Cuban Five are free! A victory for revolutionary Cuba

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I ton, D.C., and Havana on Dec. 17, President Barack n simultaneous press conferences in Washing­ Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced an agreement that included the immediate release of the three remaining Cuban political prisoners held in U.S. jails since 1998—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, and Antonio Guerrero. Two other Cubans, Fernando González and René González, having com­ pleted long jail terms, had been released in recent years.

The Cuban Five, as they are known with great ad­ miration worldwide, were charged in 1998 and con­ victed in 2001 in Miami of conspiracy to commit es­ pionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and acting as agents of a foreign power. The U.S. governmentorchestrated trial included the illegal manipulation of reporters and the media more generally, forged docu­ ments, and the exclusion of exculpatory evidence. It was a classic U.S. political frame-up, aimed at poison­ ing public opinion and the jury pool while character­ izing Cuba, the victim of U.S. terrorism for decades, as a terrorist state.

A Dec. 19 statement by the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which has been monitoring U.S.-backed terror­ ist attacks on Cuba, stated, “For more than 30 years after Fidel Castro took power, over 3400 Cubans have died and over 2000 have been wounded in terrorist attacks by extremist anti-Castro exile groups based in South Florida. In 1990, the Cuban government sent the five men to Miami to monitor and disrupt such groups and prevent future attacks.” The Cuban Five [long ago granted Cuba’s highest award, “Heroes of the Revolution”], remained nonviolent throughout their mission.”

Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” radio and tele­ vision program described one such U.S.-trained ter­ rorist, Luis Posada Carriles, as “one of the most no­ torious Cuban exiles who applied for political asylum in the United States several years ago.” Goodman re­ ported that Carriles, a former CIA operative trained by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Ga., “has been try­ ing to violently overthrow Fidel Castro’s government for four decades. … Posada was responsible for the 1976 downing of a civilian airliner that left Venezuela bound for Cuba. The bombing killed 73 passengers, including the gold medal-winning Cuban Olympic fencing team.”

In 1998 Posada told The New York Times, “The C.I.A. taught us everything. ... They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage.”

The Cuban government transmitted the informa­ tion obtained by The Five to various U.S. intelligence agencies that supposedly exist to prevent such terror­ ist activities from being initiated from U.S. soil. It was these communications to the U.S. that led to the ar­ rest of the Cuban Five, via a deeply implanted Cuban intelligence officer in the employ of the CIA. This was Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, subsequently imprisoned in Cuba for almost 20 years.

Trujillo was part of the prisoner swap, along with Alan Gross, an American working in association with the U.S. Agency for International Development, a no­ torious instrument used by the CIA and other such in­ stitutions aimed at undermining governments whose policies the U.S. government opposes. Gross had been imprisoned in Cuba for the past five years. Also, Cuba has reportedly freed 53 other “political prisoners” as part of the deal with the United States.

No U.S. government action was taken against the terrorists that the Five had exposed! Indeed, U.S. spy and terrorist operations continued with abandon, all focused on the organization of an internal opposition to topple the leadership of the Cuban Revolution.

In recent years the U.S. ruling class has been divided on the issue of the most effective methods to employ to bring down the Cuban workers’ state, established in 1959 when the forces led by Fidel Castro organized a popular revolution that removed the hated U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and opened the way to a socialist revolution in Cuba.

One wing of the U.S. ruling class, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a number of “liberal” Democrats, as well as Midwest Republicans who wish to sell cheap grain and other foodstuffs to Cuba, argue that a healthy dose of American capitalist investment aimed at undermining and underselling Cuba’s largely nationalized economy is the best way to proceed. Clinton’s view is clearly stated in her new book, “Hard Choices.”

A Dec. 18 Bloomberg View article entitled “Hillary Clinton Secretly Pushed Cuba Deal for Years” notes: “Although President Barack Obama is taking the cred­ it for Wednesday’s historic deal to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, when Hillary Clin­ ton was secretary of state, she was the main architect of the new policy and pushed far harder for a deal than the Obama White House.”

The Bloomberg article continues, “From 2009 until her departure in early 2013, Clinton and her top aides took the lead on the sometimes public, often private interac­ tions with the Cuban government. Accord­ ing to current and former White House and State Department officials and several Cuba policy experts who were involved in the dis­ cussions, Clinton was also the top advocate inside the government for ending travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and reversing 50 years of U.S. policy to isolate the Commu­ nist island nation.”

While Obama officials asserted that the secret negotiations with the Cuban govern­ ment that resulted in the present agree­ ment were facilitated by Pope Francis and Canadian diplomats, presumably those with interests in exploiting Cuba’s signifi­ cant nickel resources, ruling-class debates over the effectiveness of the Cuban em­ bargo/blockade have been underway for decades.

Today, with the same intentions, the Obama administration has come on board. The president made clear in a Dec. 19 press conference that “the whole point of normal­ izing relations is that it gives us a greater opportunity to have influence with that government.” That “influence” includes U.S. corporate intentions to penetrate Cuban markets with an ongo­ ing flow of cheap commodities aimed at undermining Cuban government enterprises.

U.S. imperialism’s relations with Cuba, and all other poor nations, always include such economic penetra­ tion based on imperialism’s capacity to set prices for vital resources far cheaper than their actual value. U.S. imperialism, for example, was able to effectively reduce the world market price of nickel, previously an important component of Cuba’s income, by 50%.

This kind of economic robbery is inherent in the im­ perialist system, wherein the nation that employs the highest levels of technology in the production of any commodity effectively devalues competing products produced with considerably more labor input. U.S. agri-business, utilizing the most advanced technolo­ gies in the world and very few workers, regularly pro­ duces rice more cheaply than any nation on earth. In every instance, the threat or actual export of rice in significant quantities has the effect of undermining the national rice markets worldwide.

The “liberal” advocates of opening Cuba to U.S. eco­ nomic investments and commodity exports often cite the great economic gains obtained by U.S. multinational corporations in China and Russia as a prime example. They have found a regular voice in the edi­ torial pages of The New York Times, which repeatedly champions an end to the embargo in order to advance U.S. economic penetration of Cuba as the most effec­ tive way to bring down the Cuban workers’ state.

The more hard-bitten sectors of the U.S. ruling class prefer the traditional stick to Obama’s carrot. They remain in accord with the 1960 State Department memo—continuing in essence to this day—to “bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of [the Cuban] government.”

The National Lawyers Guild statement also noted that “under the current [Obama] administration, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had secretly attempted to build an opposition move­ ment in Cuba which it acknowledged had no signifi­ cant support from within the island. These covert actions as documented several months ago by the As­ sociated Press include: (1) sending undercover Latin American youth to Cuba posing as health workers; (2) establishing a fake “Cuban Twitter” program, [the now-abandoned ZunZuneo (the sound of the hum­ mingbird) program], collecting the data of 50,000 unsuspecting Cubans; and (3) infiltrating the under­ ground hip-hop scene and co-opting artists.”

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These more “subtle” programs were, of course, ac­ companied by the ongoing and illegal 52-year U.S. embargo/blockade, which has caused Cuba billions of dollars in lost revenue and has been central to the U.S.-imposed misery inflicted on the Cuban people. Despite the embargo/blockade and all other illegal measures employed by U.S. imperialism, revolution­ ary Cuba has persevered, including maintaining one of the world’s finest and free systems of health care, public education, and other vital social services that are universally admired.

In recent years, and following a massive consultation process with the Cuban people, Cuba has implement­ ed a series of reforms, within the context of maintain­ ing its socialist ideals, aimed at improving the effi­ ciency of the Cuban economy. These include granting licenses for the operation of small businesses that involve just a few people, usually family members, in their operation. In 2013, these enterprises employed some 400,000 Cubans.

This fall, the government announced 246 projects that will be added to the number of industries that are open to foreign investment. This effort focuses on the special development zone that is being developed in an expanded Port of Mariel. The new zone will of­ fer the possibility of 100 percent private ownership, although enterprises will be subject to government, labor, and other regulation.

Additionally, modest parcels of state land have been distributed on a renewable-lease basis to Cuban workers and agricultural laborers. Here again, the objective was to improve efficiency and avoid bureau­ cratic abuse. The latter has been periodically and pub­ lically noted and condemned by the Cuban leadership, especially with regard to the state agriculture system, where theft and corruption have been rampant. In cases of imperialist-imposed and massive shortages of basic necessities, bureaucratic abuse is well known. Combating this abuse was been a critical part of the legacy of the Castro team.

Socialist Action has documented Cuba’s economic reforms in significant detail in the resolution in soli­ darity with Cuba adopted by our 2012 national con­ vention and published in the pamphlet entitled, “The Politics of Revolutionary Socialism.” We noted that unlike the process of capitalist restoration that has been completed in Russia and China, no significant portion of Cuba’s economy has been granted to any section of the Cuban leadership or to international corporations. Indeed, before implementation, the proposed economic reforms were presented for dis­ cussion, debate, and modification to well-organized and massive assemblies of workers and farmers that included millions of Cubans.

While Cuba still lacks formal and vitally necessary institutions of workers’ democracy, such as the soviet (council) system under the revolutionary leadership of Lenin and Trotsky in the early period of the Rus­ sian Revolution, the present Cuban leadership has not developed into a hardened caste whose interests can only be preserved by repression. To the contrary, despite the incredible hardships imposed on Cuba by U.S. and world imperialism, the Castro team has struggled valiantly to maintain the social gains of the 1959 revolution and to foster social equality to a greater extent than anywhere on earth.

The Cuban example in sending hundreds of doctors and medical workers to fight the scourge of Ebola in Africa and similar humanitarian efforts across the globe is testimony to its ongoing revolutionary and socialist orientation.

... Climate (continued from page 12: “After 20 years, no global pact on climate change”)

gral and sustainable management of forests with funding and technological support that satisfies the needs of Indigenous Peoples and local com­ munities. It also ensures gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, who play vital roles in farming and hunter/gatherer economies and often suffer the worst when ecosystems are degraded.

Bolivia’s Aymara president, who campaigned as an “eco-socialist” in his latest successful bid for reelection, pointed out that the environment is the common heritage of all the peoples of the world and must be protected from the ravages of com­ modity production. He juxtaposed the holistic practices of communal societies to the unlimited growth of a predatory, insatiable, consumerist cap­ italism that accumulates and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few while reducing the rest of the world’s population to grinding poverty and mar­ ginalization.

The heinous U.S. embargo/blockade of Cuba has been annually condemned as illegal in United Nations General Assembly resolutions in each of the past 23 years. The most recent vote on this issue was 188-2, with only the U.S. and Israel voting against.

Commenting on the embargo/blockade and the new U.S.-Cuba agreement, and reaffirming Cuba’s social­ ist course, Raul Castro stated emphatically, “An im­ portant step has been taken, but the essential thing remains—the end of the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, which has grown in recent years particularly in terms of financial transac­ tions.” In short, Cuba, unlike virtually every nation on earth, has been denied credit from almost all of the world’s major banking institutions.

While Obama declined to lift the embargo, with the assertion that this required congressional action— that is, rescinding the Helms-Burton Law and other anti-Cuba legislation—what will soon become clear is that the U.S. government will seek to use its embargo leverage to extract important concessions.

Similarly, after a century of colonial occupation, in­ cluding torture of so-called terrorists captured in the course of U.S. wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, Obama made no reference to the U.S.-occupied naval base at Guantánamo Bay. The Cuban government con­ tinues to demand an end to this colonial occupation, a product of the 1898 American war in Cuba based on the infamous “Remember the Maine!” pretext, when Spanish authorities were charged with blowing up the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor.

Morales characterized climate change as the crystallization of the capitalist crisis and stated that we have two choices—to change global soci­ ety fundamentally or to allow capitalism, which has commodified even life itself, to annihilate the world’s people and all of nature. Along with thousands of other climate crisis activists, he de­ nounced the two decades of pretentious blather and do-nothingism of past UN meetings, and con­ demned the liars who promise to take action with no intention of ever doing so.

It is clear that after 20 years of melting ice mass­ es, rising sea levels, intense heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and ferocious storms, Earth’s climate is not going to be restored by capitalist govern­ ments’ exerting “peer pressure” upon one anoth­ er in a “name and shame” operation, as The New York Times describes the Lima accord. If we are to achieve an anti-capitalist overturn in time to save the planet for human habitation, it will require powerful mass movements representing many dif­ ferent social layers in each country to challenge and bring down the ruling classes and to culmi­ nate in a worldwide eco-socialist revolution. n Obama’s press conference also an­ nounced several additional executive orders aimed at softening relations with Cuba. Dependent on expected new and soon to be enacted Treasury and Com­ merce Dept. revisions of current policy and their formal publication in the Feder­ al Register, Obama and his administration officials indicated that rules on visits to Cuba by Americans will be liberalized to allow for travel in categories that have in the past required special licenses. These include fam­ ily visits, as well as travel regarding official U.S. or for­ eign government business, journalism, competitions, and meetings for research, educational, professional, and religious activities and humanitarian support.

Specific licenses will no longer be required for busi­ ness related to telecommunications and internet link­ ages with Cuba. Further, remittances by Americans with family members in Cuba will now increase to $2000 every three months, up from $500. Americans visiting Cuba will be allowed to legally import mer­ chandise bought there with a value of up to $400, in­ cluding up to $100 in tobacco and alcohol purchases.

In the same vein, Obama—declaring the U.S. ap­ proach to Cuba “outdated” and stating that “these 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked”— proclaimed that his objective was the normalization of relations with Cuba, including the construction and establishment of a U.S. embassy in Havana and an Obama administration effort to remove Cuba from the U.S. terrorist list. Secretary of State John Kerry indi­ cated his intention to pay a formal visit to Cuba along with other top administration officials.

Liberal apologists for U.S. imperialism have been effusive with praise for Obama’s recent policy initia­ tives, characterizing them as sincere efforts to portray his “legacy” as that of a progressive, liberal-minded— if not humanistic—head of state.

Mindful of the need to attract to its 2016 electoral efforts the unprecedented millions who did not vote in the recent mid-term elections—two-thirds of the eligible electorate and especially Blacks, Latinos, and youth who saw no significant difference between the twin parties of the ruling rich—the president has en­ gaged in a flurry of executive pronouncements aimed at burnishing his tattered image. These include his fraudulent immigration reforms, his “success” in ne­ gotiating the new $1.1 trillion congressional funding bill (that granted additional billions to the corporate elite), his tepid criticisms of the now internationally exposed CIA torture practices, and his most recent release/transfer of four Guantanamo prisoners who had been held for decades without charges or legal representation.

All these measures, as with Obama’s “new” Cuba pol­ icies, are in their essence the dressing of the govern­ ment’s ongoing reactionary policies in more present­ able garb. They are aimed at maintaining and advanc­ ing the interests of the U.S. rulers at the expense of the world’s people, including the American working class. The classic maxim of over 3000 years past ap­ plies with full force today: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!” Obama’s Trojan Horse belies wicked intentions. Nevertheless, the hard-fought winning of the freedom of the Cuban Five, and all other measures aimed at ending the monstrous imperialist embargo/blockade, are important victories for revolutionary Cuba and all humanity. n SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2015 7

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(Left) Vancouver, B.C., protest against U.S. and Canadian involvement in Vietnam War in 1968. struggle policies. They fought for significant improvements in wages and conditions of work, and for the right of union members to set bargaining demands and to vote on tentative agreements.

They launched the ‘Forward With Democracy’ caucus in the Teamsters union. They pushed the fight for the 44-hour week. They built the “No Reprisals Defense Fund.” They ran candidates in union elections on a class-struggle plat­ form.

This brings us to the issue of independent working-class political action. The first task for class-conscious workers is to break the majority of our fellow workers from supporting the bosses’ parties. That entails building a political party based on the union movement, a party within which social­ ists fight for a Workers’ Agenda of democratic, defensive, and transitional demands. The only mass party in North America that is based on the unions is the New Democratic Party, in English Canada.

That meant opposing the LPP’s line for “anti-monopoly coalitions,” i.e., giving backhanded support to the Liberal

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6 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2015 The Cuban Five trial was a classic political frame-up, aimed at poisoning public opinion while portraying Cuba as ‘terrorist.’

Obama failed to lift the embargo; it will soon become clear that the U.S. will use this leverage to extract further concessions.