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Abusive,
meddling neighbor
By Carlos Alberto Montaner,
www.firmaspress.com. Posted on Tue, May.
11, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
Castro has insulted Mexico and Peru and
both countries have recalled their ambassadors
from Cuba as a sign of protest. Why did
Castro insult them? Because the two nations,
along with almost all the other democracies
on the U.N. Human Rights Commission voted
in favor of a reasonable petition -- introduced
by Honduras and backed by about a dozen
other states -- that asked that a ''rapporteur''
from that organization enter Cuba to investigate
complaints of abuses committed against opposition
democrats.
There is more, however. Not satisfied with
the broadside of insults fired by Castro
at the government of Vicente Fox, Cuba's
secret services took advantage of an obscure
corruption case to play hard in favor of
Andrés Manuel López Obrador,
the government head of Mexico's Federal
District and probable candidate of the Party
of Democratic Revolution [PRD] for presidency
in Mexico's 2006 elections.
Those maneuvers were detected by Mexican
intelligence. And President Fox and his
foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, deemed
it opportune to expel Cuban Ambassador Jorge
Bolaños as a way to remind Castro
that Mexico is a sovereign country that
does not accept this type of illegal interference
in its domestic politics.
Same old havoc
None of what's happening is exceptional.
In its diplomatic relations, Castro's Cuba
projects the same kind of constant turmoil
that the Comandante uses to govern the island.
More than a permanent revolution, it is
a permanent ruckus. Castro cannot live without
a crisis to which he can impart ''a resounding
response,'' without a "mafioso enemy
whom our glorious history will crush like
a vile worm.''
To coexist with that government is like
having as a neighbor a raving lunatic who
shouts constantly, beats his family, gets
drunk, pummels anyone who walks past his
door, bursts uninvited into your home and
starts irrational arguments that end up
affecting the entire neighborhood.
What other government in the world sends
dozens of undercover agents, disguised as
dissidents, to occupy embassies in Havana,
as happened at the legations of Spain, Czechoslovakia
and Mexico? Does any other government take
pride in making secret recordings of private
telephone conversations, as Cuba did with
Fox and Jaime Mario Trobo, former president
of the Uruguayan Congress? To Castro, the
revolution is exactly that: a quarrelsome
and hairy thing that always has a foot in
the police court.
In Spain, as the police and the courts
are aware and as the press has observed,
the Cuban Embassy -- which does have decent
functionaries who are ashamed of their government's
behavior -- has been connected to criminal
cases involving attempted kidnappings, the
mailing of letter-bombs to oppositionists
(like the one they mailed to me) and the
sale of fake passports to people who wish
to emigrate illegally to the United States.
This also happens in Buenos Aires, Mexico
City, Paris and wherever the island has
diplomatic representation.
What to do with a government whose behavior
is so removed from the conventional standards?
No doubt, submit it to a strict rule: Never
allow a Cuban diplomatic presence larger
than the police can carefully control. Isn't
the principle of reciprocity an accepted
norm in the field of diplomacy? Why are
there in Mexico 50 times more Cuban officials
than the number of Mexican officials accredited
in Cuba?
Promoting madness
It is madness -- for instance -- that 200
Cuban officials and collaborators move freely
through Spain, almost always engaged in
obscure activities, including, among others,
establishing links with the fringes of the
ETA terrorists. And it is a greater madness
that small and ill-guarded countries like
Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador and the Dominican
Republic maintain diplomatic relations with
Havana, relations that benefit only the
political and economic interests of the
Caribbean dictatorship or the interests
of the local subversive groups, always allied
to "the Cubans.''
The Uruguayans and the Salvadorans, who
have totally severed those dangerous liaisons,
sleep a lot more peacefully than those other
Latin Americans who see -- camped freely
and with impunity on their land -- tenacious
enemies of democracy whose task it is to
create problems for their hosts.
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