Showing posts with label jose daniel ferrer garcia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jose daniel ferrer garcia. Show all posts

Friday, July 3, 2020

Urgent Action for Keilylli de la Mora Valle: Young woman's life in immediate danger please let others know of her plight & ask Castro to free her now.

Please let the Castro regime know that you are concerned about her safety and want proof of life.

Life in danger: Keilylli de la Mora Valle
Keilylli de la Mora Valle is a courageous woman speaking out for human rights in a six decade old communist dictatorship. The Castro regime has tried to break her spirit, but having failed using the usual tactics of fear, harassment and imprisonment they are heightening the stakes interning her in a psychiatric facility, and are now alleging that she tried to take her own life. She is 27 years old.

On July 2, 2020 at 8:36am Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia posted a video of Raúl González alerting that Keilylli had been transferred to a Gustavo Aldereguia Hospital, that she had allegedly attempted suicide, and he warned that this could be a manipulation by the dictatorship and that this was an extremely serious situation.

We call on the international community generally, and the International Committee of the Red Cross specifically to request permission to meet with her and ascertain in what condition she is presently in.

On June 1, 2020 the Cuban opposition activist Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia posted a video of the young activist that shows a clear eyed and brave activist facing defiantly the prison time that she was facing. She retweeted the video and told Jose Daniel, "Be assured brother while they repress me more, the stronger I become." While in prison she was able to secretly record the poor conditions there, smuggle it out but was beaten up, punished and threatened with a longer prison sentence.

Keilylli de la Mora Valle is a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba and has been active on Twitter since March 2019 and describe herself as a free and independent Cuban who is 100% Anti-Castro.

A day later the UNPACU tweeted a copy of the documents showing that her appeal had been denied and she would be starting her unjust prison sentence.


Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo tweeted on July 2nd that the "young 27-year-old political prisoner, has been subjected to cruel treatment, is on her 2nd hunger strike & now police say she 'attempted suicide' but no one has seen her. Danger increases every minute she remains in the hands of the regime." Rosa Maria is absolutely right, and her original tweet in Spanish is embedded below.

The news that she has been sent to a psychiatric facility fills knowledgeable Cuban watchers with dread. The Castro regime has a long track record of using psychiatry as a political weapon and these institutions have also had a record of neglect in which patients have died from exposure.

The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba published in 1991 by Freedom House and Of Human Rights documented the interrelationship between Cuban psychiatry and the Cuban State Security apparatus to target dissidents.

The Psychiatric Hospital in Havana run by Eduardo Bernabe Ordaz Ducunge for forty years used the tools of psychiatry to torture dissidents and human rights defenders.

Three of 26 patients who died of exposure in 2010 in Cuba
 In January 2010 pictures smuggled out of Havana's Psychiatric Hospital revealed that patients were dying of exposure to the elements, and had suffered greatly through their time there. Claudia Cadelo, now exiled out of Cuba, wrote in 2010 her reaction to seeing this photos:

When I opened the little folder called “Mazorra” a series of monstrosities hit me in the face and I couldn’t stop looking at the cruel graphic testimony. A friend who is a doctor visited and while he analyzed images I didn’t have the courage to look at, expressions like, “Holy Virgin Mary, Blessed God, What in God’s name is this?” issued from his outraged throat, mixed with obscure pathologies and the names of diseases both treatable and curable. Enormous livers, tubercular lungs, and wormy intestines are the proof, Senora Arlin, of the sacredness of life in Cuba. Meanwhile The Roundtable throws a fit because the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo has unmasked a crumbling public health system, and they try to cover up the disgrace of seeing soldiers dragging and beating a group of women dressed in white with flowers in their hands. I ask myself, Gentlemen Journalists, when will they explain to Cubans the reasons why twenty-six mentally incapacitated people died in inhumane conditions during their confinement in Mazorra?
The dictatorship was forced to acknowledge what had happened thanks to the still unknown whistleblower and courageous independent journalists who made the images public and The New York Times reported on January 15, 2020 that "26 patients at a mental hospital died during a cold snap this week, the government said Friday. A Health Ministry communiqué blamed “prolonged low temperatures that fell to 38 degrees." This is the institution that Eduardo Bernabe Ordaz Ducunge shaped over 40 years, and that PAHO celebrated with an award. This episode was quickly forgotten, and the mantra of Cuba's "great" health care system continued to be repeated in the press.

Amnesty International had also raised concerns in their report Psychiatry: A Human Rights Perspective in 1995 of what they saw on their only visit:
In Cuba, there have been allegations in recent years that not only the criminally insane but also political prisoners have been sent to forensic wards of state psychiatric institutions where they are kept in unhygienic and dangerous conditions and where they are exposed to ill-treatment either at the hands of staff or fellow inmates. In 1988 Amnesty International visited the Havana Psychiatric (Mazorra) Hospital in Havana. The delegation was permitted to visit one of the forensic wards - the Sala Carbó Serviá. However, the existence of a second forensic ward, the Sala Castellanos, was denied by a hospital official. It was this ward which was alleged to present harsh conditions and to be used for the punishment of prisoners.
Amnesty International reported that prisoner of conscience Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet was sent to Mazorra on November 29, 1999 to Mazorra. He was sent to there by State Security agents and forced to undergo psychiatric examinations on several occasions.

Amnesty also reported how on December 4, 1998 Cuban dissident Milagros Cruz Cano, who is blind, was detained by State Security agents while waiting for a bus. She was initially held at the Maria Luisa police station in Havana where she was: "beaten by police officers which resulted in a swollen cheek and a bruise and scab below her eye. She was then transferred to Mazorra psychiatric hospital in Havana where she was held in an isolated cell called Córdoba. The conditions of detention were said to be degrading as she was held in a cell with iron bars which other patients and guards could see into and where she had to carry out all personal hygiene. She was released on December 14, 1998 without charge."

Observers need to take into account that in addition to negligence and indifference to human suffering that led to a situation in which more than 40 patients died of malnutrition and exposure to cold in a tropical country that this psychiatric hospital was also employed in the mistreatment and torture of Cuban dissidents and human rights activists. Officials need to know that they will be held accountable for her safety.

The Cuban government has not permitted a visit by the Red Cross to their prisons since 1989. By comparison the United States has permitted over a 100 inspections at the prison on the US Guantanamo Naval Base since 2001. What is the Castro regime hiding in its prisons?

Will they allow independent international observers to visit with this young woman, and ascertain her mental and physical status?  The international community is beginning to pay attention on her plight. Below is a tweet from the OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro from July 2nd.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Project Varela: Looking back at the nonviolent campaign 18 years later

The nonviolent campaign that shook up the dictatorship in Cuba, changed the Cuban Communist Constitution and continues to haunt the Castro regime.
Oswaldo Payá Antonio Diaz, and Regis Iglesias after turning in signatures
18 years ago today, carrying 11,020 signed petitions in support of the Varela Project, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Antonio Diaz Sanchez, and  Regis Iglesias Ramírez walked with the bulky card board boxes labeled Project Varela turning them into the Cuban National Assembly. 

 The national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement, Eduardo Cardet, issued a statement on the 18th anniversary of these petitions being presented.
"On a day like today, 18 years ago the first signatures were delivered in support of the Varela Project (11,020 signatures), which constituted a formidable expression of free adherence to a project that managed to unite diverse people in a common purpose, demanding full rights for all Cubans. The totalitarian state persists, misery as a resource of oppression deepens, repression intensifies; the longing for freedom, justice and prosperity of our people is an old long-delayed longing.
Enough of dictatorship!All rights for the Cuban people!Long live the Varela Project, Long live the MCL!Homeland, Liberty and Life!"
The General Secretary of the Christian Liberation Movement and one of the individuals who turned in the petitions, Tony Diaz Sanchez placed the importance of the Varela project in context stating, "The liberation of a people begins at the ballot box as an invitation to each of the citizens to actively participate in the necessary transformations. This is the essence of the Varela Project, an essence that is also the aim and strategy of the Christian Liberation Movement and that we do not abandon ourselves until we Cubans live in freedom in the land that saw us born."

Regis Iglesias, Tony Diaz, and Eduardo Cardet of the Christian Liberation Movement

The New York Times reported on this historic event at the time and the author of the article understood its importance:
"Two days before a historic visit to Cuba by the former President Jimmy Carter, human rights activists today delivered an extraordinary challenge to the Communist government of President Fidel Castro in the form of petitions signed by more than 11,000 people seeking greater freedom. The petition drive, known as the Varela Project, calls for a referendum under the terms of the Cuban Constitution on whether there should be more freedom of expression, an amnesty for political prisoners and a chance for ordinary citizens to own small businesses. The signed petitions were delivered this morning to the National Assembly, after supporters painstakingly verified each signature, in the most significant peaceful effort to bring reform to Cuba in four decades. ''All of these Cubans, who with great courage and sacrifice have signed Project Varela, are the social vanguard for peaceful change in Cuba,'' said Oswaldo Paya, who led the drive. He said changes in the rights of Cubans could only be achieved peacefully.
The three activists, members of the Christian Liberation Movement, would pay a high price, along with dozens of others, for advocating human rights reforms within the existing legal frame work in Cuba. In March of 2003 both Antonio Diaz Sanchez, and Regis Iglesias were arrested and subjected to political show trials and sentenced to long prison sentences. They would spend years in prison followed by forced exile. Oswaldo Payá was killed on July 22, 2012 under circumstances that point to a state security orchestrated extrajudicial execution. 

The Varela Project, named after the Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela, sought to reform the Cuban legal system to bring it in line with international human rights standards. They had followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign and yet the dictatorship's response to a nonviolent citizen's initiative was to first coerce Cubans into signing another petition declaring the Constitution unchangeable and quickly passed it through the rubber stamp legislature without debating the Varela Project, which according to the Cuban law drafted by the dictatorship meant that it should have been debated by the National Assembly.

Ten months later on March 18, 2003 the Black Cuban Spring would begin with a massive crackdown on Cuba's civil society with many of the organizers of Project Varela, imprisoned and summarily sentenced up to 28 years in prison. The 75 activists who had been imprisoned with long prison sentences became known as the "group of the 75."

The dictatorship announced, at the time, that the Cuban dissident movement had been destroyed but the Castro regime was mistaken. First, the remaining activists who were still free continued gathering signatures and would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures on October 5, 2003. Secondly, the wives, sisters and daughters of the activists who had been detained and imprisoned organized themselves into the "Ladies in White." A movement that sought the freedom of their loved ones and organized regular marches through the streets of Cuba, despite regime organized violence visited upon them.
Regis Iglesias with Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia

The Economist in its December 14, 2005 issue published a conversation with Oswaldo Paya titled "An unsilenced voice for change" that outlined what had taken place:
Between 2001 and 2004, Mr Payá's movement gathered 25,000 signatures in a vain attempt to persuade Cuba's National Assembly to change the constitution to allow multi-party democracy. Activists of his Christian Liberation Movement made up more than two-thirds of the 75 dissidents and journalists rounded up and jailed for long terms in April 2003. [...] Spain is “complaisant” with Mr Castro's regime, Mr Payá says. “We need a campaign of support and solidarity with peaceful change in Cuba” of the kind that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa and to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
It took over eight years, but the last of the group of the 75 were eventually released. Many were driven into exile but  a core group remain in Cuba and are still defiant. One  of the Project Varela leaders still active and mobilizing large numbers today is Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, but others  lost their lives defending human rights and dignity who had also gathered signatures for the Varela Project, such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
Project Varela petitions delivered in 2002, 2003 and 2016
Project Varela lives on and on March 24, 2016 another 10,000 signatures were turned into the National Assembly bringing the total number of petitions signed in Cuba to 35,404.  

 However, let us end this entry with a documentary produced at the time followed by a reflection 
on one of the key actors in the Varela Project.  The National Democratic Insitute created a documentary in September 2002 about the Varela Project, entitled "Dissident: Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project," which premiered in several film festivals.


Regis Iglesias has written a chronology of how he experienced things on May 10, 2002 that has been published at the Christian Liberation Movement's website and below is an excerpt.
... Under this repressive state, hundreds of citizens have been working for Cuba. All of this was on our minds the night of May 9. For these reasons that night, in a small room in a house literally fenced by the most sophisticated espionage techniques and by dozens of repressive agents, we met, Oswaldo Payá, Antonio Díaz, Oswaldo Alfonso, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga, Ernesto Martín Fonseca, José Daniel Ferrer, Efrén Fernández, Jorge Colmenero and I to decide the details of the presentation, the next morning, of the Varela Project at the headquarters of the National Assembly of People's Power. Our will was unwavering because millions of Cubans have placed their hopes for freedom in this Project, even from their silent sympathies. We cannot fail them.
[...]
A wave of journalists rushed at us as he got out of the car. Behind him, Antonio and I went down with the two boxes containing the signature ballots. Oswaldo declared: “We came to present the Varela Project, then we will talk. Now we are going to present the signatures, more than 11,000 ″, and we continued our march towards the side entrance of the building where the population is served. I raised my fist with my index and thumb fingers extended to make the sign of Liberation. Dozens of onlookers, journalists, repressive agents and seven more opposition activists involved in the "operation" watched the scene, some with disbelief, others with hatred, most with hope and happiness. "I have waited 42 years to see this," said Julio Ruiz Pitaluga, who spent 24 years in Castro jails and still lived on the Island. 
The doorman of the legislative offices recognized Antonio and greeted him. Another individual dressed as a custodian asked how many of us were to enter, after Oswaldo informed him of the reason for our presence there. "Three, we are three," replied the Liberation leader. We went up the few steps of the premises and they invited us to go to a small room that was on our left. 
There we waited for an official to arrive, who identified herself as Columbié Lugo, who would attend to us because the Deputy in charge of the Population Services Department was absent at that time. We explained the reason for our presence and delivered the two boxes with the signature forms, a list with the names and general information of each signatory, the Legal Foundation of the Varela Project (with a copy). The lawyer corresponded to our courtesy and we asked her to sign a duplicate of the letter to Mr. Alarcón, she graciously agreed to stamp the official seal of said legislative body on his signature. We said goodbye to Lic. Columbié Lugo, of the people who were in the hall of the building and began to go down the steps of the entrance to the offices amidst the "assault" of questions from the press who anxiously waited on the sidewalk our departure. Several dozen curious onlookers crowded the street. 
I couldn't sort all the images and fleeting thoughts that went through my mind. Now I was trying to take a look at the people on the street. I looked at their amazed faces, their gestures and tried to guess their mimics. I was able to see Ernesto Martín, José Daniel, and Ricardo Montes among the large group, they were part of our support." ...
This courageous act of civic courage is remembered, and continues to impact inside Cuba and marks a historic moment that is shaping the eventual democratic transition that will arrive on the island.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Castro regime continues to modernize repression while Europe signals its not a problem

Bad week for human rights in Cuba.
Ladies in White continue to be regularly repressed in Cuba.
This has not been a good week for human rights in Cuba. On November 20, 2019 the Swedish Parliament approved the appalling EU-Cuba Agreement. Now there are just two countries (Lithuania, and the Netherlands) that are preventing ratification of this agreement. Meanwhile a new law was made public in Cuba codifying the police state of the Castro regime.
Civil Rights Defenders, a Swedish NGO that defends human rights around the world, tweeted the bad news in Spanish on November 21st and the message it sends to the Castro dictatorship.
The parliament of Sweden approved the EU-Cuba agreement yesterday. It is a pity, given that there are currently serious human rights violations in Cuba. This decision gives the signal to the Cuban government that disrespect for human rights is not a problem.
The EU-Cuba agreement divided Sweden's political parties and until this past week a majority had refused to ratify it. The Centre Party, Liberals, Sweden Democrats and Christian Democrats voted again against the agreement, but the Left Party and unexpectedly the conservative Moderates voted for it. This is terrible news for Cuban human rights defenders.

 Rosa María Payá in an open letter Civil Rights Defenders published on October 2, 2019 warned that "European governments abandoned their previous position, the EU Common Position on Cuba [brought into force] in 1996, that condemned human rights violations, demanded democratic reforms in Cuba and kept their embassies on the island open to opposition activists and members of independent civil society, but that [today's position] is used by the Cuban government to try to legitimize its actions."

 The European Union established a Common Position in 1996 with respect to Cuba, that was consonant with fundamental EU values as expressed below:
“The objective of the European Union in its relations with Cuba is to encourage a process of transition to pluralist democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as a sustainable recovery and improvement in the living standards of the Cuban people. A transition would most likely be peaceful if the present regime were itself to initiate or permit such a process. It is not European Union policy to try to bring about change by coercive measures with the effect of increasing the economic hardship of the Cuban people. The European Union considers that full cooperation with Cuba will depend upon improvements in human rights and political freedom”
Unfortunately, it was the Obama Administration's Cuba policy announced on December 17, 2014 and the President's official state visit in March 2016 that both negatively impacted international solidarity and human rights in Cuba that included Europe. The decision of the European Union to "open a new chapter" on relations with Cuba that dropped human rights as a condition for normalization ended the 1996 European Common Position. This abandonment of a linkage between human rights and commerce was formalized in a December 12, 2016 signing ceremony.
WiFi symbol in Havana, Cuba. Photo by Nano Anderson, Flickr CC License BY 2.0.
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic the same signal was being given by the White House and tech firms such as Google. Cuban civil society organizations gathered in Puerto Rico in 2016 to condemn Google for siding with their oppressor.
"Denounced the indifference of the company Google in violation of its code of corporate conduct and demanded that it establish a correct policy to provide wireless internet service with no censorship and without dependence on the regime in benefit of the Cuban people."
On December 13, 2016 Google signed an agreement with the Castro regime to speed up faster access to the "companies branded content." Marta Dhanis, a news correspondent, visited Cuba to investigate if there had been an improvement in internet access, following Google's partnering up with the Cuban dictatorship. 
Google's Eric Schmidt signs agreement with the Castro regime in December 2016
She talked to Cubans in the island and wrote the January 25, 2017 article, "Google entering Cuba is 'Trojan Horse' that could reinforce regime, residents say." A Cuban academic outlined what the internet was becoming in the island:
“We call the internet a ‘Trojan Horse.’ The success of this government has been possible thanks to the people’s lack of information,” said a 57-year-old retired professor who requested anonymity for fear of retribution by the communist regime. “I would have a patrol car at my door tomorrow to monitor my life,” he said. On the other hand, he and others contend, this Trojan Horse is also providing the communist regime with technology that will empower the secret police with detailed reports of the users’ searches and profiles, right down to their location.
Civil Rights Defenders is right that the signal has been given to the Cuban government that disrespect for human rights is not a problem for the European Union.

 Cuban dissident Cuesta Morua in a video tweeted by Civil Rights Defenders, on October 2, 2019 stated that "since 2016 when the deal was signed between the European Union and Cuba the human rights situation has worsened." Interviewed in the Swedish publication, Aftonbladet, Manuel Cuesta Morúa explained that “this is the chance to demand democratic reforms, but it isn’t being taken.” The Cuban dissident also explained that Sweden will be missing an opportunity to demand democracy in Cuba, if the EU-Cuba deal is approved.
National Revolutionary Police pat down Cuban attending Rolling Stones concert
Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship that has systematically violated human rights and privacy since 1959. However, in today's international environment the regime feels more comfortable in unveiling on November 18, 2019 how it purportedly spies on 11 million Cubans and uses a system of informants without any judicial oversight. (Extrajudicial killing of non-violent opponents, the use of physical and psychological torture are still not admitted to in the "new" government decree.) 
Cuba is a surveillance state that seeks to modernize into a more terrible one.
The formal title of the decree in Spanish is "Decreto-Ley no. 389 modificatorio del Código Penal, la Ley de Procedimiento Penal y la Ley de Actos contra el Terrorismo" that translates into English as "Decree-Law No. 389 amending the Criminal Code, the Law of Criminal Procedure and the Law of Acts against Terrorism." This is the latest in a series of "laws" that seek to modernize and perfect the Castro regime's totalitarian system for the 21st Century in building a more perfect panopticon.  
Private network S-Net was shut down by the Castro regime in 2019
On July 4, 2019 the Castro regime issued "Decreto-Ley No. 370 Sobre la Informatización de la Sociedad en Cuba" that translates into English as "Decree-Law No. 370 on the Computerization of Society in Cuba." Article 68 of the Decree-Law "prohibits Cuban citizens from running websites hosted outside of the country."

On May 29, 2019 both official and independent publications on the island reported that on July 29, 2019 the Cuban government would recognize private, informal networks and legalize them. Reuters reported that Cuba announced that "it would legalize private Wi-Fi networks to access the internet and connect computers," based on resolutions (98/2019 and 99/2019) issued by the regime's Ministry of Communication
What happened was the opposite of what was reported in May. "S-Net", a domestic, non-hierarchical, self organizing and self configuring private network that covers all of Havana and is also found in the country side has been declared illegal.The two resolutions issued by the Cuban dictatorship's Ministry of Communication in May 2019, interpreted positively by the international press, were used to target this mesh network. What had been long tolerated as a private initiative was absorbed by the dictatorship.

Lazaro Rodriquez Betancourt: Jailed 9 months for protesting Decree 349
Decree-Law 349 signed by Díaz-Canel on April 10, 2018 further restricts and controls artistic expression in Cuba. According to Amnesty International's August 24, 2018 analysis of the new law:
Under the decree, all artists, including collectives, musicians and performers, are prohibited from operating in public or private spaces without prior approval by the Ministry of Culture. Individuals or businesses that hire artists without the authorization can be sanctioned, and artists that work without prior approval can have their materials confiscated or be substantially fined. Under the new decree, the authorities also have the power to immediately suspend a performance and to propose the cancellation of the authorization granted to carry out the artistic activity. Such decisions can only be appealed before the same Ministry of Culture (Article 10); the decree does not provide an effective remedy to appeal such a decision before an independent body, including through the courts.
Decree 349 provoked protests by independent artists. Many were arbitrarily detained, and at least two were jailed for prolonged periods.

Cuban Rapper Maykel Castillo Pérez was jailed for 1 year 1 month for protesting Decree 349
At a time when Amnesty International identified six new Cuban prisoners of conscience (José Pilot Guide , Silverio Portal Contreras, Mitzael Díaz Paseiro, Eliecer Bandera Barrera, Edilberto Ronal Azuaga, and Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces) and called for their immediate release. The same organization also alleges that imprisoned Cuban opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia is currently at risk of being tortured. This move by Sweden, an international human rights champion, to give a green light to the systematic increase in repression in Cuba sends a terrible message to the Cuban dictatorship, and other dictators around the world.

These are dark times for human rights in the world.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Failing to liberate Cuba in the 1990s, led to a resurgance of Communism in the Americas

"The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility."- Václav Havel IHT (21 February 1990)

Protest in Washington DC on November 16, 2019 against Nicolas Maduro.
Address at Freedom Plaza with Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Bolivians protesting Maduro

 On Friday, November 15th I was contacted by one of Venezuelan organizers of a protest on the following day coinciding with massive protests  in Caracas, Venezuela and asked to speak. This is my draft of the document I used that day to address the crowd at Freedom Plaza as its final speaker.
George Santayana observed that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Today in Latin America history is being repeated and communism has returned to pose an existential threat in this hemisphere.

Today I am attending this protest with a poster of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas. This Cuban opposition leader was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was a Sakharov Prize Laureate and was murdered together with youth leader Harold Cepero in 2012 by Cuban State Security. Today Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, and scores of other political prisoners are rotting in Cuban prisons and their lives are in peril.

The same Cuban state security agents and political police that took control in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and that today are trying to take control in Chile, and return Evo Morales to power in Bolivia are not to be underestimated.

The communist regime in Cuba has long term political and strategic objectives that it has patiently pursued for decades.

To Venezuelans: There are plenty of reasons to protest
Consider the case of Venezuela. The Castro regime's interest in Venezuela began from the earliest days of the Cuban communist dictatorship.

Rómulo Betancourt, was a man of the left, the first democratically elected president of Venezuela following the fall of the military dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958. He had met Castro in 1948, and at the time both agreed that Latin America had to change. One of the first things that Fidel Castro did when taking power in 1959 was to visit Betancourt in Venezuela on January 23rd, assuming that he would find an ally.

Venezuelan President-elect Rómulo Betancourt meets Fidel Castro in 1959
But Castro met a Venezuelan leader who, over the years, had become critical of communism, a leader who even in the 1930s had said that he "did not agree with the interference of the Soviet Union in European countries. " During the above mentioned visit in 1959, Betancourt recommended that Cuba not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union and that Cuba hold free elections.

In 1960 Ernesto "Che" Guevara was giving unsolicited advice calling for Betancourt to use the firing squad against his "rightist opponents." In 1963, the Congressional Quarterly reported 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.”
The Venezuelan president "believed that trade and diplomatic relations should be broken with the governments that came to power through coups, regardless of whether they were left or right. Thus, in 1961, Venezuela broke relations with Cuba and became one of the promoters of the exclusion of the island from the OAS, which was achieved in January 1962."

Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca
However, the Castro regime continued to agitate for the overthrow of democracy in Venezuela with a strategic aim. 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.

President Betancourt understood that the Castro regime was an existential threat to democracy in the Americas. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis he mobilized two Venezuelan destroyers and a submarine to take part in the quarantine of Cuba.

Betancourt's successor in the presidency, Raúl Leoni Otero, took over in 1964 and remained in office until 1969 and pursued the policy of containment and isolation. Failing to violently overthrow Venezuela's democracy, Fidel Castro publicly renounced the exportation of revolution (although he continued the practice -- see Nicaragua and the rise of the Sandinistas in 1979 and the trafficking in drugs in Colombia to finance guerillas to overthrow the Colombian government in 1983) and began making overtures to the Venezuelan government that those times were over.
.
Venezuelan democrats forgot the nature of the Castro regime.

Venezuela's President Carlos Andres Perez, unknown, Fidcl Castro, dictator.
Diplomatic relations were restored between Venezuela and Cuba in December of 1974, oil deliveries resumed, and the democratic government of Venezuela under Carlos Andres Perez's first presidency advocated Cuba's readmission to the Organization of American States.

At the start of his second presidency (1988 - 1993), Carlos Andres Perez invited Fidel Castro to his inauguration.

President Carlos Andres Perez, Fidel Castro, and Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez
Eastern Europe was liberated in 1989. Thirty years ago today the Velvet Revolution started in Czechoslovakia. The Sandinistas were driven out of office in fair and free elections in 1990. On Christmas Day 1991 the Soviet Union peacefully dissolved.  This was the moment for a democratic hemisphere to press a democratic transition in Cuba, but instead they assumed that the regime in Cuba would fall on its own.

They were wrong. Fidel Castro had rejected Gorbachev's reforms and banned Soviet publications.  This failure of solidarity in the Western Hemisphere would return to haunt Latin America.

In 1990 following a request made by Fidel Castro to Lula Da Silva the Sao Paulo Forum was established with the goal “to reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe.”  The FSP is a communist network comprised of over 100 left wing political parties, various social movements, and guerrilla terrorist organizations such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Chilean Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR).

In 1992 Hugo Chavez was involved in a failed coup against the Andres Perez government. Pardoned by Andres Perez's successor, Rafael Caldera, in March 1994 Hugo Chavez made his way to Cuba later that same year where he was received by Fidel Castro as a hero not a failed coup plotter.

Fidel Castro greets Hugo Chavez in Cuba on December 13, 1994
Four years later, in a reaction to generalized disgust with corruption endemic to the Venezuelan democratic order epitomized by the Carlos Andres Perez administration the former coup plotter was elected president.

President Rafael Caldera with Dictator Fidel Castro in Colombia in 1994
President Caldera, who had pardoned Chavez, handed power over to him in 1999. Together with Fidel Castro, as a mentor, Chavez began the process of turning a flawed democratic order into the totalitarian regime it is today.

Daniel Ortega Nicaragua, Nicolas Maduro Venezuela and Evo Morales, Bolivia.
Venezuelan money backed by Cuban spies and military personnel consolidated Chavez's rule and expanded their power base by flipping other countries. Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2006, along with the Sandinista Party.  In Bolivia, Evo Morales took power in 2006 and allied with the Sao Paulo Forum and developed close ties with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Rafael Correa achieved the same results in Ecuador in 2007 and would hang on to power for a decade, and today is helping to destabilize his successor, who has not followed in his foot steps.

Official channels announced that Hugo Chavez died on March 5, 2013 and was replaced by Nicolas Maduro, a hardcore communist, an individual who spent a lot of time in his early 20s in Cuba being trained by the Union of Young Communists and Pedro Miret, an official close to Fidel Castro.

Over the past six years Maduro has proven himself to be Havana's man, and Venezuela has been turned into a second Cuba. Complete with fake elections that only underscore that democracy has departed that South American country.

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.”

Venezuela had a strong and vibrant democracy for forty years, that successfully defended itself from Castroism, promoted democracy in the region, but when it bought into the enemy's lies and mistook the Castro regime for a friend the die was cast for the tragedy currently unfolding. Young Venezuelans are today paying with their lives for the mistakes made by Venezuelan politicians a generation ago.

This is a moment when positive change is possible. Democrats in this hemisphere should learn from the Sao Paulo Forum, and revitalize the Organization of American States into a structure that will strategically and patiently pursue democracy across the Western Hemisphere.

We are all responsible and we must collaborate together, and pursue freedom for all countries in the Americas, including Cuba.  History should teach that failing to do so in the 1990s is what brought and imposed this failed ideology on tens of millions in the Western Hemisphere.

Waiting to speak









Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)