CHAPTER 2: A NEW IMPERIALIST PROGRAMME FOR SUBJUGATING THE CUBAN NATION AND RECOLONISING THE COUNTRY

One of the clearest examples of how the Bush administration has redoubled its policies of hostility, aggression and blockade —encroaching further on Cuba’s right to self-determination— is the president’s endorsement and quick implementation of the provisions included in the report of the so-called “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba”, submitted the 6th of May, 2004.

This document describes an extensive, aggressive plan to destroy the constitutional order established and supported by the Cuban people and to return Cuba to the state of subservience it endured for more than half a century as a result of occupation by US forces and the imposition of a neo-colonial regime on the country after the first imperialist war known to history.

The “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” was created by the current White House boarder with the express aim of hastening what has been called a “regime change” in Cuba. There was no need to wait for an analysis of the Commission’s document to know, beforehand, it would be anti-Cuban and profoundly annexationist in nature and describe the brutal methods of imperialist aggression that were included in the letter and spirit of the document.

This hypothesis was based on several arguments. It underscores, to begin with, the composition of the Commission. This “select” group was assembled with several representatives of the most reactionary power circles in the United States, precisely those who call for the elimination of the Cuban Revolution through any means, including a military invasion. Several of the most recalcitrant, revanchist and annexationist elements of the Cuban-born mob based in Miami also shone in the Commission.

Secondly, the task given the Commission left no room for doubts. It was asked to hasten or quickly and urgently bring about a “transition to democracy” in Cuba, a process understood as the destruction of the political, economic and social system chosen by the Cuban people and its replacement with another, thought out by Washington to its minutest detail.
Last but not least, the hypothesis was consistent with President Bush’s extremely aggressive foreign policy and the anti-Cuban actions he relentlessly undertook throughout his first term in office. In an electoral year and as proof of his commitment to bring about a “regime change” in Cuba —his aspiration to be the first US president to visit a post-Revolutionary Cuba having been frustrated— Bush stepped up the policy of anti-Cuban hostility and aggression pursued by past US administrations to an unprecedented level, setting up a strategic platform that systematizes all previously agreed on measures, policies and actions and recommends new initiatives to break the sovereign will of the Cuban people and quickly topple its government.

A guiding principle in the design of the anti-Cuban platform requested by Bush was the proviso that all strategic proposals include suggestions as to concrete measures that can be taken to ensure the US government is in control of events, once a “regime change” has been achieved in the island.

Never before has the brutality and unscrupulousness of an administration’s anti-Cuban policies been so blatant. To achieve the proposed aims, the Commission didn’t even have reservations about recommending the violation of a right as elementary as the respect for family ties.

The report of the so-called “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” is a huge 450-page program whose objective is diametrically opposed to what its title expresses, that is to say, whose aim is to encroach on the freedom and independence of Cubans and make their country US property.

It proposes measures to redouble aggression against Cuba in all spheres in order to destabilize the country internally and create conditions that will justify a direct military intervention. It also recommends policies to discredit and stigmatize the Cuban Revolution and neutralize the support of other peoples, honest intellectuals and all objective and just individuals in the world, who admire, respect and support the Cuban people’s spirit of resistance.

Strategic tasks aimed at toppling the Cuban government described in the report include: increased support of recruitment, organization and financing of internal counterrevolutionary forces; political and diplomatic campaigns against Cuba in different international fora; stepping up the disinformation campaign against our country; providing funds to and securing the support of international actors —allied and subordinate governments, supposed “non-governmental organizations”, think-tanks and academic institutions of similar ideological makeup as Washington or included on its payroll, “intellectuals” who rent out their talent and sell their “principles” and others of equal pedigree— for its policies of anti-Cuban hostility; adopting new measures to step up the blockade and economic war on Cuba and what they have called “undermining the regime’s succession plans”; sketching out the nature and stages of the “change” and meticulously describing what prerequisites the puppet government set up in the country will have to meet.

The irrational and illegitimate nature of the Commission’s motivations and work makes itself evident in the fact that a significant number of its suggestions contradict not only basic principles and precepts of international law but also US law and regulations.

The report recommends that $ 59,000,000 —over and above previously approved funds — be used to finance actions aimed at toppling the revolutionary government. The breakdown is as follows:

• $ 18,000,000 to finance new subversive broadcasts by the inaptly called Radio and Television Martí. A broadcast system using a C-130 known as SOLO Command would immediately be set up to make weekly broadcasts and funds would be destined to the acquisition and repair of an aerial broadcast platform that would broadcast anti-Cuban programs of the US Information Agency full time.

• $ 7,000,000 for USAID´s subversive anti-Cuban program, by virtue of Section 109 of the Helms-Burton Act.

• $ 5,000,000 to support mercenaries at the service of the US’ anti-Cuban policy within the island.

• $ 5,000,000 to promote subversive activities by infiltrating and manipulating the work of organizations dealing with women’s rights.

• $ 4,000,000 for programs to recruit mercenaries of African descent (blacks and mulattoes).
• $ 4,000,000 for programs to recruit young mercenaries in favor of their anti-Cuban actions.

• $ 3,000,000 to finance anti-Cuban programs by supposed NGOs around the world.

• $ 3,000,000 as logistical support for mercenaries on USINT’s payroll.

• $ 2,000,000 to infiltrate mercenaries in international associations or organizations, to give these certain “legitimacy” and “credibility”.

• $ 3,000,000 for programs to recruit and provide financing to mercenaries who disguise themselves as union activists and to facilitate their “international contacts”.

• $ 5,000,000 for anti-Cuban “public diplomacy” initiatives (including conferences, international seminars and misinformation media campaigns).

The first chapter also proposes a series of new measures to redouble the genocidal blockade imposed on the Cuban people by the United States and to prohibit the limited exchange which exists between the US and Cuban people.

Some of these irrational, at times inhuman, measures are listed below:

• Allow only direct relatives of Cubans residing in the United States —grandparents, grandchildren, parents, siblings, wives and children exclusively— to receive remittances and packages.

• Prohibit Cubans residing in the United States from sending remittances and packages to their relatives in Cuba if these are government officials or members of the Communist Party.

• Reduce the number of visits to Cuba allowed US residents of Cuban origin from one every year, as had been permitted till then, to one every three years. In addition to this, a specific permit is required for each trip instead of the general license which had till then been in effect.

• Restrict the number of permits for travel to Cuba, issuing these only for visits to “direct relatives” (grandparents, grandchildren, parents, siblings, wives and children exclusively). Visits or the sending of any kind of aid to cousins, uncles and other close relatives are prohibited.

• Establish a law to allow Cubans newly arrived in the United States to travel to Cuba only after three years of having emigrated.

• Reduce the amount of money US residents of Cuban origin can spend during their visits to Cuba from 164 to 50 dollars daily.

• Order US authorities to carry out “covert operations” to prevent any violation of the aforementioned provisions. “Rewards” will be paid to those who denounce any violation of these provisions.

• Continue to restrict the issuing of licenses for educational trips and academic exchanges to US citizens and institutions and set up stricter regulations in this connection.

• Redouble efforts to involve governments of third countries in campaigns against the Cuban Revolution.

• Encourage actions in third countries to reduce tourism to Cuba.

These measures encroach on the basic rights of all Cubans, are an inadmissible intrusion upon the families and private lives of individuals and turn Cubans residing in the United States into lower-rate citizens unfairly and cruelly discriminated against.

The additional restrictions imposed on Cubans and their relatives residing in the United States are illegal, contradict basic principles enshrined in the Constitution of the United States and the spirit and letter of numerous bills adopted by the US Congress. What’s more, they violate the Ninth Amendment of the US Constitution which clearly establishes that no one can deny or infringe upon those rights not envisaged by the Constitution and that, therefore, constitute inalienable rights of each and every citizen of that country.

To check on and encourage compliance with all of the provisions included in the report, the Commission recommended that the position of Coordinator for the “transition in Cuba” be created in the State Department, a position which recalls the role of proconsul played by Washington representatives in Cuba during the first half of the 20th century.

The remaining five chapters address the measures that the US government would impose on Cuba —if it ever managed to destroy the Cuban Revolution— as part of a detailed plan of political, juridical, economic and social restructuring of the island guided by Washington’s vision of and lust for domination.

Each chapter merits its own individual analysis as each contributes to unmask the ultimate aim of the United States’ policy towards Cuba: to deprive the Cuban people of its sovereignty and of its right to self-determination.

The second chapter deals with some of the measures the US government would adopt once it took over the administration of an occupied Cuba, in spheres such as public health, education, housing and other basic services. Without any beating about the bush, it refers to profound and radical transformations which would eliminate all manifestations of “Castroist communism” —this is how existing social assistance and security services for everyone, state subsidies and free educational and health services for everyone are referred to— and introduce the “free market values and practices” in the image of the United States, a country, the richest in the world, where more than 40 million people have no medical insurance.

In the so-called “transition” process, the system of basic services today enjoyed by all Cubans would be dismantled and, in its place, a scheme cooked up following neo-liberal recipes would be set up, bringing the habitual exclusion and marginalization of the poorest sectors with it.

The document makes reference to the destruction of Cuban textbooks and other didactic and pedagogic instruments currently in use which it considers “profoundly politicized”, without the slightest bit of respect for the intrinsic quality of their contents. Textbooks used as tools for neocolonial domination for more than half a century —which made Cuban children believe, among other things, that US troops had to selflessly intervene in Cuba at the end of the 19th century to free us from Spanish colonialism and put an end to the bloodshed, in view of our rebels’ inability to achieve Cuba’s independence on their own— would be dusted and used once again.

The Commission’s report announces the elimination of Cuba’s current National Welfare and Social Security System —which offers coverage for everyone— and the privatization of health and education services, which would cease to be free and accessible to everyone. In the case of education, the report envisages the reopening of schools for the elite, the development of private education at all levels of schooling and the charging of fees for public education.

The programs being put into practice in Cuba to make university education accessible to everyone or the special aid offered young people from low-income families so that they may continue their studies would be eliminated in one fell swoop.

The report recommends that, “before the transition”, a Committee for government and international intervention and assistance —set up by US government agencies— be created to direct transformations in the social sphere; this Committee would call on international organizations such as the OAS to participate in these actions.

The report betrays the downright meddlesome and idiotic nature of their aims when it sets aside the National Council of Churches as a possible social interlocutor —an institution it labels “an instrument of government control over Protestant churches— and envisages the strengthening of the Catholic’s church leadership.

The anti-Cuban program endorsed by President Bush on 6 May 2004 acknowledges the role of the Miami-based terrorist anti-Cuban mob in protecting Washington’s imperial interests in the neocolonial regime that would be imposed on the island. Representatives of this mob would act as window-dressing for a puppet government, giving the administration a “Cuban” face.

The Cuban-born terrorist mob would be authorized to create a “Foundation for Assistance to a Free Cuba”. This organization would in fact do nothing else but reconcile and promote the interests of the most reactionary, aggressive and annexationist sectors of the anti-Cuban lobby in the United States.

What the report envisions is a veritable witch-hunt, a revanchist program fueled by the hatred and the resentment that, for 45 years, has accumulated in those who have been defeated by the Cuban people in every attempt to destroy the Revolution. At the height of cynicism and hypocrisy, they dress the counterrevolutionary offensive to be undertaken following the military invasion with euphemisms such as “justice and reconciliation” or “social cleansing” processes.

Hoping to block out the sun with a finger, the Commission’s report announces a supposed immunization plan against the main illnesses for children under 5, as if a country that immunizes all of its children against 13 diseases —through 10 freely administered vaccines, 7 of which are produced domestically— needed anything of the sort.

The third chapter describes plans to dismantle the institutions which guarantee the rule of the Cuban people and to dissolve the numerous organizations which ensure the full participation of every citizen in a society deeply rooted in the people and imbued with values of patriotism and solidarity.

The chapter, however, does not promote a power vacuum. Here —as throughout the document— the report outlines concrete strategies for the creation of a new political, juridical and institutional system to be set up along with, of course, the armed institutions which would suppress popular unrest and protect the interests of the United States and the Miami-based terrorist mob.

With the assistance of the US Justice, Treasury and recently created Homeland Security Departments, the US State Department would organize, train and control a “new police force”.

The report envisages the mass trials of current government officials, Communist Party leaders, Revolutionary Armed Forces and Ministry of the Interior officials, grass-roots organization and social leaders and all citizens who actively supported the Revolution, including heads of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs).

The report of the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” empowers the US government to suspend the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, an instrument approved by referendum by more than 95 % of Cubans.
The occupation government would modify and restructure Cuba’s legal system, civil and criminal proceedings, law and even the Faculty of Law’s program of studies.

It would also encourage the creation of the usual political parties, yellow unions committed to the interests of US transnational corporations and the sordid businesses of the Miami anti-Cuban mob and an institutional network that would sustain a caricature of a Republic, such as the one left behind by the Cuban people through a process of profound, revolutionary transformations.

The report proposes the revision of the labor legislation, and a change in the structure and functioning of the Ministry of Labor, of one of the few countries in the world that can boast of having achieved full employment.

What’s more, even though the United States carries with one of the most dubious electoral systems in the world —lacking in transparency and credibility and being almost completely subordinate to wealth and power— the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” asks the US government —whose current president is haunted by the specter of electoral fraud— to “create and assist” in the operation of a new electoral and political party system in an occupied Cuba.

The ‘democratic’ elections held in a Cuba devastated by bombs and made to toe the line through the sophisticated torture methods of US forces would be legitimated by monitoring missions assembled by the United States with the aid of the OAS, once accurately called its “Ministry of Colonies”.

The fourth chapter prescribes the quick and total privatization of Cuba’s economy following the overthrow of the revolutionary government; aligning the country’s economic and financial policies with those of the United States by making these subordinate to the prescriptions and impositions of international financial institutions and establishing a “free market” economy which strictly adheres to the neoliberal schemes that have had such devastating consequences for the great majority of people in Latin American and other Third World countries.

It demands the restitution of property nationalized in the revolutionary process to American transnational corporations and to representatives of Cuba’s profoundly non-patriotic oligarchy of old, most of whom have obtained US citizenship. It is well worth remembering that many of the oligarchy’s most important proprietors were torturers and henchmen hired by Batista’s dictatorial regime, the corrupt politicos of successive, supine governments, those who bled public funds and national resources dry and unscrupulous people who profited from the suffering, hunger and ignorance of the Cuban people.

The document refers to the “restitution of property” to the exploiters of old as the key to the country’s economic transformation and the panacea for its sustained growth. Historical reality, the facts that, in the recent past these same people plunged the country into a profound structural crisis and were able to guarantee the vast majority of Cubans only poverty and humiliation are swept completely under the rug.

The report concerns itself especially with the different ways in which property would be restituted in the agricultural, commercial and residential sectors. It proposes that a US government Commission be created to guarantee the Restitution of Property. This commission would adopt decisions and impose the measures required to guarantee their implementation. Much violence would doubtless be needed to take away the lands of farmers who have been made landowners by the Revolution or to once again impose high rent payments on the 85 % of Cuban families who —also thanks to the Revolution— are today the owners of the homes they live in.

Those in Washington and Miami who hope to take the Cuban people back to a past of systematic evictions and dispossessions are deluding themselves if they think they could do so without meeting with the resistance of millions of Cubans who would fight to the death.

The report of the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” also proposes that, to facilitate Washington’s administration of an occupied Cuba, the US government create a Committee for Economic Reconstruction, made up of representatives from the State, Trade, Treasury, Justice, Agriculture and Housing Departments and USAID.

The neoliberal recipes these proconsuls would follow in Cuba would result in: the dismantling of the current fiscal and monetary policy, which aims at an equitable re-distribution of incomes and to stimulate the country’s economic growth; the elimination of price controls and subsidies for first order consumer goods, including electricity and water services; the elimination of the cooperatives and the expropriation of their resources; a redefinition of priorities with respect to national budget allocations and the revision and ultimate elimination of the numerous social programs whose results have placed Cuba at the vanguard of the Third World in this sphere.

In keeping with the United States’ tried and tested policy of lies and making opportunistic use of the well-known “carrot and stick” formula, the Commission’s report is “confident” that the needed resources will be mobilized to support the country’s privatization and economic transformation, for which they will try and “share” costs with other countries and the international community of donors.

To ensure that trade between Cuba and the United States and eventual investments satisfy the expectations and lust for riches of main US economic circles and dominant sectors of Miami’s anti-Cuban mob —to the detriment of the Cuban people’s most genuine interests— the report also proposes the creation of a so-called US – Cuba Joint Committee on Trade and Investment which, of course, would also be directed from Washington.

Cuba would be dragged along and forced to accept the conditions of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the OAS and the Interamerican Development Bank, tangled up in a web of conditions and demands which would efface whatever phantasmal vestige of sovereignty could remain in a country occupied and subjugated by the United States.

The fifth chapter details and expands on different ways of administering and privatizing the country’s strategic economic sectors and production infrastructure. Concepts, directives and passages from previous chapters are repeated, as though to ensure no one has the slightest margin of space to diverge from the strategy sketched out to recolonize Cuba.

Four fundamental lines of action are to be followed: the privatization of all public services; the intervention of international financial institutions in Cuba’s economy; the technological retrofitting of industry and services, with the obliged purchase of US equipment and US intervention in and “consultancy” for all branches of the economy.
Imperial greed and power would devour everything: the airlines, airports, maritime activities, railways, roads, energy generation and distribution plants, public transportation, mining, telecommunication, water resources and many other sectors.

The report does not propose that funds be assigned, in the manner of donations, to “restructure” the economy. Cuba would have to become steeped in debt by requesting million-dollar credits to purchase US products and secure guarantees for its investments. Then, the financial guard dogs of the world’s power centers —the Bretton Woods institutions— would keep the country on a leash, transforming the Cuban economy into a mere enclave of transnational capital and an appendix of the Empire.

US advisors on two-year contracts, as minimum, —these would enjoy employment privileges and security — would supervise and ensure the Americanization of Cuban ministries and institutions.

US companies would be hired —only in “exceptional cases”, according to the report— to run all of the abovementioned services. Was the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” affected by such a severe drought of ideas that it could not but plagiarize the plans designed to “reconstruct” occupied Iraq? Or might it be that the invasion and occupation of Iraq are the dress rehearsal for the future conquests envisaged by those who advocate the expansion and consolidation of the US Empire at a planetary scale?

The Commission’s report suggests that US companies and institutions plan and direct construction and maintenance activities and manage roads, bridges, port facilities, railways and airports. An “open skies” agreement which would ruin Cuba’s national airline company would be imposed on the country.

Major US transnational companies would control oil and gas extraction and refining and own the rights to explore and exploit oil deposits in Cuba’s marine platform, depriving the country of its energy self-sufficiency once and for all. The United States would have exclusive control of any important energy reserve in Cuba or its marine shelf.

US experts would also dictate a new legislation to govern the telecommunications sector and would impose new bilateral agreements for the use of radio-electric spectrum on Cuba. Public radio and television stations —and, with them, educational, cultural and recreational programs for the people— would be liquidated and Cuba’s doors would be swung open to the US entertainment industry and the ideological impact and negative effects which come with it, namely: transculturation, the encouragement of violence, exaggerated individualism and a promotion of the amoral values of the plutocratic society which prevails in the United States.

The sixth chapter is devoted to discrediting Cuba’s environmental protection policies, policies, to be sure, which are internationally recognized.

The government that has refused to sign the Kyoto protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity, that lifted restrictions on oil prospecting in Alaska, cynically and arrogantly ignores the law, policies and programs currently in effect in Cuba, instruments which speak of a profound ecological awareness and the will to protect the environment. Cuba strictly observes and rigorously implements the 26 international conventions, treaties and protocols on the environment that it has ratified and which place it at the front guard in this field.

The report proposes: the imposition of environmental governability policies designed in Washington; the modification of the legislative body currently in effect in this field and the training —by US agencies— of personnel assigned to key local and national government, industry, academic and research positions.

There is nothing subtle about their plans to suck Cuba’s maritime and fishing resources dry and to administer and take full advantage of the biodiversity stored up in the island’s natural parks.

With respect to the supply and treatment of drinking water, the report calls for the replacement of existing equipment and chemical reagent sources, areas which would provide a sure market for US products.

Implementation of measures included in the report of the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba”

As explained above, President Bush made the Commission’s report his own last May and called for a rapid implementation of its proposals.
If this annexationist abomination was ever implemented in its entirety, the Cuban nation would be annihilated under the banner of “freedom and democracy”.

Making a good part of the report a reality would require the destruction of the Cuban Revolution and crushing the heroic resistance put up by the Cuban people against the US aggressor.

There are, however, a number of important and serious measures proposed by the report which can be implemented without occupying Cuba militarily, measures which have in fact been implemented in quick fashion.

On the 14th of October, 2004, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Daniel Fisk reported that, 150 days after the Commission’s Plan was submitted, $ 14,400,000 (of the $ 29,000,000 proposed as additional aid) had been allocated to support the “development of civil society” —i.e. the recruitment and financing of mercenaries— in Cuba and that $ 6,000,000 had been assigned to USAID to significantly expand its work with “civil society groups”.

According to this official, the remaining $ 8,400,000 had been channeled to international “partners” — referring to governments, organizations and renowned “figures” who sell their services to the best bidder— with the supposed aim of securing broader “international participation” and aiding “civil society activists” through a new process designed to put the “ideas” of so-called “democratic activists” from around the world into practice.

He declared, also, that the prerequisites for providing aid to mercenaries in Cuba —again labeled with the euphemism of “Cuban civil society groups”— had been simplified and that the supply of different means had already started.

In his speech, Fisk expressed his full support for the creation of the so-called International Committee for Cuban Democracy, to be funded and directed by Washington and presided over by the loyal US paid lackey and ex Czech President Vaclav Havel. Havel, who calls himself a writer, actually shone in the role of actor recently, following the script assigned him by US special services to the letter, in an anti-Cuban spectacle of little note in Prague which enjoyed ample press coverage.
The Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs also stated that, with the implementation of new restrictions on trips and remittances and gift packages sent to Cuba on 30 June 2004, by 10 October Cuba had been deprived of over $ 100,000,000 in hard currency and that, within a year, this figure would rise to $ 375,000,000, such that the reduction of all the country’s incomes would be no less than $ 500,000,000 dollars.

Unsatisfied with the spun submitted last May 2004, in its blinded and frustrated purposed of destroying the Revolution and seized back Cuba, Washington has already announced the introduction of a second report to further reinforce its policy toward the Island. In December 19th 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chaired a meeting of the so-called “Commission for the Assistance to Free Cuba”, aimed at identifying new measures to speed up the “change of regimen” in the Island

Rice made it public that in May 2006, the Commission will submit a second report to President Bush “with updated recommendation to speed up democracy as well as a strategic inter-agency plan to help in the Cuban-led transition”. This is the traditional language used by Washington to cynically describe its pretenses of destroying the constitutional order voted by the Cuban people.

According to the press, attending the meeting were the Secretaries of Housing, Trade, Internal Security and Treasure, as well as the Presidential Advisor for National Security Issues and the USAID Administrator, all of them members of the Commission. The anti-Cuban representative in Congress Lincoln Días-Balart, considered the decision “a very positive one” and the anti-Cuban Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, also pointed out that “the Commission could seek ways to generate more international support to the dissidence opposing the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The redoubling of the policy of hostility, blockade and aggression that the report of the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” calls for is not only underway at full speed but Washington is also planning its strengthening with new and dangerous measures aimed at speeding up the process of re-colonization of Cuba and to put the Cuban people in the humiliation and despair lived before January 1st, 1959. The threats and challenges which loom over the Cuban people’s right to self-determination, development and peace are greater every day.