Freadom

Blog

Los Dólares que llevaron el desastre a Cuba

(The dollars that brought about the disaster in Cuba)

By: Ramón Colás

Upon learning of the recommendations set forth by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, led by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez, and presented to President George W. Bush, the Cuban regime has responded with the same arguments it always has.

There is a section in the document that expresses the position that will be assumed by the United States toward the Cuban people during their transition period towards democracy on the Island. That position can be summarized in the following commitment:

- A message of hope from the United States to the Cuban people

- A clear statement of the principles to assure Cubans that the United States supports them in their desire for freedom

- The commitment is directed directly at the Cuban people

- The message to the Cubans is that while they work on a democratic transition, they will be secure in their homes and they can count on the friendship and concrete assistance from the United States, which will include humanitarian aid and assistance so that they can recover economically and hold free elections.

In another part of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba report, the following recommendations made by the President of the United States are clearly detailed:

- To give Cubans the necessary tools to prepare them for change.

We will encourage and support Cubans who want change by providing them with uncensored information via conventional transmissions, satellite, and Internet, and by reinforcing the democratic movements. During the next two fiscal years, 2007 and 2008, $80 million will be provided to support such activities.

- To generate support for a transition towards a democratic and legitimate government.

We will dedicate ourselves to take advantage of the impetus generated by Cubans themselves in favor of an authentic, democratic change in their country by encouraging other democracies to support the right of Cubans to forge a democratic future for Cuba.

- To weaken the economic status and other strategies that favor the survival of the regime.

We will strengthen the enforcement of the existent sanctions to continue exercising economic pressure on the regime and to therefore limit its capacity to sustain itself and repress the Cuban people.

- To plan the support to a Cuban Transition Government

We will be ready to offer assistance in order of priority to a Cuban Transition Government that works quickly to hold free and fair, multiparty elections. We will also update and adapt our own plans to keep in step with the Cuban people in a process of continuous support in their transition towards freedom.

The report offers details about the assistance that the U.S. government will provide a Cuban Transition Government:

- Humanitarian needs: We will prepare ourselves to help a Cuban Transition Government to begin attending to the immediate needs of water, sanitary services, health, housing and education required by the Cuban people.

- Free and fair elections: To help Cubans create a stable, open environment where free and fair elections can take place. U.S. assistance should be offered to help Cubans overcome obstacles to democratic elections and move rapidly to create an environment conducive to free and fair multiparty elections.

- Market-based economic opportunities: To provide help in establishing macroeconomic stability and to promote the conditions for the development of a free market.

The arguments from Havana describe the assistance offered in this document as an intrusion of the U.S. government on the destiny of Cuba, therefore constituting a violation of its sovereignty. The Cuban government also alleges that the proposed funds are intended to subvert Cuban society through violent means, in order to ultimately annex the Island to the United States.

Far from truthful, those desperate allegations are based on the rhetoric that is so often used by the Cuban regime to heighten tensions with its northern neighbor. The purpose of the Castro government is to manipulate the Cuban people through false claims into believing its long-held claim that the United States will invade the Island. Using those arguments, it presents an image of the dissident movement as one that is subservient to Washington, in an attempt to degrade their dignity by calling them mercenaries paid by the empire. To a great extent, the Cuban regime employs these tactics to justify its intolerance and merciless persecution against pro-democracy activists within Cuba.

None of the projects of the internal dissidence contain even one word that promotes violence or social disorder on the Island. This movement, throughout its many years of struggle, has not suggested an armed confrontation among the Cuban people as an option to creating change. The demands have always been to promote a public space in which rights could be exercised whereby the people could elect their own representatives, access information freely, and enjoy freedom of association, assembly, movement and expression among other universal principles contained in the Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2003 the Cuban regime charged its repressive and police forces, in a disproportionate and aggressive manner, against the internal dissident movement. Seventy five activists from different sectors of the opposition were detained and summarily found guilty in a judicial process without judicial guarantees. Prior to each detention, their houses were invaded confiscating books, fax machines, cell phones, computers, typewriters and other work tools that had been used up until that point to express their opinion against the Cuban regime.

None of the trials presented tests to incriminate the dissidents for possessing weapons or equipment that could be used to cause harm to another Cuban. Neither were there any proclamations, documents or projects that promoted violence or armed confrontation as necessary to bring about change in Cuba.

The United States is free to support democracy in the world. That is exactly what it does when it assists the human rights activists on the Island. Cuba is the only Latin American country that has a totalitarian, Stalin-like system that limits the exercise of all freedoms. “The people of America have the right to democracy and their governments the obligation to promote and defend it.” That declaration is the starting point of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which was signed by all the nations of the Western Hemisphere with the exception of Cuba and thus it is only fair that the countries that enjoy freedom and democracy assume the responsibility to promote it in those places where it does not exist.

The role of the United States should be supported by all the countries of Latin America. It deals with a basic question that the people and representatives of the region often forget: the constant and systematic violation of human rights in Cuba and the denial of the public space to social and political actors is irreconcilable with the norms of civil coexistence and respect for mankind.

A journey through Fidel Castro’s life, takes us to the year 1955 when he, along with Juan Manuel Márquez and other members of the 26 of July movement, collected thousands of dollars in a public and well-photographed rally in New York City.

On that occasion, Castro improvised a speech where he expressed the supposedly democratic character of his future revolution, one that required sufficient funds urgently in order for it be launched. At that time he stated, “We are against the use of violence directed at people or at any opposition organization that disagrees with us and we are radically opposed, in the same way, to terrorism and to attempts on people’s lives. We do not practice tyrannicide…” Later on in that same speech, he made a reference to the need for change in Cuban society: “Look, the Cuban people desire something more than a simple change of command. Cuba hopes for a radical change in all spheres of the public and social life. You must give the people something more than freedom and democracy in abstract terms, you must provide for a proper existence to each Cuban; the state cannot ignore the well-being of any of its citizens that have been born and raised in the country.”

These words were published in the magazine Bohemia on November 6, 1955, in a report written by journalist Vicente Cubilla, Jr., the Bohemia correspondent in New York.

What was the purpose of those collections and of all the cash that activist cells of the 26 of July movement managed to obtain in several American metropolises? As we all know, it was not used to write articles against the previous dictator, as the independent press on the Island does today in Cuba. It also wasn’t used to buy books or to offer free cultural information to the Cuban people, as the independent libraries have accomplished in promoting uncensored reading. Neither did any clinics receive those funds to save the life of a person in need of medical assistance or medicines. Today, however, despite its limited resources the Independent College of Doctors in Cuba delivers medicines and medical equipment to those in need.

The dollars collected by Fidel Castro in New York and that were placed under the American flag (as shown in the photo) were used to subvert Cuba and its people by means of a war that maintains, forty-seven years later, an entire country in mourning, impoverished and dominated with arrogance by a caste of abusive and deplorable politicians. It was those dollars that were responsible for the beginning of the longest and most humiliating tyranny ever known to mankind.

Castro’s subsequent actions once in power have shown how he hid his true dictatorial intentions from his countrymen. The arguments used by Castro to obtain funds from the Cuban exile community at that time were practically the same as those put forth by those who oppose the dictator today; the only difference being that the latter does not intend to deceive the Cuban people, or use the support offered by the U.S. government to impose an anti-democratic and intolerant system.

It is unacceptable that the Cuban authorities shout out loud that they are victims of a conspiracy between Washington and the internal opposition movement. It is indefensible to try and make comparisons between the dissidents on the Island and the rebel forces led by Fidel Castro who came to power through forceful and violent means. Such acts imposed upon the Cuban people a communist dictatorship that has excluded their opponents from the public space. Nevertheless, the dissidents work to create a society capable of promoting unity among all its children and, at the same time, of providing the freedom to express their differences.

Those who consider that the assistance offered by the U.S. government is immoral should review the budget that the Cuban regime devoted to offset the expenses of subversive groups that operated in Latin America and of the National Liberation movements in various African countries. In fact, the funds assigned for military and logistic support in Latin America by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba - which was directed by Manuel Piñeiro (known as “Barba Roja” or Red Beard) – alone totaled several million dollars, a figure that is much greater than the amount spent by the Cuban government on education in a province such as Santiago de Cuba, an area with a population of over one million people. Nevertheless, the methods used to obtain those dollars included extortion, bank robberies, theft and even murder.

The transparency of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is based on the political tradition of aid for progress on behalf of the U.S. government and its international agencies which are designed to promote democracy and development in the world.

No one can deny the legitimacy of today’s Cuban pro-democracy movement in its civil, non-violent struggle. Throughout this long period of totalitarian rule on the Island, the United States has been the only country willing to face the challenges implied by supporting those who openly confront the Cuban government. Other countries have vacillated, turning their back to the people on the Island and their complicity has resulted in their being silenced because of their grotesque alliances with the authorities of Havana.

To extend a bridge of solidarity to the pro-democracy Cubans on the Island and to responsibly assume a commitment to change in Cuba, is the best political approach that a nation such as the United States can offer those on the Island who aspire to create an open society for the good of all. When the U.S. democracy opened its doors to Cuban exiles to protect them from sectionalism and transgression of the totalitarian Castro system, it knowingly assumed that a day would come which would bring about the end of what had led to 20% of the Cuban population leaving our country.

Democracy is not only participation, it is also responsibility. The United States with its Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is complying with that principle.