Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2001.
NewsMax.com
The Castro brothers¹ hatred for the United States became immediately
apparent upon gaining power in 1959. Fidel began making his long harangues
against the United States, and the Cuban mobs so inspired began collectively
composing such anti-American slogans as "Cuba Si, Yanquis No!" and "Fidel
seguro a los Yanquis dale duro!" ("Fidel, for sure, hit the Yankees
hard!").
In the meantime, Raúl Castro and Ché Guevara were courting the
Soviets. Fidel, at last, embraced Nikita Khrushchev at, of all places, the
United Nations in New York! The Soviets were invited to visit Cuba and pluck the
fruits of the Caribbean island paradise, still plentiful then - in exchange for
Soviet arms and equipment.
The 21st Congress of the Soviet Party proclaimed that the U.S.S.R. would
surpass the United States in agricultural and industrial production. In fact, at
a Polish Embassy reception as early as 1956, Soviet Premier Khrushchev
proclaimed to the despised American capitalists: "Whether you like it or
not, history is on our side. We shall bury you." Thus, it was not
surprising that the Russian peasant who was now the Soviet dictator, emboldened
by the spectacular success of the Soviet rockets and the orbiting Sputnik,
further prophesied to the American people on U.S. television, "Your
grandchildren will live under communism."
In January 1960 on Three Kings¹ Day, Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas
Mikoyan stepped off an Aeroflot jumbo jet in Cuba and gladly demonstrated in a
three-week agricultural exhibition the Soviet achievements in agricultural and
industrial production. Fidel, Raúl, and Ché were smitten with
Soviet products, but the Cuban people or even sympathetic Cuban journalists, who
until that time had been supportive of the revolution, were not impressed.
Ordinary Cubans recognized Soviet and Eastern European products for what they
were: shoddy products, markedly inferior to those they were accustomed to from
the U.S.A. It must have been difficult for the Soviets to not recognize that in
1960 ordinary Cubans, the liborios, still had a higher standard of living than
their communist counterparts in the U.S.S.R.
Meanwhile, U.S.-Cuba relations had become tense. By the mid-1960s, freedom
of speech and freedom of the press had ended in Cuba - virtually with no protest
raised by fellow journalists in the U.S!
On May 11, 1960, Diario de la Marina, a conservative daily, was shut down,
and its chief editor, José Ignacio Rivero, had to flee for his life and
seek asylum in the Peruvian Embassy. His newspaper had criticized Castro¹s
treaty with the Soviets. On May 13, 1960, the editors and journalists of Prensa
Libre also went into exile. Revolutionary mobs demonstrated in front of the
office of the Prensa Libre demanding that the editors and journalists be sent "to
the firing squad wall" (¡Paredon, paredon¡). One by one all
newspapers were shut down, even those that had initially supported the
revolution. The communist Granma, the new voice of the Castro brothers, replaced
all of them.
In the summer of 1960, Raúl Castro flew to the U.S.S.R. to seek
armaments for his Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR; "Revolutionary
Armed Forces"). Khrushchev was impressed with Raúl¹s communist
devotion to the cause and made the fateful decision to go all out to defend the
Cuban Revolution. The Castro brothers had delivered the beautiful Caribbean
island into the Soviet camp.
At the same time, American companies were nationalized by the Cuban regime.
During June 1960, the large hotels in Havana, including the Nacional and the
Hilton, were nationalized (expropriated by the revolutionary government). On
June 29-30, Texaco, Esso (Exxon), and Shell Oil were also nationalized. Cuba had
not only seized the oil industry, but had also become totally subservient and
dependent on Soviet oil.
On Oct. 15, the Cuban government nationalized Cuban banks and all
industrial, commercial and transportation companies on the island, including
American firms - perfume and soap manufacturers, distilleries, breweries, sugar
mills, chocolate and candy companies, flour and rice mills, paint manufacturers,
bottling companies, pharmaceutical companies, construction and shipping firms,
etc. On that day alone, American companies lost an estimated $200 million
(Quirk, Fidel Castro, 1993).
By the end of October, Castro had also nationalized most of the remaining
American companies, including Woolworth, General Electric, International
Harvester, Sears and Roebuck, Remington Rand, Otis Elevator and the Coca-Cola
distributor on the island.
Raúl Castro as head of the armed forces was getting ready for a
confrontation with the U.S. using newly acquired Soviet arms. Fidel Castro
boasted that if the Americans invaded the island they would suffer casualties
exceeding those of Normandy or Okinawa! Furthermore, Raúl implemented
mandatory, universal conscription (Servicio Militar Obligatorio) and sent
military cadets to the Soviet Union for training.
Raúl was not only in charge of the organization of the military but
also supervised military intelligence. The Interior Ministry (MININT) - run by
dissolute men such as Ramiro Valdés and Manuel Piñeiro and
unrestrained by constitutional protections of civil liberties or the rule of law
- was very effective in thwarting political opposition and liquidating purported
counterrevolutionaries and other "enemies of the revolution."
By the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17-19, 1961, the Cuban
military was well prepared to defeat an invasion force that didn¹t have the
total support and required commitment of the United States government. And when
the awaited invasion came, the Castro brothers led the land forces that defeated
the abandoned and betrayed Cuban exiles.
While Fidel had to tolerate the presence of the U.S. naval base in
Guantanamo, Raúl Castro vituperated that it was "a cancer that
needed to be extirpated." And, the Soviets emboldened with "the first
defeat of Yankee imperialism in America," went ahead with the deployment of
the Soviet missiles in Cuba in the summer and fall of 1962. The Cuban ambassador
to the U.S.S.R., the former anticommunist Revolutionary Directorate (RD) leader,
Faure Chomón, who had been sent there for penitence as well as for formal
"reintegration into the revolution," was brought back from the Soviet
Union in March 1962 and made secretary of communication.
It was Raúl Castro who arranged that spring with Khrushchev for the
bold and perilous move to have Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba resulting in the
October Missile Crisis.
In the early 1970s when Raúl was promoted to first vice premier, he
was also given the new military rank of general. Until that time, the highest
revolutionary rank in the FAR had been major (comandante). "Egalitarianism"
in the military had come to an end. Once again, there would be "aristocratic"
colonels and generals in the Cuban army. As in other totalitarian societies,
there would be two tiers of "comrades," those who are less "equal"
at the bottom and those who are "more equal than others," largely in
the communist/military class - the mayimbes, led by Raúl and topped by
Fidel.
As a ranking member of the Secretariat and the Politburo of Cuba as well as
the newly reformed Cuban Communist Party (CPC), Raúl was consolidating
power behind his brother. He also led the reforms required by the Soviets for
the institutionalization of the communist bureaucracy (Sovietization) and the
establishment of the Cuban constitution of 1976, a document that borrowed
heavily from its Soviet counterpart, the old Stalinist constitution. Raúl
thus continued to enhance the confidence the Kremlin leadership had placed in
him "as a politically reliable Cuban leader and administrator."
After the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the crumbling of the
Soviet state in 1991, Raúl visited Red China and exchanged visits with
Chinese military leaders for the re-establishment of cordial Cuban-Chinese
relations. (At the time of the "Sino-Soviet split," Fidel Castro had
taken the side of the Soviets.)
Unbeknownst to most Americans, if not the rest of the world, Raúl
Castro - along with the entire leadership of MININT and its repressive state
security apparatus, José Abrantes (the then head of MININT), Manuel Piñeiro
(Barba Roja, "Red Beard"), head of Cuban counterintelligence, and the
present Minister of MININT, Abelardo Colomé Ibarra - were all named as
co-conspirators for drug trafficking (cocaine) charges in a 1993 draft
indictment issued by a federal court in South Florida. The details of the
investigation and indictment were published by The Miami Herald, but incredibly,
these charges were not widely publicized by the American media.
It was as a result of this serious U.S. ongoing investigation that Fidel
Castro had pre-empted the process by executing Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa and other
sacrificial lambs in 1989. Fidel also protected Raúl (and himself) in the
process. Indeed, subsequent investigations by The Miami Herald in 1996 disclosed
that drug trafficking charges led to Fidel himself. Be that as it may, U.S.
Attorney General Janet Reno refused to indict either one of the Castro brothers,
although the evidence was overwhelming.
One of the legal problems discussed at the time was that Fidel Castro as
head of state might have sovereign immunity from any such indictment. I have
nevertheless summarized the evidence against the Castro brothers for the reader
with references and two appendices in my upcoming book, "Cuba in Revolution
- Escape From a Lost Paradise," that despite the subtitle is also a study
of the Cuban Revolution, a revolution in which my parents participated.
Suffice to say that with Raúl Castro already named in a U.S. criminal
indictment, were he to become Cuban head of state, things could take unexpected
turns. All of this once again could surface, perhaps with the intensity it
deserves, and throw a monkey wrench into the plans of those who want to
normalize relations with a successor communist regime under the younger, equally
criminal Castro. In fact, in 1999, an 8-ton cocaine shipment was intercepted in
Cartagena, Colombia. Law enforcement officials traced the cargo to a Cuban
government enterprise. Nothing in Cuba happens without the knowledge of the
Castro brothers.
More recently, Martin Arostegui, writing for UPI, disclosed Cuban military
and DGI connections with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Marxist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), groups involved in terrorist acts
and drug trafficking. Reportedly, Cuban personnel are training the FARC in "assembling
bombs," as well as "the installation of anti-aircraft missile
batteries being assembled locally with imported radar and teleguided systems."
This could prove deadly for U.S. Blackhawk helicopters and C-47 phantom gunships
patrolling the area in anti-drug operations in that country.
As to what will happen after Fidel is out of the picture - over the last
several years, Raúl Castro has increasingly placed military officers in
key positions in the Cuban Politburo, the CPC, and in other positions of power.
It is believed that these men will remain loyal to him. They owe their positions
of privilege to Raúl. Closeness to the younger Castro is important, not
only because of the perks that go with those positions, but also because
association with him offers protection against suspicion of disloyalty to or
intrigue against the personal rule of the Maximum Leader.
MININT, which has been and remains in charge of surveillance (DGI; State
Security) and counterintelligence, has already fallen under the direct control
of the Ministry of the Armed Forces (MINFAR) and therefore under Raúl.
MININT controls State-owned enterprises and factories that still operate in Cuba
and the growing tourism industry, which also means that the hard cash (dollars)
tourism facilities also come under the control of Raúl (Institute of
Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, 2001). No doubt upon the
death of Fidel, Raúl Castro and his close knit military will clamp down
on the long dependent population and will try to retain political and economic
control of the island.
Whether Raúl¹s machinery of repression and his heretofore loyal
military will allow him to retain control over the Cuban people, with whom he is
not popular - and most importantly without the Maximum Leader - is another
story.
Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D., is editor-in-chief of the Medical Sentinel of the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), author of "Vandals
at the Gates of Medicine" (1995) and "Medical Warrior: Fighting
Corporate Socialized Medicine" (1997). He is also a contributor to
NewsMax.com and a columnist for LaNuevaCuba.com. Advance copies of his book, "Cuba
in Revolution - Escape From a Lost Paradise," will be available in the fall
2001. Web site: http://www.haciendapub.com. |