Cuba's role in the crisis in Venezuela and how it can also hurt Americans

Venezuela in crisis

Venezuelan women march on May 6, 2017 against repression in Cuba

Protests across Venezuela continue
Thousands of Venezuelan women, dressed in white, marched through the streets of Venezuela on Saturday denouncing repression by security forces. Some of the women flashed their breasts waving posters that read: "We have no firearms, just breasts." Young Venezuelans continue to be shot in the head by paramilitary groups working together with the police and national guard. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado pleaded: "We beg the armed forces: don't open fire on unarmed people."

Young Venezuelans peacefully demonstrating the Maduro regime continue to be shot in the head and killed some victims from over the past month are: Hecder Lugo (age 20), Miguel Medina (age 20), Jairo Otriz (age 19)  Carlos Moreno (age 17) and although not shot in the head, but in the throat, was 18 year old violinist, Armando Cañizales. This last death led the Venezuelan director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel,  to say "It is time to listen to the people: Enough is enough.”  There is a long list of Venezuelan youth murdered by the Maduro regime.   

Where is Leopoldo?
Venezuelan prisoner of conscience Leopoldo López Mendoza has not been seen in a month. Rumors are circulating that he has been murdered. Considering that the same Cubans who are advising Maduro also murdered an international human rights figure like Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, the fears for Leopoldo's well-being are not unwarranted.

Nicolas Maduro with his rubber stamp Supreme Court

Venezuela's downward spiral into totalitarianism continues with the Nicolas Maduro regime ramping up control and repression causing millions of Venezuelans to resist it then pause for a while until the protests die down and then begin again. The latest round began on March 30, 2017, the Maduro controlled Supreme Court stripped the National Assembly of its powers provoking the latest round of mass protests in Venezuela and international condemnation. President Maduro, following the escalating protests, called on the Supreme Court to reverse itself and they did. However at the same time Nicolas Maduro announced the activation of the green phase of Plan Zamora reported by Caracas Chronicles as:

an exercise of “integral anti-imperialist action (…) meant to strengthen the national deployment of civilian-military union to defend the nation.” The description’s made worse by the threats made by several regime members since Monday, concerning the plan to align all of their paramilitary groups – colectivos – and PSUV’s fighting corps towards the same goal of “defense”.

Cuban role in the rise of Chavism
In addition to domestic repressive forces there is a foreign presence heavily embedded in the Venezuelan military and intelligence services. Last year the head of the opposition National Assembly of Venezuela on May 15, 2016 was complaining, over social media, of the presence of 60 Cuban officers. This included a Cuban general, who he identified by the last name Gregorich, who had a leadership role that included issuing orders to Venezuelan troops. Capitol Hill Cubans identified the Cuban General as Raul Acosta Gregorich. 

Castro regime's number three man, Ramiro Valdez with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro

It is also surprising that when reviewing Cuban involvement in Venezuela that the February 2010  hiring of Ramiro Valdes, then age 77, "as a consultant for that country's energy crisis" did not raise more eyebrows. He is viewed by some Cuba experts as "the No. 3 man in the Cuban hierarchy." Afro-Cuban scholar Carlos Moore offers the following background information on Commander Valdez :

"Ramiro Valdez was an inflexible, totalitarian and brutal person. He was the most feared man in Cuba. The repressive policies of the regime were crafted by him. Valdez struck fear into the hearts of Cubans (even revolutionary ones). Today, he apparently continues to be the same dogmatic, sectarian and brutal person he was at the height of his power."

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 meeting with President-elect Rómulo Betancourt in 1959

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.

The Castro regime's efforts 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 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.

 Diosdado Cabello target of the DEA with General Raul Castro and his Foreign Minister

Consequences of Cubazuela
The name of this "single nation" is Cubazuela and is a term that has been used by mainstream press publications such as The Wall Street Journal. The consequences to the people of Venezuela are well known. Violence has escalated during the Chavez-Maduro era to levels never seen before. There is widespread hunger now in Venezuela. Civil liberties and the rule of law are rapidly disappearing.

What is not generally known are the consequences for the United States and the role the Castro regime plays in this. There are numerous news reports about the Venezuelan regime's links to international drug trafficking, and that U.S. investigations point to high ranking  officials in Venezuela turning the country "into a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering," but little is said about the Castro regime's decades long involvement in it that still continues.  Panamanian police seized more than 400 kilograms of cocaine in a Cuban ship on its way to Belgium in April of 2016.

Cuba was placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism on March 1, 1982, less than three months after the US State Department confirmed that the Cuban government was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government.

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 small 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.''

Venezuela: Global hub of drug trafficking
Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post reported on the Venezuela, FARC, Cuba trafficking axis on May 24, 2015 in the article "A drug cartel’s power in Venezuela":

Ever since Colombian commandos captured the laptop of a leader of the FARC organization eight years ago, it’s been known that Chávez gave the Colombian narcoguerrillas sanctuary and allowed them to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the United States with the help of the Venezuelan army. But not until a former Chávez bodyguard [ Leamsy Salazar] defected to the United States in January did the scale of what is called the “Cartel of the Suns ” start to become publicly known. [...] The day after Salazar’s arrival in Washington, Spain’s ABC newspaper published a detailed account of the emerging case against Cabello, and last month, ABC reporter Emili Blasco followed up with a book laying out the allegations of Salazar and other defectors, who say Cuba’s communist regime and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have been cut in on the trafficking. That was followed by a lengthy report last week in the Wall Street Journal that said Cabello’s cartel had turned Venezuela into “a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering.”

Wikileaks revealed that American diplomats also know that the Castro regime provides safe haven for the FARC in Cuba. Considering the close working relationship between Cuban and Venezuelan officials and the rampant drug trafficking and money laundering in Venezuela the claim that officials of the Castro regime are not involved seems highly unlikely. Furthermore in confronting the problem of rising levels of drugs flooding the United States, U.S. officials should re-visit sharing drug intelligence with the Castro regime.

Outlaw regimes in Venezuela also allied with Cuba

North Korea
"Our government, our people, our party, in addition to condemning any imperialist attack, will fight with Venezuelans to safeguard the Bolivarian Revolution" - North Korean Ambassador Jon Yong Jin, 10/3/13 

A report appeared on May 18, 2016 that North Korean Special forces and the Chinese People's Liberation Army are in Venezuela conducting military exercises with their Venezuelan counterpart. 

In March 2016, the same month that President Obama visited Cuba, the Castro regime signed a confidential military cooperation and intelligence-sharing agreement with North Korea reports the Paris based publication Intelligence Online. The Cuban dictatorship, under Raul Castro, has had extensive relations with the Hermit Kingdom that has included violating international sanctions to smuggle tons of weapons.

North Korea reopened an embassy in Venezuela on June 20, 2014 following a high level meeting in October 2013 with North Korea's ambassador to Cuba Jon Yong Jin who was executed in a purge in December of 2013.  Venezuela recognized North Korea in 1974 but due to North Korea's economic crisis in the 1990s it shut down its embassy in Venezuela at the time.  Venezuelan officials who met with the North Korean diplomat showed an interest in grafting elements of the North Korean governing philosophy onto the Bolivarian Revolution.

The official claim by the Maduro regime is that all this is being done to combat the threat of U.S. imperialism, but the reality appears that this has more to do with maintaining and consolidating control over Venezuela. 

Iran
"I've visited Iran more than 20 times, I deeply know the good nature, the good, deep spirit of the Iranian people and I love it. I love Iran as much as I love our Commander Chavez.” - Nicolas Maduro, August 30, 2016

Fox News reported on April 17, 2017 of a serious security threat for the United States:

A former director of Venezuela’s Office of Identification, Migration and Foreigners said that during his 17 months in the post, the socialist government gave at least 10,000 Venezuelan passports and other documents to citizens of Syria, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

In an interview with El Nuevo Herald, Colonel Vladimir Medrano Rengifo said the operation was headed by current Vice President Tareck El Aissami.
He said most passports and visas were granted in the Venezuelan Consulate in Damascus, Syria’s capital.

"Today we don’t know where these people are, nor what they are doing,” said Medrano, who currently resides in the United States.

 The crisis in Venezuela is having tragic consequences for Venezuelans and, with the rising levels of drugs entering the United States, also for Americans. However the relations with outlaw states points to more ominous dangers that need to be taken into account. Lastly ignoring the role played by Cuba is a mistake.

#FreeYon: 2008 Milton Friedman Prize Laureate kidnapped in Venezuela

#FreeYon

Venezuelan classical liberal Yon Goicoechea disappeared in Venezuela

 Yesterday morning Yon Goicoechea, a young political leader and family man, was forcibly taken by men in unmarked vehicles.  Later that same aftenoon, Diosdado Cabello at a pro-regime rally called Yon an assassin and accused him of transporting explosives. Cabello has no official role in law enforcement and is also suspected by U.S. prosecutors of being in charge of the infamous drug-trafficking organization, "Cartel de los Soles." The rule of law has not existed in Venezuela for many years and the Leopoldo Lopez show trial in 2015 was but one of many examples of its absence. Where does one find an honest man in Venezuela today who defends the rule of law and liberty? Either protesting on the streets, in prison, dead or exiled.  Yon, who is a classical liberal in the tradition of Milton Friedman, is a nonviolent advocate for liberty, free markets and the rule of law. These are ideas despised by the Chavista regime in Caracas.

Yon is the 2008 laureate of The Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty

Today marks six years since the death of Franklin Brito, a man who died on hunger strike on August 30, 2010 defending the rule of law and property rights in Venezuela.  Today the judge who followed the instructions of the regime that contributed to Brito's death is seeking political asylum in Miami. Franklin Brito's daughter took to social media to denounce the outrage. Unfortunately, once again Cubans will recognize this practice having seen it themselves with Cuban human rights violators granted "asylum" by the Obama administration.  The problem is not the Cuban Adjustment Act but the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Cuba and the Obama administration that reward these criminals with visas and residency in the United States. Hopefully, the outcry  Ángela Brito will cause them to back off in this instance.

Following the downward spiral of Venezuelan democracy over the past 15 years and the efforts by young Venezuelans to stand up to the criminal and totalitarian onslaught first by Chavez and now by Maduro (with their Cuban handlers) is often a case of deja vu in the methods of defamation, repression, and terror used against them. Experience in the Cuba case is that remaining silent is deadly for the victims of repression. One must speak out in solidarity with them quickly to save them.

This is why there must also be an outcry now for Yon Goicoechea before it is too late. The alert republished below was passed on to me by social media and apparently originated by Ana Collado.


International Alert:
Political Activist Yon Goicoechea Forcibly Disappeared by Venezuelan Political Police

Yon Goicoechea, kidnapped and missing since yesterday

 Caracas, August 30, 2016. 2:00.p.m.

Yon Goicoechea, political leader and member of the Volutad Popular political party, was taken into custody by presumed agents of SEBIN, the Venezuelan political police, with no arrest warrant, no explanation and no information as to his whereabouts.

Around 9:30 am on Monday, August 29, Goicoechea was in his car, along with driver Peter Salas, on his way to pick up furniture in Caracas. He was intercepted on the highway by two unmarked vehicles. Both Goicoechea and Salas were forcibly removed from their car and taken away to an unknown location. The car was seized.

Diosdado Cabello, a highly influential figure in the government, alleged on Monday afternoon that Goicochea was transporting “detonators for explosive devices,” and referred to Goicoechea as an assassin. The allegation was made in the context of a pro-government political rally. No documentation has been made available to support these claims, and Cabello plays no formal role in law enforcement.

It has been more than 30 hours since Goicoechea and Salas were last seen. They have not been given access to council, their families have not had any contact with them. No official information has been produced as to their whereabouts, the charges levied against them, or the evidence to support them. Under the Venezuelan constitution, Goicoechea has the right to contact with his family and lawyers immediately upon detention.

Goicoechea, a 31 year old lawyer and political activist, especially focused on non-violent activism, won the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2008. He was a key leader during the 2007 student movement. He founded Futuro Presente, an NGO dedicated to the advancement of leadership and democratic values among Venezuelan youths.

Yon had recently moved back with his wife and children to Venezuela, after having spent four years abroad studying and working, in order to continue his political activism in favor of democracy. He is the fourth member of Voluntad Popular to be either detained or issued an arrest warrant in the past week.

Goicoechea is the father of two young children, Salas is the father of a baby girl.

Yon Goicoechea and Peter Salas are two more victims of an unscrupulous and repressive regime. Any evidence of wrongdoing is fabricated. The Venezuelan authorities must ensure their physical safety. We urge you to denounce these obscene and systematic violations of human rights in Venezuela so that repression and persecution of dissidence come to an end once and for all.

The struggle for a fair election in Venezuela is not over

Leopoldo Lopez's nonviolent example of resisting Maduro's dictatorship delivers results but the struggle continues.

CNE final tally of the vote in Venezuela according to Carlos Vecchio

In the euphoria over Sunday's victory some have proclaimed that Venezuela is a democracy. Sadly, it is not but the election with the opposition's exit polling and nonviolent protests to ensure that the vote is respected shows a path of action that can lead to a restoration of democracy. Leopoldo López Mendoza, the imprisoned nonviolent opposition leader, on the eve of the elections explained how despite the regime in power being a dictatorship why Venezuelans should vote in a series of tweets that are translated to English below the image:

Leopoldo López Mendoza: "Voting against a dictatorship is not only a right it is a duty. Voting is one of the tools we have to fight. Voting against a dictatorship is an act of protest, of democratic rebellion and is worth it. Because if forced by circumstances, due to the avalanche of votes, they decide to respect the people's will it would have been worth it! Because if they are to ignore the will of the people they will have to take it from us and we will defend it democratically. I decided to confront this dictatorship to expose it in all areas: in the street, in the electoral and the moral." 

Four out of the five branches of the Venezuelan regime remain under the control of Maduro's party, the PSUV. However there is a struggle over the final tally of legislators for the next National Assembly. The Maduro regime does not want the opposition to obtain super majority status ( which necessitates 111 opposition legislators). If the final is less than 111 then the Venezuelan regime can emasculate the National Assembly which is exactly what Maduro promised to do. The final vote ( despite all the regime's irregularities to swing the vote their way) should be at least 112 opposition legislators which could still rise to 116 to 51 pro-regime legislators.  However the Electoral National Council (CNE) is only recognizing 107 opposition seats at this hour and 55 pro-regime legislators. The numbers provided by Carlos Vecchio were in the final bulletin of the CNE but their website has not actualized the numbers.

The Thursday prior to the election according to the Spanish daily ABC there was a meeting of high ranking officials that led to divisions over how much fraud and violence would be acceptable to steal the election and in the room was an unidentified Cuban general.  According to Carlos Alberto Montaner in the Diario de las Americas, on election night four days later Nicolas Maduro and Diosdado Cabello wanted to impose a result in which the government won by two seats but two generals refused to go along and saved the day.  All of this intrigue demonstrates that Venezuela is not a democracy and the rule of law is nonexistent, but this opposition victory, the result of popular discontent gives hope for the future. However there is still much to do to bring back democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela.

Castro's criminal cocaine connection

Cuban dictatorship implicated in drug trafficking while Obama Administration shares drug intelligence with Castro Regime.

Partners in Crime: Manuel Noriega and Fidel Castro

 High ranking Venezuelan defector is now in the United States and is currently serving as a key witness for the DEA and federal prosecutors. El Nuevo Herald is reporting that Salazar has identified Diosdado Cabello, head of Venezuela's National Assembly, as the leader of the infamous drug-trafficking organization, "Cartel de los Soles". Moreover, he's revealed Cuba's role in the Cartel's narco-trafficking operations, particularly regarding transshipment to the United States. 

Wikileaks has revealed the United States and Cuba, since at least 2009 have been "cooperating" on drug trafficking. Even Fox News Latino has published favorable reporting on this relation ship as recently as January 12, 2015. Unfortunately, the experts cited in news reports regarding the drug problem in Cuba and the regime's relationship to the international drug trade bears no resemblance with reality. The State Department in its 2014 country report on Cuba repeats these claims.

The public discussion surrounding cooperating with the dictatorship on counter-narcotics efforts goes back 25 years. Representative Charlie Rangel on July 3, 1989 in a letter to The New York Times started to make the case for the United States and the Castro regime to cooperate to stop regional drug trafficking. First General Manuel Noriega, an authoritarian dictator, that the U.S. shared drug intelligence with to counter drug trafficking and "showered with letters of commendation and grateful thanks by the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington" was not what U.S. officials claimed in their official reports. Secondly, high ranking Cuban military and intelligence officials had just been revealed to be smuggling large quantities of cocaine into the United States. The timing to be advocating such a policy was on the surface madness. On the other hand it was a good first step in a propaganda campaign to white wash the Castro dictatorship's criminal complicity in the trafficking of hard drugs into the United States. 

Placing this into context

General Noriega was revealed, by Florida prosecutors, to be involved in the smuggling of narcotics into the United States. Frontline in a chronology for the program Thirty Years of America's Drug War revealed that "Panamanian General Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar cut a deal which allows Escobar to ship cocaine through Panama for $100,000 per load. The two had met in 1981 when Noriega mediated negotiations for the release of Marta Ochoa. 

Seven years later on February 5, 1988 a federal grand jury in Miami issued an indictment against Panamanian General Manuel Noriega for drug trafficking.  On December 20, 1989 the U.S. military invades Panama and after eluding capture for 22 days Manuel Noriega surrenders to the DEA on January 3, 1990 and is brought to Miami. On July 10, 1992 Noriega is convicted on eight counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering, and sentenced to 40 years in federal prison. 

With regards to Cuba, the U.S. State Department on March 1, 1982 declared it a state sponsor of terrorism whose government was was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government. In 2001 at Georgetown University when I questioned General Barry McCaffrey, who at the time was advocating sharing intelligence on drug trafficking with the Castro regime, about this relationship between Cuba and Colombia's drug trafficking guerrillas and he recognized it and expressed his concerns. 

During General Manuel Noriega's trial information emerged  in 1992 publicly implicating the Castro regime as the 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."

 At the same time convicted cartel leader Carlos Lehder directly implicated Raul Castro and U.S. fugitive Robert Vesco "to route cocaine flights through Cuba."

Capitol Hill Cubans blogged how two years later, a federal indictment listed General Raul Castro as part of a conspiracy that smuggled seven and a half tons of cocaine into the United States over a 10-year period but the Clinton administration overruled prosecutors.

Conclusion
Needless to say sharing drug intelligence with the Castro regime considering its past history and current behavior is not prudent and frankly criminal considering what it will do to some of the most vulnerable in the United States.