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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen FordClick the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.
If President Obama sincerely wants to improve relations with Cuba, he can show he is serious by freeing the Cuba Five. The Cuban intelligence agents were given long prison terms for infiltrating Cuban exile terrorist groups in South Florida. With this week’s U.S. Supreme Court refusal to review their case, only President Obama can resolve this festering political problem.
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Free the Cuba Five, Mr. President
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Now that the High Court justices have washed their hands of the matter, it’s up to President Obama to find a political solution.”
The U.S. Supreme Court’s
refusal to review the case of the Cuba Five means it’s up to President Obama to make a substantive move toward lessening tensions with our island neighbor. Obama can also demonstrate that he he has a sense of fair play and elementary justice.
The Cuba Five were sent to southern Florida by Havana to infiltrate the Miami-based anti-Castro terrorist groups that have been harbored by the United States for the past half century. Over the years these criminals, operating openly and brazenly, have undertaken countless missions of murder, sabotage, and provocation against Cuba. They have also broken innumerable laws against the United States, with impunity.
The Cuban intelligence officers infiltrated the terrorist organizations Alpha 66 and the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation political front organization, and the so-called Brothers to the Rescue, a group of private airplane pilots.
Despite the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, right-wing Cuban exiles dreamed of provoking a U.S. attack on Cuba, that they hoped would result in their return to wealth and power on the island. In 1996, Brothers to the Rescue organized a series of highly provocative flights into Cuban airspace, daring the Cuban air force to shot them down. The Cubans called their bluff, and four of the pilots died.
“Obama can demonstrate that he he has a sense of fair play and elementary justice.”
In 1998, the Cuba Five were arrested. All of them were ultimately convicted of being unregistered foreign agents; three were found guilty of conspiring to steal U.S. military secrets, and one was convicted of conspiracy to murder the four provocateur pilots of the group Brothers to the Rescue. The sentences for the Cuba Five ranged from 15 years to life in prison.
The seven-month trial , beginning in November of 2000, was a legal lynching, with Miami’s Cuban exiles demanding blood. The defense argued that the defendants could not possibly get a fair trial in Miami. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights agreed, declaring that the trial did not conform to standards of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Amnesty International agreed.
As the world this week awaited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, ten Nobel laureates, including South Africa’s Desmond Tutu, called for the release of the Cuba Five. One hundred ten members of the British Parliament wrote to the U.S. Attorney General, as did numerous organizations, worldwide.
Now that the High Court justices have washed their hands of the matter, it’s up to President Obama to find a political solution.
To date, President Obama has done very little of substance to improve Cuban-American relations. He has rolled back travel and currency restrictions to the status quo that prevailed before George Bush became president, proving only that he is not George Bush. The recent so-called “compromise” that would allow Cuba to rejoin the Organization of American States, if it chooses, was forced on the U.S. by virtually every other country in the Western Hemisphere. Obama was saving face, and had no choice.
The Cubans have no obligation to make a gesture to Washington. It is they who still suffer from the U.S. trade embargo, and the century-long U.S. occupation of Guantanamo Bay. With the stroke of a pen, President Obama could send the Cuba Five back home. It’s the very least a U.S. President can do.
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by John Maxwell
Even though both Castro brothers repeatedly stated that Cuba has no desire to rejoin the Organization of American States (OAS), Latin America demanded that the ban against Cuba be dropped. “For them the OAS has been a yanki weapon against all of them, from Arbenz to Allende to Aristide to Fidel, Chavez and Morales. It does not end.” The U.S. tried to find a graceful way to accept its diplomatic defeat, and avoid further isolation in the hemisphere it once overlorded like a caudillo.
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Cuba, the US and the OAS
by John Maxwell
This article originally appeared in the Jamaica Observer.
“The so-called dissidents that Cuba is accused of persecuting are in fact paid agents of the United States.”
The older I get the more evidence seems to accumulate that the greatest enemy of world peace and popular enlightenment may be the profession of journalism.
Somebody once said that generals are always prepared to fight the last war but the truism seems to fit at least as well when applied to journalists.
Take the New York Times editorial on Thursday; it begins, portentously:
"For 50 years, the Cuban people have suffered under Fidel Castro’s, and now Raúl Castro’s, repressive rule. But Washington’s embargo — a cold war anachronism kept alive by Florida politics — has not lessened that suffering and has given the Castros a far-too-convenient excuse to maintain their iron grip on power."
Anyone who knows anything about the history of the last 50 years might be forgiven for total bafflement.
Let us leave aside the statutory abuse and go to the embargo – which the NYT describes as a Cold War anachronism which had not ‘lessened the suffering … etc.’
In the first place the embargo was originally designed and has been periodically reinforced specifically to make the Cuban people suffer and to punish them for not rising up and overthrowing their government. The embargo is – in terms of international law – an act of war, and it has always been meant to have that effect on the Cubans. If any nation had declared war on the US, would the US expect that to improve the conditions of the US population?
The embargo is so punitive that it even bans medicines and vaccines for children from the Cubans. It was and is an attempt to make the Cubans grovel in their misery and cry "Uncle" – as in “Uncle Sam.” The fact that the opposite has happened is not a matter for inquiry by the NYT. Instead, says the Times:
"So we are encouraged to see President Obama’s tentative efforts to ease the embargo and reach out to the Cuban people. At the same time, we are absolutely puzzled and dismayed by this week’s frenzied push by many Latin American countries to readmit Cuba to the Organization of American States.
"Cuba, which says it has no interest in joining, clearly does not meet the group’s standards for democracy and human rights."
The writer is obviously not aware that in the world outside of the United States, in the United Nations, the margin of support for ending the embargo has grown steadily since 1992, when 59 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The figure was 179 in 2004, 182 in 2005 and 184 in 2007.
“The embargo is – in terms of international law – an act of war.”
Last year apart from the US, only Israel and one or two other superpowers like Palau voted against the resolution, while Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained.
The delegate speaking on behalf of the European Union, France’s UN deputy ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix said the 27-member bloc rejects "all unilateral measures against Cuba which are contrary to common accepted rules of international trade." The Antiguan representative, speaking on behalf of the 132-nation Group of 77 and China, said the alliance renewed its call on Washington to lift the embargo which not only undermines the principles enshrined in the UN Charter and international law, but threatens the [now sacred] principles of free trade and investment.
The New York Times is unaware that the Iberian/Latin American nations long ago welcomed Cuba in from the cold, even holding their 1999 Summit in Havana. There, the Spanish, Portuguese and Mexican heads of government criticised what they called Cuba’s lack of democracy, but did not see their differences as unbridgeable.
At that meeting, attended by the King of Spain, among others, the leader of the Cuban revolution defiantly declared that it was “an impossible task to persuade Cuba that it should abandon the ways of revolution and Socialism,” Fidel Castro said.
“Almost nobody thought Cuba could survive the fall of the Socialist bloc … but we thought differently and were determined to fight,” said Castro.
But even before that, when the revolution was only 25 years old, I happened to be in Havana during the Malvinas (Falklands) War, when streams of Latin American diplomats came to Cuba to ask advice from and to pay homage to Cuba and to Fidel, who had condemned the Thatcher Reagan aggression – as they saw it – against hemispheric political integrity.
And when the US condemns the Cubans for their lack of democracy there is an unconcealed irony in their position, not to say hypocrisy. The so-called dissidents that Cuba is accused of persecuting are in fact paid agents of the United States, whose motives may be as innocent as saints, but who are in fact, under Cuban and international law, working for a foreign power with whom their country is at war, in a war declared not by Cuba but by the United States.
“In the United Nations, the margin of support for ending the embargo has grown steadily.”
The New York Times, like the people Castro calls the Miami Mafia and like other anti-Cuban forces, does not apparently believe the Cubans have any right to defend themselves from American attack.
"We understand the desire to fully reintegrate Cuba into the main regional organization. But as Human Rights Watch argued this week: ‘Cuba is the only country in the hemisphere that repudiates nearly all forms of political dissent. For nearly five decades, the Cuban government has enforced political conformity with criminal prosecutions, long- and short-term detentions, mob harassment, physical abuse and surveillance.’”
The people the NYT and HRW are defending are the foreground players in a multilevel criminal assault on the Cuban polity. Over the years this assault has included terrorist bombings such as the sabotage of the arms ship La Coubre which exploded in the Havana docks in 1960, killing and maiming hundreds, terrorist campaigns in the Escambray and other parts of Cuba, targeted assassinations, biological warfare killing Cuban children with imported strains of hemorrhagic dengue fever for instance; economic biological warfare targeting sugar cane, tobacco and citrus, among others with exotic diseases; terrorist bombings of hotels, targeting tourists, plots to blow up the Tropicana, the world’s most famous nightclub and its audience and cast of hundreds; and the unremitting campaign to kill Fidel Castro with more than 600 known attempts on his life.
And while we talk about Cuba let us not forget about the US attempts to spread democracy in Guatemala, Honduras,Salvador, Colombia, Nicaragua and Haiti, among others, leaving the landscape littered with the corpses of men, women, children, nuns, priests and journalists.
No one can convince me that the Cubans have no right to defend themselves and their revolution. Had Maurice Bishop taken their advice he might still be alive. But for some people, for me to say that the Cubans may have a case is a demonstration of moral and intellectual depravity.
So be it.
Posada Carriles
I happened to be in Havana in 1960 shortly after the ammunition ship La Coubre had been blown up with huge loss of life. Everybody I knew tried to discourage me from going. I was sure to be killed.
I wasn’t injured or in any real danger, although the night I arrived some gunmen in a speeding car sprayed the main shopping street with sub-machine gunfire. The air was charged. The day after I arrived I went for a walk with my camera and ran into a black Cuban on Monserrate street, where he lived. On discovering I was Jamaican and a journalist he told me that he was a communist, a trade unionist and that though the revolution was not communist, he approved of it. We walked to the Parque Central, where the permanent tiled chessboards may have witnessed the genius of Capablanca and where, on that day – May 20, 1960 – Cuba’s official independence Day and my own 26th birthday, various patriotic things were happening. Among them a group of Pioneros – the revolutionary equivalent of Boy Scouts were practicing for a parade. I began to take some pictures and was quickly stopped by a tall young main in civilian clothes who made it plain that I was under arrest.
Monserrate accompanied us to the nearby police station.
I quickly discovered I was in difficulties because I’d left my passport behind in my hotel, the nearby Siboney. But they had no one to go with me to get it. How to prove who I was?
Because I spoke English I was an American! Monserrate convinced me to scour my wallet for some form of ID. All I could find was a temporary press pass to the United Nations from the year before. Monserrate took one look at it and jumped for joy. See, he exclaimed (in Spanish of course) my friend is Ingles (English) because the pass said I was a British subject. The Brits were friends of Cuba.
The week before I arrived Life magazine had published a spread on Cuba, featuring the very troop of young Pioneers I had set my sights on.
The photographer had been a black American.
The photo spread had been titled: "Fascism in Latin America?"
As we say in cricket, the Americans had already begun rolling the wicket. The sugar quota was cut while I was there. The revolution was not even 18 months old.
A quarter of a century later I was on the steps of Jamaica House, chatting with Michael Manley, having just interviewed him for some European radio station. Somebody burst out of the house with the news that a Cubana airliner on its way to Jamaica from Barbados had been bombed out of the sky.
Manley’s reaction was shock and horrified disbelief. He went inside to phone his friend Fidel. The horror was palpable. Most of those on the plane were little more than children, the Cuban junior fencing team, some young Guyanese en route to medical school in Cuba and others.
“Somebody burst out of the house with the news that a Cubana airliner on its way to Jamaica from Barbados had been bombed out of the sky.”
Two of the culprits were soon discovered, tried and imprisoned. Another, one Luis Posada Carriles, alias “Bambi” – the mastermind, has since that day 33 years ago been under the protection of the United States of America. American agents engineered his release from a Venezuelan jail and later from a Panamanian jail after a failed plot to blow up Fidel Castro along with several other Latin American leaders and thousands of Panamanian students in a concert hall.
This terrorist, a CIA asset from the time of the Kennedy assassination, lives, protected in Miami in a country whose last president promised to go after terrorists wherever they were and regardless of who protected them. No question of moral or intellectual depravity here, of course. In addition to the Cubana bombing he was responsible for some hotel bombings, one of them fatal to an Italian tourist.
Meanwhile, five Cubans who had infiltrated the Miami Mafia and were supplying information about the terrorists the US said it was committed to hunt down – people like “Bambi” – were given long prison sentences in solitary confinement for taking George W. Bush at his word.
Fidel Castro has long made it plain that Cuba has no wish to rejoin the OAS. Latin America knows this, despite which the OAS members decided to rescind the 1964 decision. It will mean nothing, practically, but for the Latins it is a matter of honor.
For them the OAS has been a yanki weapon against all of them, from Arbenz to Allende to Aristide to Fidel, Chavez and Morales. It does not end.
Their pilgrimages to Havana 25 years ago may have served no practical purpose either, but for Latin America it helped restore their self-respect.
John Maxwell a veteran Jamaican journalist. He has covered Caribbean affairs for more than 40 years and is currently a columnist for The Jamaica Observer. He can be contacted at jankunnu@gmail.com.
Copyright©2009 John Maxwell
by Alberto N. JonesMainly white Cuban exiles in Miami, Florida, and Union City, New Jersey, who have never been friends of Blacks in either Cuba or the United States, now claim to be champions of racial equality on the island. The author, an Afro-Cuban whose roots go back to Jamaica, apologizes to Black U.S. lawmakers for the antics of the hypocritical Cuban rightwingers. Afro-Cubans, who have the most loyal to all of Cuba’s revolutions, need no assistance from "mercenaries" from Miami.
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A Sincere and Painful Apology to the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus
by Alberto N Jones
“The CBC has courageously stood by their brothers in Cuba for the past 25 years.”
Please allow me to express my disgust and apologize publicly to the United States Congressional Black Caucus on behalf of Cubans in general, Afro-Cubans in particular and especially in the name of those lured to Cuba from the English-speaking Caribbean islands at the turn of the 2oth Century, who were subjected to brutal racism, segregation, exploitation and forced to live in Soweto-type slums across that country.
A common historical experience of abuse, suffering and ignorance, made it easy for most members of the prestigious CBC to side from day one, with the suffering people of Cuba, victims of a 50 year old cruel embargo that have threatened the life, well-being and development of these survivors of the transAtlantic slave trade, like their brothers and sisters in the CBC.
Having failed in every past military, political, terroristic or economic effort to decapitate the Cuban government, ultra-rightwing Cuban-Americans in south Florida in collusion with US-AID, NED, Republican Party Foundation and others, identified an important demographic shift in Cuba during the early 90’s in favor a blacks, due to an intensified emigration tendency among Cubans of Hispanic ancestry.
Drastic changes were introduced in all counterrevolutionary groups in the US where blacks had been previously shunned, were now they are being hastily recruited and promoted to leadership positions. Numerous black study groups, foundations, leadership training centers, and religious sects, and bloggers have donated hundreds of computers, and launched CDs, DVDs and books, mostly depicting the severe inequalities to which blacks were subjected by a “white controlled, oppressive Cuban government” – the main thread of this blitzkrieg aimed at dividing the country along racial lines.
“The Afro-Cuban community, unlike those Cubans of Hispanic ancestry, did not have access to friends and family members with remittances.”
In Cuba, these aggressive, destabilizing measures were undertaken by people who called themselves independent librarians, independent journalists, anti-abortionists, human rights advocates and every other imaginable malformation, geared to weaken, divide and conquer a nation that had fought, defended and was willing to die for its Independence and sovereignty.
These despicable mercenary activities have been abundantly documented through captured instructions, tape recordings, payment receipts, confessions etc., of a clear command and control structure in the US. The campaign is assisted by a huge, well orchestrated media barrage with multiple resonance boxes across the globe. These mercenaries have convinced thousands of poorly informed citizens of their humanistic goals, unselfish sacrifices and patriotic concerns for the betterment of their people.
The overnight collapse of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries with whom Cuba held most of its trade, the introduction of the Special Period by the Cuban government and the creation of joint ventures, proved to be devastating for the Afro-Cuban community which, unlike those Cubans of Hispanic ancestry, did not have access to a large emigrant community abroad capable of supporting friends and family members with remittances.
Compounding this tragedy, was a concerted effort by Cubans of Hispanic ancestry, to secure most or all employment in the new joint Ventures, corporations and other entities with access to hard currency earnings, further widening the racial/socio-economic gap, severely weakening the moral fiber of the Afro-Cuban community and placing it on the verge of collapse, which can be seen in increased acts of delinquency, inordinate incarceration index, prostitution and hopelessness.
“Young people’s goals were expanded to raise awareness and support the anti-apartheid struggle in south Africa.”
Hundreds of desperate plea for help from black communities across Cuba, went unheard, ignored or opposed by these neo-humanists, as they flaunted their melanin content, to spread hatred towards their land of birth.
A handful of humanitarian groups in the US and abroad, attempted to respond to this social tragedy, by collecting humanitarian goods for these endangered communities in Cuba, only to be rejected or denounced as “collaborationists” or “apologists” for the Cuban government. Indescribable pain, suffering and deaths were inflicted upon women, children and the elderly. Many resisted, others gave up, some left.
During the early 1980’s, I was fortunate to meet some extraordinary, conscientious members of CONVIVIALS, a predominantly eastern Caribbean emigrant organization in Brooklyn, New York, committed to improve the plight of immigrant youths. Young people’s goals were expanded to raise awareness and support the anti-apartheid struggle in south Africa, through public speaking, holding marches and vigils in front of the UN and large collections of educational, medical or personal goods, that were sent to the ANC, SWAPO and others fighting for their independence.
With the liberation of most countries in the southern cone of Africa and the death of apartheid, the worsening of the socio-economical situation in Cuba captured our attention, leading to the creation of The Caribbean American Children’s Foundation in Florida. Through the Foundation we regularly pleaded for help, and are eternally indebted to hundreds of extremely generous people in the US and elsewhere, whose contributions helped us donate hundreds of thousands of dollars in medicine, medical supplies, educational and sports materials, and aid for the physically challenged and elder, mostly in eastern Cuba.
“The worsening of the socio-economical situation in Cuba captured our attention.”
None of the Afro-Cubans who are attempting to earn world prominence by opposing the Cuban government have ever offered an aspirin to our group or others engaged in similar humanitarian endeavors, which makes their purported platform questionable at best.
A myriad of critical problems affecting the Afro-Cuban community in Cuba must be resolved without delay, if that nation is to preserve its soul, its history and its moral motto: With all and for the well-being of all!
All branches of government, national institutions, neighborhoods, professions and hierarchies should reflect the multi-ethnic composition of the country. If the enormously successful women’s drive towards equality in the 60’s signified “a revolution within the revolution,” another drive to correct 500 years of neglect, un-payable debts to the nation’s most loyal sons and daughters, cannot be postponed any longer.
Everyone who loves our country, everyone who is enamored with our beautiful history, anyone who is capable of appreciating the enormous achievements of the Afro-Cuban community over the past fifty years, must speak up.
Undeniable facts demonstrate that Afro-Cubans constituted the bulk of the casualties during the wars of independence in 1868-78, 1878-79 and 1895-98. The unsolicited Spanish-American war created an emasculated, pseudo republic, which replicated United States southern racism and segregation. In despair, blacks formed the Independent Party of Color, 3000 of whose members were massacred in 1912.
“The unsolicited Spanish-American war created an emasculated, pseudo republic, which replicated United States southern racism and segregation.”
While a majestic monument honors president Jose Miguel Gomez, the mastermind and executioner of this monstrosity, the scene of this crime in Oriente Province is still without a simple cross in memory of the victims.
Mariana Grajales, the mother of the Cuban nation and one of the most extraordinary women ever to live in this hemisphere, is barely recognized.
These are the real battles for justice, equality and the future of our nation, that all Cubans and Afro-Cubans especially should be waging, not siding with those who castrated our independence in 1898 or those who enabled this massacre and kept us segregated, impoverished, ignorant until 1959 and today, are shamefully relying on the dark skin of some, willing to sell their intellect and soul to the highest bidder, by attempting to intimidate, blackmail or create a negative political scene against members of the CBC, who have courageously stood by their brothers in Cuba for the past 25 years.
We will not be threatened by letter carriers, book writers, open mike AM Radio Talk Show hosts in Miami, New Jersey or California, or by Cuban-American politicians in State Houses and in the US Congress with their segregationist past here and in Cuba, attempting to silence members of the CBC, with worn out Jim Crow tactics.
No one can tire, rest or give into the comfort of life, until this moral debt to every descendant of the slave trade is fulfilled. Millions of grateful sons and daughters in our region, expect the leadership of the CBC will continue and expand their role in achieving justice for all.
Honorable US Congresswoman Barbara Lee, please convey our Mother’s Day wishes of Happiness, Health and Long Life to all females on this last delegation to Cuba and our eternal gratitude to each CBC member, their Aides and everyone else, who has stood up against all odds, with their brothers and sisters in Cuba.
Alberto Jones is an Afro-Cuban of Jamaican ancestry. He is director of the Caribbean American Children’s Foundation in Palm Coast, Florida.
by Netfa FreemanBarack Obama dominates his Republican rivals here in the United States, but the international arena is a different venue, entirely. There, Obama carries the baggage of American presidents past – and any new encumbrances he might pick up on his own. Certainly, in a heads up against Cuba, the United States finds it nearly impossible to claim the moral high-ground. “One cannot ignore that unlike in the US, Cuba regards education, healthcare and employment as rights, not privileges. It is fairly common knowledge that Cuba provides free education, from pre-k up to the university level, and healthcare to all its citizens is completely free of charge.”
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The US, Cuba and Moral Authority
by Netfa Freeman
“It’s a posture that pretends US interests are to bring Cuba something it allegedly does not have; liberty, equality and human rights.”
Barack Obama’s performance at the 5th Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and his handshake with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is resonating better with African (Black) people than how he chose to deal with the UN Conference on Racism in Geneva. It seems almost naive to think that President Obama did not know the challenges he would face at the April 19th Summit. However, the game of international relations is always more one of chess than of checkers and, when dealing with political adversaries, always entails what the Cubans call the battle of ideas. Because revolutionary Cuba has had to square off against the US for nine successive administrations, it has become very adept in such battles. Essentially in the battle of ideas opponents try to achieve the higher moral ground in the eyes of the world on one level and in the eyes of their own populace on another.
In an April 16th op-ed in the Miami Herald Obama wrote: “This Summit offers the opportunity of a new beginning. Advancing prosperity, security and liberty for the people of the Americas depends upon 21st century partnerships, freed from the posturing of the past…The Summit gives every democratically-elected leader in the Americas the opportunity to reaffirm our shared values…and just as the United States seeks that goal in reaching out to the Cuban people, we expect all of our friends in the hemisphere to join together in supporting liberty, equality, and human rights for all Cubans.” This posture, rife with unfounded assumptions, is the same as those in the past that Obama is claiming to reject. It’s a posture that pretends US interests are to bring Cuba something it allegedly does not have; liberty, equality and human rights.
“Obama’s chess move was to lift restrictions on visits and money sent to Cuba by Cuban-Americans.”
Consistent with Cuba’s exclusion from the Organization of American States (OAS) since 1962, on the grounds that its Marxism-Leninism was contrary to the spirit and principles of the body, Cuba has been disallowed participation in the Summits, which began in Miami in 1994. US dominance has waned dramatically in Latin American since 1994 and certainly since 1962. Thus it was common knowledge going into this 5th Summit that the issue of US-Cuba relations would be made a hot topic contrary to the preference of the US. As such, just before leaving for the Summit, Obama’s chess move was to lift restrictions on visits and money sent to Cuba by Cuban-Americans — steps he called “extraordinarily significant” for the families, and a show of good faith by his administration that it is open to a new beginning with Cuba. At times a bishop must be sacrificed to keep the king safe.
Obama conditioned this, however by saying he needs to see signs of changes on the island before he makes any more overtures. By changes he means the standard accusations leveled by imperialism against Cuba; that it should practice what the US considers democracy, stop abusing what the US considers human rights and open its economy to the “free” market. This is because he may not yet full grasp the different nature between chess versus checkers.
At another summit in Venezuela, Cuba’s President Raul Castro responded to Obama saying that his government is willing to discuss any issue with Washington, as long as it’s a conversation between equals and Washington respects "the Cuban people’s right to self-determination." At this stage in the chess game the US is playing without its queen. The most powerful piece in the game is the perception the world really has of Cuba and the US blockade against the island.
"We have sent word to the U.S. government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything — human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything," said President Raul Castro.
If or when such a discussion takes place, who will really have the higher moral ground? What follows is a more critical examination of this question; to see how Revolutionary Cuba stands up against the infamous benevolence of the US.
“The overwhelming majority of Latin American and Caribbean leaders urged Obama to end the blockade against Cuba quickly and without any preconditions.”
First, there is the fact that at this weekend’s Summit, even while embracing Obama, the overwhelming majority of Latin American and Caribbean leaders urged him to end the blockade against Cuba quickly and without any preconditions. They also expressed a virtually unanimous desire to restore Cuba’s status in the OAS. At some point Bolivian President Evo Morales even declared he was a Marxist-Leninist and dared the OAS to expel his country for it. The greater point Morales was making is that Washington should not dictate the road Cuba chooses. Ironically Sunday’s Washington Post reported Obama as saying at the Summit, "Every one of our nations has a right to follow its own path." Funny he can’t recognize this in reference to Cuba.
Human Rights
When comparing human rights in the US and in Cuba it should be considered that Cuba’s national security has actually been under constant attack by the US since the dawning of the revolution. The US government doesn’t have to worry about the world’s most powerful foreign force, just 90 miles from its shores, constantly attempting to destabilize and overthrow it. Cuba does and the US is that force. One method used against Cuba is the bribing of Cuba’s own citizens to serve the empire against their own country.
A declassified October 1961 document authored by then CIA inspector Lyman Kirkpatrick states, “The history of the Cuban Project begins in 1959” and goes on to outline its fundamental aspects: “a) Formation of a Cuban exile organization…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.”
Such activities remain in effect today under the title “Cuba Program,” compliments of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Anywhere such valid national security concerns exist countries cannot simply take for granted the integrity of each and every one of their citizens. But organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International refuse to factor in this added complexity when judging human rights in Cuba or any other country that falls prey to this improved regime change strategy of imperialism.
“One method used against Cuba is the bribing of Cuba’s own citizens to serve the empire against their own country.”
In response to this Cuba has had to enact laws specifically designed to keep its citizens from aiding and abetting the US’ immoral and internationally condemned Helms-Burton Act. The Helms-Burton Act (a.k.a. The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity – Libertad – Act of 1996) strengthens and extends the territorial application of the initial US embargo against Cuba to apply to foreign companies trading with Cuba. In effect this transformed the embargo effectively into a blockade of the Island, hindering it from importing even the most basic of human necessities. This is reinforced by the use of Cuban nationals posing as political dissidents while disseminating false and misleading information on behalf of the US to justify the blockade.
When the intersection between human rights and economic justice is considered, the comparison between Cuba and the US reveals some interestingly stark contrasts. One cannot ignore that unlike in the US, Cuba regards education, healthcare and employment as rights, not privileges. It is fairly common knowledge that Cuba provides free education, from pre-k up to the university level, and healthcare to all its citizens is completely free of charge. Additionally, according to the World Health Organization and UNESCO these services are among the highest quality in the world. Conversely the US has many obscenely under-funded and poorly resourced public schools especially in neighborhoods with majorities of African/Black and Latino youth. The state of healthcare in the US is infamous, with an estimated 47 million citizens having no health insurance and another 25 million underinsured.
“Millions of Americans never read another book after leaving school.”
Cuba’s literacy and education ranks second highest in the world at a noteworthy 99.8 percent. Although the United States ranks seventeenth at 99.0 percent, it must be understood that US literacy rates are manipulated by various definitions. The government may label individuals who can read a couple thousand simple words they’ve learned by sight in the first four grades in school as literate; but the most comprehensive study of US adult literacy ever commissioned by the government argues that such adults are “functionally illiterate.” That is they cannot read well enough to hold a good job.
That study involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the US. Designed to represent the US population as a whole, it showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text," could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials," and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." Another study by the Jenkins Group showed that millions of Americans never read another book after leaving school. This in what is regarded as the most “developed” nation in the world.
A World Bank-sponsored study records Cuban education “as outstanding: universal school enrollment and attendance; nearly universal adult literacy; proportional female representation at all levels, including higher education; a strong scientific training base, particularly in chemistry and medicine; consistent pedagogical quality across widely dispersed classrooms; equality of basic educational opportunity, even in impoverished areas, both rural and urban. In a recent regional study of Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuba ranked first in math and science achievement at all grade levels, among both males and females. In many ways, Cuba’s schools are the equals of schools in OECD countries, despite the fact that Cuba’s economy is that of a developing country.” OECD’s are the countries signed onto the Convention on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, none of which are in Africa, Latin America or the Caribbean.
“In a recent regional study of Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuba ranked first in math and science achievement at all grade levels, among both males and females.”
In relation to foreign policy, Cuba sends thousands of doctors and teachers to serve the oppressed in countries around the world, while the US has sent exponentially more soldiers to “serve” as occupiers and invaders than they have doctors or teachers.
US propaganda mostly reduces human rights to things like freedom of speech and association. But what good is the “freedom” to speak out when the state can completely ignore you and in spite of the most blatant of abuses – like the war, electoral improprieties, racism and other inequalities? We have already shown above that much is done to spread lies about the Cuban revolution and over time many of these lies have been exposed. The Cuban government has consistently, emphatically and persuasively denied that free speech is suppressed in Cuba. In a 2003 April press conference Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque refuted claims about the arrests and convictions of 75 of its citizens saying, “It has been said that these are prisoners of conscience that they have been charged for thinking or speaking and I categorically reject this notion. What has 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.”
Countless visitors to the island including this author, who have met Cubans with no qualms about openly criticizing their country, can corroborate this. And unlike in many US backed military dictatorships where hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared and murdered at the hands of such governments, never has anyone been able to identify in Cuba a single name of a missing person, a person murdered at the hands of the government, anyone arrested in the wee hours of the night with a hood over her or his head who was never seen again. There are, however thousands of unresolved such cases on lists of missing people in countries whose oppressive governments have enjoyed the backing of Washington. Barack Obama is undoubtedly a smart and informed man. Can he be ignorant of these facts? Regardless, whether he is or isn’t helps no one.
“Never has anyone been able to identify in Cuba a single name of a missing person, a person murdered at the hands of the government, anyone arrested in the wee hours of the night with a hood over her or his head who was never seen again.”
Capital punishment is also a very instructive issue when comparing human rights within Cuba and the US. With 1158 executions since 1976, thirty-seven of those occurred in 2008 and twenty-two have already taken place not halfway through 2009. In Cuba there has been a moratorium on capital punishment since 2001. Cuba made exceptions only in 2003, sentencing three men to death after their part in a series of armed, US-instigated ferry and airline hijackings accompanied by overt threats against Cuba by the US government. The threats went as far as saying that “Cuba will be next” to follow the US invasion of Iraq. Even if one considers this a heavy-handed response, Cuba invoked this measure on people who clearly posed a threat to their national security. Additionally it can’t be forgotten that this was within a context that BAR’s Glen Ford has fittingly described as “the full spectrum of international crimes against its small island neighbor: invasion, biological warfare, a relentless campaign of assassination and terror, and the world’s longest trade embargo.”
When the US refers to “national security” it generally is referring to the protection of imperialist interests in some far off part of the world. But no one can refute that Cuba has real live national security concerns because of truly powerful and poised enemies.
While Barack Obama alludes to human rights in Cuba, he dismisses and ignores human rights violations in the US of innocent people like Shawn Bell, Oscar Grant and literally thousands of others murdered at the hands of police and never afforded justice by the US government. No such things happen in revolutionary Cuba.
Democracy
The number one justification the US uses for its policies toward Cuba is the claim that Cuba is not a democracy; when one looks at the facts this becomes a patently transparent lie now being regurgitated by Obama. Even if he is truly unfamiliar with the Cuban system, surely he knows the US has normal relations with countries like China, Vietnam and even Saudi Arabia which has no parties or elections at all, calling into question why Cuba is singled out.
The voting age in Cuba is 16 years of age. Contrary to what is implied by the US, Cuba has regular elections that enjoy participation by over 90-96% of its citizens at every level; local municipal, provincial and national. Statistics for the US find elections grossly wanting with turnouts in federal elections reflecting percentages in the 30s and percentages in the low 50s for the presidency. The candidacies of Bush and Obama raised these numbers slightly for the last two elections, 55% in 2004 and 57% in 2008. It should also be noted that US statistics are a little misleading by only considering those registered to vote and not the portion of the citizenry as a whole. Cuba’s statistics on the other hand are directly based on their population who are automatically eligible to vote once reaching 16 years of age.
The strength of a democracy is affected by how educated and informed a populace is. A comparison has already been made between education in the US and Cuba. In addition the Cuban people are some of the most informed and politically astute people in the world. People from the US are notorious for being the most politically ignorant people in the world.
“The Cuban people are some of the most informed and politically astute people in the world.”
Cuban people have the right to national referendums while this right is only afforded to some states in the US. Even though the people do not vote directly for the president, the Cuban National Assembly elects him, and the people directly elect that body. Contrary to notions people in the US are fed they do not directly elect their president either. The purpose of the US Electoral College is to make sure voters cannot directly choose the president. Once campaign financing is also factored in, along with the nomination processes of the two monopolizing parties, there is even less democracy involved.
Because Cuba’s National Assembly is directly elected by the people, if the intelligent, politically astute Cuban people did not want Fidel Castro as President for all these years they would have easily found a way to get in a National Assembly that would not re-elect him. Now the post of President in Cuba constitutionally has no term limits, which is why Fidel was able to lead for so long. While Western concepts consider unlimited terms undemocratic, it actually can be argued as being more democratic. The people in this instance are allowed to politically exercise the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Cuba’s National Assembly is equivalent to the House and Senate in the US but comprised not only of representatives from geographic areas. It is also comprised of representation from integral sectors of the society, such as women, youth, workers, etc. The US government has no such representation.
Although Cuba is regularly referred to as a dictatorship controlled exclusively by Fidel Castro himself, Fidel’s former post, now occupied by his brother Raul, wields less power than that of the President of the United States (POTUS). The Cuban president cannot appoint his cabinet ministers. The National Assembly elects them as well. The POTUS appoints his administration. The President of Cuba does not have veto power over decisions of the Assembly. POTUS does. Contrary to popular belief outside of Cuba, Cuba’s process is not done in the name of the Communist Party of Cuba or of any other political, mass or social organization. This means membership in the Party is not required to run for any post in the government.
There is so much misinformation spread about democracy in Cuba or the supposed lack thereof it would take books to comprehensively address the topic.
Political Prisoners
Much is propagated about political prisoners in Cuba. The way this is mentioned by US government officials and the “news media” one would think there are no political prisoners in the US. How much has the public spoken out for the release or at least a fair trial for Mumia Abu Jamal? Leonard Peltier, freedom fighter for American Indian Movement has languished in prison for 32 years with calls for his release coming from all corners of the world. There are no less than 70 political prisoners in the US and speculations that the number is actually twice as high.
“There are no less than 70 political prisoners in the US.”
In Cuba, however those being called political prisoners or prisoners of conscience have been proven otherwise in Cuban courts and convicted of what is essentially treason. The evidence and records of the trial proceedings are a matter of public record in Cuba. Like every country Cuba has laws against treason. Unlike most countries Cuba has the compounded challenge of US laws created against it, which are designed to strangle the country into submission. These are violations of the UN Charter and an offense to Cuba’s right to national self-determination. The UN General Assembly has for years consistently condemned the US blockade in votes with only the US, Israel and various third countries casting dissenting votes.
In response Cuba enacted laws to address the US policies against it, such as Law No. 88 on the Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba, an antidote to the US’s Helms-Burton Act. Article 6.1 of Cuba’s Law No. 88 stipulates that “He who gathers, reproduces, disseminates subversive material from the government of the United States of America, its agencies, representative bodies, officials or any foreign entity to support the objectives of the Helms-Burton Act, the Blockade and the war, shall incur a sanction of deprivation of liberty.”
To criticize Cuba for their handling of these “political prisoners”, is to dismiss Cuba’s right to defend itself against the pervasive and immoral methods of the US government.
Conclusion
It is an incredible shame that the Obama administration won’t stand on principle regarding one of the most important and historic cases in the US, the Cuban Five and the 12 amicus briefs filed on their behalf. The fact that the US finally charged the CIA trained criminal and terrorist Luis Posada Carrilles indicates in whose favor the battle of ideas is leaning, even if only for the relatively petty crime of lying.
It should go without saying that the most powerful weapon in the battle of ideas is the actual application of humanist principles and not simply echoing the rhetoric of them. When a nation assumes moral authority over another, one would expect honesty and the practice of domestic and foreign policies grounded in justice. Contrary to what one might believe from Barack Obama and unlike what is practiced in the US, Cuba prioritizes people over profit and private interests, domestically and internationally. A simple cursory look reveals this.
Netfa Freeman is the Director of IPS’ Social Action & Leadership School for Activists, an activist in the internationalist and Pan-Africanist movements and a founding organizer for the No War On Cuba Movement (www.nowaroncuba.org). He can be reached at netfa@hotsalsa.org.
by John MaxwellIf you give those Americans an inch, they’ll steal your whole country out from under you. Raul Castro said he was willing to put “everything” on the table in future talks with Washington. But hostile-minded analysts interpreted Raul’s remarks as meaning he’d throw Cuba’s sovereignty and social system into the pot. Former leader Fidel was quick to clarify: putting “everything on the table” did not mean bowing to unreasonable demands from a superpower that is still a “squatter” on Cuban soil at Guantanamo Bay, and continues the world’s longest economic blockade against Cuba.
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Half a Century of U.S. Lies
by John Maxwell
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"
It is one of my favorite apothems and is credited variously to Mohandas Gandhi and to a spokesman for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Whoever said it clearly understood the nature of struggle like my illustrious colleague Fidel Castro who has now turned journalist after 50 years inventing a civilization.
Fidel does not often lose his temper in public, but this week it was obvious he was sorely tried by the results of the Americas Summit in Port of Spain. In a piece of biting sarcasm Fidel questioned the fitness of the Organization of American States to be the guarantor of any new and just dispensation in the Western hemisphere.
In a reflection entitled "Delirious Dreams" Fidel lets rip:
"Is the OAS perchance the guarantor of the sovereignty and integrity of the peoples of Latin America? Always!
"Did it at any point intervene in the internal affairs of any country in the hemisphere? Never!
"Is it true that it has always represented a docile instrument of the United States? Never!
"Did one single Latin American or Caribbean die on its account? Not one! Those are calumnies of Castro-Communism emanating from Cuba, a country expelled from the OAS because its government proclaimed Marxism-Leninism, a country where there was never an election, nobody votes or is elected, and in which a dictatorship reigns that has had the effrontery to confront a country as weak, defenseless and poor as the United States throughout half a century."
”Since the mainstream media determine what most people believe, US politicians are among the most ignorant in the world.”
Even from those who claim to be least biased in the ideological contention, it is impossible to get a fair hearing for anyone but the United States. So-called journalists, like Robert Novak and Judith Miller, Wolf Blitzer, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck, to name only the most grotesque, have made it almost impossible for the “average American" to discover what’s happening in his own country much less the world outside.
And since the mainstream media determine what most people believe, US politicians are among the most ignorant in the world.
The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, one of the better informed think tanks in the US, was constrained to comment on Fidel’s reflection on the Summit:
"Fidel’s latest interjection follows the almost scientific pattern of Cuban authorities of shooting themselves in the foot at precisely the moment that meaningful dialogue appears achievable with the U.S. For Fidel to spell out restrictions to discussions with the U.S. at this early stage is premature."
The unspoken assumption is that President Obama was justified in saying that the US had shown willing, now it was Cuba’s turn.
Fidel Castro is the only political figure in history of whom it can be said that he fulfilled every promise he made to his people. I am not aware of anyone else whose actions have been at all times guided by the highest principle, by a sense of justice and honor.
If you don’t believe me go read his speech in his defense against the charge of treason at Santiago in October 1953.
I wrote about that speech in my column "History will Absolve Fidel" in December 2005. Among other things I said:
"Looking back at the speech today, more than fifty years later, I am struck by two things: the idealism of the aims and the fact that most of those aims have, in fact, been achieved. There have been mistakes made, many of them serious, but overall, if one compares Cuba to its nearest neighbors, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, it is clear that Cubans enjoy a far better quality of life than citizens of the others. And in World Bank terms it is poorer than all except Haiti.…
"…The care given to the weakest and most vulnerable is extraordinary and Cuban health care is recognized as among the very best in the world. The same is true of education, and just as Cubans now have a doctor in every neighborhood (1 doctor to every 100 Cubans) they are getting university-level centers set up in every borough. And education is almost completely free."
”I am not aware of anyone else but Fidel whose actions have been at all times guided by the highest principle.”
What is most extraordinary about the Cuban achievement is that it was done while Cuba was (and is) in a state of war –declared by the United States, invaded, infiltrated by gangs of terrorists, bombed and sabotaged, its people and economy attacked by biological warfare agents, hemorrhagic dengue, thrips, tobacco mosaic and other plagues, and its leader subject to at least 637 known conspiracies to murder him.
Some of the leading terrorists against Cuba, Orlando Bosch and "Bambi” Posada Carriles are at this moment under the protection of the government of the United States. These noxious creeps were responsible for murdering Cubans abroad and in Cuba, from fishermen to diplomats, and most horrifically, the destruction of a Cuban plane with 73 people, including the young Cuban Olympic fencing team.
In addition, the US is illegally squatting on Cuban property at Guantanamo Bay and to add injury to insult has used that property as a base to attack Cuba and worse, to set up camps for the criminal denial of human rights to people accused, but never convicted of crimes against the United States.
A bizarre footnote to all this is that while providing aid and protection to known and notorious terrorists the US has imprisoned five Cubans in solitary confinement and in circumstances which constitute cruel and unusual punishment. This, despite the fact that the United States admits that the men have done nothing to injure the interests of the United States.
“The US is illegally squatting on Cuban property at Guantanamo Bay and to add injury to insult has used that property as a base to attack Cuba.”
Meanwhile, the people responsible for killing innocent people by bombing hotels and nightclubs enjoy protected status in the US.
In January 2000, the Cuban government and people launched a lawsuit against the USA claiming $121 billion in damages for, among other thing, the killing of nearly 4,000 Cubans and the maiming of thousands more, the damage or destruction of 294 fishing boats, 78 airplanes, 135 urban and rural schools, and 63 Cuban embassies and consulates – targets of terrorism and sabotage, encouraged and financed by the United States.
Against all this, the American press demands that Cuba should open up, introduce “democracy” and freedom of the press. It is claimed that there are dozens of prisoners of conscience, people the Cubans say are proven paid agents of the US and criminals under Cuban law.
Unlike the American prisoners at Guantanamo Bay the Cuban “dissidents” have been charged and tried.
Of course, Fidel Castro and the Cubans do not have a case. Their claims have never been reported by the free American press. On the other hand anti-Castro apparatchiks like John Bolton, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and Luigi Einaudi, all official representatives of the United States, have between them claimed that Cuba is preparing bio-warfare against the US, that Cuba was supplying Nicaragua with Soviet MIGS to bomb California and have helped to rescue terrorists like Bosch and Posada from the justice they deserve.
Perhaps, just to clear the air, the United States should present Cuba with its own list of grievances.
John Maxwell a veteran Jamaican journalist. He has covered Caribbean affairs for more than 40 years and is currently a columnist for The Jamaica Observer. He can be contacted at jankunnu@gmail.com.
Copyright©2009 John Maxwell
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
Click the flash player above to hear or the mic to download an MP3 copy of this Black Agenda Radio commentary.
What does putting "everything on the table" mean, in discussions among nations? Cuba’s Raul Castro says he means literally everything, including exchange of political prisoners, as long as talks are held on the basis of equality. Barack Obama claims the next move is up to Cuba, but it appears Raul has already made an authentic offer. Besides, there is something fundamentally wrong when the nation that continues to commit crimes against its neighbor - the U.S. - asks for concessions before it will cease and desist.
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Obama, Raul and Hugo: Who are the Truly ‘Big Men?’
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
“The U.S. holds pose no threat to the U.S., while the prisoners Havana holds may well pose a threat to Cuba.”
U.S. President Barack Obama says the next move is up to Cuba, to improve relations between the two countries. This statement is both typically Obama, and vintage American imperialist. Obama, just like his American presidential predecessors stretching back more than two centuries, thinks the United States has the right to decide when it’s time for other countries to forgive America’s own crimes – even when the Americans continue to commit those crimes. Obama tried to run that game at the Summit of the Americas, in Trinidad, this weekend, when he spoke of setting aside "stale debates and old ideologies." That’s the same language he uses, here in the U.S., when people want to talk seriously about curbing the power of money or creating a single-payer health care system. Obama pretends that everything he says is fresh, rather than stale, even when its old as dirt, or stolen from somebody else. He claims to have no ideology, while practicing imperialism, backed up by the biggest military budget in history, 24 hours a day. Since Obama smiles when he utters this kind of nonsense, he is called a statesman and a cool dude.
But let’s return to Cuba and the “next move.” President Obama has made concessions mostly to Cuban exile families who would like to visit their relatives and send more money, more often. Obama has not undone the historic U.S. economic, political, diplomatic and cultural blockade of Cuba, but only some of George Bush’s more egregious barriers, and mostly for the benefit of Cuban Americans. Cuban leader Raul Castro has offered to put “everything” on the table for discussion, including exchanges of political prisoners. That’s a much bigger concession for Cuba than for the United States. Cuba holds scores of prisoners that Havana says have sought to undermine the state and serve the interests of foreigners, meaning, the Americans. The United States holds only the Cuban Five, Cubans sent to infiltrate exile groups in Florida that were breaking the laws of the United States by carrying out operations against Cuba. Although convicted of espionage, the Cuban Five were not spying on the United States, but instead, spying on rightwing Cubans in the United States. In other words, the Cuban prisoners the U.S. holds pose no threat to the U.S., while the prisoners Havana holds may well pose a threat to Cuba. It is Cuba that would give up the most in an exchange. Yet Obama plays it coy, and noncommittal, while claiming that ideology and the preservation of the imperial big stick have nothing to do with it.
“Fidel and Chavez ask only for relations on the basis of equality.”
Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez are the bigger men in this story. Raul would be perfectly justified in demanding that the United States first clear out of Guantanamo Bay, sovereign Cuban territory, before any further talks could be held on contact between relatives in Cuba and Miami, or on political prisoners. Raul could ask, on behalf of his brother, for an apology for the innumerable U.S. attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Venezuelan President Chavez could demand the same on behalf of himself, for George Bush’s 2002 attempted coup against his government, in which Chavez came very close to being killed. But Fidel and Chavez ask only for relations on the basis of equality. Unfortunately, equality among nations is a pill no imperialist will swallow, including Barack Obama.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Click the flash player above to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary
No matter how you measure it, the US embargo of Cuba has been a failure, and worse, a crime against both the US and the Cuban peoples. Instead of isolating Cuba, it isolates the US and its people from Cuban cultural contributions and US businesses from the profits of Cuban trade. Still, the First Black President moves slowly, much slower than hos voters would like, toward the inevitable.
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Obama Slowly Edges Toward Ending Failed U.S. Embargo of Cuba
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“President Obama will attend a summit meeting of the OAS, most of whose members now maintain good relations with Cuba and wish the U.S. would lift the trade embargo.”
For half a century, U.S. hatred of the Cuban revolution has driven Washington to commit the full spectrum of international crimes against its small island neighbor: invasion, biological warfare, a relentless campaign of assassination and terror, and the world’s longest trade embargo. Yet the Castro brothers and the socialist government still stand. Forty-seven years ago, when all of Latin America – except for Cuba – was under Washington’s thumb, the United States directed the Organization of American States – the OAS – to expel Cuba, which, of course, was promptly done. That was the same year, 1962, that the U.S. imposed its trade blockade on Cuba. Later this week, President Obama will attend a summit meeting of the OAS, most of whose members now maintain good relations with Cuba and wish the U.S. would lift the trade embargo. Some of them will surely tell Obama so, and in this day and age, the president of the United States has no choice but to listen. The Caribbean Community is also on record against the embargo, as is the General Assembly of the United Nations. Captains of U.S. industry, and their foreign counterparts, have for years lobbied for an end to the embargo, for the simple reason that it’s bad for business, putting American firms at a disadvantage in the global marketplace.
The embargo against Cuba, designed to isolate the revolution, today isolates the United States from the community of nations.
“Cuban leader Raul Castro offered to exchange the Cuban Five for any jailed Cuban dissidents the U.S. wants.”
Barack Obama got ready for his Friday meeting with the leaders of the rest of the Americas by dropping a
range of restrictions on Cuba, mostly involving visits Cuban Americans will be allowed to make to the island and the money and gifts they can send.
The older generation of Miami Cubans last week finally bowed to the stability and longevity of the Cuban revolution. Acknowledging the handwriting that has long covered the walls, the far-rightwing Cuban American National Foundation called for a
significant loosening of restrictions on Cuban American contact with the island. The old reactionaries stopped short of calling for an end to the embargo, but said the issue was only “symbolic” and no longer “important anymore.”
One of the Cuban American National Foundation’s heroes, the infamous
terrorist Luis Posada, moved a little closer to his eventual encounter with justice, when a federal grand jury served up a new indictment against him in connection with bombings at Cuban tourism destinations, back in 1997. One Italian tourist was killed in the terror campaign. Posada has long been wanted by Havana in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
But nowadays the Cuban government would be much happier for the return of the so-called Cuban Five, a group of intelligence agents sent by Cuba to infiltrate Miami’s exile groups, where younger versions of Luis Posada planned terrorist attacks on Cuban soil. Instead of being thanked by the FBI for doing the Bureau’s job, the Cuban Five were sentenced to long terms in prison on espionage charges. Cuban leader Raul Castro offered to exchange the Cuban Five or any jailed Cuban dissidents the U.S. wants. Sounds like a good deal. And then the U.S. can end the embargo, and look a little bit less evil in the eyes of the world.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
from Prensa LatinaThe former leader of Cuba, in his new capacity as journalist, reports on this week’s and previous visits from members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Castro describes the CBC as, “in practice…the most progressive wing within the Democrat Party.” The delegation, which attended ceremonies at Havana’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, where CBC Chairperson Barbara Lee (D-CA), Laura Richardson (D-CA), Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO)and Bobby Rush (D-IL) spoke at an observation of Dr. King’s assassination. One member “said he was sure that Obama will change the policy towards Cuba, but Cuba should also help him.”
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Fidel Castro on Black Caucus Trip to Cuba
from Prensa Latina
Cuban Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro filed the following report, published by Prensa Latina, during the April 3-8 visit to the island nation by six members of the Congressional Black Caucus and one member of the Congressional Asian-Pacific American Caucus. The article was titled, “Reflections by Comrade Fidel: The Seven Members of Congress Who are Visiting Us.”
An important US political delegation is visiting us right now. Its members belong to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) which, in practice, has worked as the most progressive wing within the Democrat Party.
The Congressional Black Caucus was founded in January 1969 by the twelve Afro-American legislators who belonged to the US Congress at that moment. During the first 50 years of the 20th century only four Afro-Americans were elected to Congress.
At present, as a result of the struggles they have waged, the CBC is made up by 42 members. Several of its representatives have maintained very active and constructive positions on topics related to Cuba.
The first Caucus delegation that visited us came to Cuba on February 1999 and was presided over by Maxine Waters; the second came on January, 2000.
Influential members of that Congressional group publicly expressed their positions and carried out other positive actions during the battle for the return of the child Elián to his homeland.
On May 2000, another Caucus delegation visited us. It was presided over by James Clyburn, from North Carolina, who was then its main leader, and was made up by Bennie Thompson, from Mississippi, and Gregory Meeks, from New York. These congressmen were the first to know through me about Cuba’s readiness to grant a number of scholarships to low-income youths, who were to be selected by the Congressional Black Caucus, so that they could come to Cuba and study medicine. We made a similar offer to the “Pastors for Peace” NGO, which is presided over by Reverend Lucius Walker, who sent the first students to the Latin American Medicine School (ELAM). When the Bush administration anti-Cuban pressures and actions against travels and the presence in Cuba of persons under the US jurisdiction became more severe, the Black Caucus legislators addressed Secretary of State Colin Powell and managed to secure a license that legally allowed American youths to continue their Medicine studies -which they had already started- in Cuba.
“The aura achieved by Luther King is accompanying them.”
Powell, a military chief of great authority and prestige, could have been the first black President of the United States, but he refused to be nominated out of respect for his family which, reminding themselves of Martin Luther Kings’ assassination, tenaciously opposed his being nominated.
The Black Caucus delegation visiting Cuba this time is presided over by Barbara Lee, Representative from California. She first traveled to Cuba accompanying the then black Congressman Ronald Dellums. She was his assistant and afterwards occupied his seat when he retired. On that occasion I had the honor of meeting her personally and admire her combatant spirit and capacity for struggle. The group she is presiding right now is made up by seven members of Congress. The other members of the delegation are: Melvin Luther Watt, from North Carolina; Michael Makoto Honda, from California; Laura Richardson, also from California; Bobby Rush, from Illinois; Marcia L. Fudge, from Ohio; and Emanuel Cleaver II, from Missouri.
Patrice Willoughby, Executive Assistant of the Congressional Black Caucus, plus four military of the Congressional Liaison Office, under the orders of lieutenant colonel Daniel Wolf, are accompanying the delegation.
I highly assess the gesture of this lawmakers group. They have been strictly complying with the visit program they asked for. The aura achieved by Luther King is accompanying them. Our press has given a broad coverage to their visit. They have been exceptional witnesses of the respect with which we always welcome Americans visiting our homeland. Very hardly have they seen any face expressing hatred, and maybe they admire the total absence of illiterate people or children shining shoes on the streets. The swarms of children, teenagers and youths attending schools and universities; the day-care-centers, senior citizens homes, hospitals and polyclinics run by highly skilled medical staff offering assistance to all citizens will not escape from any critical eye. In the midst of this international economic crisis there are no citizens queuing up to apply for a job. Persons who move on the streets in an active and almost always happy manner do not match with the stereotyped images that most of the times are portrayed about Cuba abroad.
“They have been exceptional witnesses of the respect with which we always welcome Americans visiting our homeland.”
Our homeland is showing that a small Third World country, which has been besieged, attacked and blockaded for tens of years, can put up with its poverty with dignity. Many citizens in the richest nation of the world do not receive the same treatment, and a considerable number of them do not even vote. However, that right is exercised quite often by more than 90 per cent of our population, which knows how to read and write and has acquired a not inconsiderable culture and political knowledge.
Among the visitors there are opinions which are shared by all; others are personal points of view. In general, they believe that 68 per cent of the American public opinion favors a change in the policy towards Cuba.
One of them expressed that it was necessary to take advantage of this historical moment, when the presence of a black President in the White House coincides with a current of opinion that is in favor of the normalization of relations.
When Alarcón explained that removing Cuba from the list of terrorist States – where it has been arbitrarily included – was a moral duty, he was reminded that both Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were labeled as terrorist by the US Congress.
Another member of the delegation thanked the Cuban authorities and the presidency of the Black Caucus for promoting the trip and arranging for this type of exchange.
Another representative explained Obama’s great significance for the United States and the need for him to be re-elected. He said that the President believes himself a political leader who should govern for all social sectors of the country. Nevertheless, he said he was sure that Obama will change the policy towards Cuba, but Cuba should also help him.
“A member said that the President can not go beyond liberalizing travel and allowing remittances by Cuban-Americans.”
A fourth member of the Caucus said that despite Obama’s electoral victory, the American society continues to be racist. He added that Obama represented the only opportunity that nation had to move on and leave behind all the wrongdoings accumulated by former governments. He said that the President can not go beyond liberalizing travel and allowing remittances by Cuban-Americans, because proclaiming the lifting of the blockade or the full normalization of bilateral relations could mean the impossibility for him to be re-elected. Besides, he reaffirmed that the anti-Cuban right wing still has enough power to corner him and prevent his re-election.
Finally, another lawmaker frankly expressed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the United States should not lose the opportunity of recognizing that its policy towards Cuba has been an absolute failure. He added that his government should apologize to Cuba for all these years of hostility and for the blockade policy, because only then will we be in the position to move on together towards the solution of the bilateral differendum. He pointed out that, from his position, he would do whatever is possible to eliminate the blockade.
“One of them described as excellent the results achieved by Cuba in the field of Biotechnology.”
During their visit to the Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Center, one of them, expressing the feelings of the rest, described as excellent the results achieved by Cuba in the field of Biotechnology, and said that at this moment, the political atmosphere was favorable to build bridges of understanding and communication between the scientific communities of our respective countries. He recommended that we should be careful and patent everything, according to the international intellectual property standards, to prevent our being robbed of the efforts that led to such a wonderful work.
All of them expressed how greatly impressed they were during the visit to the center, where the minister of Science, Technology and the Environment, together with several scientific institutions directors, explained to them about the work carried out by our country in that field.
The main activity of April 4, a day that marked the 41st anniversary of the death of the human rights martyr, was the visit to the park in Cuba’s capital named after Martin Luther King, where there is a black-veined dark green marble monolith, bearing the bronze embossed image of the great black combatant who was assassinated by the racist. Barbara Lee, Laura Richardson, Emanuel Cleaver II and Bobby Rush took the floor at the gathering. The four of them publicly emphasized the positive impact of the meetings they had held.
“The main activity of April 4 was the visit to the park in Cuba’s capital named after Martin Luther King.”
Yesterday Sunday, at 13:20 hours, Congresswoman Barbara Lee arrived at the Ebenezer Church of the Martin Luther King Centre, where she was welcomed by Raúl Suárez and other executives of Cuba’s National Council of Churches. Also present there were Alarcón and other officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Before that, Barbara had visited two other churches in Vedado. She addressed the audience; she reiterated certain previous public statements and expressed her intention to make certain coordinations with the administration to promote a change of policy towards Cuba and the reactivation of the exchanges between the churches of both countries. I have summarized as much as possible the exchanges that have taken place. I have been careful enough not to disclose the names of those who have made certain statements, because I do not know whether they are interested in going public.
I only wanted to offer some necessary elements for judgment so that our national public opinion could have as much information as possible on the sensitive subject of the relations between Cuba and the United States under Obama’s presidency and the visit of the Black Caucus delegation to Cuba.
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 6, 2009
2:03 p.m.
