Conghaileach
29th April 2003, 02:16
TURNING THE VICTIM INTO THE CRIMINAL Cuba Responds to U.S. Provocations
By Ike Nahem
With skillful manipulation of the press [the U.S. government] turns
the victim into the criminal and the criminal into the victim.
--Malcolm X
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell
It has been said that these are prisoners of conscience, that they have
been charged for thinking or for speaking. I categorically reject this
notion. What have been judged here are actions and conducts typified
as crimes by the law, we have not judged ideas. We win battles of
ideas with ideas, as Jose Marti said, and we are very strong in the
field of ideas. We punish actions and conducts..We have much
experience in the defense of our sovereignty.We know that subversion is
fabricated from abroad, that they are attempting to create a Trojan
Horse here. Thus, we are exercising our sovereign right to legally
confront it, abiding by the law and ethics , never resorting to such
things like kidnapping and assassination, never creating death squads,
never violating anyone's physical and moral integrity." --Cuban
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
The Trials
The arrest, trial, and subsequent conviction of 75 Cuban citizens-
financed and under the blatant political direction of the U.S.
government-by the Cuban state has been the answer by Cuba's
revolutionary government to the increasingly provocative and insolent
activities of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana for a number of
years. Cuba's sober decision to put an end to this particular U.S.-
organized counter-revolutionary operation followed repeated warnings
to the U.S. Interests Section and its Cuban hirelings to cease and
desist in their violations of Cuban sovereignty and laws. The Cuban
citizens were convicted under Cuban legislation, including the "Law
on the Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba,"
which makes it a crime to collaborate and receive financing from the
U.S. government and its agencies in the promotion of Washington's
unchanged, decades-long economic and political war to destabilize and
overthrow the Cuban Revolution.
(For a detailed and thoroughly documented presentation of the facts on
the recent arrests and convictions, their recent and historical
context, as well as the specific Cuban laws violated and the legal
process and full legal guarantees involved-public trials and right to
counsel of their own choosing- see the CSNY website-
www.cubasolidarityny.org-where the entire transcript of the April 9,
2003 press conference of Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque is
reproduced. This document reveals incontrovertible evidence as to
Washington's role in the activities of the so-called "peaceful
dissidents" and answers point by point the anti-Cuba
propaganda campaign directed by Washington and the big-business press
around the prosecution and convictions. Perez Roque documents the
multi-million dollar grants mandated by the U.S. Congress under the
Helms-Burton law, part of the overt and covert disbursed by Washington
to its Cuban clients through CIA-fronts like the National Endowment for
Democracy, the State Department's Agency for International
Development, and "private" organizations, including Miami-based
counter-revolutionary outfits created long-ago by the CIA with long
histories of violence and terrorism, sustained permanently with
the thinnest of gloves covering Washington's hand.)
The arrests and convictions quickly became the pretext for a torrent
of self-righteous indignation and stunning hypocrisy against Cuba. A
mounting campaign of numerous editorials, op-ed columns, and news
articles in the big-business press and, of course, howls, huffing and
puffing by the U.S. State Department and Democratic and Republican
party politicians has been launched.
By a vote of 414-0 the U.S. House of Representatives-a body which
maintains the vicious and murderous U.S. economic blockade and
finances counterrevolutionary covert action against Cuba-passed a
piously worded resolution condemning Cuba in words as arrogant as they
were demagogic. A number of editorial pages that had formally opposed
the U.S. embargo and travel ban (on the basis that it was a "failed"
policy that only "strengthened Castro" and was an impediment to
"change" and a "transition to democracy" in Cuba) as well as
statements from a slew of liberals and others who had claimed to
oppose U.S. sanctions, have now reversed themselves and joined in the
campaign demanding Cuba's hide for the crime of defending itself
against the U.S. Empire. A typical editorial in the Los Angeles
Times stated, "After years of calling for liberalized relations with
Cuba, this editorial page must now urge American policy makers to hit
the breaks." The Times editors can be certain that the White House and
Congress will look more favorably on their current "urge" than
previous half-hearted, two- faced calls for "liberalization."
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other "nonpartisan"
human rights groups- who more and more operate as in-house critics
within the imperialist world order-have lined up behind the reactionary
anti-Cuba campaign and give it respectable cover. These groups have no
view, being "non-political," on the role of a handful of imperialist
powers-all "democratic" and where these groups are based and funded-who
enforce an economic and social order of massive poverty, oppression,
and exploitation in the so-called Third World, which is the source of
the truly disastrous human rights reality in the world. And which
revolutionary Cuba is the leading force that politically combats this
reality. That is why the revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro
is attacked by all the imperialist "democracies." The "dissidents" who
are championed by the professional "human rights" industry are in the
pay of the U.S. government and promote its agenda. An agenda which-in
the name of "democracy"- would return Cuba to the "free market,"
neoliberal, neocolonial dependency which is the devastating reality in
the rest of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the entire so-called
Third World today.
Other more purportedly left-wing forces, including the French
Communist Party, Portuguese Communist Party member and Nobel Prize-
winning novelist Jose Saramago, Mexican intellectual and novelist
Carlos Fuentes, and Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano have also piled on
in condemnation of Cuba. Washington and its loyal corporate media,
which generally ignore or disdain the views of such reformist
leftists, have widely welcomed and publicized these demoralized
attacks.
So, with cover from liberals, some prominent "leftists" and
professional "human rights" outfits-who, no doubt would have condemned
Abraham Lincoln for his "brutal repression" of "peaceful" advocates
and paid agents of the slave-owning South during the Second American
Revolution (Civil War)- the Bush Administration has already moved to
further tighten travel restrictions, effectively ending previously
approved visits for educational and cultural purposes. Still harsher
economic sanctions and travel restrictions are being prepared.
With blood in their mouths following their "victory" over Iraq, many
in Imperial Washington would like to put Cuba more directly in
their crosshairs. Today, as Foreign Minister Perez Roque put it, "marks
a time when the anti-Cuban policy, the policy of subversion against
Cuba is becoming fiercer, overt, gloves off."
The Executions
Further grist for the imperialist propaganda mill came on April 11
when three Cuban citizens were swiftly executed after a trial and the
rejection of two subsequent appeals to the Cuban Supreme Court and
Council of State-as required by Cuban law-for the violent hijacking of
a ferry boat full of tourists.
The death penalty, while legal, is extremely rare in Cuba, unlike in
the U.S. where it is numbingly routine, arbitrary, racist, and class
biased. In the U.S. there have been dozens and dozens of death-row
inmates finally released after many years of incarceration when their
convictions-that is, their frame-ups-had to be dropped due to DNA and
other exonerating evidence being produced. Which raises the obvious
question of how many innocent working people-which is who occupies
death row-have been put to death in of-the-rich, by-the-rich, and for-
the-rich criminal justice system in the United States.
In contrast, the April 11 executions were the first in Cuba in many
years. It is almost never used in normal criminal cases. Cuba has
historically only implemented this highest penalty in cases directly
involving the security and credibility of the Cuban Revolution in face
of Washington's unending campaign to destroy it. Cuba's rate of
incarceration is also very low compared to the U.S. reality.
Furthermore, in recent years there has been a successful drive in Cuba
to release many prisoners and place them in schools and jobs.
There are many in the world and in Cuba who are opposed in principle to
the death penalty and their moral position and criticism of the April
11 executions in Cuba should be respected. Nevertheless, there is a
crucial context to the ferry boat executions which should also be
understood and presented in defense of Cuba's action in this case and
at this time..
This was the seventh violent hijacking of Cuban planes or boats in as
many month and coincides with the stepped-up provocations led by the
U.S. Interests Section. Washington has refused to implement the 1994
migration accords reached with Havana which allows a "minimum" of
20,000 Cubans to immigrate to the U.S. via a legal orderly process
with papers and a legal seat on an airplane or boat. In the past six-
month cycle Washington provided legal papers for exactly 505
applicants. Instead, under the notorious U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act-
which allows any Cuban who steps foot on U.S. territory to receive
automatic "political asylum" as a "victim of persecution"-
illegal immigration, including violent hijackings, are encouraged.
And, in fact, of the recent rash of hijackings, whose perpetrators
reached U.S. territory, four individuals are now at liberty in Miami
and none of the pirated Cuban property has been returned. The April 11
executions sent the strongest possible message that this situation
would no longer be tolerated.
Immigration from Cuba to the U.S. is due primarily to continued
economic hardship-which is the very purpose of the intensified U.S.
economic blockade and secondary boycott. The layer of Cubans, many
with family in the U.S., which choose to leave for the U.S. is far
fewer than the number who would, if they had their own "Adjustment
Act," would vacate any impoverished capitalist country in Latin America
and the Caribbean. Cuba law is very clear that anyone who chooses to
leave is free to do so if they have legal authorization from the
receiving country. Participation in Cuba's revolutionary process and
struggle, Fidel Castro has repeatedly said, is "completely voluntary."
Instead of allowing an orderly, legal immigration process,
Washington disregards the agreement it signed, encourages illegal
immigration with the Cuban Adjustment Act and propaganda broadcasts
from Radio Marti (grossly named after Cuba's revolutionary hero, Jose
Marti). The obvious result is increased frustration and pent-up demand
by would-be immigrants, leading some to desperate and violent
measures. The only beneficiary of such a vile policy is those aiming
to fabricate a propaganda image of people "fleeing Castro's prison
island." There is another, more sinister and dangerous purpose as
explained in a pointed April 16 editorial in the Cuban Communist Party
daily Granma, "The head of the United States Interests Section is at
the forefront of a conscious plan to stimulate illegal emigration via
acts of terrorism with the objective of casting aside the migratory
agreements between the two countries and creating a chaotic situation.
The objective is to stimulate mass migration, obliging Washington to
take aggressive action to avoid it."
A New Reality
The imperialist campaign aims at preparing U.S. public opinion for a
more aggressive U.S. posture promoting "regime change" in Havana. The
political dynamic and logic of this anti-Cuba campaign is direct
military threat. Hans Hertell, Washington's Ambassador to the
Dominican Republic-a country invaded by 25,000 U.S. troops in 1965 to
crush a popular revolution-made this chillingly clear when he stated,
"I think what is happening in Iraq is going to send a very positive
signal, and it is a very good example for Cuba."
The decision by the Cuban government to "roll up" Washington's clients
in one fell swoop was reached in a calm and deliberative fashion. The
Cuban authorities are fully aware of how the arrests will be used as a
pretext for a blitzkrieg of deceiving and demagogic propaganda against
Cuba-as is now unfolding. They are fully aware than many friends of
Cuba will be confused under the propaganda barrage and that other
false friends will join in the chorus of hypocritical condemnation.
This has already been the case among a host of Democratic and
Republican politicians who have, in the past, declared opposition to
U.S. economic sanctions and the U.S. travel ban. The shameful list
includes liberal politicians such as Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano
who had in the past displayed a degree of friendship with Cuba
and spoken out against U.S. policy.
Illegal activities directed out of the U.S. Interests Section have
become more blatant under the new Bush-appointed Chief of the U.S.
Interests Section in Havana, James Cason. It is clear the Cuban
authorities had been exceedingly patient and tolerant in the desire to
see a change in U.S. policies and the hope that the recurrent flurries
of proposed legislation on Capitol Hill to "ease" U.S. sanctions and
the U.S. travel ban might actually produce something concrete and
positive. This has now come to an end. As Foreign Minister Perez Roque
said in his April 9 Press Conference, Washington's stepped-up hostility
and blatant interventions via the U.S. Interests Section "is sending a
message to all these mercenaries which is that of believing that they
can count on impunity, that they are protected by a powerful ally who
encourages, finances, organizes, and directs them.[this] has compelled
us to apply our law, and these trials must be understood as Cuba's
behavior when no other option remained given the path of confrontation
and provocation that the U.S. government has chosen to pursue in its
relations with Cuba.Things had reached an untenable point for our
country which lives under aggression, harassment and blockade and
which has laws to defend itself and has made sovereign use .to punish
those who co-operate with the power that tries to subvert order in the
country and tries to crush and deprive Cubans of the right to enjoy
independence and self-determination."
The "Dissidents" Base is in Washington, Not Cuba
Washington and the big-business media are doing somersaults to portray
the convicted Cuban citizens and paid Washington employees as "non-
violent," "committed to peaceful change," "courageous intellectuals,"
"independent journalists," and even "poets" who are now "prisoners of
conscience persecuted for what they think and what they write." This
is a Big Lie.
In a period of stepped-up U.S. threats against Cuba, the operatives
in Washington's pay, who masquerade as "peaceful dissidents,"
regardless of their lack of political weight and influence inside
Cuba, become a point of reference and conduit for U.S. intervention
and potential terrorist and overt military intervention against Cuba.
This is not a question of speculation. Clear evidence gathered by the
Cuban courts-much of it public knowledge-show irrefutably the links
between the allegedly "peaceful dissidents" and known CIA-trained
Cuban-American counterrevolutionaries with long records of terrorist
and violent acts in Cuba and in the United States against their
opponents.
The so-called "democratic opposition" inside Cuba has no social or
political base in the country. Their social and political base is in
Washington not Cuba. In terms of the domestic relationship of
political forces inside Cuba and the constant, wide-ranging, and
democratic debates over the country's course, its economic and social
challenges, and the solutions to social problems and mistaken policies,
the "dissidents" are utterly insignificant. Their direction and
funding is from Washington, not from the Cuban people. They have no
base or minimal support among Cuba's working class, peasantry, youth,
and intellectuals that are the social forces who wield political power
in Cuba and which embody its government and state power. It is
an insult to reality and the overwhelming majority of the Cuban
population who support and participate in their Revolution to present
the so-called "dissidents" as representative of the "oppressed Cuban
people." They represent the U.S. Empire and its designs on Cuba.and
nothing else.
In 2002 over eight million Cubans voted in a secret-ballot
national plebiscite to make "irrevocable' the social, economic, and
political conquests that are embodied in Cuba's Constitution. This was
a response to the "Varela Project," highly promoted by Washington as a
"peaceful" wedge against Cuba, which claimed to have gotten 10,000
signatures from Cuban citizens on a petition to abrogate Cuba's social
and economic system.
The U.S.-created and sustained "dissidents"-in and of themselves-
represent no threat whatsoever to the power and continuity of the
Cuban Revolution. But the "dissidents" do not exist in and of
themselves. They are the mercenary agents of a foreign power-the mighty
U.S Empire, which, moreover, has an unchanged policy for over four
decades of overthrowing the Cuban government and destroying the Cuban
Revolution.
If the U.S. economic and political war against Cuba-shadowed by
permanent threats of military aggression-were to definitively end and
normalized Washington-Havana relations established, the prop of the
"dissidents" would collapse. They or people with similar pro-
capitalist or pro-imperialist ideas would be free to organize and
display their political irrelevance under Cuba's Constitution. But
activists in the Cuba solidarity movement and opponents of U.S. policy
should have no illusions that such a happy reality is anywhere close
to the horizon.
Only the determined resistance of the Cuban workers, peasants, and
youth in alliance with the fighting peoples of Latin America and the
Caribbean and the redoubled solidarity of activists in the U.S. can
bring that day closer.
Why Washington and Wall Street Hate Cuba
The "dissidents" paymaster and conductor-Washington-dominates the
political and economic landscape in Latin America where it enforces-
against growing continental resistance-the reality of massive
inequality and impoverishment. Washington and Wall Street hate Cuba
and its revolutionary government precisely because it is a living
example to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean-and the entire
so-called Third World-that it is possible to win independence from the
United States and build a more just and egalitarian society.
Supporters of the Cuban Revolution and genuine friends of Cuba who
sincerely uphold the right of self-determination, oppose U.S.
sanctions, and support normalization and equality in relations between
Washington and Havana now more than ever must get in the way of,
challenge, and fight to reverse Washington's escalating anti-Cuba
campaign. Our campaign begins with a commitment to get out the facts
and tell the truth. Facts and truth about Washington's 44-year
campaign to destroy the Cuban Revolution by any means possible. Facts
and truth about the history of Washington's recruitment, organizing,
financing, arming, and promotion to this day of Cuban counter-
revolutionaries. Facts and truth about the real history of
unbroken decades of violent and terrorist acts organized from U.S.
territory inside Cuba by CIA-trained mercenaries which have led to
over 3,300 deaths; the use of biological agents directed at Cuban
agriculture; hundreds upon hundreds of attempts to assassinate Fidel
Castro and other revolutionary leaders; and terrorist bombings of
Cuban tourist facilities. What is happening today registers Cuba's
right of self-defense against an unbroken policy of U.S. aggression
ever since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
Why this unremitting imperialist hatred against revolutionary Cuba? The
idea that it is for "lack of democracy" or "human rights" is a
monstrous joke and a stupid lie meant for demagogues and gullible
fools. Washington has organized, promoted, and sustained every blood-
soaked tyranny in Latin America in the 20th Century, from Chile to
Nicaragua to Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Bolivia and Uruguay,
including the Batista dictatorship overthrown by the Cuban Revolution.
In April, 2002, Washington welcomed and was the barely covert
ringleader of the brief military coup in Venezuela that was beaten
back by the aroused and mobilized working class and peasantry of that
country. As popular resistance in Latin America grows to the vicious
and brutal inequality of Washington-imposed "neoliberal" policies,
Washington will again attempt to revert to direct military rule
to protect the flow of profits to U.S. capital.
Cuba's real crime
Cuba's real crime to the pious hypocrites in Washington is to have
carried through and defended effectively a real social revolution in
the interests of the vast majority. A revolution that broke forever
the economic, financial, political, and cultural stranglehold of U.S.
imperialism. A revolution that remains-despite the mountains of filth
and lies thrown at it by the vast propaganda apparatus of Washington
and the big-business media-an inspiring example to the oppressed and
exploited rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the entire so-
called Third World, which still faces and resists that domination. The
Cuban Revolution opened up for Cuban workers, peasants, and youth
national sovereignty and pride, free and equal access to world-class
health care, education, sports, and artistic and cultural achievement.
The Cuban Revolution wiped out illiteracy, drug addiction, and the
U.S. Mafia. It dealt body blows to race and sex discrimination.
Despite an initially poor record on gay rights in the first years of
the Revolution, Cuba has abolished all anti-homosexual laws and today
is the freest country in Latin America and the Caribbean for gays and
lesbians.
This is the real "threat" that Cuba represents to Washington and its
lackeys among the ruling classes in Latin America. Washington has
never-and can never-reconcile itself to the revolutionary example of
Cuba no more than, as Malcolm X put it, "a chicken can produce a duck
egg."
Revolutionary Cuba has never turned the other cheek to Washington's
threats. It remains true to its revolutionary principles and its
socialist ideals of egalitarianism and internationalism. They will not
cower and back down in the face of the U.S. Empire. They count on the
power of their ideas, their willingness to fight to the end, and the
solidarity of the oppressed and exploited people of the world to
successfully resist the most militarily powerful force in the history
of the earth-the U.S. Empire.
Cuba embodies international solidarity. Cuba supports every just cause
in deeds as well as words. Now is the time to be counted in defense of
this small revolutionary island and its mighty example. Now is the
time to show solidarity with Cuba.
Ike Nahem is a coordinator of Cuba Solidarity New York, a member of
the National Network on Cuba. Nahem is a member of the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers, Division 11, Amtrak, in New York City. These are
his personal opinions.
By Ike Nahem
With skillful manipulation of the press [the U.S. government] turns
the victim into the criminal and the criminal into the victim.
--Malcolm X
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell
It has been said that these are prisoners of conscience, that they have
been charged for thinking or for speaking. I categorically reject this
notion. What have been judged here are actions and conducts typified
as crimes by the law, we have not judged ideas. We win battles of
ideas with ideas, as Jose Marti said, and we are very strong in the
field of ideas. We punish actions and conducts..We have much
experience in the defense of our sovereignty.We know that subversion is
fabricated from abroad, that they are attempting to create a Trojan
Horse here. Thus, we are exercising our sovereign right to legally
confront it, abiding by the law and ethics , never resorting to such
things like kidnapping and assassination, never creating death squads,
never violating anyone's physical and moral integrity." --Cuban
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
The Trials
The arrest, trial, and subsequent conviction of 75 Cuban citizens-
financed and under the blatant political direction of the U.S.
government-by the Cuban state has been the answer by Cuba's
revolutionary government to the increasingly provocative and insolent
activities of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana for a number of
years. Cuba's sober decision to put an end to this particular U.S.-
organized counter-revolutionary operation followed repeated warnings
to the U.S. Interests Section and its Cuban hirelings to cease and
desist in their violations of Cuban sovereignty and laws. The Cuban
citizens were convicted under Cuban legislation, including the "Law
on the Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba,"
which makes it a crime to collaborate and receive financing from the
U.S. government and its agencies in the promotion of Washington's
unchanged, decades-long economic and political war to destabilize and
overthrow the Cuban Revolution.
(For a detailed and thoroughly documented presentation of the facts on
the recent arrests and convictions, their recent and historical
context, as well as the specific Cuban laws violated and the legal
process and full legal guarantees involved-public trials and right to
counsel of their own choosing- see the CSNY website-
www.cubasolidarityny.org-where the entire transcript of the April 9,
2003 press conference of Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque is
reproduced. This document reveals incontrovertible evidence as to
Washington's role in the activities of the so-called "peaceful
dissidents" and answers point by point the anti-Cuba
propaganda campaign directed by Washington and the big-business press
around the prosecution and convictions. Perez Roque documents the
multi-million dollar grants mandated by the U.S. Congress under the
Helms-Burton law, part of the overt and covert disbursed by Washington
to its Cuban clients through CIA-fronts like the National Endowment for
Democracy, the State Department's Agency for International
Development, and "private" organizations, including Miami-based
counter-revolutionary outfits created long-ago by the CIA with long
histories of violence and terrorism, sustained permanently with
the thinnest of gloves covering Washington's hand.)
The arrests and convictions quickly became the pretext for a torrent
of self-righteous indignation and stunning hypocrisy against Cuba. A
mounting campaign of numerous editorials, op-ed columns, and news
articles in the big-business press and, of course, howls, huffing and
puffing by the U.S. State Department and Democratic and Republican
party politicians has been launched.
By a vote of 414-0 the U.S. House of Representatives-a body which
maintains the vicious and murderous U.S. economic blockade and
finances counterrevolutionary covert action against Cuba-passed a
piously worded resolution condemning Cuba in words as arrogant as they
were demagogic. A number of editorial pages that had formally opposed
the U.S. embargo and travel ban (on the basis that it was a "failed"
policy that only "strengthened Castro" and was an impediment to
"change" and a "transition to democracy" in Cuba) as well as
statements from a slew of liberals and others who had claimed to
oppose U.S. sanctions, have now reversed themselves and joined in the
campaign demanding Cuba's hide for the crime of defending itself
against the U.S. Empire. A typical editorial in the Los Angeles
Times stated, "After years of calling for liberalized relations with
Cuba, this editorial page must now urge American policy makers to hit
the breaks." The Times editors can be certain that the White House and
Congress will look more favorably on their current "urge" than
previous half-hearted, two- faced calls for "liberalization."
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other "nonpartisan"
human rights groups- who more and more operate as in-house critics
within the imperialist world order-have lined up behind the reactionary
anti-Cuba campaign and give it respectable cover. These groups have no
view, being "non-political," on the role of a handful of imperialist
powers-all "democratic" and where these groups are based and funded-who
enforce an economic and social order of massive poverty, oppression,
and exploitation in the so-called Third World, which is the source of
the truly disastrous human rights reality in the world. And which
revolutionary Cuba is the leading force that politically combats this
reality. That is why the revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro
is attacked by all the imperialist "democracies." The "dissidents" who
are championed by the professional "human rights" industry are in the
pay of the U.S. government and promote its agenda. An agenda which-in
the name of "democracy"- would return Cuba to the "free market,"
neoliberal, neocolonial dependency which is the devastating reality in
the rest of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the entire so-called
Third World today.
Other more purportedly left-wing forces, including the French
Communist Party, Portuguese Communist Party member and Nobel Prize-
winning novelist Jose Saramago, Mexican intellectual and novelist
Carlos Fuentes, and Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano have also piled on
in condemnation of Cuba. Washington and its loyal corporate media,
which generally ignore or disdain the views of such reformist
leftists, have widely welcomed and publicized these demoralized
attacks.
So, with cover from liberals, some prominent "leftists" and
professional "human rights" outfits-who, no doubt would have condemned
Abraham Lincoln for his "brutal repression" of "peaceful" advocates
and paid agents of the slave-owning South during the Second American
Revolution (Civil War)- the Bush Administration has already moved to
further tighten travel restrictions, effectively ending previously
approved visits for educational and cultural purposes. Still harsher
economic sanctions and travel restrictions are being prepared.
With blood in their mouths following their "victory" over Iraq, many
in Imperial Washington would like to put Cuba more directly in
their crosshairs. Today, as Foreign Minister Perez Roque put it, "marks
a time when the anti-Cuban policy, the policy of subversion against
Cuba is becoming fiercer, overt, gloves off."
The Executions
Further grist for the imperialist propaganda mill came on April 11
when three Cuban citizens were swiftly executed after a trial and the
rejection of two subsequent appeals to the Cuban Supreme Court and
Council of State-as required by Cuban law-for the violent hijacking of
a ferry boat full of tourists.
The death penalty, while legal, is extremely rare in Cuba, unlike in
the U.S. where it is numbingly routine, arbitrary, racist, and class
biased. In the U.S. there have been dozens and dozens of death-row
inmates finally released after many years of incarceration when their
convictions-that is, their frame-ups-had to be dropped due to DNA and
other exonerating evidence being produced. Which raises the obvious
question of how many innocent working people-which is who occupies
death row-have been put to death in of-the-rich, by-the-rich, and for-
the-rich criminal justice system in the United States.
In contrast, the April 11 executions were the first in Cuba in many
years. It is almost never used in normal criminal cases. Cuba has
historically only implemented this highest penalty in cases directly
involving the security and credibility of the Cuban Revolution in face
of Washington's unending campaign to destroy it. Cuba's rate of
incarceration is also very low compared to the U.S. reality.
Furthermore, in recent years there has been a successful drive in Cuba
to release many prisoners and place them in schools and jobs.
There are many in the world and in Cuba who are opposed in principle to
the death penalty and their moral position and criticism of the April
11 executions in Cuba should be respected. Nevertheless, there is a
crucial context to the ferry boat executions which should also be
understood and presented in defense of Cuba's action in this case and
at this time..
This was the seventh violent hijacking of Cuban planes or boats in as
many month and coincides with the stepped-up provocations led by the
U.S. Interests Section. Washington has refused to implement the 1994
migration accords reached with Havana which allows a "minimum" of
20,000 Cubans to immigrate to the U.S. via a legal orderly process
with papers and a legal seat on an airplane or boat. In the past six-
month cycle Washington provided legal papers for exactly 505
applicants. Instead, under the notorious U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act-
which allows any Cuban who steps foot on U.S. territory to receive
automatic "political asylum" as a "victim of persecution"-
illegal immigration, including violent hijackings, are encouraged.
And, in fact, of the recent rash of hijackings, whose perpetrators
reached U.S. territory, four individuals are now at liberty in Miami
and none of the pirated Cuban property has been returned. The April 11
executions sent the strongest possible message that this situation
would no longer be tolerated.
Immigration from Cuba to the U.S. is due primarily to continued
economic hardship-which is the very purpose of the intensified U.S.
economic blockade and secondary boycott. The layer of Cubans, many
with family in the U.S., which choose to leave for the U.S. is far
fewer than the number who would, if they had their own "Adjustment
Act," would vacate any impoverished capitalist country in Latin America
and the Caribbean. Cuba law is very clear that anyone who chooses to
leave is free to do so if they have legal authorization from the
receiving country. Participation in Cuba's revolutionary process and
struggle, Fidel Castro has repeatedly said, is "completely voluntary."
Instead of allowing an orderly, legal immigration process,
Washington disregards the agreement it signed, encourages illegal
immigration with the Cuban Adjustment Act and propaganda broadcasts
from Radio Marti (grossly named after Cuba's revolutionary hero, Jose
Marti). The obvious result is increased frustration and pent-up demand
by would-be immigrants, leading some to desperate and violent
measures. The only beneficiary of such a vile policy is those aiming
to fabricate a propaganda image of people "fleeing Castro's prison
island." There is another, more sinister and dangerous purpose as
explained in a pointed April 16 editorial in the Cuban Communist Party
daily Granma, "The head of the United States Interests Section is at
the forefront of a conscious plan to stimulate illegal emigration via
acts of terrorism with the objective of casting aside the migratory
agreements between the two countries and creating a chaotic situation.
The objective is to stimulate mass migration, obliging Washington to
take aggressive action to avoid it."
A New Reality
The imperialist campaign aims at preparing U.S. public opinion for a
more aggressive U.S. posture promoting "regime change" in Havana. The
political dynamic and logic of this anti-Cuba campaign is direct
military threat. Hans Hertell, Washington's Ambassador to the
Dominican Republic-a country invaded by 25,000 U.S. troops in 1965 to
crush a popular revolution-made this chillingly clear when he stated,
"I think what is happening in Iraq is going to send a very positive
signal, and it is a very good example for Cuba."
The decision by the Cuban government to "roll up" Washington's clients
in one fell swoop was reached in a calm and deliberative fashion. The
Cuban authorities are fully aware of how the arrests will be used as a
pretext for a blitzkrieg of deceiving and demagogic propaganda against
Cuba-as is now unfolding. They are fully aware than many friends of
Cuba will be confused under the propaganda barrage and that other
false friends will join in the chorus of hypocritical condemnation.
This has already been the case among a host of Democratic and
Republican politicians who have, in the past, declared opposition to
U.S. economic sanctions and the U.S. travel ban. The shameful list
includes liberal politicians such as Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano
who had in the past displayed a degree of friendship with Cuba
and spoken out against U.S. policy.
Illegal activities directed out of the U.S. Interests Section have
become more blatant under the new Bush-appointed Chief of the U.S.
Interests Section in Havana, James Cason. It is clear the Cuban
authorities had been exceedingly patient and tolerant in the desire to
see a change in U.S. policies and the hope that the recurrent flurries
of proposed legislation on Capitol Hill to "ease" U.S. sanctions and
the U.S. travel ban might actually produce something concrete and
positive. This has now come to an end. As Foreign Minister Perez Roque
said in his April 9 Press Conference, Washington's stepped-up hostility
and blatant interventions via the U.S. Interests Section "is sending a
message to all these mercenaries which is that of believing that they
can count on impunity, that they are protected by a powerful ally who
encourages, finances, organizes, and directs them.[this] has compelled
us to apply our law, and these trials must be understood as Cuba's
behavior when no other option remained given the path of confrontation
and provocation that the U.S. government has chosen to pursue in its
relations with Cuba.Things had reached an untenable point for our
country which lives under aggression, harassment and blockade and
which has laws to defend itself and has made sovereign use .to punish
those who co-operate with the power that tries to subvert order in the
country and tries to crush and deprive Cubans of the right to enjoy
independence and self-determination."
The "Dissidents" Base is in Washington, Not Cuba
Washington and the big-business media are doing somersaults to portray
the convicted Cuban citizens and paid Washington employees as "non-
violent," "committed to peaceful change," "courageous intellectuals,"
"independent journalists," and even "poets" who are now "prisoners of
conscience persecuted for what they think and what they write." This
is a Big Lie.
In a period of stepped-up U.S. threats against Cuba, the operatives
in Washington's pay, who masquerade as "peaceful dissidents,"
regardless of their lack of political weight and influence inside
Cuba, become a point of reference and conduit for U.S. intervention
and potential terrorist and overt military intervention against Cuba.
This is not a question of speculation. Clear evidence gathered by the
Cuban courts-much of it public knowledge-show irrefutably the links
between the allegedly "peaceful dissidents" and known CIA-trained
Cuban-American counterrevolutionaries with long records of terrorist
and violent acts in Cuba and in the United States against their
opponents.
The so-called "democratic opposition" inside Cuba has no social or
political base in the country. Their social and political base is in
Washington not Cuba. In terms of the domestic relationship of
political forces inside Cuba and the constant, wide-ranging, and
democratic debates over the country's course, its economic and social
challenges, and the solutions to social problems and mistaken policies,
the "dissidents" are utterly insignificant. Their direction and
funding is from Washington, not from the Cuban people. They have no
base or minimal support among Cuba's working class, peasantry, youth,
and intellectuals that are the social forces who wield political power
in Cuba and which embody its government and state power. It is
an insult to reality and the overwhelming majority of the Cuban
population who support and participate in their Revolution to present
the so-called "dissidents" as representative of the "oppressed Cuban
people." They represent the U.S. Empire and its designs on Cuba.and
nothing else.
In 2002 over eight million Cubans voted in a secret-ballot
national plebiscite to make "irrevocable' the social, economic, and
political conquests that are embodied in Cuba's Constitution. This was
a response to the "Varela Project," highly promoted by Washington as a
"peaceful" wedge against Cuba, which claimed to have gotten 10,000
signatures from Cuban citizens on a petition to abrogate Cuba's social
and economic system.
The U.S.-created and sustained "dissidents"-in and of themselves-
represent no threat whatsoever to the power and continuity of the
Cuban Revolution. But the "dissidents" do not exist in and of
themselves. They are the mercenary agents of a foreign power-the mighty
U.S Empire, which, moreover, has an unchanged policy for over four
decades of overthrowing the Cuban government and destroying the Cuban
Revolution.
If the U.S. economic and political war against Cuba-shadowed by
permanent threats of military aggression-were to definitively end and
normalized Washington-Havana relations established, the prop of the
"dissidents" would collapse. They or people with similar pro-
capitalist or pro-imperialist ideas would be free to organize and
display their political irrelevance under Cuba's Constitution. But
activists in the Cuba solidarity movement and opponents of U.S. policy
should have no illusions that such a happy reality is anywhere close
to the horizon.
Only the determined resistance of the Cuban workers, peasants, and
youth in alliance with the fighting peoples of Latin America and the
Caribbean and the redoubled solidarity of activists in the U.S. can
bring that day closer.
Why Washington and Wall Street Hate Cuba
The "dissidents" paymaster and conductor-Washington-dominates the
political and economic landscape in Latin America where it enforces-
against growing continental resistance-the reality of massive
inequality and impoverishment. Washington and Wall Street hate Cuba
and its revolutionary government precisely because it is a living
example to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean-and the entire
so-called Third World-that it is possible to win independence from the
United States and build a more just and egalitarian society.
Supporters of the Cuban Revolution and genuine friends of Cuba who
sincerely uphold the right of self-determination, oppose U.S.
sanctions, and support normalization and equality in relations between
Washington and Havana now more than ever must get in the way of,
challenge, and fight to reverse Washington's escalating anti-Cuba
campaign. Our campaign begins with a commitment to get out the facts
and tell the truth. Facts and truth about Washington's 44-year
campaign to destroy the Cuban Revolution by any means possible. Facts
and truth about the history of Washington's recruitment, organizing,
financing, arming, and promotion to this day of Cuban counter-
revolutionaries. Facts and truth about the real history of
unbroken decades of violent and terrorist acts organized from U.S.
territory inside Cuba by CIA-trained mercenaries which have led to
over 3,300 deaths; the use of biological agents directed at Cuban
agriculture; hundreds upon hundreds of attempts to assassinate Fidel
Castro and other revolutionary leaders; and terrorist bombings of
Cuban tourist facilities. What is happening today registers Cuba's
right of self-defense against an unbroken policy of U.S. aggression
ever since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
Why this unremitting imperialist hatred against revolutionary Cuba? The
idea that it is for "lack of democracy" or "human rights" is a
monstrous joke and a stupid lie meant for demagogues and gullible
fools. Washington has organized, promoted, and sustained every blood-
soaked tyranny in Latin America in the 20th Century, from Chile to
Nicaragua to Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Bolivia and Uruguay,
including the Batista dictatorship overthrown by the Cuban Revolution.
In April, 2002, Washington welcomed and was the barely covert
ringleader of the brief military coup in Venezuela that was beaten
back by the aroused and mobilized working class and peasantry of that
country. As popular resistance in Latin America grows to the vicious
and brutal inequality of Washington-imposed "neoliberal" policies,
Washington will again attempt to revert to direct military rule
to protect the flow of profits to U.S. capital.
Cuba's real crime
Cuba's real crime to the pious hypocrites in Washington is to have
carried through and defended effectively a real social revolution in
the interests of the vast majority. A revolution that broke forever
the economic, financial, political, and cultural stranglehold of U.S.
imperialism. A revolution that remains-despite the mountains of filth
and lies thrown at it by the vast propaganda apparatus of Washington
and the big-business media-an inspiring example to the oppressed and
exploited rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the entire so-
called Third World, which still faces and resists that domination. The
Cuban Revolution opened up for Cuban workers, peasants, and youth
national sovereignty and pride, free and equal access to world-class
health care, education, sports, and artistic and cultural achievement.
The Cuban Revolution wiped out illiteracy, drug addiction, and the
U.S. Mafia. It dealt body blows to race and sex discrimination.
Despite an initially poor record on gay rights in the first years of
the Revolution, Cuba has abolished all anti-homosexual laws and today
is the freest country in Latin America and the Caribbean for gays and
lesbians.
This is the real "threat" that Cuba represents to Washington and its
lackeys among the ruling classes in Latin America. Washington has
never-and can never-reconcile itself to the revolutionary example of
Cuba no more than, as Malcolm X put it, "a chicken can produce a duck
egg."
Revolutionary Cuba has never turned the other cheek to Washington's
threats. It remains true to its revolutionary principles and its
socialist ideals of egalitarianism and internationalism. They will not
cower and back down in the face of the U.S. Empire. They count on the
power of their ideas, their willingness to fight to the end, and the
solidarity of the oppressed and exploited people of the world to
successfully resist the most militarily powerful force in the history
of the earth-the U.S. Empire.
Cuba embodies international solidarity. Cuba supports every just cause
in deeds as well as words. Now is the time to be counted in defense of
this small revolutionary island and its mighty example. Now is the
time to show solidarity with Cuba.
Ike Nahem is a coordinator of Cuba Solidarity New York, a member of
the National Network on Cuba. Nahem is a member of the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers, Division 11, Amtrak, in New York City. These are
his personal opinions.