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Updating the counterrevolutionary
business
BY ANDRES GOMEZ
(Editor of Aerodigital)
MIAMI.—Lately, the Cuban
counterrevolution, which has always been excellent
business, is blooming, enjoying another “fat kine”
period. It should be recalled that during the
Kennedy administration, from 1962-3, Operation
Mangosta was the most lucrative occupation of the
time, the most costly CIA operation to that point,
on which the federal government spent nearly $1
billion – dollars at that time – and employed
thousands of counterrevolutionary Cubans. Today, the
Bush administration has budgeted an annual $50-plus
million – above the table – of public money – at a
time of huge budget deficits and exceptional and
inhumane cuts to essential social, health and
educational programs – for its anti-Cuba policy
business.
Hence numerous Cuban-American counterrevolutionary
organizations are emerging in
Miami,
covering a gamut of activities. Before, just a few
organizations did everything; now, many are being
invented, in this way anyone can do their thing.
After the experience of the Cuban-American National
Foundation, initially the work of the Reagan
administration, the federal government has opted for
buying clients, atomizing the business in order to
control it better.
Coincidentally, during the
Atlanta hearing of
the case of the Five, relatives of the four members
of Brothers to the Rescue brought down in two light
aircraft in February 1996 over Cuban waters,
questioned the origin of the funds that allowed us
to go to
Atlanta.
It should be understood that they belong to the
class of people who are used to being subsidized by
Washington.
Our funds – which are few – and we did not fly first
class to Atlanta, stay in five-star hotels or eat in
luxury restaurants – come from the pockets of
members of our organizations and our own, not from
the $90-plus millions belonging to the Republic of
Cuba, frozen since
1959 in the United States,
which the federal government arbitrarily granted
those same inconsolable families to keep them quiet.
A
published report from the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) -- one of the
federal government agents via which it distributes
money to subvert other countries – details the sums
assigned in 2005 to certain Cuban-American
counterrevolutionary organizations. Evidently, this
is a partial list as only 17 organizations are
mentioned as involved in the business for a sum of
barely $2.365 million of the $50-plus million in the
budget.
And which are those “patriotic”
organizations, and what are their aims? Despite the
scandalous nature of these operations given their
mendacity and criminal plans against the Cuban
people, the explanation of their aims is veritably
laughable, they are so barefaced.
One
is the Afro-Cuban Alliance. According to the NED
report, its aims are to promote debate on the
conditions of African Cubans and African-Cuban
themes via the publication of a three-monthly
bulletin to be distributed within and outside of the
island, with the objective of informing Cubans of
African descent on the island and in exile on civil
rights issues, the hidden history of slavery and
racial discrimination existing in Cuba.
Thus the descendants and ideological
inheritors of the traffickers of African slaves and
the slave owners in the
United States
are entrusting the descendants and ideological
inheritors of the traffickers of African slaves and
slave owners in
Cuba
with this useful and praiseworthy task. This
organization, which nobody here and, I am sure, in
Cuba
knows except for the individual or individuals
grabbing the money, has a grant of $62,000 per year.
Another one is the Independent Libraries of Cuba,
assigned $133,773 per year. Its tasks include
promoting intellectual freedom and debate in
Cuba
and giving financial help and material assistance to
independent libraries in
Cuba.
This organization – whose only visible member is a
well-traveled black guy whose bearing and manners
remind me of those brought up in pre-1959 Cuba,
always wearing a white uniform – would seem to be
unaware, like his masters, that, for example, there
has been an annual book fair in Cuba for the last 15
years. The latest three have brought 12,160,555
people, many of them children, and have sold
10,121,405 books at very low prices. Four million
people attended this year’s edition, which began in
Havana
on February 3, and before its closure, toured 35
cities and towns in the country.
For
reasons of space, as a last example of those 17
organizations listed by the NED, I should like to
mention the Cuban Culture Encounter Association. For
services lent to the
United States
the report states that this organization has a
budget of $200,000 per annum. According to the NED,
this money is to partially cover administrative
costs to permit the group to publish its
Encuentro magazine and continue the internet
publication of its daily Encuentro On-Line.
Encuentro is to be published quarterly and
distributed in
Cuba
and abroad.
And
this is how those intellectuals and their masters
are guaranteeing truth, liberty and intellectual
integrity and the free discussion of ideas in
Cuba
and abroad.
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