On March 25, singer Gloria Estefan led a march of some several thousand Cuban right-wing exiles in Miami’s Little Havana under the pretext of the recent events in Cuba surrounding the so-called “Las Damas de Blanco,” or Ladies in White. This small turnout was despite major publicity announcing the action by the Miami media.
 Cubans repudiate “Ladies in White.” |
The mobilization, however, served a much bigger role in light of U.S. and European imperialism’s escalated attacks on socialist Cuba over the past several weeks.
The Ladies in White are a small opposition group in Cuba composed of relatives of the 75 counterrevolutionaries who were tried and convicted in the spring of 2003 for violating Cuban laws that prohibit citizens from acting as agents of a foreign government.
In a cynical manipulation of the death of hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo in late February, the Ladies in White planned a week of actions in Havana in March to commemorate the so-called “Black Spring” of 2003. During the several days of these “protests,” hundreds of Cuban citizens mobilized in defense of the Revolution and to counter the 20 or so Ladies in White. Despite the right-wing’s claims of Cuban police repression, video and photos show the “ladies in white” protesters being ushered into a bus provided by security officials and driven away—to their homes.
These events came only weeks after the death by self-starvation of Zapata Tamayo, a 42-year-old prisoner in Cuba. Although portrayed by the corporate media as a “human-rights activist,” Tamayo’s string of incarcerations for numerous violent crimes were absent of any political character. He was, in fact, a common criminal.
Never ones to worry about such things as facts and reality, U.S. and European governments and media have used these two incidents as a pretext to launch another campaign against the Cuban Revolution.
The march called by Estefan in “defense” of the Ladies in White is but one piece in this campaign.
Natural friends: The CIA and international terrorists
During the demonstration in Miami, a Reuters photographer captured images of admitted terrorist Luis Posada Carriles marching in the crowd.
Carriles’s terrorist crimes against the Cuban people and the progressive movements of Latin America have spanned more than five decades. The government of Venezuela has petitioned for the extradition of Posada Carriles to stand trial for 73 first-degree murder charges against him related to his principal role in the mid-air explosion of a Cubana Airlines passenger jet.
The Bush administration and now the Obama administration have allowed Posada to walk free in Miami. Their refusal to either extradite him or bring him to trial in the United States is in violation of international treaties to which the United States is a signatory.
Of course, the corporate press has failed to make any connection between the terrorist Posada and the Ladies in White. The political connections between these counterrevolutionary forces are certainly real and worth noting.
It was revealed in May 2008 that Marta Beatriz Roque, one of the 75 counterrevolutionaries, was receiving at least $1,500 monthly from Fundación Rescate Jurídico, or Legal Rescue, an organization in Miami. The president of Rescate Jurídico is Santiago Alvarez, an accomplice of Posada Carriles and his long-time financial sponsor.
The blatant hand of the U.S. government in these operations was exposed: Michael Parmley, then chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, was the direct go-between, literally delivering the monies into Roque’s hands.
In 2005, Alvarez helped smuggle Posada illegally into the United States. Alvarez is himself a notorious terrorist.
Alvarez is also directly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks on the people of Cuba. It is not difficult to show through declassified U.S. government documents the material aid that the CIA has provided to these men to carry out their criminal acts
Anti-Cuba campaign escalates
These attacks on Cuba have been much more than a media campaign, however. A resolution passed by the European Parliament has openly called on European governments to intensify their subversive activities, and on their embassies in Havana to further foster support and fund counterrevolutionary forces.
A statement released by President Obama March 24 constituted an escalation in his hostile comments against Cuba. He claimed, “Cuban authorities continue to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist.” The statement goes on to arrogantly demand “an end to the repression, for the immediate, unconditional release of all political prisoners, and for respect of the basic rights of the Cuban people.”
It is without moral authority that Obama speaks of political prisoners, while thousands of prisoners await execution in the United States, while political prisoners are unjustly imprisoned for decades—Leonard Peltier for 34 years, Mumia Abu-Jamal for 28 years—and the Cuban Five are close to their 12th year of unjust imprisonment.
Placing the 20 members of the Ladies in White on a bus and taking them to their houses is not government repression. If the Obama administration wanted an example of government repression, he would not need to look far from home. In countless social protests tear gas, rubber bullets, fire hoses and horses are used to trample people to the ground. That does not happen in Cuba. And it is the United States that carries out genocidal wars for profit on every corner of the globe that should learn about respecting basic human rights from the Cuban Revolution. Cuba, despite its tremendous deficit of resources due to the legacy of colonialism and the effects of the five-decade-long blockade, has shown itself to be an example of international solidarity.
While the United States sends young workers in military uniform to every corner of the world, Cuba has sent thousands of doctors
Nonetheless, this recent campaign against Cuba will fail. A statement from Cuba’s National Assembly of Peoples Power says it quite clearly: “Such a discriminatory and selective condemnation can only be explained by the failure of a policy incapable of bringing a heroic people to their knees.”
The turnout of the Cuban people on May Day will be a defiant rejection of Washington’s aggression. The millions of Cubans who will participate in the upcoming workers’ celebrations will serve as a reminder to the governments in Europe and Washington the true aspirations of the Cuban people.
