The American People Themselves Must Demand Freedom for the Cuban Five

An International Campaign to Free the Cuban Five will begin on September 12. This will be an excellent opportunity to knock at the doors of American people’s consciences

by Luis Luque Alvarez

Sept. 6, 2007

Reprinted from: http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu

One of former US President Jimmy Carter’s daughters violated the law when she occupied a university building in protest of illegal acts of aggression against Nicaragua in the 1980s. However, she was found not guilty! The intention of preventing the useless death of thousands of people weighed more than her infraction; therefore, the court declared her innocent.
Such fundamental rule is not applied to Cuba. The US government does not recognize that five Cuban men needed to infiltrate the terrorist groups in South of Florida to prevent hostile actions against the Cuban people.
"Should we wait for Washington to willingly rectify the clumsy injustice it has committed against Gerardo, Rene, Ramon, Fernando and Antonio?" said the president of the Cuban National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, in an interview broadcast on Tuesday on the Round Table TV news/commentary program.
"Continuing the struggle to raise popular awareness about this case: that is the key, that is what the Cuban Five have signalled, said Alarcon, for whom the possibility to move up the liberation of the Cuban Five lies on the ability to mobilize the people.
"What we need," he said, "is for the American people to organize themselves in the streets, unions, factories to demand the end of this outrage. And the first step is to allow those people to know the truth."
The President of the Cuban Parliament added that throughout the history of the United States, no political case has been settled solely in the courts. If there has been justice, it has had to do with the popular struggle, such as when John Lennon defended a Black activist to whom a court had rejected to grant his freedom. Tens of thousands of peoples called on by the artist unveiled what the prison bars and the press tried to hide.
"Therefore, mobilization is the key element of this case. Even the US government agrees with us; that’s why they prefer to remain silent," said Alarcon.
The next International Campaign to Free the Cuban Five, scheduled to run from September 12 to October 8, will be an excellent opportunity to knock at the door of the American people’s consciences. Little by little, they will answer the call.

http://www.freethefive.org/updates/CubanMedia/CMAmericanPeople90507.htm







CALL TO INTERNATIONAL ACTIONS IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE CUBAN FIVE


On September 12th, the struggle to Free the "Cuban Five" enters its tenth
year.

Gerardo, Ramón, Fernando, René y Antonio are still serving long sentences
in US high security prisons. They have been deprived of regular family
visits. The US government has denied two of them the right to be visited
by their wives at all.

This past August 20 oral arguments for the Five took place in Atlanta. The
presence of internationally known personalities and jurists, from around
the world, demonstrated the international support that the Five enjoy and
the truth of their cause. It is unknown when the judges will deliver their
decision. We cannot just wait for their verdict but rather now more than
ever it is imperative to continue to mobilize on their behalf.

Recent interviews with the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and the articles in the
Washington Post and the New York Times and other major media, shows that
the wall of silence is starting to crack, thanks to the solidarity and the
international denunciation that continues to build.

This is a crucial moment for our Five brothers!

We make a call to all the committees in support of the Five, friends of
Cuba, and all honest justice loving women and men around the world, to
organize events of solidarity with the Cuban Five from September 12th to
October 8th

September 12th: Marks 9 years of the unjust imprisonment of the Five.
October 6th: 31 years since the terrorist bombing of the Cubana airliner
over Barbados.October 8th: The 40th anniversary of the assassination of
Che by the CIA.

Let us raise our voices from the most diverse actions: marches, picket
lines, public events, video documentary showings, flyer distributions
every where, signs, and other forms of creative actions.

Let us unite our forces to make the condemnation against the empire for
all it crimes be unanimous!

FREEDOM NOW TO THE FIVE CUBAN PATRIOTS!
INMEDIATE US VISAS FOR OLGA SALANUEVA AND ADRIANA PEREZ!
EXTRADITION TO VENEZUELA OF LUIS POSADA CARRILES!

For more information e-mail to: ajrapko@yahoo.com











THE WASHINGTON NOTE: Ever Heard of the Cuban 5? When We Look Like the Bad Guys. . .




Steve C. Clemons



2007-09-10

THE WASHINGTON NOTE*

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002337.php


September 06, 2007


All I'd need to write here is Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or Haditha to make the case that America has lost its moral credibility in much of the world. It's tough to make a case against other thugs in the world when we deploy unaccountable thuggery of our own.
But despite that, I think that it's important to continue to fight for what is right and just -- particularly in the cases that are unpleasant.
Did Larry Craig -- someone who really doesn't deserve much support from this blogger -- get screwed by the cops in Minneapolis? Probably so. We all know what constitutes genuinely lewd conduct vs. what is just hitting on someone. But let's leave that for another day.
Another case when weighing justice gets tougher is when national security, foreigners, and fears of espionage are involved. This is in fact the case of five Cuban nationals charged with spying for their government and currently in prison for trying to infiltrate groups in the US who might attack Cuba or Cubans.
I've begun to look into this case as more and more media around the world are kicking the tires of this bizarre legal case in which five men -- who seem rather ordinary to tell you the truth -- have received some of the heaviest prison penalties in the intel business and yet -- didn't seem to have discovered any national secrets and as best as I can tell were not spying on the US government.
I need to learn more about this -- and as readers of this blog know -- I think that US-Cuba relations are important to change gears on -- as a move on this front could appear a harbinger of healthier American engagement in Latin America but also more enlightened US global engagement as well. It would symbolize the peripheralization of interest-group driven foreign policy cabals and finally bury Cold War era deals that have no place in the 21st century.
I'm going to go hear the Cuban 5's attorney, Leonard Weinglass -- who is mentioned in the CNN story above -- make his case. It should be useful and interesting to those who are interested in how real or not the charges against these Cuban nationals are -- and whether there ought to be a difference when people are caught spying on dangerous NGOs or spying on the Pentagon.

The info for the meeting is:

FOREIGN POLICY, POLITICS AND THE LAW: THE CASE OF THE CUBAN FIVE

You are cordially invited to hear noted civil rights lawyer and activist, LEONARD WEINGLASS, speak about this highly controversial case
SEPTEMBER 12, 2007
6:00 P.M.
HOWARD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, MOOT COURT ROOM
2900 VAN NESS STREET, NW WASHINGTON, D.C. 20008


I'm not the organizer of this meeting -- but I find the subject very interesting because it may be the cases involving citizens from Cuba, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere when it is most important to show how "justice" in a fair and impartial legal system is supposed to work.
I have a hunch that some in the Cuban-American community have been more than comfortable with subverting a just legal process to achieve unfair convictions. . .but as I said, I want to learn more.
Someone I know in the military establishment, however, shared with me a bit of information that may very well be classified.
He said that in the many simulations he had been involved with in planning war exercises dealing with Cuba, the simulation called for US military forces to repel attacks from Floridians aimed at Cuba.
That information makes one think that whatever the Cuban Five may have been doing for the Cuban government, fears in Havana were shared by many planning combat exercises in the Pentagon.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons
*The Washington Note is a blog created by Steve Clemons, Senior Fellow & Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation.






Posted from:

http://www.antiterroristas.cu/index.php?tpl=./interface.en/design/reading/special-article.tpl.html&aNews_lang=en&aNews_obj_id=1000851








The Truth About the Cuban Five published in Project Censored 2008




Alicia Jrapko



2007-09-07




Project Censored is a progressive research group located at Sonoma State University in Northern California. The backbone of this project is made up primarily of students who are interested in doing investigative research of news stories that have been censored and buried by the U.S. corporate media.

Every year Project Censored publishes a book that includes a number of chapters of topics that have been unreported and the 25 top ignored stories during the previous year before the publication of the book. Due to the fact that the case of the Cuban Five has been practically ignored for the past nine years, the importance of the case merited a chapter in the 2008 book that is being released at the beginning of September.

Project Censored started in 1976 under the direction of Dr. Carl Jensen, professor emeritus of Communication Studies at Sonoma State University. After Jensen retired, Dr. Peter Phillips, A sociology professor at the university assumed the direction of the project that continues to train critical thinking students in the field of journalism.
Hundreds of stories of the most diverse themes are sent annually to Project Censored where they are reviewed by students and professors connected to the project. Among the personalities that have been in charge of selecting the stories for publication are Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Norman Solomon, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally, Frances Moore Lappe, Herbert I. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Erna Smith, and Mike Wallace.
Under the title "Corporate Media Bias in the Case of the Cuban Five” a 9 page, 4000 words comprehensive chapter on the case details the history of the Cuban Five.

The author of the piece is Jeffrey Huling, a Sonoma State University student. Prior to being randomly assigned by Professor Phillips to research the case, Huling had never heard about the Cuban Five.

According to Huling, working on the story opened his eyes to the deception and hypocrisy of the US government beyond what he thought they were capable of. “It was extremely frustrating to see through the evidence of this case how powerless justice can be in the face of political corruption” Huling said.

Project Censored 2008 is being translated into several languages including Arabic, Spanish and Italian. In the United States alone between 15 and 20 thousand copies are being printed. Project Censored web page, www.projectcensored.org, receives between 25 and 30 thousand visitors a day.

Project Censored’s wide international reach is one more educational tool in the struggle to work the truth about the Case of the Cuban Five to the surface. It also reveals the complicity of the corporate media to silent a story about heroism, justice, sacrifice and the rights of a country to defend itself when it does not line up with the policies of the U.S. government.





http://www.antiterroristas.cu










Alarcon Says American People Could Help Release the Five

Sept. 5, 2007

Reprinted from Cuban News Agency

Havana, Sept 5 (acn) The head of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcon said the possibility of having the Five men imprisoned in the U.S released earlier depends very much on the support they receive from the American people.
"The first step is to let that people know the truth. This is what we need to keep on demanding," said the Parliament president.
In the daily TV Round Table show, Ricardo Alarcon, gave legal and ethical details of the Five's case, showing the double standards of the U.S' policy and its hostility towards Cuba. The statements were the continuity of an interview he gave last August 27 also broadcasted on
Cuban TV.
The President of the Cuban parliament said the American government is aware of the effect that the support of the American people could have on international opinion. For that reason the media has been instructed to refer to the Cuban men only as "spies."
Alarcon said the American government has turned a blind eye on news releases that show Washington's political bias against the Five. He mentioned the articles posted by London's BBC and the New York Times, which were very objective, but they are not willing to follow the case.
It will be nine years on the coming September 12, since Gerardo Hernandez, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Rene Gonzalez, were sent to American jails.
That day in 1998, the Five Cuban men were arrested and later subjected to a politically biased trial in Miami. The judicial process ended in 2001 with the judge handing down harsh sentences on the men, whose only crime was to infiltrate Miami-based extreme right groups that operated with Washington's consent, organizing and conducted terrorist actions against the Cuban people.
Alarcon pointed out that the U.S does not have evidence proving that the Five were conspiring to commit espionage or murder. However, they are serving outrageous terms in jail.
All the evidence is available online to all news agencies willing to report on the issue, Alarcon said. He mentioned the internet portal of the U.S Justice Department, on the South Florida Court, "look up the U.S. case against Gerardo Hernandez," he pointed.
Alarcon said on one occasion, the American government decided to remove the second charge -conspiracy to commit espionage- from the files of three of the defendants -Gerardo, Ramon and Antonio-, as long as they pleaded guilty to other crimes. However, the third charge would not be taken to the negotiating table. Instead, seeking to please the Miami-based Cuban-American community, a charge of quadruple fist degree murder was added to the case.
The U.S government ended up recognizing in writing before the Court of Appeals of Atlanta, that the charges had been manipulated. Now we have to wait until the Court overrules such allegations, explained the Cuban official.
The head of the Cuban parliament went on to say that the Cuban Five acted under the principle of "State of Necessity," comparing the case with that of former U.S president Jimmy Carter's daughter, who was arrested in the late 1980's for taking over a building to protest against the CIA. Eventually, she was released on the grounds that she and the other 14 people accompanying her had committed minor crimes to avoid a greater one.
Likewise, Alarcon mentioned the case of Zacarias Musagüi, accused of being involved in the Sept 11 attacks. He noted that the mother of Moroccan-born Musagui was allowed to visit her son. Meanwhile, the mothers of the Five Cuban men are patiently waiting in line to get an entry visa to the U.S to be able to see their sons. "It is the right of any prisoner, irrespective of the crime they committed, and in this case the Five did not even threaten nor shoot any body, nor did their relatives," Alarcon stressed.
Ricardo Alarcon concluded the interview by saying that no one should think that is doing too much for the Five. "We are not even doing a fraction of what they are doing themselves, with their constancy, resistance and leading the battle for justice and for their release.




International days of action to support Cuban anti-terrorists


Washington, Sept. 4 (PL).— The International Committee to Free the Five, based in the United States, has called for international days of action in solidarity with the Cuban anti-terrorists imprisoned for almost a decade in this country.
Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González were arrested in September 1998 in the United States while they were protecting their country from terrorist groups of Cuban origin based in Miami, Florida.
This September 12, the struggle to free the Cuban Five, as they are known, enters its 10th year, and we should not allow international support for the Cuban patriots to falter, said a press release from the non-governmental group
The press release noted that Gerardo, Ramón, Fernando, René and Antonio continue to be held in maximum-security prisons, deprived of their right to have regular contact with their families.
Washington has denied two of them the right to be visited by their wives, the press release added.
On August 20, there was a hearing on their case in a federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia. Those present at the hearing to show their support for the Five included renowned jurists and prominent individuals from all over the world, the note said.
Moreover, coverage of the hearing by major news media such as the BBC, CNN and the Washington Post and New York Times demonstrate that the wall of silence is beginning to crumble, thanks to international solidarity.
The press release said: “We call on all committees and friends of Cuba, all honest men and women in the world, to carry out a mass international campaign of days of action in solidarity with the Five from September 12 to October 8.
“Let us speak out through the most diverse actions: marches, pickets, sit-ins, public events, documentaries, distribution of literature in public, placards, articles and manifestoes,” the press release stated.
Richard Klugh, defense attorney for Fernando González, remarked on the interest shown by the Atlanta Appeals Court judges this past August 20, giving reason to be optimistic about the future of the Five’s case, despite their lengthy incarceration.
A similar opinion was expressed by Antonio Guerrero’s lawyer, Leonard Weinglass, in recounting the strength and validity of the arguments presented at the U.S. court.
The defense concentrated its presentation on three issues: the charge against Gerardo of conspiracy to commit murder, that of conspiracy to commit espionage, and inappropriate conduct by prosecutors.
Translated by Granma International

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/septiembre/mier5/international-days.html



Visit also:

http://www.antiterroristas.cu

http://www.freethefive.org


Videos:

- “Mission against Terror”:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CCdGdpeNps8


http://es.arcoiris.tv/modules.php?name=Unique&id=824


- "Bacardí, the bat’s secret":

http://video.google.es/videoplay?docid=5416850335187952791

http://es.arcoiris.tv/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload2&cid=&orderby=title%20ASC&offset=0&email=&letter=E

error

error

Well, if they were not in the U.S. they would be free men. (well as free as one can be in Cuba)

They got caught, just like many U.S. spies have been. This goes with the territory, or the job of being a spy.

I don't feel sorry for them one bit and I doubt you will get the support you so desperately seek.

Please don't enter this forum with things like this. You should read more and kill your
TV.
"They got caught, just like many U.S. spies have been. This goes with the territory, or the job of being a spy. "
These were informers to the FBI about US terror squads in Fla.
Or at east they tried to inform.
The US loves its anti-Cuban death squads but not the ones who inform on them.
Did you even read the article you found yourself called upon to comment on?

Are you suggesting that they were not spy's?

Cuba shot down a U2 "informer" plane over there air space right?

Your description of there actions is exactly what spies do, inform foreign governments. The reasons why they did this doesn't matter. Just like the reason why someone committed murder doesn't matter in a court. You get caught, well you pay the price. They got caught. I have yet to see a protest free a criminal(s) Waist of time if you ask me but do as you please. Maybe you can set some ground breaking precedence that changes the courts and the politicians minds..

If you hate the U.S government, the laws, and there policies so be it. You don't have to make up some cause and try to justify the actions of others to do that.

uh 'just a guy' you should read the article.
You sound like you haven't.
And I wouldn't let any flights originating near America over Cuban Airspace if I were a Cuban either.
50+ years of CIA terror squads ( what these 5 were reporting on, to the FBI ) have proven this a good practice.

Whats the difference between violating airspace and violating sovereign soil?

Did they not communicate or attempt to communicate with Cuba? You yourself mentioned informers.

Your articles are one sided and designed to manipulate. Are you suggesting because you posted others opinion that everyone should jump on board?

Why does the noise machine about non issues go into full gear.
?
"Whats the difference between violating airspace and violating sovereign soil? "

If sovereign soil is an issue ( my my how your diction and spelling has improved all of of a sudden, Mr. 'waist there time'... ) then Gitmo kinda ruins your case, Skippy.
You're just supporting American terrorism.
And I know why.
So does the reader.

Dear « just a guy », the Cuban Five not only infiltrated the terrorist groups in Miami in order to prevent their actions against cuban people informing the cuban government; the intelligence information they obtained was also put in the hands of the US government and the FBI, as can be constated reading their process. Cuba has always tried to cooperate with the US around these topics but unfortunately from the US gov. the attitude received is another: the incarceration of the Five Cuban antiterrorists and impunity for terrorists like Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, among others. All this explains Cuba’s necessity in the infiltration of the terrorists groups based in Fla.
The Cuban Five are not spies, their task wasn’t directed against the american people or their institutions. Even some US Army and Navy high grade military declared in their process that these five men weren’t in the USA acquiring this kind of information. These are the facts and Justice waits.
There are two articles that enlights the Cuban attitude against terrorism. One of them his from Fidel, where he describes how Cuba put all the information of a attemp preparative against Ronald Reagan in the hands of the US government. And this a ethical and political attitude that clearly marks the difference regarding terrorism.
The other article is from a former US diplomat: Mr Wayne Smith, who gives his testimony about the experience he lived as Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana…
You can read both in this same site of LA Indymedia:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/09/207053.php

My other post was hidden. So it obvious I hit a nerve or something, Oh well. So be it. Good luck getting support, you will definately need it.

The reason you're being hidden is that obviously you are here to inject
right wing talking points that show you have not even read the lead article.
Trolls are not welcome.

The reason you're being hidden is that obviously you are here to inject
right wing talking points that show you have not even read the lead article.
Trolls are not welcome.

It's just pathetic to see articles hidden or deleted that don't conform to the views of the Indymedia editors.

Castro is a dictator and he's really bad for Cuba.

When he dies it will be grounds for celebration.

There are not any terrorists in Miami.

The unfortunate thing for the Cuban people is that the Bay of Pigs liberation movement failed. Otherwise they'd be free today.

Really pathetic… is the persistence of troll’s around the topic Cuba, with their old songs apologizing about the Bay of Pigs (it seem’s that’s a topic that hurts more than one, jajaja!); or waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting to celebrate Fidel’s dead; or closing their eyes about the Miami based Usamerican terrorists… Poor troll movement: with trolls like these, obviuously there is nothing to worry about.




Mills' Return

by Ricardo Alarcón

Sept. 16, 2007

Reprinted from: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=13792§ionID=60

Lecture delivered at the Workshop “Dialogos Políticos”, XXVII International Congress LASA 2007, Montreal, Canada. September 7, 2007

"What planet are you from, anyway?" responded the Guantanamero to the insistent question posed by someone who apparently did not believe there were schools, libraries, teachers, doctors and nurses there who offered their services to everyone free of charge, as they have been doing for several decades in Cuba. This anecdote, mentioned in Sicko, Michael Moore's latest documentary, describes what many, in one way or another, have experienced in the course of nearly half a century of encounters —positive and not—between beings that inhabit worlds which are at once close to and cut off from one another. In 1960, hoping to bridge the enormous gap through the noble and generous voice of C. Wright Mills, Cubans had noted: “We are so far apart that there are Two Cubas - ours and the one you picture to yourselves”[1].
By the way, Cuba is not a nation about which few things have been written or published.
Over the course of several years publishing houses in the United States have printed texts essential to understanding our history, which have analyzed Cuban society and its Revolution profoundly: true must-read classics that include important studies by experts from LASA. Avoiding many a time, the barriers erected between our two countries in their prolonged struggle and overcoming the specific challenges I will address later, US academia has given us highly valuable works worthy of praise. Its efforts, however, have been severely limited by the structures within which it must operate.
The mass media have devoted more attention to Cuba than to most other Latin American and Caribbean countries. They have created another, unrecognizable Cuba through massive errors, distortions and inaccuracies many times reaching grotesque proportions.
Voicing superficial opinions about Cuba, assuming stances against its revolution and even boasting of expert knowledge on the subject is something which is not only natural and easy but also lucrative for some. In the introduction to an extensive study published in 1997, The UN Economic Commission on Latin America underscored the paradoxical fact that Cuba’s was “one of Latin America's most interpreted, but least studied, economies”[2].
The lack of analytical rigor, superficiality and even dishonesty often characterize the treatment of the Cuban issue. Many were trained to react with reflexive mechanisms and without thinking. The mere mention of Cuba or Castro prompts an instantaneous and automatic reaction, before the brain can even pass judgement. Prejudice, in short, is sown through modern instruments of information and a cultural industry which, more and more, divests thought of true content and encourages banality everywhere.
Another professor from Columbia, Brzezinski, put it frankly: with the new technologies they could “manipulate emotions and control reason” [3].
The commotion stirred up by recently-divulged declassified documents which describe attempts by the CIA and the mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro is quite revealing. The plans were known, in detail, and acknowledged by the US Senate more than thirty years ago. Books on the subject were published and box-office hits were made. Nothing new has come to light. What is revealing is how frivolously the mass media treated the idea of assassination and other crimes and the passiveness with which the public took in the news.
In a world in which information has become a form of entertainment, you can tell the people that their government has been involved in all sorts of sordid actions without facing a scandal. Some, parroting the CIA chiefs, pointed out that these things happened so long ago that no one even remembers them. Obliged to speak about the Iraq war, Abu Grahib, Guantanamo and other current realities, they will again avoid any connection with the past; they will treat them as isolated events, outside of history, present them as the inexplicable images of a stupefying spectacle.
This is also how it has been possible, for over two years now, to provide safe haven to Luis Posada Carriles, prevent the resumption of a trial began in Venezuela for the mid-air bombing of a commercial airliner and the holding of a trial in the United States —in flagrant violation of international anti-terrorist conventions—while perpetuating the incarceration of the Cuban Five, young men, whose only crime was the peaceful struggle against him and other terrorists harbored by Washington. These two incidents have been mentioned once or twice in some of the US media, always in biased reports full of errors, and have immediately been buried beneath an unrelenting avalanche of misinformation and rubbish, dumped upon a captive and defenseless public day in and day out. The result: the cases of Posada Carriles and our Five Heroes are known around the world, voices of condemnation, protest and solidarity are being heard more and more, while ignorance and silence are forced upon the people in the United States. All the while, thousands of young Americans go to Iraq to kill and die in the name of a supposed war against terrorism.
I invoke Mills again, because this year, the 45th anniversary of his physical disappearance, Cubans ought to remember with gratitude, and to pay tribute to this North American writer who, in difficult and decisive times, struggled for friendship and understanding between our nations like very few did. To this cause he devoted his exceptional talent and all of his energies; for this cause, put simply, he gave his life.
From the time of Listen Yankee's publication in 1960, Mills had to struggle against all sides, thrown into an uneven match with the powers that be and the owners of the mass media. The FBI and pro-Batista gangs based in Miami employed all the instruments of persuasion, including threats and pressures against him.
A paradigm of the intellectual committed to truth and justice, an independent, lucid and creative thinker, he met his death before his time, leaving an admirable oeuvre unfinished, an oeuvre which was the inspiration of those young people who, in that unique moment in US history, sought to storm heaven. His indefatigable struggle on behalf of Cuba had, for him, more than a present significance as part of a debate; it was decisive for the future relations of the United States with the world and for the well being of the nation in general.
As a prelude of things to come, he wrote: “I’m afraid there is going to come about a very bad time in my country for people who think as I do… What bothers me, is whether or not the damned heart will stand up to what must then be done”[4].
We have, indeed, faced difficult times, bereft of his irreplaceable rebelliousness.
In its policy towards the Cuban revolution, the United States has traced an unbroken, unwavering line which takes us all the way back to the Eisenhower administration and already spans across half a century. It is the policy of misinformation and lies. While other elements of US policy have varied over time, this, its fundamental component, has not experienced the slightest change since the now remote times when Washington worked hard to perpetuate Batista’s dictatorship and prevent the revolutionary triumph.
In this battleground, the US government has employed financial, material and human resources impossible to quantify. Those who have sought to delve into the issue of Cuba have had to do so over a boggy and mined terrain, to face a single and singular obstacle: the most powerful government on the planet which has done everything in its power, made use of all available means, in order to lie, falsify reality and deceive. Such premeditated efforts to conceal the truth and divulge falsehoods, such consistency over so long a period of time, are without precedents.
It is not only a question of prejudice, ignorance or moral cowardice. Many who have opposed the Cuban revolution have been the object of deliberate and systematic intellectual and emotional manipulation, victims of an operation designed at the highest levels of US power, an operation in which an immense governmental bureaucracy and its many public and secret agencies, reliant on the conscious and unconscious complicity of politicians, academics, journalists and other intellectuals, has been involved.
Though little was known about this operation in Mills’ time, he was able to imagine that something of this nature was taking shape and alluded to this more than once. Today, we have access to all its details, from the time of its inception, through its development, to the present day.
In the 1990s, a good many official documents till then kept secret came to light. In 1991, the US Department of State published a thick volume titled “Foreign relations of the United States 1958-1960 Volume VI Cuba” which contains hundreds of documents, reports, internal Department analyses, the minutes of the National Security Council and other government agency meetings, messages exchanged with the US embassy in Havana, other diplomatic missions and allied countries and other materials which cover the last years of the Batista regime and the first two years of Cuba - US conflict, up to the breaking of diplomatic relations.
1958 was a crucial year which holds the key to understanding what was to happen later. The volume contains irrefutable proof of Washington's close alliance with the bloody dictatorship which scourged the island. Collaboration existed in the most diverse spheres, even the nuclear energy sector. Military aid was unlimited, extending beyond the supply of weapons, munitions, equipment and assistance at all levels. All officers in Cuba's air force, nearly all army, navy and police officials and complete units of the troops that fought against the rebels in the Sierra Maestra were trained in US military schools.
Batista found support not only in Cuba but also in the United States. The FBI and Department of Justice kept a tight rein on exiles and anti-Batista émigrés and worked to thwart all of their efforts to aid those who struggle for freedom at home. The two governments exchanged information and coordinated actions as part of these efforts. In this regard, the actions undertaken against then ex-president Carlos Prío Socarras are worthy of note.
As the Batista regime's exhaustion became more and more evident, concealing the aid which his government continued to receive became a priority for the Eisenhower administration, as did the obstinate and fruitless efforts aimed at preventing the people’s victory. "We must prevent a Castro victory" was the conclusion often repeated at White House meetings.
The declassified documents reveal more than a political, military and economic commitment between the authorities of two governments which, at times, appear to merge into a single body. We come across anxious and perplexed characters, actors in a drama they are unable to understand. In the course of 1958, more and more meetings see Eisenhower, Nixon, Dulles and his generals draw up desperate plans looking for a magic formula to save the old regime and prevent its complete collapse.
As with soap operas, there is intrigue and melodrama, like the scene in which the President, in a grave and solemn tone, asks everyone present to promise they will deny, without exception, having heard what was discussed there. Or his precise and unquestionable instruction, that “the hand of the United States remain hidden”. And, as if this were not enough, as though suspicious of his closest advisors, his personal instruction to the CIA director, to stop discussing plans against Cuba at National Security Council meetings.
They were forced to interrupt or postpone dinners and revelries. In the last hours of December 31st, from his office, Secretary Herter sends Havana his last message of 1958. It is a bitter and sorrowful letter which summarizes everything Washington had done to support the despot until the last moment.
Before dawn broke that first morning of 1959, Washington was already receiving reports from its ambassador in Havana. The gentleman had not slept a wink; he had been busy trying to prop up the military junta which was scrambling to organize itself and coordinating the departure from the country of those leaders and collaborators who had no fled with Batista.
In those first early hours, already Cuba was to receive one of the toughest blows of the United States' economic war against the island. The fugitives had literally plundered the Treasury of the Republic, creating what the Department of State itself described as a situation no administration could bear. Not one cent was returned. Neither were any loans granted the provisional government, in spite of its discrete and friendly appeals. Therein lies the origin of the many fortunes that arose, later to be swelled by privileges, tax exemptions and other benefits no one else has ever enjoyed in the history of the United States, fortunes which the official propaganda extols as the supposed successes stories of a community of enterprising émigrés.
Washington never let its loyal friend down. One of the longest sections of the abovementioned volume describes the steps diplomats and US officials took to secure a pleasant and safe retirement for the defeated tyrant. Since the “hand had to remain hidden”, it had to be outside of US territory, so it was the good will of the then ruling government of Spain and Portugal with the United States' approval that came to their aid. The dictator’s wife, children and other relatives and close friends settled comfortably in the homes they had purchased, using stolen money, in south Florida. There, they joined other fugitives and created an artificial Cuba, with all of the characteristics of the Cuba that had forever disappeared. The government of the United States gave them the resources to become, in a short time, a force to be reckoned with, which the US people was obliged to accept as representative of fictitious values that had hitherto never been theirs.
The first counterrevolutionary organization, La Rosa Blanca, was founded in Miami by Rafael Díaz Balart, one of Batista's main ministers and ex-chief of his political apparatus. Former torturers, veteran gangsters, drug-traffickers and thieves came to control media spaces and were received at Congress meetings and in the offices of politicians, both democratic and republican. They were allowed to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars —more than 400 million, according to calculations by experts from the National Bank and New York Times editorialists—and, later, incalculable sums taken from US taxpayers, as tax exemptions for the supposed loss of properties left behind in Cuba, and other, equally exorbitant sums, through diverse anti-Castro programs which have been generously financed with money from the federal budget for nearly half a century.
Batista's lot was to die in Europe but his memory lives on in the United States. Every March 10th, the day he took power through a coup d´état in Cuba when he liquidated its government institutions in one fell swoop is celebrated in Miami. Batista's relatives, and those of his close friends, live in the United States, hold positions in the judiciary, the executive and the legislature, at the federal, state and local levels. They are accorded honors and paid tributes at public squares, universities and even in the United States Congress. Today, in the 21st century, a strange cult of Batista's regime survives in the United States, the pathetic token of unconditional devotion.
1959 and 1960, as the recently declassified documents tell us, were years in which the powerful hand which sought to remain invisible wrestled with a small country which sought to ward it off. New acts of economic aggression soon followed the brutal sacking of the public treasury. Given Cuba's then almost complete dependence on US financing and markets, Washington strategists were confident that a few blows to the country would suffice to make Cuba collapse and come again under US domination.
With the passing of time, they coined phrases which proved useful in concealing the meaning of their actions. The learned refer to these actions as “sanctions” which are part of an "embargo". Now, it is possible for us to read that, as early as 1959, one of the first measures, the suppression of the sugar quota, was described by Secretary Herter as "economic warfare”.
We know, also, that, in those early days, US authorities had a very precise idea of what they were doing, of the moral implications of their actions and the political ends they were pursuing. Few times were they as sincere as when they wrote: “The majority of Cubans support Castro… the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba… a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”[5]. When this policy was designed and applied, it had already been many years since the Nuremberg Tribunal had handed down its final verdict and the United Nations made its Convention on the crime of genocide a universal law. Those in Washington who coldly decided to apply a policy which spelled genocide for the Cuban people were fully conscious of these facts. Note that they sought to make the people suffer and to destroy them, to ignore and ultimately crush their will, deny them the exercise of their democratic rights.
More recently, when these documents came to light, making a mockery of decency and common sense, U.S diplomats and their academic and journalistic coryphaei went as far as attempting to justify the policy of genocide, in the name of democracy.
In 1997, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified another document it had zealously kept secret for over thirty years, with the pertinent omissions and finishing touches. It is the report of General Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, CIA inspector general for the actions undertaken in 1959, which, in essence, describes the policy the United States has continued to apply to this day.
The program consisted in:
“a. Formation of a Cuban exile organization to attract Cuban loyalties, to direct opposition activities, and to provide cover for Agency operations.
b. A propaganda offensive in the name of the opposition.
c. Creation inside Cuba of a clandestine intelligence collection and action apparatus to be responsive to the direction of the exile organization.
d. Development outside Cuba of a small paramilitary force to be introduced into Cuba to organize, train and lead resistance groups”[6].
One finds surprising the importance accorded to propaganda and political work, which according to Kirkpatrick was allotted a greater part of the assigned budget than intelligence and military operations. The one aim of the organization in exile was to cover up Agency operations to guarantee, of course, that “the hand of the U.S. Government would not appear”.
“Anti-Castro propaganda operations were intensified throughout Latin America”. To sustain these operations, the initially assigned budget was constantly being increased and the clandestine CIA body in charge of these came to have more staff and resources than any other the Agency had during the Cold War.
The hidden hand was generous indeed.
It handed out no less than 35 thousand dollars a week for the publication of Bohemia Libre magazine, whose circulation reached that of 126,000 copies, second only, in the Continent, to Reader's Digest; the reprinting in exile of the daily newspaper Avance years before financed by Batista; Radio Swan broadcasts, television programs and other publications, including comic strips; not to mention the travel expenses of lecturers, deployed to divulge propaganda across Latin America. At the time, the CIA paid Cuban leaders in exile 131,000 dollars in salaries each month.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco did not put an end to these activities; rather, these became broader and more intense. Clandestine radio broadcasts, which have not ceased, were later expanded and became special Voice of America programs, today's Radio and TV Martí. Since then and up to today, the CIA has financed newspapers, journals and other publications and continues to have lecturers, academicians and journalists on its payroll.
In addition to covert operations, the US currently undertakes other, more visible actions. The Cuba Program is still in effect, though it enjoys a larger budget today, and, in addition to the CIA's original program, there are now AID and NED ones. Nothing has changed, not even the name.
With the passing of the Helms-Burton Act and the reports of the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, approved by President Bush, US foreign policy has become interventionist and arrogant like never before. There wouldn’t be enough time to go into an in depth analysis. I will limit myself to saying that, were the recommendations of these documents followed to the letter, Cuba would cease to exist as a sovereign nation.
But this is an irrational and anachronistic policy. The real world has not moved in the direction longed for by the vindictive supporters of Batista and their friends in Washington.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of what came to be known as “real socialism” dazzled many in the capitalist world, who became intoxicated with a simple-minded and disproportionate optimism. Absorbed with talk of the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were completely oblivious to the Caracazo.
Painstakingly, and not without ups and downs, the world would in fact move in the direction Mills wisely predicted. Rather than the end of history, we witness the end of an era and the beginning of a new one that recalls his theory; the same one Mills had long searched for.
Latin America and the Caribbean witness the dawn of a new era. National revolutionary processes are consolidating themselves, grassroots movements are growing stronger, indigenous peoples and other marginalized sectors have ever greater participation in these and real and efficacious alternatives are making progress, impelling true unity and independence in the region. New alliances and pursuits emerge as the region moves towards the construction of socialist projects which, in their diversity, will make up the socialism of the 21st century; a form of socialism which is wholly ours, and which will not be “a carbon copy" of previous systems, but a "heroic creation", as Mariategui advocated. The work of people capable of independent thought, the type of people Mella dreamt of when Cuban Marxism was coming into its own. As all creations it will be unique, it will shatter templates and be impervious to dogma. It will be the rainbow already heralded by the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.
Intellectuals on both sides of the Rio Grande shoulder great responsibility and are duty-bound to make this new age one of peace and friendship among our peoples. With the Cold War behind us, we now face new possibilities to establish new relations, which will only be possible when all hegemonic designs are abandoned.
Mills has finally returned. Let us take heed of his words: “What I have been trying to say to intellectuals, preachers, scientists -as well as more generally to publics- can be put into one sentence: Drop the liberal rhetoric and the conservative default, they are now parts of one and the same official line; transcend that line”[7].

Ricardo Alarcón, President of the National Assembly of People’s Power of the Republic of Cuba

[1] C. Wright Mills, Listen Yankee – The Revolution in Cuba, Ballantine Books, New York 1960, p. 13.
[2] La Economía Cubana. Reformas estructurales y desempeño en los noventa. Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe de las Naciones Unidas y Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997.
[3] Zbiegniew Bszezinski, Between Two Ages, America’s role in the Technetronic Era, The Viking Press, New York, Sixth printing, June 1974, p. 13.
[4] C. Wright Mills, Letters and Autobiographical Writings, edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills, University of California Press, 2000, p.324
[5] Foreign Relations of the United Status, 1958 – 1960, Volume VI, Cuba, United States Government Printing Office, Washington 1991, p. 885
[6] Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban operation and associated documents, CIA historical review program release as sanitized 1997, p.3 - 4
[7] C. Wright Mills, The causes of World War Three, Ballantine Books, New York, second printing. January 1961, p. 183


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