ALPHA 66

WINDOW ON CUBA


 

Wednesday, November 27, 2002 1:29 PM

ACULISTA | Extensive rebutal to a "confused" Canadian, by a Cuban named Jesús Chao

11/24/2002

Dear Mr. Akins:

 In your reply to my first e.mail you gave as a proven “fact is that the living standard, education level, abilitity to access health care, and the quality of that care for the numerical majority of Cubans increased when the government changed hands from military dictatorship (Batista) to socialist revolutionaries (Castro),” although in due course I will prove that was not so.  For the sake of the argument, lets accept it, and let us analyze if those portrayed advances were worthy of the sacrifices and blood bath carried out during the 43 years of Castro’s tyrannical rule. 

It is completely baseless to maintain that the living standard for most Cubans improved after the revolution. Today, (Sunday, Nov. 24th) on Cspan, Castro’s biographer Georgie Anne Geyer, answered a question from a caller, and according to her: ”Cuba was at the top of this hemisphere, just behind United States and Argentina, when Castro took power, today Cuba is at the bottom along with Bolivia and Haiti.”  (I wonder what place was Canada in 1959?). Georgie A. Geyer is the foremost foreign expert among the American journalists and his book “The Guerrilla Prince” is one of the best written about Castro.  She also commented that Castro has a very intelligent and diabolical mind, and although it is true that Cuba has chemical and biological weapons, she thinks that Castro will not use it against U.S. in spite of his pathological hatred towards the United States.  In Geyer’s opinion, he is neither crazy nor suicidal.

 According to the best world authority in Cuba’s History, English scholar Hugh Thomas, referring to the Cuban tragedy, (The Spectator, 7/12/1986) he affirmed that: “The comparison must be with the account of Nazi concentration camps.  Although there are yet no gas chambers in Cuba, there have been experiments of a criminal biological type designed to see how far an individual can survive starvation, beating, solitary confinement, and many various kinds of ill treatment.  Valladares’ account of working in a stone quarry is not dissimilar to, and no more humane than, the many accounts extant of ‘life’ in Manthausen.  Nor should one forget that the brutalities in Nazi Germany lasted at most 12 years and the gross cruelties in the Auschwitz camp continued for four years.”

The brutal violations of human rights in Castro’s Cuba has been proven beyond any doubts and denounced by all the international human rights organizations, form the United Nations in Geneva to Amnesty International.  It defies logic that a person who lives in Canada with access to a free press, is not aware of these undisputed facts and nevertheless accept as fact, Castro’s propaganda.  This proves that the Canadian press is as a sycophant of Castro as CNN and most Western media.  Ideological prejudices against the United States blind the objectivity, professionalism and honesty of the media when dealing with Castro and the Cuban revolution.  So, people who has been brain washed by the media, when confronted with proven facts, tend to find them biased. 

It is incomprehensible to me that to this day, while tens of thousands of Cubans were assassinated by Castro’s henchmen, and the fact that over 300,000 men, women and children have been tortured inside Castro’s dungeons, many people in the world still look the other way in an attitude of deceit and indifference.  As it happened during the Jewish Holocaust, nobody wanted to listen.  And, when we denounce those atrocities, we are portrayed as emotional, but how could not those factual histories of horror bring strong emotions into the hearts of those whose families and friends were victimized by Castro’s henchmen?

In Paris, on April 11 and 12, 1986, Resistance International organized a Nuremberg type tribunal composed by world renowned personalities, mostly European socialists, some of them sympathizers of the Cuban Revolution, to judge Castro’s alleged crimes.  The members of the tribunal were:  Jorge Semprún, Spanish writer, communist ex-prisoner of Buchenwald and the Minister of Culture in the Spanish Socialist government; René Tavernier, President of the French “Pen Club”; Paul-Loup Sulitzer, international specialist in finance; Bernard Stasi, member of the French Parliament; Philippe Sollers, writer; Fernando Sanchez Dragó, Spanish writer; Haing Ngor, Cambodian actor, winner of the “Oscar” for the “Killing Fields”; Bernard Henri Levi, French philosopher and writer;  Marie Madeleine Fourcade, Heroine of the French Resistance; Leon Boubien, jurist; Monique Garnier Laocon, Vice-President of the European Security Institute; Martin Gray, writer and survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinca; Osmund Faremo, member of the Norwegian Parliament and President of the Inter-Parliamentary Caucus of Norway; Pascal Bruckner, writer; Yves Montand, French actor; Jean Francois Revel, French writer and philosopher.  The witnesses were twelve former Cuban political prisoners of Castro.

The tribunal reached the conclusion that “the common practice in Cuba is: arbitrary arrests, sentences by military tribunals without public audience or defense, interrogations lasting for several days with beatings, woundings, tortures, internment in forced labor camps without enough food, without dress and without medical care, suffering promiscuity from common prisoners.  The imprisonment of boys as young as nine years old and young adolescents exposed to the worst tortures and the promiscuity of prisons was considered very grave.  Furthermore, as it was proven by certain testimonies, the methods used to obtain confessions bring to our minds the methods used by Hitler in the German concentration camps: suffocation by submergence, mutilations, etc..., in addition to methods of intellectual terrorism used to force the prisoners to abandon their principles.  Particularly grave is the practice of biological experiments on prisoners by Russian physicians.” (“Lumiere Sur Cuba”)

 They concluded: “The crime of ignoring the reality of the Nazi concentrations camps, as it happened during the Second World War, should not be repeated.  To do it again will be to become accomplices of those crimes.”

You can ask in French or English the full process: Lumiere Sur Cuba, Internationale de la Resistance, 102 Avenue de Champs Elysées, 75088 Paris, France.

 This was the turning point for the European socialist intellectual establishment.  Castro’s myth was destroyed and the real brutal and tyrannical character of his regime was exposed to the world.  Even in this hemisphere many former Castro sympathizers began to express their discomfort with the regime of terror reigning in Cuba.  Tad Szulc, Castro’s friend and biographer, affirmed in 1986: “A gulag south exist in Cuba under the socialist revolution launched by Fidel Castro over 27 years ago, and in terms of prisons networks, it appears to rank high along with the Soviet Union and South African gulags… years of supreme brutality against tens of thousands of human beings.” (Washington Post, Book World, July 20)

The findings of the Paris Tribunal were reported by the European Western media, and Latin America but almost ignored by the American elite media. From reading your e.mails, I have to assume that the Canadians ignored it completely, how otherwise could you in conscience maintain that there is not “evidence to suggest that he (Castro) is not a (bloody) dictator” even when I proved the point with Ambassador Valladares’ address to the United Nations Human Rights Commission which, in front of the proven facts, reached a condemnatory verdict against Castro’s regimen.

 In the book “The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba” by scholars Charles J. Brown and Armando M. Lago you will find well documented, the use in Cuba of mental wards as torture chambers against Castro’s political dissidents.  Vladimir Bukovsky, a leading member of the democratic movement in the Soviet Union during the 60 and 70s who live in Cambridge, England, wrote the Preface of the book and commented in 1991: “Cuba has covered in thirty-two years what the Soviet Union achieved in seventy-three.  Within a single generation, Cuba advanced from ‘revolutionary justice’ to ‘socialist legality,’ from liquidation of ‘class enemies’ to ‘political re-education and psychiatric treatment of those ‘apathetic to socialism.”

 Peter Reddaway, co-author of the book “Russia’s Political Hospitals: Abuse of Psychiatry in the USSR: commented about the Brown-Lago’s book:  “Not until now has the subject been so systematically investigated and documented.  Brown and Lago’s carefully researched book reveals a picture of cooperation between an oppressive, cruel regime and morally corrupt doctors… These crimes will go into the history of medicine along side of the Nazi doctor Mengele.”

 On the other hand, you are convinced that the United States government: “is also rather obsessesedly bound to overtaking Cuba, since it participated in the battle for independance from Spain.”  Which was true at the end of the XIX Century, but, judging by the accompliced silence of the Canadian media and government, hiding Castro’s crimes against humanity, isn’t the fact that they might be trying to protect the spurious interest of Canadian companies who are exploiting Cuban slave labor in cahoots and partnership with the Cuban Tyrant in a modern version of colonialism?

 Canadians, Spaniards, Mexicans, British, French, and investors of other countries went to Cuba attracted by Castro’s offer of cheap slave labor, a country without labor problems where workers do not have even the right to strike. In fact, whoever invests in Cuba cannot hire a single worker.

 I am sure that a person of your sensibility would find it outrageous that the Canadian companies must pay up front to Castro $300 dollars per worker every month, and the Cuban regime pays the worker 300 Cuban pesos, the equivalent of $15 dollars a month. That means that in order to be able to hire a worker, a foreign investor has to give Castro a bribe of 2,000% up front, that goes to finance the repressive apparatus that keeps the Cuban people under feudal bondage conditions.  I am afraid that you had not been aware that Canadians were among the worst exploiters and that the Cuban people repudiate all those investors and tourists that have exploited them in partnership with the Cuban tyrant.  Greed is not an exclusive characteristic of the American ethos.  In fact, American companies were the ones paying the highest salaries and benefits to their workers in Cuba before Castro. Greed is a sin of human nature regardless of the country of origin. In fact, as with the companies involved during the Nazi era in the slave labor exploitation, those that have been involved in Cuba during Castro’s regimen will have to pay dearly once Cuba recovers its freedom.

 In the 1987-1988 Freedom in the World, Political and Civil Liberties’, annual report assessing in an unbiased way, the conditions of freedom in the world, by Freedom House, reported the conditions in Cuba at the bottom of all countries in this Continent.  In Cuba ”writing or speaking against the system, even in private, is severely repressed".  There are reports of psychiatric institutions also being for incarceration.  Independent human rights organizations are not allowed to function in Cuba.  Freedom to choose work, education, or residence is greatly restricted.  It is generally illegal to leave Cuba, but some have been forced to leave.  Comparatively: Cuba is as free as Gabon, and less free than Guyana.”  Cuba has held the same awful record from 1973- to 1987, the worst in Latin America including Haiti (Freedom of the World, 1987-1988, Raymonf D. Gastil, Freedom House, pages 298,299, 56)

 The Freedom House’s annual summary on the status of freedom in the world is based on the reports made by more than 50 of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.  A rating is made in three categories: Political Rights and Civil Liberties, giving a rating 1 to the best to 7 for the worst.  The third category is Status: Free, Partly free, and Not free.  Cuba in the 1987-1988 report was classified as 6 in Political Rights, 6 in Civil Rights, and Status, Not Free.  In the 1993-1994 report Cuba fared even worse: “Political Rights 7, Civil Rights 7, and Status: NOT FREE.  Cuba was among the “20 worst rated countries”, a shameful distinction that was only shared by Haiti in this Continent.  “Since 1990 the International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to prisoners.” (Freedom in the World, 1993-1994, pages 220, 222, 5)

 Dear Ms. Akins, let us assume for a moment that you made an exhaustive research and found that all theses facts I have been presenting are true, and let us assume that the accomplishments you think the revolution reached were also true.  Would you still think that it was worth it?

 Jesus

You bet it is too sensitive! The entire scenario played out buy Janet Reno and the Clinton administration was/is insensitive and evil! My heart broke -- not only for Elián but also for the country. Those of us who were affected, almost sick, knew it was a sign of what American has become. Senator Bod Smith from New Hampshire was deeply troubled, as he knew exactly was was going down. He was a go-between consoling and assisting the family as best he could. When Elián was being held at Andrews Air Force Base with his father, Senator Smith was turned away not being allowed to enter. Again - a United States senator denied access to a military base! What does that say? When I went to the Senator's office in Washington DC and asked the obvious questions of why this was happening in America, this is the answer I received, "They are all Communists.

Ëlián's father, Juan Miguel, was silenced while he was in this country. He was watched every minute and never spoke for himself. If allowed, he would have freely gone to Miami to visit his relatives. It should have been a family matter instead of an orchestrated Gestapo operation ordered by Castro. Unbeknownst to most of us, there was be a reason that our government kowtows to dictators. Now we have former President Carter and journalist Kate Snow propagandizing for Castro from Havana.

CNN reported, "According to the United Nations," 96% of Cuban students are literate and are learning English as well as Spanish. Cuba has turned mansions into schools of learning. Ms. Snow, interviewing a Cuban woman about healthcare, "We were born with that 'right' we do not know anything else."The news piece was blatantly glorifying the Cuban way of life making it sound as if they have a system that "works." The average American will actually buy that pack of lies. Then -- when we talk of socialized medicine and the govenment controlling our children, those same American people will think that it is a good idea. Propaganda works! Take a look around!

Mr. Carter you could hae done a good deed and gone to Cárdenas and said hi to Elián for us. Perhaps the media would have followed with their cameras so we could have seen for ourselves that he is living as well as Castro has said. Oh, you were not allowed to go there?  Thanks anyway, at least you said "Hi"to Castro for us!

February 1999

MANIFESTO

January 1999
IS THERE ANYTHING WORTH CELEBRATING IN 40 YEARS OF TYRANNY

Used, haggard, and just the shadow of his old arrogance, Fidel Castro celebrated on January 1st, in Santiago de Cuba, along with his henchmen, forty years of the revolution that the people of Cuba carried out to topple Batista and which he converted in a sinister communist tyranny. There were a mere one thousand people in this commemoration of the same date in 1959, when a multitude of thousands celebrated what was supposed to be the return of hope and liberty.

On this occasion he read his speech, dividing it in two parts. One, to talk about all the marvelous things he had done for Cuba. A real paradise, according to his sick imagination, where all was happiness and success. One only has to imagine when his audience returned to their homes and found their children with no shoes, dressed in rags and asking for something to eat. What would they think? How is it possible to explain the differences between reality and the wonders that Castro described in his speech? Of course he didn’t mention the firing squads active for forty years, the prisons full of Cubans in jails for just expressing their discontent. He never mentioned those who continue to risk their lives by taking to the shark infested waters of the Caribbean to run away from his oppressive gulag.

In the second part of his speech, and leaving no doubt of his political ignorance, he announced the demise and failure of capitalism. And we wonder. Is it possible that Mr. Castro does not know that what has been a complete failure is the communist system, with its Marxism-Leninism and all that absurd theories which have only served to stain the 20 Century with the blood of countless individuals. Could it be possible he doesn’t realize that he is riding a dead “burro”? That for him and his corrupt system the time has gone by and there is no future?

It seems he doesn’t hear the voice of the people. In November and December two strong protests occurred in Havana. One in front of the Court Building, where a trial against a journalist was going on, and the other in Butari’s Park where a march was to start, by people celebrating the 50 anniversary of the Human Rights document. The repressive forces of the tyranny broke up both of these protests. In most cities graffiti of “Fidel go”, “Down with Fidel” “Viva Alpha 66” is common. In Santiago de Cuba, and just days before Castro's celebration, two huge signs appeared with a very provocative message: “Fidel Go - We are hungry”.

All these signs of discontent, plus numerous acts of sabotage throughout the island are being reported by independent, courageous journalists in Cuba. These are omens that we are getting close to the tragic finale of the red nightmare. All Cubans in exile must see that we are marching at the same pace with these events.

We nourish ourselves with the monthly dues from our members and sympathizers, each contributing accordingly to his or her income or circumstances. We also conduct fund raising events, which are organized around patriotic days or historic acts of our heroes and martyrs. Other activities, such as the sale of donated articles, constitute income for our continued struggle.

We ask that you look in your heart to see if you want to be a part of this epic fight, which has been combating the tyranny for more that 37 years, without faltering a single day. With more assistance, we could accelerate the pace of our struggle to a decisive point.

Contact one of the four representatives in our electronic mail system which appears on our page. In addition, we will soon invite you to participate in our next General Assembly which will take place at the beginning of next year.