Cuba Crackdown:
A Revolt Against the National Security Strategy?
By Robert Sandels
Since becoming principal officer at the U.S. Interests
Section in Havana in September 2002, James Cason has increased
official U.S. connections with Cuban dissidents. Entering directly
into Cuba domestic politics, Cason helped launch the youth wing
of the dissident Partido Liberal Cubano. Nowhere in the world,
said Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, would it be legal for
a foreigner to participate in the formation of a political party.
In October 2002, Cason invited a group of dissidents to meet
with U.S. newspaper editors at his residence in Havana. Although
it has become routine for heads of the U.S. mission to seek out
dissidents, it was unusual to meet them at home.
Feb. 24 of this year, he participated
in a meeting of the dissident Assembly for the Promotion of Civil
Society at the home of prominent dissident Marta Beatriz Roque.
Also present at the meeting were several reporters to whom Cason
repeated his criticisms of President Fidel Castro's government
and reaffirmed U.S. support for dissidents.
Cason organized two other such meetings
at his residence in March even after receiving a formal complaint
from the Foreign Ministry.
In a recent television interview in Miami,
Cason said the help he gave dissidents was "moral and spiritual"
in nature. But, according to the testimony of several Cuban security
agents who infiltrated the organizations that received U.S. support,
the Interests Section became a general headquarters and office
space for dissidents. Some of them, including Marta Beatriz Roque,
had passes signed by Cason that allowed them free access to the
Interests Section where they could use computers, telephones,
and office machines.
The State Department calls these activities
"outreach." However, under the United States Code,
similar "outreach" by a foreign diplomat in the United
States could result in criminal prosecution and a 10-year prison
sentence for anyone "who agrees to operate within the United
States subject to the direction or control of a foreign government
or official (Title 18, section 951 of the United States Code).
On March 4, Castro warned that Cuba might
close the Interests Section. "Cuba can easily do without
this office, an incubator for counterrevolutionaries and a command
post for the most offensive subversive actions against our country,"
he said. In April, the Foreign Ministry sent the United States
government a note saying the government was forced to act against
the dissidents due to the "declared purpose" of the
United States to overthrow the government of Cuba.
On March 18, the government began rounding
up dissidents including members of Oswaldo Paya's Varela Project--though
not Paya--independent journalists, and several leading dissidents
such as Martha Beatriz Roque. Sentences handed down ranged from
six to 28 years. The formal charge against most of the defendants
was crimes against the "independence or territorial integrity
of the state."
In an April 9 news conference, Foreign
Minister Perez Roque gave Cuba's explanation for the arrests.
"We have run out of patience with Mr. Cason and his irresponsible
actions. He is the person most responsible for what has occurred."
That was the short explanation. In the
exhaustive presentation that followed, Perez Roque made the case
that the Bush administration had radically increased hostility
toward Cuba to destabilize its government.
The much-praised Varela Project is an
especially interesting case. According to the documents Perez
Roque presented at the news conference, the Varela Project referendum
was financed by the United States and organized with the help
of Carlos Alberto Montaner, a Cuban exile based in Spain, assisted
by Spanish officials.
In a letter in 2001 to Osvaldo Alfonso,
one of those arrested, Montaner mentioned money sent to Cuba
to underwrite the project and said, "Very soon, some high-level
Spanish friends will call you to talk about the Varela Project."
Montaner suggested several people, including Paya, to help set
up the project.
The arrests generated nearly universal
condemnation. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said
the United States was "outraged," and Secretary of
State Colin Powell demanded that Cuba release the "prisoners
of conscience." Neither Boucher nor Powell explained away
the evidence that the dissidents were paid agents of the United
States.
The Cuban government has always maintained
that dissidents are created and funded by the U.S. government.
Under that rationale, Cuban law makes collaboration with U.S.
policy, especially the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, a criminal offense
punishable with lengthy prison terms. In 1997, the National Assembly
passed the Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty Law
as an "antidote" for Helms-Burton, and in 1999, the
Protection of Cuban National Independence Law, which criminalized
any act of cooperation with U.S. policy toward Cuba. These laws
are similar to U.S. laws governing activities of unregistered
agents of foreign governments. Evidence supporting the Cuban
claim that dissidents are mercenaries of the United States is
available on U.S. government Web sites. The Web site of the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID) lists recipients
of U.S. funds to support dissidents, independent journalists,
independent librarians, and human rights organizations in Cuba.
For example, in 2000, USAID gave US$670,000
to three organizations to support "the publication abroad
of the work of independent journalists from the island...and
to distribute their writings within Cuba" (USAID report,
Evaluation of the USAID Cuba Program, 2001).
The State Department's 2003 review of
the Cuba Program, set up to carry out the regime change directive
in the Helms-Burton Act, notes that the Cuba Dissidence Task
Group "was created to support the activities of dissident
groups in Cuba," especially the Group of Four--the group
led by Marta Beatriz Roque. The task group received a US$250,000
grant in 1999.
US$280,000 went to the Cuba Free Press
between 1998 and 2000, for "giving voice to independent
journalists and writers inside Cuba." <
CubaNet, which operates out of Miami,
posts the work of independent journalists on its Web site. Florida
International University, another USAID grantee, works with CubaNet
to translate articles written by dissident journalists into English,
French, and German. CubaNet received US$343,000 up through 1997.
U.S. admits/denies it funds dissidents
USAID official Adolfo Franco said earlier this year that the
agency had spent US$20 million dollar carrying out Helms-Burton
mandates since 1997. Nevertheless, another USAID official, Alfonso
Aguilar, denied that the agency funded dissidents, though he
claimed it was legal to do so. He admitted that USAID gives money
to nongovernmental organizations that in turn pay dissidents.
But he argued that Perez Roque's accusations were "outrageous,"
because the payments did not come directly from the U.S. government.
Despite the implied USAID principal that
indirect payments are a legitimate means to fund internal opposition
in sovereign countries, the State Department said Perez Roque's
accusation that the United States fabricated Cuban dissidence
was "ludicrous."
Part of the case against Hector Palacios,
a Varela Project supporter sentenced to a 25-year prison term,
was that he had received US$3,000 in remittances from organizations
in the United States as well as computers and other equipment
donated by the Interests Section. Investigators found US$5,000
in cash hidden in a medicine bottle in his house. Another
of the prominent writers arrested was Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who
received a 20-year sentence. Interviewed on the Pacifica network's
radio program Democracy Now (04/09/03), Miriam Leyva, Espinosa
Chepe's wife, denied he had collaborated with the United States.
She said he had only received US$15 per article from CubaNet
in Miami. During the April 9 news conference, Foreign Minister
Perez Roque displayed receipts indicating that Espinosa Chepe
had received US$7,154 in such payments during 2002. At US$15
per article, Espinosa Chepe would have had to sell 477 articles
or 10 every week that year. Perez Roque said that investigators
found US$13,660 in Espinosa Chepe's closet and that he had not
held a job in 10 years.
Dissidents were often paid with U.S.
funds channeled through a Canadian bank. The bank allows Cubans
to access U.S.-supplied funds with a Transcard (debit card).
Almost without exception, media reports
and editorials said Castro had taken advantage of the Iraq war
to order the crackdown on dissent.
That interpretation, however, fails to
consider the current context or the long history of U.S. attempts
to overthrow the Cuban government. Indeed, the current crisis,
like others, has been treated in the media as just another random
act arising from Castro's character flaws and having no connection
with any relevant historical event.
Nevertheless, the current crisis may
be said to have its origins in President George W. Bush's new-initiative
statement. In a May 20, 2002, speech in Miami, billed as an "initiative
for a new Cuba," Bush restated U.S. hard-line policy and
proposed increased U.S. government aid to dissidents. There seemed
to be nothing really new in it, but the Cuban government took
it as a new threat, especially since the speech came a few days
after State Department official John Bolton announced that Cuba
was producing and transferring biological-weapons technology
to terrorist states.
Since the Bush speech, the United State
has paid increasing attention to the Varela referendum, which
essentially proposes a reformist approach to the elimination
of the revolutionary state and economy. Administration officials
denied there were any new elements in the speech and talked about
relying on dissent in Cuba instead of direct outside pressure
to bring down the regime.
After he accepted the European Union
(EU) Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought last December for
leading the Varela referendum, Paya made a triumphal tour that
included a stop in Washington where he was cordially received
by Secretary Powell. In Miami, he won support from the Cuban
American National Foundation (CANF). During the same period,
CANF formally embraced the strategy of working for Castro's overthrow
through dissidents, outraging other hard-liners who support more
aggressive actions from the U.S.
However, if one takes the Varela Project
to be a covert U.S. operation, the shift toward reliance on domestic
dissidents ushered in by the speech would appear to be the start
of an aggressive campaign spearheaded by the Interests Section--Bush's
"final solution" to the Cuba "problem."
Castro responded to the Varela referendum
with a constitutional amendment making socialism in Cuba "irrevocable."
While seen in the United States as a crude attempt to block the
referendum, its timing and intensity indicated it was Castro's
answer to Bush's initiative for a new Cuba.
Announcement of the initiative came four
months after Bush declared his radical foreign-policy doctrine,
The National Security Strategy of the United States. Cuban officials
cite the doctrine as an additional threat to Cuba because it
announces "a comprehensive strategy" to promote a global
free-trade economy.
More menacingly, it asserts the right
of unilateral, preemptive war against states that support terrorists
or are believed to have weapons of mass destruction. Since the
State Department is on record declaring Cuba as a state with
bioweapons technology, and continues to count Cuba as one of
the states promoting terrorism along with Iraq, Iran, Libya,
North Korea, Sudan and Syria, the new strategy logically leaves
Cuba open to military intervention at the discretion of the president.
Under this doctrine, U.S. military forces will be perpetually
dominant and may operate outside international sanctions. They
"will be "strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries
from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or
equaling, the power of the United States," and, "will
not be impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry,
or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose
jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not
accept."
One Cuban official told Wayne Smith,
former chief of the U.S. Interests Section, "This new preemptive-strike
policy of yours puts us in a new ball game, and in that new game,
we must make it clear that we can't be pushed around."
Aside from the immediate background to
the crackdown in Cuba, there is the matter of the U.S. initiative
in the Middle East. It is striking how similar the scenario
for Iraq is to U.S. policy for the transformation of Cuba: identifying
the target country with weapons of mass destruction and terrorism;
calling for regime change; selecting exiles to form interim governments;
U.S. control of those governments during the period of "transition";
arrogation to the president the power to determine when a democratically
elected government is in place; and the rectification of economic
structures in the target country to conform to free-market principals,
which have already been defined as coterminous with democracy.
A case could be made that Cuba's decision to obliterate the
internal dissident organizations and their links to the United
States, marks Cuba as the first country to openly revolt against
Bush's post-9/11 doctrines.
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