Socialist Action /November 1999
Cuba puts U.S. Government on Trial
By MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH
One of the most interesting documents that we uncovered and published
in our recent book ("Che Guevara and the FBI," by Michael Ratner
and Michael Steven Smith, Ocean Press, 1997) was about Che Guevara.
Che represented the government of Cuba at a meeting in Punte Del Este,
Uruguay, in 1961. The Organization of American States (OAS) was meeting
there and Richard Goodwin, who wrote this document, was representing President
John Kennedy and the United States.
One of the purposes of the OAS meeting was to kick Cuba out of the organization-which
they did. Che gave a very fine talk there about the situation of Cuba and
Latin America, and then on the very last night of the meeting he made sure
he would run into Richard Goodwin at a party.
Goodwin wrote back to President Kennedy about his meeting with Che. He
reported that Che was a personable, likeable, and very humorous person,
that he was extremely intelligent, that his presentation was totally thought
through and organized, and he said in essence that what Che was telling
him-and this was in 1961, right after the Bay of Pigs-that Cuba would like
to see a modus vivendi with the United States, get things on a different
path, and end the tension and aggression.
So Goodwin wrote all this back to Jack Kennedy, and then he added that
his recommendations were (1) continue the economic blockade, (2) continue
the propaganda against Cuba, (3) try to overthrow the Cuban government.
What do we learn from this? That the onus for aggression and violence,
for the whole campaign against Cuba, rests solely on the United States and
has all the way back to the beginning. And what we get from studying the
recent Cuban law suit puts the onus of violence right on the United States,
where it belongs.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of eight organizations in Cuba, the
trade unions, the small farmers, the women's organization, the college students,
the middle students, the children, the Committees to Defend the Revolution,
and the veterans. These organizations make up most of the Cuban population.
The suit alleges and identifies acts of aggression by the United States,
its agents, servants, and employees from the period of 1960 to date-that
is, for the last 40 years.
It doesn't mention what the United States did from 1956, when the motor
yatch Granma landed with Fidel and the others who began the movement that
eventually overthrew Batista. It doesn't mention the fact that the United
States trained, armed, and supplied the soldiers of the Batista dictatorship.
It doesn't mention the 20,000 Cubans who lost their lives in the Cuban war
for independence. It doesn't start there.
It starts instead in 1960 with a list of what has been done against the
Cuban people. I'll give you a cold statistic: in the period of 1960 to date,
the suit states, the U.S. government has been responsible for killing 3478
persons in Cuba and it has been responsible for bodily injuring 2099 people.
It is those incidents of injuring and killing that this lawsuit covers.
Another example regards biological warfare: our government says it is
against biological warfare and it would never use it. Yet Fort Detrick in
Maryland is the biggest biological warfare armory in the world. The suit
alleges that it was in Fort Detrick that the mosquito was developed that
carries Dengue 2 fever.
Dengue 2 causes internal hemorrhaging. The suit alleges that it was an
agent of the United States that brought the Dengue 2-carrying mosquitoes
into Cuba, which caused 24,000 people to hemorrhage.
When you bleed internally you lose blood. You need blood to bring oxygen
to nourish your brain. If you don't have enough blood going to your brain
you go into shock-and 10,224 people went into shock.
If you are in shock long enough you die. Who dies easiest? Children.
One hundred fifty-eight people died, and of those, 101 were children, killed
by the United States with Dengue fever.
The U.S. didn't confine itself to people. It thought it could attack
Cuba's food supply and brought in African Swine Fever-a disease, like Dengue
2, that had never been present in Cuba. The Cubans had to do away with 500,000
pigs to prevent the further spread of the disease. Tobacco blight was another
disease that they brought in.
When the revolution succeeded on Jan. 1, 1959, one of the first things
that the revolutionary government did was to create a law-which was very
popular because a lot of the people who had fought on the side of the revolution
benefited directly from it-initiating a comprehensive land reform.
Previously, large tracts of land had been owned by American corporations.
The average Cuban peasant worked part time, seasonally, was not literate,
and lived from hand to mouth. What the revolutionary government did was
to nationalize these big properties-which was their right under international
law.
Not only did they nationalize them. They told the owners they would pay
for them. They said to the American owners: "We will pay you exactly
the amount you say they are worth, according to the taxes that you pay on
the land." But they were turned down.
In retaliation, the United States, which was refining all of Cuba's oil
in American-owned oil refineries, stopped refining oil, and Cuba was cut
off from gasoline.
What did the Cubans do? They nationalized the refineries, and willy nilly,
the bus company was nationalized, the phone company was nationalized, the
nickel mines were nationalized, the economy was rationalized.
Instead of having production for profit, which is really irrational,
anarchical, they had a planned economy-that's what we call a socialist revolution.
That's what happened very quickly in Cuba.
What was the response of the United States? That's when the blockade
started. It was not just before the missile crisis, in 1962. It was right
then in 1960.
One of the first things the revolutionary government did was to send
people out into the countryside on a literacy campaign so that all the Cubans
could learn how to read and write. So the U.S. government supported terrorists
who murdered the teachers.
When the collective farms were organized, what did the U.S. government
do? They supported groups who set fire to the sugar crops, killing people
in the process. That's documented in this law suit.
In the United States, we have what is called common law-under which you
proceed by first making allegations and when you go to trial you have to
prove them. In Cuba it is different. The plaintiffs must submit proof along
with the allegations. So appended to their complaint is proof of what they
are claiming, much of it in documents the U.S. government itself released.
That's why I think the Cubans are going to win this lawsuit.
A Cuban airplane was blown up by two agents of the United States, Orlando
Bosch, who is living in comfort in Florida on our tax dollars (along with
Che's assassin, Felix Rodriguez) and Luis Posadas Carriles. Bosch and Posadas
caused a bomb to be planted in a Cubana Airline plane, which killed 72 people-including
the young Cuban fencing team. That is one of the causes of action in this
lawsuit.
American policy has killed and injured over 5000 people and that's not
to speak of the hundreds of thousands of persons who have to live with the
psychological burden of having this beast 90 miles north of them waging
continual aggression. So there is a psychological aspect to the suit too.
In the United States, we call this "intentional infliction of emotional
distress," and there is a demand for compensation for this also.
Why do I think that the bringing of this lawsuit, which was filed in
the Provincial Court in Havana on May 31, 1999, is important at this time?
For two reasons:
One has to do with the Brothers to the Rescue. For years they had been
flying low over Havana, dropping leaflets on the city. Can you imagine what
would happen to an airplane if it flew low over the White House? It would
be vaporized.
For several years, the Cubans put up with this nonsense. They kept protesting
to the United States, "Tell them to stop it, they are taking off from
American territory, they are violating Cuban air space." But the U.S.
would not stop it.
Finally, the Cubans said, if they do it one more time we will shoot.
They did it one more time and the Cubans shot, which was their right. Four
pilots were unfortunately killed, although they chose to do this.
The estates of these four pilots brought a lawsuit in Florida and they
won a verdict of $187 million dollars against Cuba. That's just not a paper
verdict because the Cubans have assets in the United States that they built
up with the telephone company. After the verdict these assets were seized.
There remains a question whether the Cubans will be able to collect if
they win this lawsuit because they brought it in Havana; although the United
States was duly served through its interest section there, the United States
refused to appear as a defendant.
The Cubans will need to enforce a default judgment, which may not be
recognized in the courts of other countries. Why didn't the Cubans bring
the suit in the World Court? Because when the United States was brought
in front of the World Court for mining the harbor in Nicaragua and for supplying
the Contras, and a judgment was awarded to the Nicaraguans, the United States
pulled out of the World Court. They don't recognize the World Court anymore.
So whether Cuba can collect on the judgment remains to be seen. But apart
from the money, the morality of the case-and getting the message out to
people-are important.
Another thing that I think makes the lawsuit important at this time is
in relation to the action that the United Nations Committee on Human Rights
took at its recent meeting in Geneva in response to the trial of four Cuban
citizens who had been convicted of economic sabotage and sent to prison
for three to five years.
What the four Cubans did was done in concert with the American Interest
Section in Havana. The Cubans are very strapped now for hard currency.
In order to get it they are doing joint enterprises with foreign capitalist
companies, like going 50/50 with an Italian company on a hotel, or sharing
profits with a Canadian company extracting nickel from a Cuban mine.
The four convicted Cubans, working with the United States, would go to
companies considering a joint enterprise with the Cuban government and tell
them that there is going to be a counterrevolution in Cuba, and when the
new government comes to power these investments will not be recognized.
In that way, they tried to scare away potential foreign investors-undercutting
the Cuban economy and Cuban people. The Cuban government has a right to
make this illegal.
But the United States set up a hue and cry: "They're human rights
violators!" They went to Geneva and made a big pitch. They always make
this pitch in Geneva-and never win. But last time they won. Why? There was
a lot of economic pressure put on Ecuador, which had a vote. Ecuador finally
relented and voted with the United States. The United States won by one
vote and had Cuba condemned as a human rights violator.
We ought to get out the truth about what really happened there, and this
law suit is a good vehicle for doing that. I would like to conclude with
one thought. There is an old blues song by Leadbelly, a blues singer from
the 1930s. The last refrain of his song goes: "Land of the brave, home
of the free, I don't want to be mistreated by no bourgeoisie." Neither
do the Cubans.
The text of their law suit has been published by Ocean Press in a pamphlet
titled "Washington on Trial: The people of Cuba versus the U.S. Government."
It can be purchased for $4.95, including handling, from Ocean Press, PO
Box 834, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Fax (201) 617-0203.
Socialist Action /November 1999 |