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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">René González of the Cuban Five on Cuba’s Challenge and Washington’s Hypocrisy (Interview)</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Denis Rogatyuk - August 9, 2021<br></div>
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<p><strong>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.</strong></p>
<p>René González is a former member of Cuba’s “<a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/08/wasp-network-five-cuban-revolution">Wasp Network</a>,”
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 <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/luis-posasa-carriles-cold-war-anticommunism">CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles</a> — this intelligence unit worked to infiltrate and undermine the terrorist milieu.</p>
<p>Immortalized in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/02/wasp-network-review-penelope-cruz-cuban-spy-drama-havana-oliver-assayas">2019 <i>Netflix</i> film</a> <i>Wasp Network</i>, González is best-known as one of the so-called <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/free-cuban-five/">Cuban Five</a>.
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 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070926231335/http:/www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/docs/62chr/E.CN.4.2006.7.Add.1.pdf">internationally condemned</a> for its lack of due process. He was sentenced to a fifteen-year jail spell, and finally returned to Cuba in 2013.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>DR</strong><br>
<strong>What has your experience of the protests been, and what have you seen?</strong></p>
<p>RG<br>
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 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/17/cuba-president-slams-social-media-hatred-after-protests">president’s presence there</a>, and gradually, especially from sites in Miami, information and jubilant videos about events elsewhere in Cuba.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>DR</strong><br>
<strong>How about the counter-mobilizations, in support of the revolution?</strong></p>
<p>RG<br>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>DR</strong><br>
<strong>What do you think about the comparisons being made between these protests and the so-called “El Maleconazo” in 1994?</strong></p>
<p>RG<br>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>DR</strong><br>
<strong>Have you seen signs of a campaign of fake news?</strong></p>
<p>RG<br>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>DR</strong><br>
<strong>Is it possible to do something from outside of Cuba?</strong></p>
<p>RG<br>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>DR</strong><br>
<strong>What have been the harshest effects of the blockade that you have observed in the last year?</strong></p>
<p>RG<br>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>DR</strong><br>
<strong>As a former US political prisoner, what would you say to those who say that Cuba is a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime?</strong></p>
<p>RG<br>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>There is no reason why we should capitulate: we will continue to defend this revolution.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em><br></em></p>
<p>(<a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/08/cuban-five-cuba-protests" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jacobin Magazine</a>) by Denis Rogatyuk</p>
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Denis Rogatyuk </span>
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<p>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.</p>
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