Andres Oppenheimer. Published Sunday, February 11, 2001, in
the Miami Herald
The biggest irony about last week's diplomatic feud over Cuban President
Fidel Castro's charge that Argentina is "licking Yankee boots'' is a
historical fact few seem to remember: the same Castro who now attacks
Argentina's center-left elected government was a key supporter of Argentina's
1976-83 right-wing military dictatorship.
Some of us who were born in Argentina and left the country at the time
remember it well. And two key Carter administration officials who took part in
U.S. efforts to condemn the Argentine military junta's human rights abuses
confirmed to me last week that Castro was a major diplomatic ally of the junta.
That tidbit of history went virtually unnoticed last week, when Castro
lashed out against democratically elected Argentine President Fernando de la Rúa
for allegedly planning to vote against Cuba at April's session of the United
Nations' Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
In a five-hour speech, Castro -- who rules over one of the poorest countries
in the hemisphere -- lashed out against Argentina's free-market policies, saying
the country has privatized everything and now is "licking Yankee boots'' to
get extra loans because "it is drowning'' in debts.
Argentina reacted with predictable anger, sending a diplomatic protest note
and recalling its ambassador from Havana "indefinitely.'' Foreign Minister
Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini said Castro's statement was "an offensive
outburst of irrational behavior'' and an intervention in his country's affairs.
I wish Argentina's foreign minister had gone a step further. He could have
reminded the world about Castro's support for Argentina's military dictatorship,
and he could have expressed his wish that Castro would support de la Rúa
today as much as he supported Argentina's military juntas in the 1970s.
OPPOSED U.S. MOTION
Indeed, in 1980 and 1981, when the Carter administration was seeking
international support for a vote against the military junta at the U.N. Human
Rights Commission in Geneva, Cuba helped create a formidable bloc to oppose the
U.S. motion.
"We did try repeatedly to get a resolution passed to condemn
Argentina's gross and consistent violations of human rights,'' recalls Pat
Derian, who was U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights at the time.
"The Argentines and the Cubans were hand in glove through the entire period
of the Argentine junta.''
Roberta Cohen, who was Derian's deputy at the time, told me she saw it
firsthand. Cohen was part of the U.S. delegation that flew to Geneva in 1980 to
fight for the U.S. resolution, which would have singled out Argentina for the
forced disappearance of between 9,000 and 30,000 people.
"It was a very difficult negotiation,'' Cohen recalled. "The
Russians and the Cubans didn't want to do anything against Argentina.''
In the end, the U.N. commission passed a very weak resolution, which
condemned forced disappearances in general but did not single out Argentina.
SEVERAL REASONS
Why did Castro support Argentina's right-wing dictatorship?
First, because he was afraid that a U.N. human rights resolution against
Argentina's generals would set a precedent for possible human rights
condemnations of his own regime's violations of fundamental freedoms.
Second, because Argentina's military junta had joined Cuba in efforts to
stop a U.S.-backed resolution in support of Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov.
Argentina and Cuba were the only Latin American countries that opposed the U.S.
initiative.
Third, because Argentina's dictatorship had broken the Carter
administration's 1979 embargo on food exports to the former Soviet Union,
following Moscow's invasion of Afghanistan, and was doing great business with
the Soviets. Argentina quadrupled its grain sales to the Soviet Union in 1980,
to eight million metric tons of wheat. In 1981, Argentina, which was already
selling 60 percent of its grain exports to the former Soviet Union, signed a
five-year grain export deal with the Soviets.
I could go on with several more examples about the close ties between Castro
and Argentina's military juntas, which became most visible when Castro became an
enthusiastic supporter of the Argentine generals' disastrous invasion of the
Falklands-Malvinas in 1983.
But the bottom line is very simple, and I wish Castro's remaining admirers
in Latin America would remember it: Castro and Argentina's right-wing generals
had a lot in common, especially an aversion to democracy and fundamental
freedoms. It should come as no surprise that they got along so well.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 