The Island of Dr. Fidel
McColm, R. Bruce & Maier, Francis X.
"The Island of Dr. Fidel" of these people are not, of course, disinterested: They do not reflect an abiding fear that we may be deprived, prematurely, of Reagan's presence in our public life, And yet the concern...
...pcisonvi...
...According to Zayas, the intent of the organization is to help the Church in Cuba from the outside...
...But on April 1, it happened again...
...According to Edward Navarro, lawyer for the Los Angeles-based Cuban Rights Committee (CRC), "The whole reason for letting the exiles go back is an economic one on the part of the Cuban government...
...Second, through the Castro-connected tour agencies which book the flights in the United States, Cuban intelligence agents are able to penetrate the exile community in particular and American society in general...
...While both the CIA and the State Department admit that Castro's popularity has seriously declined, neither feels that he is "vulnerable" to overthrow...
...of these people are not, of course, disinterested: They do not reflect an abiding fear that we may be deprived, prematurely, of Reagan's presence in our public life, And yet the concern has been raised also by sober men and women who do wish Reagan well, and who appreciate just what a strain the presidency may be even for younger men in good health...
...As a result, and in a manner strikingly similar to the Jewish diaspora, Cuban exiles have developed a sort of pan-Cuban consciousness, at least one manifestation of which has been a high degree of coordination among Cuban communities in Spain, the United States, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and elsewhere...
...And if the United States should interfere, Soviet intervention in Cuba would be, logistically, almost impossible...
...His policies in civil rights might have been inspired by the purest conviction, but they merged with the long-term interest of his party in reading the logic that was built into their own coalition...
...According to the Rev...
...As noted by Carlos Franqui in these pages two months ago, there are over 500,000 Cubans somehow involved with the machinery of repression...
...One of Castro's most effective operations, in Calzon's judgment, is Alamar Associates...
...A l l things considered, then, what are Castro's chances for survival...
...But a more sensible analysis will recognize it as merely the latest movement in a violent, century-long symphony of Cuban politics...
...There was a time when you c o u l d n ' t criticize anything about Cuba without appearing like as fascist," says Frank Calzon...
...Moreover, manv of the recent young refugees are veterans of the wars: in Africa who abandoned Cuba after the regime reneged on promises made in order to encourage military volunteers...
...The disinformation campaign need not always be so heavy-handed and surreptitious...
...F i v e y e a r s ago they were projecting 300,000 North American tourists a year," says Emilio Murga, the Los Angeles representative of Abdala, a young, left-nf-center anti-Castro group...
...The extent of the Soviet hold on Cuba may be measured not only by Cuba's geo-political position, but by the Cuban constitution itself, which, in its very wording, enshrines the alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union as intimate and permanent...
...Cuban officials have acknowledged in print a number of politically-motivated arsons since the beginning of 1980...
...In total, the "family reunification" program brought the Havana govc'rnmetll between 150 and 300 million American dollars during 1979...
...That's the way everything works in Cuba--everything is monumental, everything has a lot of publicity...
...But the repression did not, and does not, stop there...
...Right now evcrylhing's falling apart in Cuba," Murga observes, "even the secret police...
...According to eyewitness accounts published in the Peruvian journal Caretas, the Cuban government removt:d its police "protection" a'round the embassy, and the Peruvians reinforced their gates to prevent any further crashers...
...Manuel Espinosa (who headed one of these agencies, Christian Charters, Inc...
...As one anti-Castro militant observed: "The GNP of the exile community is already competitive with the island--and we don't have any roads to repair...
...The visiting exiles are part of Castro's official "dialogue" with the international Cuban exile community, begun in late 1978, which has led to the release of some political prisoners and the start of "family reunification" flights...
...Medina, as well as Juan Clark, claims that the vast majority of Cuban refugees since the early seventies have come from the lower classes: working men and blacks and their families--precisely the people the revolution was supposed to help most...
...What happened next is public record: A fake letter was circulated throughout the exile communities--pieced together from bits of genuine letters--that purported to show the Bishop's support of the exile community's dialogue with Castro...
...Lyndon Johnson could hardly do anything other than continue in the path marked off by Kennedy...
...Most important to Castro, however, is the financial harvest from the tours...
...The horror stories could go on forever-and do...
...And Humberto Medrano adds: "the young people didn't go through the Sierra Maestra, they have no illusions THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 13 morale both at home and abroad...
...Considering the b e n e f i t s Moscow derives from the relationship, the price is a bargain...
...In the ensuing gunplay, a Cuban police officer was killed...
...She goes on to say thai "sometimes they used the male common criminals to whip the women with electric c a b l e s , " and r i n g l e a d e r s were someiimes dealt with even more severely --with mactmtes...
...Among the young male refugees are a disproportionate number of Cuban hlacks, who have borne the brunt of the African wars...
...Mestre points to the present refugee crisis as an example: "He has an uncanny ability m turn liabilities into strengths, and the proof of that statement is that Carter, not Castro...
...A lot of prisoners were given plastic surgery to erase the signs of mistreatment...
...The result has been the gradual erosion of an exclusively American sphere of influence...
...Their intent is to undermine army C } n e of the most dangerous problems facing the regime today is a widening "generation gap...
...Bitter anti-Castro graffiti is appearing all over Havana these days with greater regularity than ever before, and a number of refugees confirm an Upsurge in political bombings...
...Expert consensus seems to feel that Castro will ride this storm out, just as he has ridden out many storms before...
...So the regime started building dozens of hotels...
...Adler, a captain in Caslro's army...
...Before the Revolution, there were 12,000Jews in Cul)a...
...Havanatur claims to have made :$79 million alone in 1979, off tnur packages that are now being challenged in a major discrimination lawsuit by the CRC...
...Cuban dissidents commandeered a bus and smashed their way into the Peruvian compound...
...State Department, Ralph Braibanti, c~ firmed that a "significant" portion of the visa requests at the U.S...
...It as to , , - i ) ~ ' ~ ' o ; i \ ( ' F e ' s i . ' - ; t ~ H ~ c e o n a ! ' ~ . q ( i ( . ) l ' i a ] , % ( 8 [ e...
...Even the governments of Mexico and Venezuela, far more stable than most in Latin America, feel the effects of a Cuban-backed terrorist threat...
...p;r(;:vs (-vet" iT]ore i~,~r,'~n,%e, B.%;::'.:{.~v.'.'r...
...Indeed, from the beginning Castro has shown extraordinary savvy in knowing when to relieve certain pressures on his regime by releasing political prisoners or by allowing refugees to leave ('1"1 m;.ls s e . But ( ] a s l r o ' s savvy extends beyond THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 11 merely "political warfare...
...From Castro's point of view, the "dialogue" has three advantages: First, it does indeed divide the exile communities by isolating anti-Castro militants from the exile masses who understandably, and predictably, want to see their families again...
...The result is an economy in ruins, massive repression, and a socialist generation that, according to Fr...
...First, and perhaps most important, is the simple fact that Castro beat the yanqui...
...n>'.mnt...
...To point out all of this, of course, is not to gay that Castro's regime is impregnable...
...According to Sergeant Paul Janosky, head of the antiterrorist Squad of the Dade County Public Safety Department, Castro has infiltrated and subverted nearly all the Cuban exile groups in the United States, sometimes to the point of having Cuban agents carry out murders and terrorist attacks which are then blamed on anti-Castro militants...
...Espinosa claims that Havanatur's Carlo Alfonso is a cohmel in the Cuban intelligence service and the former head of security for the deposed Allende regime in Chile, and that several other Allende Chileans are employed in the United States as intelligence agents...
...been wn...
...This has a parallel in the mind of the average Cuban citizen...
...Castro, now in his fifties, presides over a population that is getting younger as he gets older...
...the Cuban masses as the economic s { t t i a t i o n w o r s e n s , because thc New Class never feels the pinch...
...Needless to say, such relationships are vulnerable to American domestic political pressure, as was illustrated in the Angolan civil war...
...Someone ought to send a copy of that book to Fidel...
...R. Bruce McColm Ls" a conttqhulmg editor to the National Catholic Register and its UN correspondent...
...At floodtide, the Agency's Miami station reportedly numbered more than 700 career officers, not counting the Cuban exile agents those officers ran...
...o defcqd, so ihe'., can see CuhaP...
...And it is in the great slrategic value of Castro that one finds the real purpose of the Soviet brigade in Cuba...
...The Peruvians were expected to fold quickly under pressure, providing a warning that the regime's tolerance of burgeoni n g refugee populations in the local embassies was over...
...I hold my arm t i g h t without firing, and I comply with my Conscience...
...The rest may indeed be left to men of experience and administrative wit...
...Ostensibly, exile families are allowed to return to Cuba for seven-day visits with their relatives on the island...
...The privileges nf the New Class are superior to those of any other elite in Latin America--total power...
...But there is additional evidence that resistance has now gone beyond the Bic 14 'IIIE AMERICAN SPF.CTA'['OR JU1.Y 1980 lighter stage...
...outright persecution threatens such activist sects as the Jehovah's Witnesses...
...Also, 'while geo-politics can be overplayed to the point of paranoia, the pattern emerging from Caribbean unrest is nonetheless disturbing as Cuba helps more and more to foment, and arm, "populist rew)tts" throughout Latin America...
...Young activist groups like Abdala are heavy with American-trained lawyers who know how to use the law to protect the exile community and to bring pressure (as in the CRC's Havanatur case) against pro-Castro organizations and individuals...
...Francis X. Maier & R. Bruce McColm THE ISLAND OF DR...
...FIDEL Will Castro survive ? I n December of last year, a truckload of Cubans tried to slam their way through a maze of police obstacles and guards into the Venezuelan embassy in Havana...
...Manuel Espinosa, a Protestant minister living ~n Miami who was close to Castro for four years-and played a major part in Castro's efforts to approach the exile community, Zayas is a "Castro collaborator" and Re/C/exiones is part of an attempt to subvert the attitudes of exiled Catholics toward the regime...
...The size and make-up of this latest human exodus permanently discredit the romance of Fidel's Revolution, while giving the exile militant organizations a massive transfusion of new young blood at a time when their methods have never been more sophisticated...
...Nobody knows who they are anymore, nobody knows what's true, because the only thing that's true in Cuba is the repression...
...According to John Adler...
...Others see it differently...
...She was fed r e g u l a r l y and well, and " t h e guards said they wanted us to forget everything so we'd be happy on the outside...
...His mere existence gives every Latin American nation more importance, and therefore more leverage, in Washington...
...Wells classic: There came a day when the half-men, half-animals Dr...
...And while the average age in Cuba today (now 34) is dropping, crime, drug use, and suicide are climbing...
...ucra...
...Raul Castro is neither liked nor respected, and the Cuban Communist Party has been suspect ever since it opposed Castro as a "putschist" in the early years of his struggle...
...They're just not that efficient, and if you understand how they work, it's not that difficult to slip through...
...According to Armando Galan, a recent refugee, " t h e young people are completely fed u p - - t h e y don't believe in God, they don't believe in Marx, they are totally cynical...
...But on April ,i...
...The result of all this, according to Clark, has been " a gigantic slowdown in the productivity of the average Cuban worker" and a demoralization of the work force in general...
...Finally, Castro's chances for survival must be measured against the security apparatus he has built up over twenty years...
...There is also evidence that Israel, as part of its clandestine war with the PLO, provides training and money for certain anti-Castro groups (this was confirmed by two sources: a young anti-Castro lawyer and a congressional candidate with ties to Israel...
...Anti-Castro groups also work closely with other international elements, particulady black guerrilla movements fighting Castro-backed Marxist regimes in Africa...
...Not surprisingly, various sorts of emotional trauma are common among ex-prisoners...
...Additionally, Cuban surrogates enhance Soviet intelligence throughout the hemisphere...
...is the guy who's bewildered and on die defensive...
...Even more important, however, has been the penetration of the family flights by anti-Castro militants...
...Murga confirms that the family flights have been a boon to the anti-Castro groups by sending the regime's securily apparatus into overload...
...Nearly 90 percent of the tobacco crop failed this year, coffee production is lagging, the sugar crop is diseased, and pork production was wiped out by swine fever...
...and ~! c{jii"~pe!iti(-n for cTi!rv' into i;h,e "New Chv:s"--the ruling bc~:e...
...Police opened fire again (in direct violation of consular treaties), but this rime the dissidents shot back...
...According to Emilio Murga, anti-Castro contacts within Cuba "have now developed to the point where they can be called working cells...
...Wb:_~t rhe, y see i~4 a d~'cljnh'ip., cc,)n{)m),.', an expao.;thlg v,,'ork .force...
...Wh.'lt happened next can (ml) be described as baffling...
...The Revolution is not over...
...What may be even more ominous for the regime in the long run is that the modern Cuban army is an army of tanks, planes, and education, the largest and most selfconsciously p r o f e s s i o n a l force in Latin America...
...Adler's father--who had fled Nazi (}e|man\ in 1935 ---"star~ed comparing Castro to klitlcr more and more...
...Araujo claims that "the objective is to have everyone on the island committing some little act of sabotage every day...
...The final number of Cuban refugees may reach 250,000...
...And Soviet backing is not merely a funetion of ideological sympathy: Castro is an extremely valuable ally...
...The State Department has acknowledged that Havanatur is regarded as an agency of the Cuban government...
...and he might well have brought the party system past the threshold of realignment by bringing many Democrats and Catholics more firmly into the Republican party...
...As Clark notes, "while pre-Castro owners were exploiters, they were at l e a s t p e r v e r s e l y efficient...
...Accgrdklg r.,~ l:.'.,rhcr Raul Comesanas, "me of ft~e" com-(tinqw.rs of the CubaP, ref'agee resettb:mcnt in Nc-w Jersey, the single most common reason fl}r fleeing Cuba among young males is fear of thc draft, which is really a fi:ar nf service in Africa...
...Pedro Araujo (not his real name), now in his early forties, has made more than halfa dozen trips into Cuba on the flights, using various disguises and phony identifications...
...interests section in Havana were related to draft evasion, and refugees claim that hundreds of young Cubans are now serving prison terms for desertion or draft resistance...
...More than 20 years ago, Fidel Castro embarked on an experiment to create a "new socialist man" in the Caribbean...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 15...
...now there is no accountability and the system is totally inefficient...
...Johnson knew the nature of the coalition that brought Kennedy and him to the presidency and which had to be nourished if he were to stay there...
...Even before the recent upheavals, the Cuban desk officer in the U.S...
...Nonetheless, Castro has regularly outmaneuvered the United States in the political arena--he enjoys great personal popularity in American intellectual circles to this day--while successfully transforming a backward, semi-colonial mafia fiefdom into an international presence to be reckoned with at the UN, in Africa and the Middle East, and Within the non-aligned movement...
...The result was a new round of dissension among the exiles, dissension that of course played right into the regime's hands...
...But the regime has been in power twenty years now, and you c a n ' t hide reality from everyone forever...
...From a Marxist point of view, this latest wave of refugees may be interpreted as a final spasm of reaction to the 1959 revolution...
...As the tales of these violations unfold, from Cuban exiles and from recently released prisoners, the true character of Castro's Cuba is made ever more manifest, which is of p a r t i c u l a r importance considering how well entrenched the myth of the Cuban Revolution has been among Western i n t e l l e c t u a l s . True, the repression of Cuba's artists and writers spoiled the Revolution for people like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir early on...
...Geography and history tie Cuba too closely to the United States...
...The result, according to artist add ex-political prisoner Cesar Bermudez, is a national "ballet of police" that has produced a "profound schizophrenia throughout the culture...
...When the United States gave up supporting the exiles, even nominally, in the early seventies they were forced to fend for themselves...
...In the same way, Reagan's successor would be forced to move in the cast defined by Reagan through the campaign he composed and the coalition he constructed...
...trade embargo is regularly blamed for ever), Cuban economic setback, the real reason is colossally incomp e t e n t planning...
...finally had to shoot his way into ~he Colombian embassy for asylum...
...is ~.~,)r tsnusua!: "Du.ring one ind',x:'ri~m!i,.-n session," she sa),s, recall.'-t~-:g ~h(: scxu.'.:l abuse and physic<q...
...The brigade has nothing to do with direct Soviet military adventurism: P r e s i d e n t Carter's panicky denunciations last year caused Cuban exiles no end of amusement...
...The Soviets now provide Cuba with nearly all its oil, purchase its sugar crop at inflated prices, and underwrite the Cuban economy to the tune of $8 million a day...
...trade embaru.o--putting one machine out of action in a plant can result in forcing the government to buy new Soviet machinery at a catastrophic expense...
...Among the many realities now coming to light, and helping to discredit the Cuban regime, are Castro's systematic violations of human rights...
...In this connection, Cuban Jews have suffe,ed especially...
...Despite thepoignancy of the most recent accounts of artistic, religious, and ethnic repression in Cuba, they fall far short, in 12 Till( AMERICAN SPt,,C'IATOR .IUI.Y 1980 lheir .le-mytho!ogizing effect, of what the poil,'.icp.l p:-isoners have to r e l a t e . The exl;c':-icnce ',}P A..']c_.a !?..~driguez, for h-..sianct:, a r:'<.'enrly ,released politica...
...Abdala now claims to have two clandestine printing presses on the island...
...Nevertheless, a loss of face doesn't bring down a government in i t s e l f . Castro's Caribbean gulag may isolate him politically at a time when he needs all the friends he can get, but a true threat to his regime would have to come from within-and it does, in various forms...
...One of the ways he interests American businessmen in Cuba is by pitching the idea that there are no real labor unions in Cuba, and therefore no labor problems...
...The anti-Semitism came a/%'r ~he l~.evolutiara...
...Soviet tanks can't roll across the Atlantic...
...As a result, political and economic discontent, especially among the young, has radically accelerated...
...ti~c- (;ubari N{'w Class becomes in::rcesingly abrasive...
...According to Humberto Medrano, a Miamibased human rights activist who has collected and disseminated letters smuggled out of Cuban prisons for the last two decades, the island's political prisoner population now numbers between 10,000 and 25,000...
...By these means, Castro uses the Church in a larger campaign of disinformation...
...La Nifia dcl Escambray," the most famous antiCastro woman guerrilla leader and subsequently Cuha's most famous female political prisoner, arrived in Miami in late February with permanent mental damage incurred from her severe prison regimen...
...But casting Castro as merely a Soviet puppet does the man an injustice...
...II's part of the way Castro thinks...
...Not all the scars from Cuban prisons can be handled by surgery, though...
...She remembers that at one prison "we were all stripped in front of a line of Cuban soldiers, who then joined in the b e a t i n g s . " In the last two months before her release from captivity, however, her treatment miraculously changed...
...Araujo has smuggled in hundreds of Bic lighters and bars of Ivory Soap as "gifts," which are then turned into incendiary devices...
...He asserted Latin American independence in the face of overwhelming North American power and survived an almost obsessive effort to oust him once he consolidated his control: There was a time, before direct American intervention in Vietnam in 1965, when toppiing Castro was the highest clandestine priority of the Central Intelligence Agency...
...The Soviet Union, while its presence permeates every facet of Cuban life, is still a very long way off, which tends to take the edge off exile charges of Russian neo-colonialism...
...According to Raul Comesanas, deterioration has already set in with the home army's rank and file: "Troops are going AWOL and their officers are looking the other way because of the shortages of fond...
...In lhe momhs following the Revolution...
...Importantly, Cuban troops serve as proxies in the military expansion of Soviet influence...
...Sabotage is not always so dramatic...
...it is entering a new and internationalized phase...
...One New York-area FBI agent assigned to Omega 7 terrorism admits that the day when Washington could crack the whip on the exiles is over...
...Fathers Andres Reyes and Eduardo de Zayas of New .Jersey, for example, favor "dialogue" and reconciliation with the present Havana government...
...They have an office in Washington," Calzon says, " t h a t ' s run by Kirby .Jones, the former press aide to Senator George McGovern...
...Second, Castro has no apparent successor...
...More than 120.000 have done so since December 1978...
...Nothing ever gets done...
...soch:ty "or what ii real!,- is...
...On the contrary, as the recent refugee storm d e m o n s t r a t e s , the halcyon days when Castro could do no wrong are over now...
...It reminds one of the H.G...
...First, the Soviet Union is a long way away...
...By one account, Castro agents broke into the Venezuelan residence of Bishop Eduardo Boza Masvidal last year (Boza is the spiritual leader of the exile community) and stole his stationery, personal seal, and copies of his signature...
...One hundred and thirty-eight of Cuba's most prominent polilical prisoners, however, denounced the "dialogue" from their jail cells as another of Castro's political ploys to divide the opposition...
...mi:strea:menr she suffered in prison, " t h e women star.,:ed answering back aim p r o t e s t i n g . The gtiP,.rds moved in and broke the womcn's ribs with their bools...
...This allows the Soviets to carry out the destabilization of Latin America under the mantle of "populist revolts" against corrupt, reactionary dictatorships, dictatorships often backed by the United States...
...It doesn't leave a bruise or a scar, but it breaks your health and spirit...
...As Frank Calzon, the executive director of OHR, has pointed out: "Castro is a master of media drama, and he's had a very well financed and organized public relations campaign in the United States for at least the last ten years...
...And because of the potential imbalance o f American troops facing Cuban troops on the baltlefield they also push the United States into a permanently reactionary and nco-colonial posture by forcing it to rely on proxies in turn...
...When he goes in, he carries with him instructions for simple sabotage that can be carried out by individuals without elaborate clandestine cooperation, making detection harder...
...Francis X. Maie, r is edilor o f the National Catholic Register...
...One refugee spoke of hearing two bomb blasts in Havana in a single day, as he waited to board his plane to the United States...
...From the very earliest days of the revolution, he was always acutely aware of the importance of American public opinion--a lesson the exiles have still not learned...
...the exiles smell a kill...
...And the outcome is still very much in doubt...
...The momentum is shifting...
...pad casuahh-s -'r r...
...Then the money runs out, or priorities change, and the whole thing is quietly dropped...
...According to .Juan Clark, a Miamiarea sociologist whose field of study is the Cuban Revolution, "Rene Dumont has pointed out, correctly, that the New Class in Cuha is now disposing of p r o p e r t y an{] privileges in a manner reminiscent of feudalism...
...Thanks to the flights, "people in Cuba have discovered that everything the government told them about the exiles and life in the United States is a lie...
...And two other factors should be kept in mind...
...Most of those seeking asylum in the Peruvian embassy were allowed to leave Cuba for the United States...
...In the next 38 hours, someone sought asylum on the average of every 15 seconds--a total of nearly 10,000 people--as Cuban military helicopters buzzed over the embassy to intimidate the crowd and pro-Castro mobs shouted obscenities outside...
...Everyone who works in Havanatur is an officer in Cuban espionage...
...t!35...
...Raul Comesanas, "is psychologically debilitated and morally illiterate...
...According to the Rev...
...They reduce you to the point of starvation," Mates claims, " s o t h a t the s l i g h t e s t change in your diet has an impact...
...In the absence of an obvious heir and a credible constitutional system that would provide for the orderly passage of power, anything might happen, should Castro go...
...For the most important part of Reagan's statecraft would have been accomplished: He would have shaped the electorate explicitly around a new ensemble of issues...
...Moreau had created finally turned on him...
...were the present regime to collapse or be overthrown, Cuba would almost inevitably fall back into the American orbit, an event that might invalidate the entire revolutionary experience in many people's eyes...
...They are, in effect, "a nation among us," with their own foreign policy objectives quite distinct from our own...
...And he's not registered as a lobbyist--which is incredible...
...Ctiba's most celebrated ex-political prisoner, Huber Mates (whose arm is partially paralyzed from repeated beatings) underwent years of scientific manipulation of his diet that nearly drove him mad...
...How do its officers rise when command positions are inevitably held by veterans of a small and rather eccentric revolution that happened more than 20 years ago, a revolution that the new officer class can barely even remember...
...While the U.S...
...Zayas founded the Felix Verela Organization, which in turn publishes Rc, flexiones, which is targeted at exiled Cuban Catholics...
...For instance, as in the Soviet Union, educational and career reprisals threaten all religious believers in Cuba...
...For once, however, CaStro miscalculated: The Peruvians did n o t fold, and tens of thousands of desperate Cubans poured into Havana from as far away as Oriente Province seeking a chance for asylum...
...Castro's massive penetration of the Cuban exile community is corroborated by Newark FBI sources, who see in certain clandestine operations an a t t e m p t to build domestic pressure against the U.S...
...Since a lot of Cuban machinery is pte-revolutionary, American-made vintage--the spare parts of which are unavailable because of the U.S...
...The attempt failed in a storm of police bullets, and the government organ Bohemia subsequently dismissed the incident as the work of malcontents and criminals...
...Boza, who led the Cuban Church's struggle against Castro in the early sixties, denounced the letter as a forgery, but Zayas printed it in Reflexiones anyway --even after he had been warned that the letter was false, according to one New Jersey Cuban priest close to Boza...
...Castro's stake in the confrontation remains obscure...
...Cuba is not Hungary or Czechoslovakia...
...It is here, in the military, with its potential for a coup, where some of the best exile propaganda is now t a r g e t e d . Groups like "Camilo" (named after revolutionary hero Camilo Cienfuegos) collect and disseminate letters and dissident poetry written by troops in Africa...
...a Cuban-born Jew who raised money for Castro and later fought Batista as a member of the non-Castro Student Direclorate: "The fact thai I was Jewish and mosl o f mv f ' r i c n d s w ( ' r e n o t was never eveh discussed when I was growing up...
...Nevertheless, in all the newspaper and magazine copy that has so far talked I0 THE A~MERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 about that first catalytic incident, a simple question remains unasked: Where did those dissidents get their guns...
...Young soldiers steal light weapons from the military and trade them on the black market for food, tape recorders, and radios, which are brought into the country by visiting exiles...
...And the FBI in Miami acknowledges that militant organizations have found new sponsors among other Latin American intelligence agencies, notably that of Venezuela, Havana's greatest rival...
...The running-mate who succeeded Reagan would be compelled to say, as Lyndon Johnson was compelled to say after the death of John Kennedy, "Let us continue": Let us continue with the agenda be defined and the mission he disclosed...
...However grave Castro's troubles may appear to be, any calculation of his chances for survival must begin by judging his unusual s t r e n g t h s , those deriving from Castro's personality itself, from the presumed historical importance of what he has done, and from the unique geo-political position Cuba has assumed under Castro, especially as it affects other Latin American countries, the Soviet Union, and the United States...
...According to Tania Medina, an official with the United States Catholic Conference refugee resettlement effort, "the family flights were the biggest mistake Castro ever made...
...Now there are less than 2,000...
...It also keeps these leftist movements free of an explicit association with the Soviets until it's too late for the United States to act...
...But Peruvian sources claim the whole affair was an elaborate scheme that went haywire: Castro apparently hoped to force the Peruvians into turning the refugees away, denying them asylum, thus breaking the Montevideo Treaty and placing pressure on other embassies to do the same...
...In their place has arisen a new convergence of problems that spell real trouble for the r e g i m e - - t h e worst in f i f t e e n years...
...They give you a lot of salt, then no salt, too much coffee, then no coffee, always at random...
...trade embargo on Cuba, and to gain control of the important exile community institutions, including the Church, which plays a major role in exile life...
...In order to survive, soldiers in the army, like everyone else in Cuba, resort to Cuba's massive black market, which accounts for the guns the dissidents had on April 1 at the Peruvian embassy...
...There is ample evidence of the success of this last strategy...
...the Cuban military proclaim('d the dead l.mliceman a national hero, Cuban fbrklifis tore down the embassy gates, and the regime's radio started broadcasling directions to the Peruvian compound fi~r ~2~t3x-(~r~(~ '~'t]o wanted to leave...
...The brigade, put simply, is the Revolution's praetorian guard, underscoring once again a fact that is often overlooked in the post-Cold War era: No Marxist-Leninist state has ever been overthrown...
...Implicit in that question, and really in the whole Cuban refugee phenomenon, are two other questions, even more far-reaching: .Just how much trouble is Castro really in, and can the Havana government survive...
...The fact that sugar, oranges, and coffee are rationed in Cuba," adds F,-ank Calzon, "indica~..,.:,~ that the people wm.,}e, to work...
...Travel agencies like 'Havanatur' are direct arms of the Cuban intelligence service...
...for Reagan would already have done the most important work that it was his mission, in our politics, to do...
...Poems like the one below are bound to have an effect: With b i t t e r t h o u g h t s , I s p e n t last night Nile, hi of many torments Nigbt that will return to haunt mc No one will know Of my silent r e s i s t a n c e , but I am not made for this Criminal violence...
...In effect, Castro single-handedly dismantled the Monroe Doctrine and in so doing removed a humiliation that rankled every Latin American nationalist, whatever his ideological stripe...
...But there's no t-urning back the clock...
...According to recent r e f u g e e s , the brigade's maneuvers center on the seizure and holding of one or two important airfields...
...he would have fashioned a new coalition out of the interests he was bringing together...
...But the reunification program's fatal flaw has been this: As exiles have returned to Cuba, they have brought with them their success stories and the clothes and photographic evidence to prove it...
...In a Latin America traditionally exploited by the industrialized north, Castro's revolution is regarded by many as a classic case of David and Goliath...
...Peru has often argued Cuba's case in the Organization of American States, and it backed Cuba in its bid for a United Nations' Security Council seat earlier this year...
...Even if he had not been swept in that direction by the force of sentiment, he would have been moved by a recognition of where the logic of the Kennedy-Johnson victory had pointed...
...Calling in sick, not meeting production quotas, forgetting to oil machinery --all qualify as political acts...
...Peru was chosen because of, not in spite of, its friendly relations with the Havana regime...
...But at the risk of sounding callous, I would have to point out that the case I have sketched here on behalf of Reagan would retain its force even if--God forbid-Reagan should die before his inauguration...
...More important, Cuba serves as a political proxy, allowing the Soviets the option of applying pressure through the established Latin American Communist parties (which are, however, traditionally ineffective) or through other armed leftist movements funded through, and influenced by, Havana...
...Murga says that Abdala's island contacts began four or five years ago, through disaffected Cuban diplomats travelling in Latin America...
...It should be remembered that not least among Castro's strengths is his effect on the Western media...
...t {!-,(: s.a:>e t,,me, Cuba's wars in Africa }--,'..(' P...
...According to Ramon Mestre of the Washingtonbased, Cuban-oriented human rights group, Of Human Rights (OHR), "Castro is unrivaled in applying the guerrilla mentality to international political warfare...
...Espinosa claims that lhrough him Havana paid for free trips to Cuba by Zayas and other "collaborationis1" religious leaders...
...One UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) intelligence officer confirmed that anti-Castro information from within Cuba is excellent...
...This penetration of the family flights shows a tactical sophistication among the exiles that goes hand in hand with a new self-image...
...The Soviet Union, obviously enough, plays another important part in Castro's survival...
...The regime needs the money, and the exiles are an easy group to exploit...
...As it turned out, this was only the first incident in what has become a long, and sometimes bizarre, refugee story, which is _9 still unfolding...
...Carlos Franqui, the former editor of Revolucion, has said that no one should expect a collapse in Cuba, because the system of repression is so large and deeply rooted that inertia, if nothing else, is on its side...
Vol. 13 • July 1980 • No. 7
