[News] René González of the Cuban Five on Cuba’s Challenge and Washington’s Hypocrisy

[Anti-Imperialist News]

orinocotribune.com
<https://orinocotribune.com/rene-gonzalez-of-the-cuban-five-on-cubas-challenge-and-washingtons-hypocrisy-interview/>
René
González of the Cuban Five on Cuba’s Challenge and Washington’s Hypocrisy
(Interview)
Denis Rogatyuk - August 9, 2021
------------------------------

*René González is one of the Cuban Five, long jailed in the US for their
intelligence work combating far-right Miami terrorist groups. He spoke to
Jacobin about the blockade and what his trial told him about the US’s
concern for human rights in Cuba.*

René González is a former member of Cuba’s “Wasp Network
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/08/wasp-network-five-cuban-revolution>,”
set up to combat the terrorism long directed against the island by
far-right Miami exile groups. Following the murder of over two hundred
Cubans in sustained attacks on the country’s aviation, shipping, and
tourism sectors — organized by figures like CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/luis-posasa-carriles-cold-war-anticommunism>
—
this intelligence unit worked to infiltrate and undermine the terrorist
milieu.

Immortalized in the 2019 *Netflix* film
<https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/02/wasp-network-review-penelope-cruz-cuban-spy-drama-havana-oliver-assayas>
 *Wasp Network*, González is best-known as one of the so-called Cuban Five
<https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/free-cuban-five/>. After the FBI
broke up the Wasp Network in 1998, González and four of his colleagues were
put before a Florida court in a trial internationally condemned
<https://web.archive.org/web/20070926231335/http:/www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/docs/62chr/E.CN.4.2006.7.Add.1.pdf>
for
its lack of due process. He was sentenced to a fifteen-year jail spell, and
finally returned to Cuba in 2013.

Today living in Havana, González saw first-hand the July 11 protests that
captured international attention. In an interview with Voces sin Fronteras,
hosted by Jacobin contributing editor Denis Rogatyuk, he spoke about the
current situation in the capital, the history of US attacks on the island,
and a six-decade-long economic blockade affecting even Cuba’s trade with
third countries.

*DR*
*What has your experience of the protests been, and what have you seen?*

RG
Like the vast majority of Cubans, I woke up on July 11 and began my normal
life — or at least, a normal Sunday under the pandemic — and suddenly
information began appearing on social networks. First, about what was
happening in San Antonio, then the president’s presence there
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/17/cuba-president-slams-social-media-hatred-after-protests>,
and gradually, especially from sites in Miami, information and jubilant
videos about events elsewhere in Cuba.

I continued my routine, until I realized something more serious was going
on. I started making some calls and in the evening, I went to two places
where protests had taken place. I went to [the municipality of] Diez de
Octubre, and when I got there, the protest was still ongoing but was
practically over. You could see the damage, and then I went to Zanja Street
where something had also happened, but much less.

So I could see things first-hand. Then, I think on the Monday there were
some further protests, and a mixture of falsehoods, lies, and video
footage. We all know now that images of Buenos Aires, Alexandria,
Venezuela, and other places were used to create the impression that Cuba
was immersed in chaos, and that the government had collapsed.

In Cuba, we all knew that was a lie, but I suppose that it will have had
its effect on some people elsewhere, who do not know the Cuban reality. And
I suppose that some exaggerations regarding the supposed repression of
peaceful protesters will have made their mark on some of the not so
well-informed.

*DR*
*How about the counter-mobilizations, in support of the revolution?*

RG
I’m not going to deny that what happened surprised us. We’re not used to
seeing events like these in our country — and above all, this level of
violence. I will clarify that not everyone who demonstrated was a violent
person — there were places where some dissatisfied people came out, some
with genuine claims and problems that have been imposed on us for years,
largely from the United States. But the level of violence was unusual for
Cuba. This is something we need to examine, make the corresponding
analyses, and take the appropriate measures — in terms of public order, but
also social and political measures.

We, as a country, as a people, as a community, have for six decades been
subjected to a genocidal policy whose express purpose is precisely to make
people surrender out of hunger, out of desperation, out of necessity.

These events provoked a response among people who don’t want to see our
country like this. The demonstrations organized by communities and by trade
unions took to the streets to show that we want to build a peaceful country
— we don’t want these levels of street violence. And also to show that most
Cuban people continue to support this country, the revolution, the
government.

Above all, that we’re aware that beyond the legitimacy of some people’s
demands, all this is part of an attack against Cuba. It was well-planned
through social networks. But we are going to defend this government, our
sovereignty, our independence — and we are going to continue resisting.

We, as a country, as a people, as a community, have for six decades been
subjected to a genocidal policy whose express purpose is precisely to make
people surrender out of hunger, out of desperation, out of necessity. And
well, there are people who surrender. I don’t mean this as an insult — I
don’t think that everyone necessarily has to have the same level of
endurance. The people who decided to blame the Cuban government for all
this aren’t all criminals.

But I believe that criminal elements, spurred on by the tremendous campaign
on social networks, made these demonstrations into what we saw in [those]
days. I believe that the part of the population that maintains a dignified
position in the face of US imperialism’s criminal policy has the right to
take to the streets to demonstrate in favor of this process and against the
policy that has tried to suffocate us for sixty years.

*DR*
*What do you think about the comparisons being made between these protests
and the so-called “El Maleconazo” in 1994?*

RG
There are many points of contact. The main one, the “backdrop,” is the US
blockade against Cuba, which has deliberately sought to sow despair among
the Cuban people so that they become disenchanted and blame the government
for this country’s economic problems and material hardships. It is part of
a systematic, sixty-year policy, a common thread running through the 1994
crisis and the one we are facing now.

Moreover, I think that in both cases, the uprising was promoted from
abroad. In 1994, the immigration issue was used so that some desperate
people took to the streets and, in this case, the COVID situation has been
used. This has been linked to an intensification of the criminal US policy
against Cuba, imposed by President Trump and continued by President Biden.

I think that US empire’s policy towards Cuba will continue to promote these
events. It will not change as long as they consider that they can provoke
despair in the Cuban people, and there are moments like these when various
circumstances converge that increase people’s material hardships and when
part of that population — out of despair in some cases, in other cases due
to political, malicious, sometimes even criminal intentions — end up taking
these positions and take to the streets.

*DR*
*Have you seen signs of a campaign of fake news?*

RG
Yes, of course. The US government has always tried to use the media to
influence the Cuban population and incite insurrection, illegality, and
violence. We cannot forget that during Reagan’s presidency, Radio Martí was
created. Previously, there was Radio Ciudad alongside Radio Americas. The
US Government always wanted to use communications to subjugate Cuba, as
part of this war. This is the psychological component of a war of attrition
that is anything but simply psychological. In the 1960s, it was the radio,
then came TV Martí, though it was never seen in Cuba, and recently social
networks have joined this war.

We all know that the US Government dedicates considerable funds to this
psychological warfare, which, through social networks, has been “dropped”
on Cuba. It is a persistent, systematic, methodical, scientifically
calculated effort that does end up impacting some people — and has been a
very important element in this campaign.

This campaign is carried out in two directions. One aims to break our
spirits, to confuse some Cubans, to incite us to violence, to make us
believe and rationalize the theory that the embargo does not exist, that
there is no blockade, that the Cuban government is to blame for everything.
But we mustn’t forget that it also aims to deceive the rest of the world,
so that people receive false news about Cuba. It aims to magnify any
problem that occurs here and thereby justify the demands for “humanitarian
intervention,” which many of the worst spokesmen of the Cuban
counterrevolution make to the US government in the hope that its army will
hand them back their privileges in Cuba.

In both cases, I think this is a criminal use of a technological instrument
that in other circumstances should serve to bring people closer, to sow the
seeds of peace. Obviously, this is not in the interest of those who wish to
reconquer Cuba. And that’s a phenomenon that we must continue to face and
fight.

*DR*
*Is it possible to do something from outside of Cuba?*

RG
As in the case of the Cuban Five, I think it’s important for people to
inform themselves and not be fooled, to try to learn about Cuba from the
Cubans who are here. Not to be influenced by all the campaigns, the lies,
the misinformation that — both through social networks and through the
hegemonic disinformation media — are disseminated throughout the world. To
try to stay informed and spread that information among your friends, your
acquaintances, and try to stir worldwide solidarity with the Cuban people,
against the criminal policies of the US government.

Let’s not kid ourselves. They want to turn Cuba into a Syria, a Libya, an
Iraq, and then come in with all these processes we’ve seen already in which
capital returns and supposedly rebuilds the country that they have just
destroyed. They want to do the big business that they do everywhere when
they arrive with their “humanitarian” interventions, in favor of
“democracy,” etc.

*DR*
*What have been the harshest effects of the blockade that you have observed
in the last year?*

RG
The blockade has been a brutal act of war, intensified over the past four
years by the Trump administration. The assault on the Cuban economy has
been brutal, even before the pandemic came along. I’ll give some examples.

With the connivance of the Latin American right, specifically the
presidents of Brazil and Ecuador, the medical programs that brought several
billion dollars a year to enter Cuba were dismantled. That was a brutal
economic blow. Then [Trump’s administration] continued to take measures
against family remittances. Trump talked a lot about “human rights,” as
does Mr Biden and all the others who went before did. They attacked the
Cuban family and cut remittances to relatives in Cuba, inflicting another
blow to the heart of the Cuban family economy. Further, [foreign-based]
Cubans’ trips to Cuba were drastically reduced.

The pandemic added to all this. After the other blows I described, the
Cuban economy was counting on tourism, but the pandemic has practically
paralyzed the tourism industry and we have had to do without that income,
which is what allowed the development of normal life in Cuba.

Under these conditions, the United States has increased its disinformation
campaign, its psychological war against Cuba, always with the message that
the fault lies with the inefficiency of the Cuban government — that it
doesn’t care about its citizens and should be protested against. The result
has been that some people have become desperate and have lost their
perspective on the real impact that these measures have had on Cuba.

I don’t know the exact figure, but we can speak of several billion dollars
that have stopped arriving in Cuba in recent years. Under these conditions,
the government has had to deal with the pandemic — and the resources are
simply not enough for everything. I wouldn’t venture a comparison with
other governments such as Leningrad [in 1941], but the conditions we are
experiencing at this time are quite similar.

The US government considers that it has the right to decide that each
country must do what suits the US government — and, if not, it will have to
face the consequences.

If we lived in a just world, the Trumps and Bidens would be prosecuted for
this criminal policy. It is imposed by the largest political, economic and
military power in human history against a country of 11 million inhabitants
which gives the rest of the world only solidarity, love, and peace. But our
all-powerful neighbors have decided to set us against each other. They
continue to dream — as it was set out in the 1980s — that through hunger
and despair Cubans will end up desperate and will kneel before the US
government.

*DR*
*As a former US political prisoner, what would you say to those who say
that Cuba is a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime?*

RG
I think that the repression within US society is visible to the whole
world. I am amazed when some people take lessons on human rights, on the
rule of law, from the US government.

The US government has been repressive from its inception, and that has not
changed. That’s not even mentioning the rest of the planet. The US
government considers that it has the right to decide that each country must
do what suits the US government — and, if not, it will have to face the
consequences.

The trail of death that it has left around the world in recent decades just
because a government decided not to do what suits US capital is appalling —
and that is what they are looking for in Cuba. To speak of repression, and
to do so in the name of the US government, is the most blatant cynicism.

There is no reason why we should capitulate: we will continue to defend
this revolution.

I think that has a lot to do with the experience that we [the Cuban Five]
had, especially in the legal process to which we were subjected. If the
annals of American legal history are studied one day, the trial that we
went through would be right up there for its cynicism, for the use of lies,
by a government that considers itself the arbiter of human rights and
legality around the globe.

We saw things in that trial that you don’t even see in the movies. We saw
the prosecutors blatantly lie. Blatantly put people on the stand to lie
knowing that everyone knew it was a lie — knowing with tremendous
confidence that the jury was going to believe all those lies. We saw the
prosecutors blackmail witnesses, threaten them with prosecution if they
testified. That is, witnesses that we took to the trial for the defense,
witnesses that were given subpoenas according to our right to defense but
couldn’t testify because the prosecutor stood with tremendous calm and said
that if that person testified, he would prosecute them.

In the trial, we saw the prosecutors threaten an American general that his
pension would be taken away if he testified in favor of the defense. We saw
all kinds of violations, mockeries of due process. … It had nothing to do
with what we see in the movies where the accused has every right to defend
himself.

Really, I think the trial taught us to better understand why an individual
like Joe Biden, who is painted, presented or sold as liberal and moderate,
can stand in front of a camera and say no to reopening family remittances
because the Cuban government supposedly going to appropriate them. Why he
can then stand before a camera and suddenly offer us vaccines, but insist
that an international organization has to come to distribute them among the
population because the Cuban government — the only one in Latin America
that has created a vaccine — supposedly isn’t going to.

You have to be cynical, you have to be hypocritical, to say such things. I
do not know if Biden is a lawyer — he is probably also a lawyer. I think he
has learned from the cynicism that colors those who represent that
imperialist, criminal, genocidal government. Our experience as political
prisoners left a mark on us and quickly taught us to be able to identify
such people.

The majority of the Cuban people continue to defend this revolution. I
think it is a question of principles and human dignity. There is no reason
why we should capitulate: we will continue to defend this revolution. We
will have to look inside ourselves, rectify what has to be rectified. But I
do not think it is worthy of our history, of our martyrs, of the principles
that have inspired this revolution, that we surrender to an empire because
it wants to starve us. We will have to look for solutions within ourselves
— but surrender is not an option for us.


(Jacobin Magazine
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/08/cuban-five-cuba-protests>) by Denis
Rogatyuk

Denis Rogatyuk

Denis Rogatyuk is a Russian-Australian freelance writer, journalist and
researcher. His articles, interviews and analysis have been published in a
variety of media sources around the world including Jacobin, Le Vent Se
Léve, Sputnik, Green Left Weekly, Links International Journal, Alborada and
others.
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