There is a well-orchestrated operation by the United States to bring down Cuba’s political regime.
This is nothing new, of course. A dirty war by the US against Cuba — the largest-ever covert action program conducted by one nation against another — commenced in October 1959. It continues in one form or another.
At its height, the dirty war included about 299 bands of right-wing exiles with 3995 members operating throughout Cuba.
Since 1959, there have been more than 680 acts of terrorism including chemical warfare and bioterrorism, assassination attempts, and terrorist attacks against tourist facilities carried out by US agencies or paid hitmen under their protection.
More than 3000 Cubans have died since 1959 as a result.
Now, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is engaging in a different kind of dirty war against Cuba.
Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister Anayansi Rodríguez Camejo tweeted on November 3 the details of the current US plan to bring Cuba's political system down.
Rodríguez described the US operation as a “new kind of counterrevolution” using “social networks, digital communication media and a strategy to influence the intellectual sector” in “probably the largest and most complex CIA designed culture war operation”.
The US wants to ultimately establish a pro-US puppet state in Cuba and its operation seeks to appeal to well-educated young people, with the aim of empowering them to be “leaders for change” in foreign universities or the US embassies.
However, these leaders, said Rodríguez, “are exposed and end up being unmasked”.
“Truth and virtue prevail,” tweeted Rodríguez, referring to recent statements by Dr Carlos Leonardo Vázquez, who served for about 25 years as an undercover Cuban intelligence officer.
Ahead of the planned November 15 demonstrations in Cuba — which did not eventuate — Vázquez revealed on Cuban TV some of the links of certain well-known terrorist organisations and their representatives.
The planned protests were orchestrated from and in the US, utilising the Archipiélago platform, an online discussion forum. As such, the protests didn’t receive approval from the various municipal authorities in Cuba. The aim of the planned protests, according to Vázquez, was to “set off chaos and social disobedience”.
The alleged organiser of the planned demonstrations, Cuban playwright Yunior García, stayed in his house on the day, as did other “leaders” of the planned protests while supporters of the Cuban Revolution stood outside their houses, expressing their support for the revolution.
Vázquez also revealed Garcia’s links to people with a history of attacks on Cuba and with US anti-Cuban think tanks.
As an undercover agent, Vázquez participated with García in training courses for political leaders at the service of foreign interests, including a 2019 workshop sponsored by the University of Saint Louis. One of the main issues discussed at this workshop, according to Vázquez, was “the role of armed forces in a transition process”.
“[B]ehind it are many organizations financed by the United States to overthrow the Cuban Revolution, such [as] the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),” Vázquez said.
The NED funds an array of projects and movements designed to effect regime change in Cuba. One such project is Empowering Cuban Hip-Hop Artists as Leaders in Society, the ostensible aim of which is to “empower Cuban artists as cultural leaders to promote citizen participation and social change in society”. The real aim of these bodies and projects is more sinister.
Richard Young, from the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and an expert in the use of public protests as a social and political change method, spoke at the workshop. According to Vázquez, Young referred to the new forms of civic activism as a way to establish a fundamentalist and privatising capitalism in Cuba.
The TV program also aired a conversation between García and Ramón Saúl Sánchez Rizo, a notorious terrorist of Cuban origin, who has been linked to several anti-Cuba terrorist organisations in Miami, Florida, including Omega 7, the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), Alpha 66, National Liberation Front of Cuba, and Young Stars and Democracy Movement.
Sánchez supports the actions of the Miami extreme right and maintains regular communication with Yunior Garcia, whom Washington could well describe as being “our man in Havana”.
Cuban activist and entrepreneur Saily González Velázquez, who is a moderator of the Archipiélago platform, spilled the beans when she recently acknowledged that she had received support and advice from Omar López, director for Human Rights at the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).
Since its inception in the early 1980s, CANF has continually been able to shape US government policy on almost all issues related to Cuba. The foundation is a key arm of US imperialist strategy to destroy the Cuban Revolution.
The Cuban government has accused CANF of planning and funding terrorist attacks within Cuba, including a September 1997 bombing that killed an Italian tourist in Havana.
CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles had close ties to CANF. Posada helped organise the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He was also responsible for the mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, which killed 73 people.
In 1997, Posada admitted to having organised a series of hotel bombings in Cuba, which injured 11 people and killed the aforementioned Italian tourist. In 2000, Posada was arrested and jailed in Panama for planning to bomb a university where former president Fidel Castro was due to speak. He was never tried for mass murder or terrorism and received enormous support from right-wing Cuban Americans.
The planned protests on November 15 may not have materialised but one thing is clear. The Cuban Revolution remains under attack and Washington’s dirty war on Cuba continues, unabated.
[Ian Ellis-Jones is the author of Cuba: Revolution Under Attack, published by Resistance Books and available online. The booklet describes in greater detail some of the historical events referred to in this article.]