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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/alarcon09172007.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/alarcon09172007.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>September 17,
2007<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>The Return of C.
Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>By RICARDO
ALARCÓN <br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>"What planet are you from,
anyway?" responded the Guantanamero to the insistent question posed
by someone who apparently did not believe there were schools, libraries,
teachers, doctors and nurses there who offered their services to everyone
free of charge, as they have been doing for several decades in Cuba. This
anecdote, mentioned in Sicko, Michael Moore's latest documentary,
describes what many, in one way or another, have experienced in the
course of nearly half a century of encounters positive and notbetween
beings that inhabit worlds which are at once close to and cut off from
one another. In 1960, hoping to bridge the enormous gap through the noble
and generous voice of C. Wright Mills, Cubans had noted: “We are so far
apart that there are Two Cubas - ours and the one you picture to
yourselves.” By the way, Cuba is not a nation about which few things have
been written or published. <br><br>
Over the course of several years publishing houses in the United States
have printed texts essential to understanding our history, which have
analyzed Cuban society and its Revolution profoundly: true must-read
classics. Avoiding many a time, the barriers erected between our two
countries in their prolonged struggle and overcoming the specific
challenges I will address later, US academia has given us highly valuable
works worthy of praise. Its efforts, however, have been severely limited
by the structures within which it must operate. <br><br>
The mass media have devoted more attention to Cuba than to most other
Latin American and Caribbean countries. They have created another,
unrecognizable Cuba through massive errors, distortions and inaccuracies
many times reaching grotesque proportions. <br><br>
Voicing superficial opinions about Cuba, assuming stances against its
revolution and even boasting of expert knowledge on the subject is
something which is not only natural and easy but also lucrative for some.
In the introduction to an extensive study published in 1997, The UN
Economic Commission on Latin America underscored the paradoxical fact
that Cuba’s was <i>“one of Latin America's most interpreted, but least
studied, economies.” <br><br>
</i>The lack of analytical rigor, superficiality and even dishonesty
often characterize the treatment of the Cuban issue. Many were trained to
react with reflexive mechanisms and without thinking. The mere mention of
Cuba or Castro prompts an instantaneous and automatic reaction, before
the brain can even pass judgement. Prejudice, in short, is sown through
modern instruments of information and a cultural industry which, more and
more, divests thought of true content and encourages banality everywhere.
<br><br>
Another professor from Columbia, Brzezinski, put it frankly: with the new
technologies they could <i>“manipulate emotions and control reason”.
<br><br>
</i>The commotion stirred up by recently-divulged declassified documents
which describe attempts by the CIA and the mafia to assassinate Fidel
Castro is quite revealing. The plans were known, in detail, and
acknowledged by the US Senate more than thirty years ago. Books on the
subject were published and box-office hits were made. Nothing new has
come to light. What is revealing is how frivolously the mass media
treated the idea of assassination and other crimes and the passiveness
with which the public took in the news. <br><br>
In a world in which information has become a form of entertainment, you
can tell the people that their government has been involved in all sorts
of sordid actions without facing a scandal. Some, parroting the CIA
chiefs, pointed out that these things happened so long ago that no one
even remembers them. Obliged to speak about the Iraq war, Abu Grahib,
Guantanamo and other current realities, they will again avoid any
connection with the past; they will treat them as isolated events,
outside of history, present them as the inexplicable images of a
stupefying spectacle. <br><br>
This is also how it has been possible, for over two years now, to provide
safe haven to Luis Posada Carriles, prevent the resumption of a trial
began in Venezuela for the mid-air bombing of a commercial airliner and
the holding of a trial in the United States in flagrant violation of
international anti-terrorist conventionswhile perpetuating the
incarceration of the Cuban Five, young men, whose only crime was the
peaceful struggle against them and other terrorists harbored by
Washington. These two incidents have been mentioned once or twice in some
of the US media, always in biased reports full of errors, and have
immediately been buried beneath an unrelenting avalanche of
misinformation and rubbish, dumped upon a captive and defenseless public
day in and day out. The result: the cases of Posada Carriles and our Five
Heroes are known around the world, voices of condemnation, protest and
solidarity are being heard more and more, while ignorance and silence are
forced upon the people in the United States. All the while, thousands of
young Americans go to Iraq to kill and die in the name of a supposed war
against terrorism. <br><br>
I invoke Mills again, because this year, the 45th anniversary of his
physical disappearance, Cubans ought to remember with gratitude, and to
pay tribute to this North American writer who, in difficult and decisive
times, struggled for friendship and understanding between our nations
like very few did. To this cause he devoted his exceptional talent and
all of his energies; for this cause, put simply, he gave his life.
<br><br>
From the time of <i>Listen Yankee's </i>publication in 1960, Mills had
to struggle against all sides, thrown into an uneven match with the
powers that be and the owners of the mass media. The FBI and pro-Batista
gangs based in Miami employed all the instruments of persuasion,
including threats and pressures against him. <br><br>
A paradigm of the intellectual committed to truth and justice, an
independent, lucid and creative thinker, he met his death before his
time, leaving an admirable oeuvre unfinished, an oeuvre which was the
inspiration of those young people who, in that unique moment in US
history, sought to storm heaven. His indefatigable struggle on behalf of
Cuba had, for him, more than a present significance as part of a debate;
it was decisive for the future relations of the United States with the
world and for the well being of the nation in general. <br><br>
As a prelude of things to come, he wrote: <i>“I’m afraid there is going
to come about a very bad time in my country for people who think as I do…
What bothers me, is whether or not the damned heart will stand up
to what must then be done”.</i> <br><br>
We have, indeed, faced difficult times, bereft of his irreplaceable
rebelliousness. <br><br>
In its policy towards the Cuban revolution, the United States has traced
an unbroken, unwavering line which takes us all the way back to the
Eisenhower administration and already spans across half a century. It is
the policy of misinformation and lies. While other elements of US policy
have varied over time, this, its fundamental component, has not
experienced the slightest change since the now remote times when
Washington worked hard to perpetuate Batista’s dictatorship and prevent
the revolutionary triumph. <br><br>
In this battleground, the US government has employed financial, material
and human resources impossible to quantify. Those who have sought to
delve into the issue of Cuba have had to do so over a boggy and mined
terrain, to face a single and singular obstacle: the most powerful
government on the planet which has done everything in its power, made use
of all available means, in order to lie, falsify reality and deceive.
Such premeditated efforts to conceal the truth and divulge falsehoods,
such consistency over so long a period of time, are without precedents.
<br><br>
It is not only a question of prejudice, ignorance or moral cowardice.
Many who have opposed the Cuban revolution have been the object of
deliberate and systematic intellectual and emotional manipulation,
victims of an operation designed at the highest levels of US power, an
operation in which an immense governmental bureaucracy and its many
public and secret agencies, reliant on the conscious and unconscious
complicity of politicians, academics, journalists and other
intellectuals, has been involved. <br><br>
Though little was known about this operation in Mills’ time, he was able
to imagine that something of this nature was taking shape and alluded to
this more than once. Today, we have access to all its details, from the
time of its inception, through its development, to the present day.
<br><br>
In the 1990s, a good many official documents till then kept secret came
to light. In 1991, the US Department of State published a thick volume
titled <i>“Foreign relations of the United States 1958-1960 Volume VI
Cuba” </i>which contains hundreds of documents, reports, internal
Department analyses, the minutes of the National Security Council and
other government agency meetings, messages exchanged with the US embassy
in Havana, other diplomatic missions and allied countries and other
materials which cover the last years of the Batista regime and the first
two years of Cuba - US conflict, up to the breaking of diplomatic
relations. <br><br>
1958 was a crucial year which holds the key to understanding what was to
happen later. The volume contains irrefutable proof of Washington's close
alliance with the bloody dictatorship which scourged the island.
Collaboration existed in the most diverse spheres, even the nuclear
energy sector. Military aid was unlimited, extending beyond the supply of
weapons, munitions, equipment and assistance at all levels. All officers
in Cuba's air force, nearly all army, navy and police officials and
complete units of the troops that fought against the rebels in the Sierra
Maestra were trained in US military schools. <br><br>
Batista found support not only in Cuba but also in the United States. The
FBI and Department of Justice kept a tight rein on exiles and
anti-Batista émigrés and worked to thwart all of their efforts to aid
those who struggle for freedom at home. The two governments exchanged
information and coordinated actions as part of these efforts. In this
regard, the actions undertaken against then ex-president Carlos Prío
Socarras are worthy of note. <br><br>
As the Batista regime's exhaustion became more and more evident,
concealing the aid which his government continued to receive became a
priority for the Eisenhower administration, as did the obstinate and
fruitless efforts aimed at preventing the people’s victory. <i>"We
must prevent a Castro victory" </i>was the conclusion often repeated
at White House meetings. <br><br>
The declassified documents reveal more than a political, military and
economic commitment between the authorities of two governments which, at
times, appear to merge into a single body. We come across anxious and
perplexed characters, actors in a drama they are unable to understand. In
the course of 1958, more and more meetings see Eisenhower, Nixon, Dulles
and his generals draw up desperate plans looking for a magic formula to
save the old regime and prevent its complete collapse. <br><br>
As with soap operas, there is intrigue and melodrama, like the scene in
which the President, in a grave and solemn tone, asks everyone present to
promise they will deny, without exception, having heard what was
discussed there. Or his precise and unquestionable instruction, that
<i>“the hand of the United States remain hidden”.</i> And, as if this
were not enough, as though suspicious of his closest advisors, his
personal instruction to the CIA director, to stop discussing plans
against Cuba at National Security Council meetings. <br><br>
They were forced to interrupt or postpone dinners and revelries. In the
last hours of December 31st, from his office, Secretary Herter sends
Havana his last message of 1958. It is a bitter and sorrowful letter
which summarizes everything Washington had done to support the despot
until the last moment. <br><br>
Before dawn broke that first morning of 1959, Washington was already
receiving reports from its ambassador in Havana. The gentleman had not
slept a wink; he had been busy trying to prop up the military junta which
was scrambling to organize itself and coordinating the departure from the
country of those leaders and collaborators who had no fled with Batista.
<br><br>
In those first early hours, already Cuba was to receive one of the
toughest blows of the United States' economic war against the island. The
fugitives had literally plundered the Treasury of the Republic, creating
what the Department of State itself described as a situation no
administration could bear. Not one cent was returned. Neither were any
loans granted the provisional government, in spite of its discrete and
friendly appeals. Therein lies the origin of the many fortunes that
arose, later to be swelled by privileges, tax exemptions and other
benefits no one else has ever enjoyed in the history of the United
States, fortunes which the official propaganda extols as the supposed
successes stories of a community of enterprising émigrés. <br><br>
Washington never let its loyal friend down. One of the longest sections
of the abovementioned volume describes the steps diplomats and US
officials took to secure a pleasant and safe retirement for the defeated
tyrant. Since the <i>“hand had to remain hidden”,</i> it had to be
outside of US territory, so it was the good will of the then ruling
government of Spain and Portugal with the United States' approval that
came to their aid. The dictator’s wife, children and other relatives and
close friends settled comfortably in the homes they had purchased, using
stolen money, in south Florida. There, they joined other fugitives and
created an artificial Cuba, with all of the characteristics of the Cuba
that had forever disappeared. The government of the United States gave
them the resources to become, in a short time, a force to be reckoned
with, which the US people was obliged to accept as representative of
fictitious values that had hitherto never been theirs. <br><br>
The first counterrevolutionary organization, La Rosa Blanca, was founded
in Miami by Rafael Díaz Balart, one of Batista's main ministers and
ex-chief of his political apparatus. Former torturers, veteran gangsters,
drug-traffickers and thieves came to control media spaces and were
received at Congress meetings and in the offices of politicians, both
democratic and republican. They were allowed to pocket hundreds of
millions of dollars more than $400 million, according to calculations by
experts from the National Bank and New York Times editorialistsand,
later, incalculable sums taken from US taxpayers, as tax exemptions for
the supposed loss of properties left behind in Cuba, and other, equally
exorbitant sums, through diverse anti-Castro programs which have been
generously financed with money from the federal budget for nearly half a
century. <br><br>
Batista's lot was to die in Europe but his memory lives on in the United
States. Every March 10th, the day he took power through a
coup<i>d´état</i> in Cuba when he liquidated its government institutions
in one fell swoop is celebrated in Miami. Batista's relatives, and those
of his close friends, live in the United States, hold positions in the
judiciary, the executive and the legislature, at the federal, state and
local levels. They are accorded honors and paid tributes at public
squares, universities and even in the United States Congress. Today, in
the 21st century, a strange cult of Batista's regime survives in the
United States, the pathetic token of unconditional devotion. <br><br>
1959 and 1960, as the recently declassified documents tell us, were years
in which the powerful hand which sought to remain invisible wrestled with
a small country which sought to ward it off. New acts of economic
aggression soon followed the brutal sacking of the public treasury. Given
Cuba's then almost complete dependence on US financing and markets,
Washington strategists were confident that a few blows to the country
would suffice to make Cuba collapse and come again under US domination.
<br><br>
With the passing of time, they coined phrases which proved useful in
concealing the meaning of their actions. The learned refer to these
actions as “sanctions” which are part of an "embargo". Now, it
is possible for us to read that, as early as 1959, one of the first
measures, the suppression of the sugar quota, was described by Secretary
Herter as <i>"economic warfare”</i>.<br><br>
We know, also, that, in those early days, US authorities had a very
precise idea of what they were doing, of the moral implications of their
actions and the political ends they were pursuing. Few times were they as
sincere as when they wrote: <i>“The majority of Cubans support Castro…
the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through
disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and
hardship… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken
the economic life of Cuba… a line of action which, while as adroit and
inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money
and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about
hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”.</i> When this policy
was designed and applied, it had already been many years since the
Nuremberg Tribunal had handed down its final verdict and the United
Nations made its Convention on the crime of genocide a universal law.
Those in Washington who coldly decided to apply a policy which spelled
genocide for the Cuban people were fully conscious of these facts. Note
that they sought to make the people suffer and to destroy them, to ignore
and ultimately crush their will, deny them the exercise of their
democratic rights. <br><br>
More recently, when these documents came to light, making a mockery of
decency and common sense, U.S diplomats and their academic and
journalistic coryphaei went as far as attempting to justify the policy of
genocide, in the name of democracy. <br><br>
In 1997, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified another document it
had zealously kept secret for over thirty years, with the pertinent
omissions and finishing touches. It is the report of General Lyman B.
Kirkpatrick, CIA inspector general for the actions undertaken in 1959,
which, in essence, describes the policy the United States has continued
to apply to this day. <br><br>
The program consisted in:<br><br>
“a. Formation of a Cuban exile organization to attract Cuban loyalties,
to direct opposition activities, and to provide cover for Agency
operations.<br><br>
b. A propaganda offensive in the name of the opposition.<br><br>
c. Creation inside Cuba of a clandestine intelligence collection and
action apparatus to be responsive to the direction of the exile
organization.<br><br>
d. Development outside Cuba of a small paramilitary force to be
introduced into Cuba to organize, train and lead resistance groups”.
<br><br>
One finds surprising the importance accorded to propaganda and political
work, which according to Kirkpatrick was allotted a greater part of the
assigned budget than intelligence and military operations. The one aim of
the organization in exile was to cover up Agency operations to guarantee,
of course, that <i>“the hand of the U.S. Government would not
appear”.<br><br>
“Anti-Castro propaganda operations were intensified throughout Latin
America”. </i>To sustain these operations, the initially assigned budget
was constantly being increased and the clandestine CIA body in charge of
these came to have more staff and resources than any other the Agency had
during the Cold War. <br><br>
The hidden hand was generous indeed. <br><br>
It handed out no less than $35,000 a week for the publication of
<i>Bohemia Libre</i> magazine, whose circulation reached that of 126,000
copies, second only, in the Continent, to Reader's Digest; the reprinting
in exile of the daily newspaper <i>Avance</i> years before financed by
Batista; Radio Swan broadcasts, television programs and other
publications, including comic strips; not to mention the travel expenses
of lecturers, deployed to divulge propaganda across Latin America. At the
time, the CIA paid Cuban leaders in exile $h131,000 in salaries each
month. <br><br>
The Bay of Pigs fiasco did not put an end to these activities; rather,
these became broader and more intense. Clandestine radio broadcasts,
which have not ceased, were later expanded and became special Voice of
America programs, today's Radio and TV Martí. Since then and up to today,
the CIA has financed newspapers, journals and other publications and
continues to have lecturers, academicians and journalists on its payroll.
<br><br>
In addition to covert operations, the US currently undertakes other, more
visible actions. The Cuba Program is still in effect, though it enjoys a
larger budget today, and, in addition to the CIA's original program,
there are now AID and NED ones. Nothing has changed, not even the name.
<br><br>
With the passing of the Helms-Burton Act and the reports of the so-called
Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, approved by President Bush, US
foreign policy has become interventionist and arrogant like never before.
There wouldn’t be enough time to go into an in depth analysis. I will
limit myself to saying that, were the recommendations of these documents
followed to the letter, Cuba would cease to exist as a sovereign nation.
<br><br>
But this is an irrational and anachronistic policy. The real world has
not moved in the direction longed for by the vindictive supporters of
Batista and their friends in Washington. <br><br>
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of what came to be known
as “real socialism” dazzled many in the capitalist world, who became
intoxicated with a simple-minded and disproportionate optimism. Absorbed
with talk of the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were completely oblivious
to the Caracazo. <br><br>
Painstakingly, and not without ups and downs, the world would in fact
move in the direction Mills wisely predicted. Rather than the end of
history, we witness the end of an era and the beginning of a new one that
recalls his theory; the same one Mills had long searched for. <br><br>
Latin America and the Caribbean witness the dawn of a new era. National
revolutionary processes are consolidating themselves, grassroots
movements are growing stronger, indigenous peoples and other marginalized
sectors have ever greater participation in these and real and efficacious
alternatives are making progress, impelling true unity and independence
in the region. New alliances and pursuits emerge as the region moves
towards the construction of socialist projects which, in their diversity,
will make up the socialism of the 21st century; a form of socialism which
is wholly ours, and which will not be “a carbon copy" of previous
systems, but a "heroic creation", as Mariategui advocated. The
work of people capable of independent thought, the type of people Mella
dreamt of when Cuban Marxism was coming into its own. As all creations it
will be unique, it will shatter templates and be impervious to dogma. It
will be the rainbow already heralded by the Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas. <br><br>
Intellectuals on both sides of the Rio Grande shoulder great
responsibility and are duty-bound to make this new age one of peace and
friendship among our peoples. With the Cold War behind us, we now face
new possibilities to establish new relations, which will only be possible
when all hegemonic designs are abandoned. <br><br>
Mills has finally returned. Let us take heed of his words: “What I have
been trying to say to intellectuals, preachers, scientists -as well as
more generally to publics- can be put into one sentence: Drop the liberal
rhetoric and the conservative default, they are now parts of one and the
same official line; transcend that line”.<br><br>
<b>Ricardo Alarcón</b> is President of the National Assembly of People’s
Power of the Republic of Cuba. This is the text of a lecture delivered at
the Workshop “Dialogos Políticos”, XXVII International Congress of the
Latin American Studies Association, 2007, Montreal, Canada. September 7,
2007.<br><br>
<br><br>
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