The
Cuba Conundrum
By Saul Landau
03 May, 2003
What is
Fidel doing? asks a Mexican American who has supported the Cuban
revolution for decades.
While US bombs and Cruise
Missiles rained down on Iraqis and Bradley fighting vehicles blew away
their opponents and lots of civilians, the Cuban government tried 75
dissidents and sentenced them to long terms.
While US forces occupied
Iraq and soldiers fired into crowds at Mosul, killing 10 and wounding
100, the Cuban government arrested several boat hijackers, summarily
tried them and executed three of them.
As a result of these two
separate, yet judgmentally connected actions, Cuba has lost more progressive
intellectual friends than it has since the infamous 1971 case of Heberto
Padilla, the Cuban poet detained for 38 days for something he wrote,
said, thought or who knows?
On April 14, Nobel Prize
winning novelist Jose Saramago of Portugal wrote an open letter in El
Pais. "Cuba has won no victory by executing these three men, but
it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, robbed me of my illusions."
Eduardo Galeano, the soul
of Latin American resistance, wrote in the April 18, La Jornada that
Cuba hurts, describing his feeling over the jailing of people
for their ideas and lightning application of the death penalty. When
Cuba executed the boat jackers on April 11, I felt the kind of pain
Galeano referred to. I cannot justify the death penalty. I cannot invent
reasons for its swift application.
Some US leftists joined others
around the world in petitions criticizing Cubas actions and in
the April 20 Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times the prestigious
Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes reiterated his opposition to Cubas
undemocratic government while opposing Bush at the same time. We should
assume that most of the people on the left who have recently criticized
Cuba have done so for noble motives. For many honest progressive and
revolutionaries, Cuba has represented one of the few sources of hope,
even at those times when Cuban leaders made judgments that we disagreed
with.
Because of the extraordinary
accomplishments of the Cuban revolution, including its leading role
in affirming the mostly forgotten UN Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, every progressive worth a salt has invested some part
of his or her soul in that process.
What Cuba has yet to do in
the two separate causes (arrests and executions) is present the pertinent
facts and reasons for arresting and condemning people whose organizations
it had penetrated and controlled and explain why it had to execute with
lightning speed the boat-jackers.
Similarly, those quick to
condemn Cuba might study more carefully the facts of the cases as well.
The dissidents, who defined themselves as economists, journalists
and human rights activists did not face trial for expressing dissenting
opinions at least not formally. The Cuban government accused them of
working with and taking money (or gifts and services) from the US Government
in order, in the words of Cubas Ambassador to Canada, to
destabilize the country, undermine and destroy Cubas Constitutional
order, its Government, its independence and its Socialist society.
Yes, Cuba has made it illegal
to work with the United States to subvert the Cuban government. Having
affirmed that right of self defense, as would any state in the world,
Cuba should present all the necessary facts and analysis. We know that
US diplomats openly promoted the weakening of the Cuban government.
James Cason, the head of the US Interest Section in Havana organized
Cuban citizens and paid them small sums or gave them gifts and services
to promote dissidence.
So whats new? For forty
four plus years, Washington has tried every criminal method short of
direct US military invasion to destroy Cubas revolution. The US
government has wreaked havoc on Cubas social and economic order
and Cubans have every right to suspect the US government of the most
malicious motives.
But why did the Cuban government
bother to arrest and prosecute people whose actions they monitored so
closely? State security agents had not only infiltrated, but had actually
set up some of the dissident organizations. The infiltrators
had not only won the trust of Cason, but had gained access to the US
Interest Section and to the homes of the leading US diplomats. So why
bust these people whose national following did not amount to any significant
public, whose internal reputation was a joke, and whose political coherence
depended on handouts from the US government or on ideas generated by
Cuban agents, some of whose opinion pieces appeared in the Miami Herald?
Cuba has not answered this
question. I can imagine, however, that Cuban leaders might claim that
after Iraq, the imperialists now possess the will to try to crush any
country. And members of the policy elite have stated that they do not
consider Cuba off limits for military attack.
Suppose, six months before
the 2004 elections, the US economy remains stalled and Republican planners
decide that Bush needs another win. Given the enthusiasm
of the Castro-hating Florida Cubans for such an idea, Bush might well
make the island his target -- if he saw even a shred of vulnerability
in Cubas defenses.
For example, the 10,000 plus
Cubans who signed a US-backed Varela Project petition demanding
basic reforms could become a dangerous symbol under such conditions.
Did Fidel fear that Washington would take the veneer of dissident
success as a sign of the revolutions weakness and then pursue
a military course to provoke Cuban leaders to surface twelve of the
agents they had masterfully planted inside the dissident
organizations?
See, 10,000 signatures
collected in a totalitarian state. In addition to their biological weapons,
we now have evidence of deep-seated discontent, Bush might say
as a prelude to whipping up invasion spirit. After all, he used such
exaggerations to prepare the public for the invasion of Iraq. Indeed,
Cuban officials may have feared that the dissidents no matter
how well penetrated -- could convert themselves into at least a symbolic
fifth column on the island, while Washington tightened the
embargo and travel ban to create outside pressure on Cubas weak
economy.
Also, buying dissidents
with small amounts of money could end up corrupting a less manageable
sector, enough perhaps to offer orchestrated TV cameras images of crowds
welcoming US marines.
Cuban leaders must have sensed
some overt threat before taking such drastic steps. A new migration
crisis that Bush could use as a pretext that Cuba was encroaching on
US national security? A military provocation around Guantanamo? I await
the revelation of the facts.
Those in Washington who know
the islands realities would discourage such aggressive plans.
But suppose Fidel worried that the Bushies might believe in their own
inventions? Fantasies that Cubans are defiantly rising in the thousands
as one hears on some of the hysterical shows on Miami radio -- could
well lead to calls for serious invasion scenarios.
In addition, high level US
officials and Radio Marti have for months repeated the baseless charge
that Cuba has bio-terrorism weapons and harbors terrorists. Indeed,
in Miami, where anti-Castro terrorists walk proudly down the streets
or sit with the President on his platform, pro-war demonstrators carried
placards equating Fidel with Saddam Hussein. Given the success of Bushs
spin linking Saddam to 9/11, who knows what polls would show about percentages
of gullible Americans falling for propaganda that promoted the
invasion of Cuba as a way of securing the US homeland.
So, its possible that
Cubas jailing and harsh sentencing of dissidents and
executing of hijackers derives from military crisis not normal political
thinking. As a result of the lessons taught by the sentences of the
dissidents and the hijackers, Cubans will less likely accept
gifts from dubious sources.
If this analysis is correct,
will Cubans try to repair the political damage done in their military
mode? Perhaps, they might make public the basis for their actions rather
than repeat accusations and demand blind solidarity. Such revelations
would hardly justify their use of the death penalty, but at least it
would help explain their behavior to bewildered comrades throughout
the world.
Many left critics of the
procedural issues surrounding the dissidents case have not
properly informed themselves of the intricacies of Cubas legal
system. For example, most of the accused did have the right to choose
their lawyers or received court appointed defense if they did not make
a choice. They did know exactly what charges Cuba leveled against them.
Cuba did not hold secret trials. Indeed, the relatives of the accused
and other observers sat through the proceedings.
Yes, in accordance with Cuban
law, the dissidents received summary trials. But this does
not automatically deprive them of their procedural rights. The Cuban
defense lawyers work with the prosecutors on the indictment and if there
are holes, the defense lawyers inform the judges, who should then dismiss
the cases. The Napoleonic-Spanish system! The government had airtight
cases that the accused had taken money, goods and services from the
arch enemy of Cuba and had performed anti government acts writing, speaking
and publishing that the US government promoted.
But to dismiss the 75 as
simply traitors hardly suffices. Military thinking produces absolutes
that in turn leads to a serious political downside. As Galeano indicates,
by trying and condemning them, Cuba turned groups which openly
worked from James Cason's house, the representative of Bush's interests
in Havana, into martyrs of freedom of expression. Indeed, as Cubas
security agents testified, with no refutation from the United States,
Cason actually established a political party (the youth section of Miami-based
Carlos Alberto Montaners Liberal Cuban Party. In fact, some of
the dissident money came from sources like Montaner, who
received grants from US government agencies).
By bagging these pathetic
people Galeano concludes that the Cuban authorities have paid
homage to them, and have granted them the prestige that prohibited thoughts
acquire. The Uruguayan writer continues. This `democratic
opposition has nothing to do with the genuine expectations of
honest Cubans. If the revolution hadn't done it the favor of repressing
it, and if in Cuba there was full freedom of press and of opinion, this
so-called dissidence would disqualify itself. And it would get the punishment
it deserves, the chastisement of loneliness, for its notorious nostalgia
of colonial times in a country which has chosen the way of national
dignity.
Even those defending the
actions fail to answer the criticism. In the April 12, La Jiribilla
Angel Guerra refers to the Bush doctrine of `preemptive war
and the preparations for aggression against Iraq, justified with any
lie and invoking the right of the United State to bring about "regime
change" wherever and whenever it considered it necessary. Why not
in Cuba, which after all appears on all the inquisitional lists of the
State Department, among them the list of countries that sponsor terrorism
and, of course, the countries that systematically violate human rights?
Guerra also cites the
Miami mafia, leading a mobilized mob last Sunday in support of the intervention
against Baghdad, which raised the cry, Iraq today, Cuba tomorrow.
Four words that reveal exactly the purpose that today determines their
actions as well as those of their satellites on the Island, even if
they disguise themselves as independent journalists or human rights
defenders.
The issue would not
deserve any comment, Guerra continues, if it were not for
the extraordinary influence the terrorist group in Miami has in defining
Washington's political agenda toward the Island.
These events are not
fortuitous, he concludes, but are the product of Bush administration
complicity with the Miami mafia, determined to fish in troubled waters.
Carlos Fernandez de Cossio,
Cubas Ambassador to Canada, wrote in the April 10 Globe and Mail
that Cubas critics employed double standards. True,
but this does not address what Cuba did. If Cubas behavior derived
from security fears, then Cuban officials should confront that issue
and explain their actions accordingly.
He points correctly in his
letter to abuses of Afghans, Arabs and citizens from different
countries detained in Guantanamo base
in Cuba. No secret military
trial like the ones established in the United States has been nor can
be carried out in Cuba. There do not exist thousands of detainees still
ignorant of the charges against them and whose names have not been released
in totality, as is happening in the United States since September 11,
2001. None of the individuals tried in Cuba have been submitted to solitary
confinement, to psychological torture or cruel separation from their
families like the five Cuban unjustly suffering prison in the United
States.
True, but most of the leftists
critics strongly opposed US procedural violations in the very cases
he cited. US officials reach new heights of hypocrisy when they try
to smear Cubas human rights record. Can one conceive of a more
gross human rights violation than waging aggressive war?
Or compare the trials of
the dissidents to that of the five Cubans tried and sentenced
in Florida (the five had infiltrated US-based anti-Castro terrorist
groups because the FBI did not stop their terrorism. The government
charged them with espionage and sentenced them to long terms) and youll
conclude that Cuba offered more procedural rights than the US did. As
Fernandez de Cossio asserts, the five are still waiting to read
over 50 per cent of the documentation used to incriminate them because
it was declared secret.
Critics on the left do not question Cubas right to protect itself
from the US monster. Most of the leftist signatories to the protest
letters would agree that the United States has all but shredded international
law and the UN in its latest criminal capers in Iraq.
But the Cuban government
didnt adequately explain its rationale; indeed, it practically
shouted at its critical friends and enemies alike with shrillness, as
if everyone should understand what no one explained.
In so behaving, it handed
its enemies the public relations chance of a decade: Cuba imprisons
its dissenters and summarily executes people. As Galeano wrote freedom
and justice march together or they don't march.
In 1960, when I first visited Cuba, I felt that the revolutionary spirit
had changed my life, provided me with reason and inspiration to seek
justice. I agree with Galeano that over the decades the revolution
has lost the wind of spontaneity and freshness that has driven her from
the start. I say it with pain. Cuba hurts.
Yet, after forty plus years,
I still look to the island as a place from which superior, not inferior
forms of human behavior will arise. I dismiss the puerile criticisms
of Cuba from US government hacks who have made careers of creating dictators
in the third world, and who possess the moral authority of a flea.
Speaking of moral fleas,
George Death Penalty Bush as Governor of Texas celebrated
152 executions. He can teach a how to do it course on that
subject. So Cuba rightfully dismisses Ws judgments, but it should
not dismiss as enemies those progressives who felt appalled over the
execution of the boat-jackers. They are appealing to Cubas conscience.
Can the death penalty coexist with a moral socialism? The critics may
have signed petitions without possessing the necessary facts, but that
in and of itself is not sufficient reason to deride honest people who
abhor the death penalty and question trials of people whose crimes consisted
of writing and speaking no matter in whose interest or that they took
money.
George W. Bushs name
may engrave itself in historys pages as the first fascist president.
Fidel Castro has already entered the history books as the man who led
the Cuban people from the marginality of informal US colonial status
to a heroic role in world history. The Cuban Revolution has made its
mark. It has no reason no matter how real the threat -- to turn its
back on friends and supporters who criticize specific actions from principled
positions.
Cuba may well be a viable target of the Bush fascists. In such circumstances,
shouldnt revolutionary Cubans maintain dialogue with honest progressives
who disagree with jailing dissidents and carrying out the
death penalty? And shouldnt the progressives keep their lines
open as well?
Landaus film IRAQ:
VOICES FROM THE STREETS is distributed by Cinema Guild, 800-723-5522.
Find him on the web at www.rprogreso.com He teaches at Cal Poly Pomona
University and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.