Cuba cracks down on dissidents and accuses the US of fomenting unrest, reports James Pringle in Havana
Havana, Cuba -- Next door to the seven-storey United States Interests Section, a grim, fortress-like building heavily guarded by crack Cuban internal security troops on Havana's seafront, stands a huge poster board depicting a young Cuban armed with an AK.47 rifle calling out defiantly to a furious Uncle Sam. 'Mr Imperialist, we have absolutely no fear of you.'
This has been about the level of dialogue between the two nations this past month, reaching a climax last Thursday, when President Fidel Castro, addressing a May Day rally of hundreds of thousands, accused the US of wanting to attack Cuba, to assassinate him or take over this communist state of 11.2 million -- a threat, he said, that justified his recent crackdown on political dissidents.
Cuba and the US, after decades of animosity, have no diplomatic relations, and the Interests Section, once the American Embassy, helps regulate wary contacts between the two adversaries who are just 90 miles apart across the Florida Straits.
The Cubans say the Interests Section mission is 'a hotbed of CIA activity' and it is true that from it the Americans have had contact with Cuba's small but growing dissident community. Since last September, when James Cason took over as head of mission, these contacts have been stepped up as US President George W Bush's administration pushes harder for political change in the only socialist state in the Americas.
Cason, acting in what some diplomats say is a 'needlessly provocative manner', has attended dissidents' meetings, hailing the activists as Cuba's future leaders. He even opened his office and residence to them, causing an angry Castro to call him a 'bully with diplomatic immunity' and threatening to close what he called 'an incubator of counter-revolution'.
The Interests Section was at the centre of a series of summary trials in Havana last month in which 75 Cubans were jailed for up to 28 years in the biggest crackdown on political dissent here since the 1960s. The Americans have now reduced contact with the few dissidents remaining free.
Envoys say Cuba's 76-year- old leader apparently acted because he genuinely fears Cuba is next on Mr Bush's hit list after Iraq, and that he believes Washington has been fomenting internal opposition to create conditions for intervening. US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted there are no plans for military action against Cuba. Although not listed as part of America's three-nation 'Axis of Evil', Cuba -- along with Libya and Syria -- form a second tier of 'rogue states'.
Havana-based diplomats say the thin-skinned Castro, intolerant of criticism of his one-party state with its lack of a free press, may also have been responding to rising discontent within Cuba against poor living conditions -- food shortages, lack of public transport, low pay (averaging £12 a month) and falling health and education standards
But the draconian sentences against the dissidents, who since last year have mounted the first major internal challenge to Castro's inflexible rule in four decades, and the summary nature of the one day trials, caused global outrage.
It was all cloak and dagger stuff. The trials heard that government spies, with names like 'Agent Tania' and 'Agent Vilma', had infiltrated the dissident movement. One male agent was 72 years old and had been a 'mole' for years.
One dissident sentenced to 20 years in jail was Raul Rivero, 57, one of Cuba's best-known poets and journalists.
The fact that the crackdown started on the very eve of the Iraq war indicated that Havana thought the hostilities involving Baghdad would deflect international attention.
At the same time, Cuba shot three of a group of hijackers who commandeered a local Havana ferry boat with 50 passengers on board, in a failed bid to reach the US mainland. The executions, the first for three years in Cuba, led to a brief but potent street protest by bereaved relatives, who shouted 'Down with Fidel'.
During the same period, there were three plane hijackings to the US, two of which succeeded, causing one diplomat to remark: 'This has been a terribly destabilising few weeks for Cuba.'
Western diplomats mostly discounted Castro's justification for the crackdown, saying that economic recovery has faltered since 2001, but some also said that Casto did have some reason to worry about the Bush administration.
If Castro has actively assisted terrorists in attacking the USA, he probably is pretty high on that list. Lot closer to home too! Heck, we could start at 8, get done by noon, and still drink a latte at a Miami Starbucks by 3--that's how close this is!
Cuban leader Fidel Castro gestures as he delivers a speech on May Day, 2003 in Havana in front of hundreds thousands of Cubans. (AP Photo/Jose Goitia)
Castro calls executions 'extraordinary measure' to avert US aggression***Since the ferry hijacking Cuban security agents have thwarted 29 other armed plots to hijack boats and aircraft, Castro said, predicting a "migration crisis" with far-reaching consequences. The United States and the anti-Castro Cuban exile community of Florida have a "warped plot" to create a crisis with Cuba that could lead to military action against the island, he said.
"We had to stop short this wave of kidnappings," he said, issuing a stern warning to any potential hijackers. "Hijackers and hostage-takers will be submitted to summary judgments and should not expect clemency from the Council of State," Castro said. Although it shares some of the "sensibilities" of "many of our friends" worldwide who oppose the death penalty, Cuba cannot renounce it for now, due to the threat posed by the United States, Castro said.
Until the recent executions, Cuba had observed, since May 2000, something of a moratorium on capital punishment despite death sentences issued in that time, he said. "Capital punishment was not applied, but it was not renounced," he said. An invasion of Cuba by the US government would involve Washington in a prolonged war destined for failure, Castro said.
Cuban exiles and dissidents who want to end Cuba's "revolution... will last no longer than a meringue in a schoolyard" during any such confrontation, he said. "More than 40 years of failure after failure should persuade any government in the United States that the most sophisticated weapons cannot crush the resistance of the Cuban people," Castro said. ***
Would like either the Cuban people or our military to get rid of castro, I'd like to go diving and fishing there.
These punk-@ss dictators all sound as nervous and paranoid as a long-tailed cat in a room full of Texas Rocking-chairs.
And – we could have the casinos rebuilt and up and running by the next morning.
This is really crude but I know a guy who vacations in Cuba, he lives in Mexico, and he takes a couple suitcases filled with cans of tuna and levis. He spends his vacation bedding down with knockout Cuban girls simply by handing out his little set of gifts. They are so poor it is unreal. I dont agree with the transaction but it is telling as to what Castro has done to these people.
Sure. If you make millions off it, give me a coupon for a hazelnut latte.
But Castro is not a failure...... Just ask his good friends Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Danny Glover, etc.
A can of tuna is all it takes? Dadgum, I've been buying flowers and diamonds all these years for nuthin'.
You forgot the sacasm tag. I was just asking about using it in my FR tagline.
Call Mike Corleone. He will be interested.
A can of tuna is all it takes? Dadgum, I've been buying flowers and diamonds all these years for nuthin'.
He may give them a pair of levis with that tuna. From what he told me, for Cubans eating meat or fish is like a once a week treat if that often. But you can pack a lot of tuna tins in one suitcase.......