CUBAN AMERICAN RIGHT WING
Property, not children, is their concern
By Teresa
Gutierrez
In the debate over the fate of six-year-old Elián
González, it appears that the Cuban American right wing
in Miami holds his future in their hands. It is therefore a
good time to take a look at who they really are.
Many of the Cuban Americans now in Miami were the capitalist
ruling class of pre-revolutionary Cuba. Prior to the 1959
Revolution, they willingly and greedily did the bidding of Wall
Street and the Pentagon.
After the revolution, the mansions of the rich were
expropriated and handed over to the Cuban masses for day care
centers and schools. Despite their claims today of concern for
Cuban children, what drives the Cuban right wing in the U.S. is
their desire to take back those mansions and the wealth that
the Cuban workers took over.
Since then, this grouping has dedicated all its resources
and energy to undermining the Cuban Revolution. In cahoots with
the CIA, they have carried out countless acts of sabotage,
assassination attempts and terrorism.
Cuban lawyers submitted a lawsuit against the United States
government in May 1999 demanding $181 billion for the deaths of
3,478 people and incapacitation of 2,099 people as a result of
this terror campaign against their country.
And many of these cowardly acts were carried out by
right-wing Cuban Americans.
Right-wing Cuban exiles, organized by the CIA, were used in
the invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
According to Jane Franklin, author of several chronologies
on U.S.-Cuban relations, these counter-revolutionaries met and
plotted with other mercenaries to assassinate Cuban leader
Fidel Castro as early as 1960. These attempts have never ceased
in the 40-year history of the Cuban Revolution.
Seven people were indicted in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Aug.
25, 1998. They were charged with the attempted assassination of
Cuban President Fidel Castro while he was on an official visit
to Venezuela in October 1997.
One of the seven, Jose Antonio Llama, was a member of the
28-person directorate of the Cuban American National
Foundation--a right-wing Cuban organization based in Miami.
Since its founding in 1981, CANF posed as a peaceful political
group. But it has been a weapon of U.S. hostility against
revolutionary Cuba.
Concern for children?
Alpha 66 has been one of the main groups orchestrating the
heartless three-ring circus around Elián in Miami. And
this paramilitary organization has been a principal organizer
of terrorist acts.
On Jan. 12, 1982, the New York Times wrote about
paramilitary training at a remote desert camp in southern
California. The commandos were a group of Cubans and
Nicaraguans dedicated to the overthrow of their respective
governments.
The camp was supposedly under close surveillance by
government authorities. Alpha 66 operated the training site. At
the time, Alpha 66 was described by the Times as "a 10-year-old
Miami-based group that has claimed responsibility for
widespread acts of sabotage in Cuba."
Imagine if this had been Chicano youth sympathetic to the
Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. The camp would have been
shut down immediately and the youth would be in jail today.
In November 1993, an Associated Press dispatch named
Humberto Perez of Alpha 66 as threatening "to escalate its
guerrilla war against Communist rule by harassing, robbing and
even kidnapping tourists who visit Cuba."
Perez added that "foreigners and Cuban exiles who return as
tourists will be singled out by members of Alpha 66 operating
clandestinely in Cuba."
Alpha 66 has used other methods in an attempt to stifle
opposition voices.
For example, on Feb. 25, 1994, Alpha 66 members disrupted a
forum at Rutgers University Law School in Newark. The forum was
organized to support a shipment of humanitarian aid and school
supplies to Cuban children.
The event was first disrupted by a bomb scare and then by a
group of Cuban exiles who heckled the crowd. The microphone was
grabbed by several of their men, dressed in combat fatigues and
berets. Other forums at William Paterson College and the Fort
Lee Public Library were similarly disrupted.
So much for their concern for Cuban children.
Posada-Mas Canosa exposé
In July 1998, a two-part series in the New York Times
exposed the ties between the CIA and right-wing Cuban terrorist
Luis Posada Carriles, who is responsible for mass murder and
sabotage against the Cuban people, and CANF.
Posada admits to engineering the 1997 hotel bombings in
Havana that resulted in the death of an Italian tourist and
millions of dollars in property damage. He was also convicted
and jailed in Venezuela for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban
airliner that killed 73 people--many of them teenage Cuban
athletes.
Posada trained with Jorge Mas Canosa for the Bay of Pigs
invasion. Mas, now deceased, was the leader of CANF. After the
invasion was defeated, Posada and Mas joined the U.S.
military.
The two were reportedly encouraged to go to officer
candidate school at Ft. Benning. There, Posada said, "The CIA
taught us everything, everything, they taught us explosives,
how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage.
Posada continued his career as an anti-communist "hit man."
He ran a right-wing terrorist training camp in Florida for the
CIA.
Mas went on to rule over Miami's Cuban community, reportedly
threatening any Cuban he decided was "soft on Castro." With
apparent help from powerful friends on high, he became a
millionaire who moved in Washington's political circles. Mas
was welcomed to the White House by Reagan, Bush and
Clinton.
Over the years, the Times article charged, Mas used his
acquired wealth to fund Posada's terror campaigns.
Why did the New York Times expose this tip of the iceberg
about the relationship between the right-wing Cubans, the CIA
and their attacks on Cuba?
The U.S. ruling class is as committed to destroying the
Cuban Revolution as the right-wing Cubans are. But after
predicting the imminent fall of the government for 10 years
now, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, an
influential part of the U.S. ruling class knows they must find
new tactics in their struggle to overturn the Cuban Revolution.
They have been trying to create and finance an internal
opposition with a more "democratic" odor than the thugs in
Miami. Even with the hard times caused by Washington's
blockade, however, the CIA hasn't come up with much.
Now the kidnapping of this six-year-old child has galvanized
massive anti-imperialist sentiment in Cuba and widespread anger
at the U.S. government around the world. Neither tactic--hard
cop nor soft cop--can succeed in overthrowing this most popular
of revolutions.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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