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Reality of U.S. Record on Cuba

As published in Adbusters: Issue 126-Volume 24-Number 4: July/August 2016 and the Victoria Standard: April 11, 2016.

Those who praise President Obama for his current Cuba rhetoric may not be aware of the decades of U.S. - sponsored Latin American atrocities under cooperative dictators like Pinochet, Somoza and the Duvaliers. Of special note was Panama’s Manuel Noriega; paid by the CIA until he became too independent for their liking. Excessive independence was also Cuba’s greatest sin in the eyes of U.S. power brokers, who have always viewed Cuba as American property.

Would Canada or America accept a foreign prison like Guantanamo Bay on their soil? After ejecting U.S. organized crime from Cuba, Castro made the mistake of defying the Monroe Doctrine and pursuing an independent course. The Monroe Doctrine, for those unfamiliar with it, was a turn of the century understanding that North and South America were U.S. territory and therefore off-limits to the European powers with the exception of the existing colonies dotting the Caribbean.

While Castro’s regime was undoubtedly guilty of human rights abuses; a little perspective is necessary before we judge him. It is reasonable to assume that the Cuban government, like any other; found it necessary to pursue and prosecute foreign-backed agents working to destabilize it. Since protection of state institutions is the rationale behind our own Bill C51 it shouldn’t be difficult for us to understand the Cuban situation.

The CIA waged a covert terrorism campaign against Cuba from 1959 until the late 1990s and possibly beyond that time frame. Yet, Republican Congressmen criticized Canada for failing to, “…denounce human rights abuses in Cuba.” According to Wiki-leaked U.S. documents,”…the United States [also] accuses other countries, including China, Russia and those in Latin America and Africa, as taking a ‘best friends forever’ approach in Cuba, which avoids raising human rights abuses in private or in public.” We may trace Cuban engagement with these states, particularly Soviet Russia; back to the early 1960s, when the suffocating U.S. trade embargo forced the Cubans to seek assistance elsewhere.

The state of Florida is home to any number of anti-Castro militants recruited, trained and shielded by the CIA. In Cuba, they stand accused of various terroristic crimes that occurred from 1960 to the late 1990s. People like Orlando Bosch come to mind. This anti-Castro terrorist lives free in Miami after being pardoned by George Bush Sr. for his role in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed seventy-six people.

In 1998, the Cuban government invited the FBI to Havana and provided them extensive anti-Castro terrorism evidence and the identity of Cuban agents infiltrating the anti-Castro terrorist cells in Miami. Ironically; the infiltrators, not the terrorists, were arrested and sent to U.S. prisons. I doubt if these facts will appear on the pages of our mainstream press.