Back Channel to Cuba has a wealth of detail and is very complex. But
basically, it's obvious that from the start, the US saw the new
revolutionary government in Cuba as a problem because so much American money
was invested in Cuba, mostly in the sugar crop. When Castro's takeover was
seen as inevitable, our government attempted to immediately place the new
Cuban government in a state of submission to the US. Initially, although
there were Communists in Castro's revolutionary troops, it was not a
Communist revolution. Castro was young, patriotic, filled with pride, and
not sophisticated in the ways of US political wheeling and dealing. The US
wanted him to come to Washington, hat in hand, asking for financial aid. He
refused to do it. He saw his country as an equal to the US, and he needed
the aid, but he wanted the US to offer it without his asking. From that
beginning, things deteriorated. Castro did not nationalize all of the
industry immediately, nor did he expropriate all that American business
property immediately. That happened as the relationship between the
countries worsened. But yes, it is clear that from the very start, the
policy of our government was to remove Castro and regain control over Cuba.
There were a very few people in our government who did not have that goal
and who tried to influence the policy in a different direction. But the CIA
and most Sstate Department people were too powerful to allow any other
options to be pursued.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2016 10:44 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Castro, Cuban people answer sugar-coated
words,of Obama
http://themilitant.com/2016/8014/801402.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 14 April 11, 2016
(front page)
Castro, Cuban people answer sugar-coated words of Obama
BY SETH GALINSKY
The U.S. government is continuing the game of the carrot and the stick,
wrote Elier Ramírez in the March 26 issue of Juventud Rebelde, daily paper
of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba. There is no change in their
strategic objective of regime change.
Ramírez was responding to President Barack Obamas March 20-22 visit to the
island. Despite many sugar-coated words as Cuban revolutionary leader
Fidel Castro described Obamas comments Washingtons goal of overthrowing
the Cuban Revolution and restoring capitalist exploitation came through loud
and clear. Numerous articles in the Cuban press have answered aspects of the
U.S. rulers shift in methods.
In his March 22 speech, broadcast on Cuban TV, Obama said the U.S.
government was leaving behind the last remnant of the Cold War because
what the United States was doing was not working.
He didnt spell out what it was that didnt work: years of terrorist
operations, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, assassination attempts, as well
as attempted diplomatic isolation and the unparalleled economic embargo that
remains in place to this day, more than 55 years after it began.
And the commander in chief of U.S. imperialism conveniently left unsaid the
failed goal: overturning the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the workers and
farmers government it brought to power, taking land away from small farmers
and giving it back to capitalist landlords, and bringing back the
so-called free market so that Cubas working people and the islands
resources can be a source of superprofits for U.S. capitalists.
In an article in Granma, the paper of the Communist Party of Cuba, Enrique
Ubieta Gómez pointed out that during these decades of harassment,
U.S.-based terrorists caused 3,478 deaths and left 2,099 people disabled.
Luis Posada Carriles, the intellectual co-author of the blowing up of a
civilian Cuban plane in mid-flight who is responsible for the death of all
its passengers and crew, is living comfortably in Miami to this day, he
noted.
And on the territory occupied against our will in Guantánamo for a century
not a single word from Obama, Ubieta said, referring to the U.S. naval base
that U.S. imperialism forced down Cubas throat at gunpoint in 1903.
One of the most outlandish statements by Obama was his claim that we took
different journeys to our support for the people of South Africa in ending
apartheid. But President [Raúl] Castro and I could both be there in
Johannesburg to pay tribute to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela.
I dont know what support he is referring to, Ubieta wrote, because the
government that jailed Mandela was a strategic ally of Washington.
Under the U.S-backed white supremacist regime in South Africa blacks who
were some 80 percent of the population could not vote, change jobs at
will, own land, or travel from one side of a town to the other without
permission.
Cuba paid tribute to Mandela with the blood spilled by its men and women in
the African jungle, while together with Angolan combatants they repulsed the
invasion by racist South Africa, Ubieta said, referring to the nearly
400,000 Cuban internationalists who voluntarily fought in Angola from 1975
to 1991.
Heart of Washingtons new tactics
To weather the storm created by the world capitalist economic crisis and
challenges Cuba faces as the only country where the workers hold state
power, the revolutionary government has implemented measures that increase
the influence of the world capitalist market, while defending workers
control, a planned economy and the social values of solidarity.
The measures include promoting the growth of small businesses
cuentapropistas or self-employed in Cuban parlance and encouraging more
foreign investment in Cuba.
The U.S. rulers see this as an opportunity to create pressure from below, to
create a capitalist class and get the Cuban government to make more
concessions to U.S. and other capitalist businesses.
Throughout his trip Obama pushed the Cuban leadership to allow direct
employment by foreign enterprises operating in Cuba. He wants those
capitalists to have the right to hire and fire workers directly.
Currently they must hire through a government-run employment agency.
With more control, foreign capitalists limited to a maximum 49 percent
control of joint ventures with the Cuban government can begin to undermine
union protections and workers control of job conditions.
One day before Obamas visit, Starwood Hotels & Resort Worldwide announced
it had signed agreements to invest in and manage Hotel Inglaterra and Hotel
Quinta Avenida in Havana and a letter of intent to manage the Santa Isabel,
a boutique hotel. It becomes the first U.S.
company since 1959 to do so.
Starwood will be advocates for change; they will be forceful, said John
Kavulich of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council in New York.
In his speech to an entrepreneurship and opportunity event in Havana, March
21, Obama told participants that being a small businessman means if youre
willing to work hard, you can make your own way and improve your situation
in life, for the next generation. Its the spirit of youth. In other words,
look out for number one the me first ethos that characterizes
capitalism as opposed to the solidarity that is the product of the
proletarian socialist revolution in Cuba.
Obama wants to seduce the youth, stimulate selfishness within them and a
desire for purely individual improvement to present capitalist growth as the
universal panacea and not the cause of the crisis, Darío Machado wrote in
the March 25 Granma. Its our turn to explain this.
Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and
selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual
wealth they have gained with the development of education, science and
culture, Fidel Castro wrote in the March 28 Granma. We are capable of
producing the food and material riches we need with the efforts and
intelligence of our people. We do not need the empire to give us anything.
Related articles:
Cuba anti-Zika fight shows difference revolution makes
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