offensive
to quash the insurgency.” ..."The operation mobilized 70,000 Cuban
soldiers and 110,000 militia. They 'uprooted most of the peasant
families living in the area, and dragged them into concentration camps'
in the far western part of the country. ...'The obsessive goal was total
extermination,' so the government forces 'destroyed crops, burned huts
and contaminated springs as they systematically combed the region for
rebels or suspects.'”
Miami Herald journalist Glenn Garvin on December 1, 2016 an article titled, "Red Ink: The high human cost of the Cuban Revolution" cited "University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel,
who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the
killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that
credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."
This does not take into account non-Cubans killed by the Castro regime.
US policy on Cuba 1959 - 2018
Vice President Richard Nixon greets Fidel Castro in Washington D.C. in April of 1959
Recognized Castro regime
The Castro regime has a revolutionary project to
spread communism. They sought within the first
months that they were in power to destabilize and overthrow governments across Latin America. The United States did not understand this at first and quickly recognized the Castro regime in January of 1959.
Severed diplomatic relations and tried to overthrow regime
After two years of increasingly hostile behavior by the Castro regime the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba and attempted to overthrow the dictatorship in April of 1961 at the Bay of Pigs. The Cuban exile force did not receive the promised support and the military mission failed and instead consolidated the Castro regime.
Engagement and concessions
The Carter Administration was the first to lift the travel ban and hold
high-level negotiations with the Cuban dictatorship, and both sides
opened Interest Sections in their respective capitals between 1977 and
1981. Then from 1981 to 1982, the Castro regime executed approximately 80 prisoners, which was a marked escalation when compared to 1976.
Furthermore, during the Carter presidency, Fidel Castro took steps that
resulted in the violent deaths of US citizens.
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. This first attempt at normalizing relations saw a worsening human rights situation and migration crisis.
This effectively
ended the era of isolation of the Castro regime. It is not a coincidence
that the Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua two years later during the Carter
Administration.
Reagan's rollback of Carter concessions
Nor does easing sanctions improve the situation for Cuban dissidents.
The only time the Castro regime permitted the International Committee
of the Red Cross to visit Cuban prisons, and Amnesty International to
visit Cuba was in the late 1980s after Ronald Reagan took a hard line on
human rights violations in Cuba at the United Nations, rolled back the
Carter Administration’s 1977 opening of the travel embargo in 1982,
toughened economic sanctions, and began broadcasting uncensored news to Cuba over Radio Marti.
President George W. Bush did not rollback Clinton economic openings
The Bush Administration didn't rollback cash and carry trade with the dictatorship, but following March 2003 crackdown on Cuban dissidents by the Castro regime did toughen some sanctions.
Castro had some success first in Nicaragua in 1979, then in Venezuela in 1999 and today the regime is a strong and anti-democratic force in the hemisphere and at the United Nations Human Rights Council. No surprise that these regime offensives coincided with normalization policies of the United States.
President Trump has rolled back some policies and shifted rhetoric
The current Administration has rolled back some, not all, of the Obama era Cuba
policies, spoken out on the human rights situation in Cuba, and
Ambassador Nikki Haley defended the morality of U.S. sanctions on the
Castro regime. Despite the claims by the architect of the previous Administration's Cuba policy, that President Trump's turn around on the Obama Administration's Cuba policy
would fail, trade between the United States and Cuba was at its highest
level in 2017 following its collapse between 2014 and 2016 when the
previous Administration was pushing its new Cuba policy.
Summit of the Americas: Panama 2015 and Peru 2018
The 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama marked the first time the Castro regime had been invited to attend. Latin American leaders threatened that
the VII Summit
would not take place if the Castro regime was not invited. On September
22, 2014 Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos at a Americas
Society/Council of the Americas meeting in New York City said, "if Cuba doesn’t go, then probably no Summit.” On December 17, 2014 President Obama announced that Cuba and the United States would seek to normalize relations. Four months later at the Summit of the Americas in Panama he held a bilateral meeting with General Raul Castro.
President Obama deemed the April 2015 gathering a success despite the Castro regime filling the event with shock troops that engaged in acts of harassment, in an atmosphere of
hostility, and acts of violence so extreme that some were
hospitalized as a result of physical attacks carried out by agents of the Castro regime.
The pattern repeated itself in 2018. The regime brought in shock troops to disrupt events and physically and verbally threaten and assault attendees who dissented from the regime's official line. One of the Castro regime's shock troops attending the Summit of the
Americas was identified
when he arrived in Peru. His name is Ronaldo Hidalgo Rivera. He was one of the men who knocked down Daniel Llorente Miranda (age 52) a Cuban dissident on May 1, 2017 as he ran with a flag of the United States outstretched in his arms over his head.
In contrast with the 2015 Summit during the 2018 Summit, Cuban human rights defenders got a full hearing and Vice President Mike Pence met with Rosa María Payá Acevedo and affirmed his support for human rights in Cuba and the desire of the Cuban people to live in freedom.
Last night, I spoke w/ Rosa María Payá, a Cuban dissident fighting for Cuba’s freedom. I made clear the Trump Admin stands w/ the Cuban people. We are w/ them for their freedom, the release of political prisoners, the restoration of basic human rights & for free & fair elections. pic.twitter.com/V5kSUhV9KE
Equally as important was that Peru's Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Salvador Heresi, recognized at this gathering that “Cuba is the mother of all evils in Latin America.” Latin America is at a dangerous crossroads and recognizing the damage done by the Castro regime in the hemisphere and its continuing threat is an important step that other countries need to understand before it is too late.
(AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga) 
