ZNet | Latin America
U.S., Latin America Trends
by Philip Agee; March 15, 2007
Anyone following the news in recent times cannot be unaware
of the wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean.
For many lonely years Cuba held high the torch through its exemplary
programs to provide universal health care and education, both gratis, along
with world class cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you
wonÃÂt find a Cuban today who says things are perfect, far from it, probably
all would agree that compared with pre-revolutionary Cuba there is a world
of improvement. All this they did against every effort by the United States
to isolate them as an unacceptable example of independence and
self-determination, using every dirty method including infiltration,
sabotage, terrorism, assassination, economic and biological warfare and
incessant lies in the cooperating media of many countries. I know these
methods too well, having been a CIA officer in Latin America in the 1960ÃÂs.
Altogether nearly 3500 Cubans have died from terrorist acts, and more than
2000 are permanently disabled. No country has suffered terrorism as long and
consistently as Cuba.
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All through the years, beginning even before taking power in
1959, the Cuban revolution has needed to have intelligence collection
capabilities in the U.S. for defensive purposes. Such was the fully
justified mission of the Cuban Five, jailed since 1998 with long sentences
after conviction for various crimes in Miami where they had no chance for a
fair trial. Their sights were exclusively set on criminal terrorist planning
in Miami for operations against Cuba, activities ignored by the FBI and
other law enforcement agencies. They neither sought nor received any
classified U.S. government information.Ã Their cases are still on appeal,
and will be for years to come, but their completely biased convictions rank
with the legal lynching in the 1920Ãââs of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, the anarchist immigrants, as among the most shameful injustices in
U.S. history. Freedom for the Cuban Five should be the cause of everyone for
whom fairness, human rights and justice are important, both in the United
States and around the world, joining in the activities of the 300 Free the
Five solidarity committees in 90 countries.
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Current U.S. policy with its means and goals can be found in
the nearly 500-page 2004 report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free
Cuba together with an update published in 2006 that has a secret annex. A
fundamental goal, the same in 2007 as I remember it was in 1959, is
isolation of Cuba to keep this bad example from spreading, and the current
policy if successful, would mean no less than Cuban annexation to the U.S.
and complete dependence, in fact if not in law, as Cubans rightfully claim.
Other fundamental goals from 1959 are still, nearly 50 years later, to
foment an internal political opposition and to cause economic hardship in
Cuba leading to desperation, hunger and despair. It is no exaggeration to
call these goals genocidal.
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Yet, U.S. economic warfare of nearly 50 years against Cuba
hasnÃâât worked even though the Cubans who keep book estimate its cost at
more than $80 billion. After the Cuban economyÃââs free fall in the early
1990Ãââs, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it began to recover in
1995. By 2005 growth was 11.8% and in 2006 it was 12.5%, the highest in
Latin America. Some sectors have surpassed their development levels of the
late 80Ãââs, before the collapse, and others are nearly back. CubaÃââs
exports of services, nickel, pharmaceutical and other products are booming,
and try as it may, the U.S. has not been able to stop this.
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In the end U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba have also totally
failed. In September 2006 Cuba was elected, for the second time, to lead the
Non-Aligned Movement of 118 countries, and two months later, for the 15th
consecutive year, the United Nations General Assembly voted to condemn the
U.S. economic embargo of Cuba, this time 183 to 4. In 2007 Cuba has
diplomatic or consular relations with 182 countries. Havana meanwhile is the
site of seemingly endless international conferences on every imaginable
theme with thousands of people from around the world attending. And not
least, Cuba in recent years has been hosting more than 2 million foreign
tourists annually at its world-class resorts. Far from isolating Cuba, the
U.S. has isolated itself.
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More than 30,000 Cuban doctors and health workers are saving
lives and preventing disease in 69 countries, many in the most remote and
difficult areas where few or no local doctors will go. Meanwhile 30,000
young foreigners from dozens of countries are studying medicine in Cuba on
full scholarships. All were selected from areas lacking doctors, and all are
committed to return to these areas in their home countries to practice.
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In education the Cuban literacy program known as ÃâÅYes I
canÃâ has been adopted in nearly 30 countries on five continents where
thousands more Cuban volunteers are teaching. Through this program, in
Spanish, Portuguese, English, Creole, Quechua and Aymara, some 2 million
people have learned to read and write, most of whom continue their education
afterwards through a variety of other programs.
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Thanks to these international assistance programs, Cuban
prestige and influence, and international solidarity with Cuba, have never
been greater. It was to defend these worthy programs that the five Cubans,
unjustly convicted, went to Miami in the 1990Ãââs.
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Then in 1999 came Hugo Chavez, the U.S.Ãââs latest worst
nightmare in the region, admittedly following the Cuban example in
Venezuela, with its enormous income from petroleum, to establish what he
calls a Socialism for the 21st Century with a foreign policy of regional
integration under his innovative Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas,
ALBA, excluding the United States altogether. The program is already
underway through institutions such as Mercosur in trade, Petrocaribe,
Petroandino and Petrosur in the energy sector, the Banco del Sur in finance,
and Telesur in electronic media.
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Another program under ALBA is OperaciÃÂn Milagro (Operation
Miracle) for offering free eye surgery to people unable to afford it for
cataracts, glaucoma, diabetes and other vision problems. It began in 2004 as
a joint Cuban-Venezuelan effort to bring Venezuelans by air to Cuba cost
free for operations. Within two years 28 countries of Latin America and the
Caribbean were participating, and operations restoring sight numbered
485,000 of whom 290,000 were Venezuelans. Jet liners loaded with patients
come and go from Havana everyday, but by early 2007 thirteen modern eye
clinics were being built in Venezuela, and several had already performed
thousands of operations there. Other clinics were being established in
Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti, all with Cuban planning and
staffing. The ten-year goal of OperaciÃÂn Milagro is to restore sight to 6
million people of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the program is
expanding to Africa. Ã Ã Ã
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The Cuban example of so many years, and now Venezuela, have
also recently inspired the peoples of Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay and Nicaragua to elect progressive leaders. Most have rejected the
1990ÃÂs ÃâÅWashington ConsensusÃâ and the neo-liberal model along with
determined U.S. efforts to establish a hemispheric free trade zone. All are
developing grassroots social and economic programs, each in its own way,
aimed at improving the quality of life for all, especially the long-excluded
majorities of their populations where this injustice prevailed. Although
achievements in Cuba continue to shine, the torch of revolution in the
region has effectively passed from the towering figure of Fidel, ailing at
eighty, to Chavez, a military man and teacher inspired by SimÃÂn BolÃÂvar
and JosÃÂ MartÃÂ.
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Reflecting on these new hopes for hundreds of millions in
such a vast region, one cannot avoid recalling the old professor, PrÃÂspero,
addressing his class for the last time in Ariel, the classic essay by JosÃÂ
Enrique RodÃÂ, still read by students in Latin America. In borrowing from
The Tempest, and urging his students to follow the soaring spirit of virtue
and good, represented by Ariel, and to reject the crass materialism of the
U.S. personified by CalibÃÂn, PrÃÂspero drew a contrast between Latin
American idealism and the United States that is as valid today as in 1900
when the essay first appeared.
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While Latin America is fast moving in progressive
directions, almost unimaginable less than ten years ago, in contrast the
United States, at least since the Reagan era, has been moving step by step
toward a Fascism for the 21st Century. And the pace has quickened in the
last six years of Republican government under George W. Bush with passage of
the Patriot Act under emergency circumstances just after the attacks on the
Twin Towers in September 2001, and then adoption in 2006 of the Military
Commissions Act, both with substantial support from Congressional Democrats.
Other legislation supports this trend.Ã Ã
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The U.S. Federal Government now has legal powers to secretly
monitor oneÃÂs communications, whether by telephone, ordinary mail, e-mail,
or fax, plus your bank accounts, credit cards, the web sites you visit, and
the books you buy or read in libraries. Torture, secret prisons, kidnapping,
and jailing indefinitely without trial or recourse to courts through habeas
corpus---all are now legal. So is ÃâÅextraordinary renditionÃâ whereby U.S.
captives are delivered to other governments where they will likely be
tortured and possibly assassinated. Investigations by the European
Parliament have identified around 1200 secret CIA flights carrying these
people through European airports to secret prisons. To qualify for this
treatment, anyone in the world, U.S. citizens and any others, only need be
designated by the government as an ÃâÅillegal enemy combatantÃâ whose only
definition is someone who has ÃâÅpurposefully and materially supported
hostilities against the United States.Ãâ Hostilities or a hostile act can
be interpreted as almost anything that opposes U.S. policies, from a speech
expressing solidarity with Cuba to a picket line protesting the war in Iraq.
If an ÃâÅenemy combatantÃâ ever gets a trial, it will not be by a jury of
peers but by a U.S. military court that can use hearsay and evidence
obtained under torture.
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These powers reminiscent of the Nazi regime are not just a
global U.S Sword of Damocles waiting to fall on perceived enemies. The full
range of repression has been going on since the invasion of Afghanistan in
2001 with plenty of evidence coming from the prisons and concentration camps
of Bagram, Abu Graib and GuantÃÂnamo as well as from testimony of various
released innocents swept up in the process. It is an on-going worldwide
application of fascist power in a non-defined, nebulous ÃâÅwar on
terrorismÃâ that has no end or geographical limits. Since September 2001
the Bush government has given one specious reason after another for what it
believes are the motives of Islamic terrorism, never admitting that it is a
reaction and resistance to U.S. imperial policies, starting with U.S.
support for IsraelÃââs continued occupation and colonization of Arab lands
and IsraelÃââs refusal to return to its borders before the Six-Day War in
1967.
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By 2006 the U.S. had designated some 17,000 people around
the world as ÃâÅenemy combatants,Ãâ according to press reports. Combine
this repression with gargantuan contracts to private U.S. firms, as in Iraqi
security and ÃâÅreconstruction,Ãâ along with forcing the Iraqi government,
always with eyes on the prize, to contract highly prejudicial 30-year
ÃâÅproduction sharing agreementsÃâ to American and British oil majors,
excluded from Iraq before the invasion, plus historic lows in trade union
power, and you have the marriage of government and corporate power that
Mussolini, who invented the word in 1919, described as the essence of
fascism. The one bright spot are the recent indictments of 13 CIA people in
Germany and 26 others in Italy for kidnapping and other violations of their
laws. They will never be brought to trial, of course, but the indictments
are refreshing developments.
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Protection of terrorists who serve U.S. interests is still
another feature of American Fascism of the 21st Century. There are many
examples, especially among Cuban exiles, but two stand out from the others:
Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Both have long, well-documented
pedigrees as international terrorists, but one of their joint crimes was
historic: the first bombing in flight of a civilian airliner in the Western
Hemisphere. It was Cubana flight 455 that on October 6th, 1976 exploded just
after takeoff from Barbados killing all 73 people on board.
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Bosch and Carriles, both of whose CIA careers began around
1960, planned the bombing in Caracas and provided the explosives to two
Venezuelans recruited by Posada. These two were discovered, convicted, and
sentenced to long prison terms. Not so with Bosch and Posada who were
protected by then-Venezuelan President Carlos AndrÃÂs PÃÂrez who has his own
history of working with the CIA. Although they were both arrested and tried
separately in Venezuelan courts as the intellectual authors of the crime,
neither was convicted.
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Bosch was found not guilty and released in 1988, returned to
Miami but was arrested for an old parole violation. The Justice Department
then ordered his deportation as an ÃâÅundesirableÃâ and as ÃâÅthe most
dangerous terroristÃâ of the Western Hemisphere. But Jeb Bush, son of
then-President Bush, persuaded his father in 1990 to quash BoschÃÂs
deportation order. Since then Bosch has lived freely in Miami where he gives
television interviews in which he makes every effort to justify terrorism
against Cuba.
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For his part PosadaÃÂs trial in Venezuela never ended
because in 1985 he escaped from prison, fled the country, and soon turned up
in El Salvador working in the CIAÃÂs Contra terrorist operation against
Nicaragua. When this ended he stayed underground in Central America and from
the early 1990ÃÂs organized more terrorist operations against Cuba. In 2005
he was arrested in Miami for illegal entry to the U.S., and although he
admitted to the New York Times to terrorist bombings of hotels and other
tourist facilities in Cuba, in one of which an Italian tourist died, he has
only been indicted for lying to the FBI and in his request for
naturalization. The Bush administration refuses to certify him as a
terrorist so that he can be tried as such, at the same time ignoring
VenezuelaÃââs extradition request as a fugitive from justice, alleging
absurdly that he might be tortured there. His treatment suggests that he
will eventually be pardoned by Bush, perhaps on Christmas Eve of 2008 just
before leaving the White House, just as his father on Christmas Eve of 1992
pardoned former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and various CIA officers
for crimes in the 1980ÃÂs Iran-Contra scandal, thus precluding their trials
scheduled to begin the following month.
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One need not dwell on the obvious. The conviction of the
Miami Cuban Five for their anti-terrorist efforts, in contrast with the
official protection of terrorists like Bosch and Posada, speaks volumes on
the U.S. as the pre-eminent state sponsor of international terrorism.
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The major disguise used to cloak this U.S. program of
worldwide aggression from the 1980ÃÂs to the present has been ÃâÅpromotion
of democracy,Ãâ a hypocritical claim used ad nauseum by Presidents,
Secretaries of State and others that has never fooled anyone. It has always
been clear that the ÃâÅdemocracy promotionÃâ programs of the National
Endowment for Democracy, the State Department, the Agency for International
Development and associated foundations and agencies are nothing more that
attempts to foment and strengthen internal political forces in countries
around the world that will be under U.S. control and will protect and cater
to U.S. interests. Their origins are in the CIAÃââs political operations
starting in the 1940ÃÂs, and they have included the overthrow of
democratically elected governments and the institution of unspeakable
repression as in Brazil in 1964 and Chile in 1973 to name only two of many
examples.Ã Ã
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To be sure there has been, and is, important and worthy
resistance in the U.S. to this developing fascism both within Congress and
among private organizations and individuals. But it has been mostly isolated
attempts of a defensive and rear-guard nature, with little mention in the
corporate media. Bills have been introduced in Congress to ease or end the
economic blockade of Cuba, to amend the worst of the repressive laws, even
to impeach Bush and Cheney, but they seem unlikely ever to prevail or become
law. The two parties, actually competing branches of a one-party state, have
simply adopted ever more extreme measures to maintain their monopoly of
power.
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Even the judicial system, once perhaps the last hope for
enforcing the Constitution, has been riddled with neo-conservatives who
ignore it. Take only the appeal of the Miami conviction by the Cuban Five.
The original three appellate judges of AtlantaÃÂs 11th Circuit issued a
compelling 93-page unanimous decision upholding the defense position that no
fair trial of self-admitted Cuban agents was possible in MiamiÃÂs prevailing
anti-Cuban atmosphere and that the trial venue should have been moved.Ã
Nevertheless the other 10 judges of the Circuit voted to hear another appeal
en banc and then unanimously overturned the first decision with only two of
the original three judges voting against (the third had retired). That 10 of
the 13 Circuit Court judges would uphold Miami as a place where Cuban agents
could get a fair trial is a good example of how morally and intellectually
corrupt the federal judiciary has become.
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So these are grim days indeed for the United States and by
extension for its allies, starting with its junior partner, the U.K., and
extending through NATO. There have been other periods of shameful repression
in the U.S., like the years following World War I, but never with a global
reach like this.
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Predictably U.S. prestige around the world, what there ever
was of it, has disappeared, replaced by contempt and scorn. Testimony to
this is the repudiation of Bush and what he stands for expressed by so many
thousands in the streets protesting his presence as he currently travels
around Latin America attempting to lure five countries away from regional
integration. What a contrast with the enlightened, idealistic, and
progressive social and political movements now flowering in Latin America!
Ã
Havana, March 2007Ã Ã
Ã
Philip Agee, 72, was a CIA secret operations officer in
Latin American from 1960 to 1969. He is the author of the best-selling
Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Penguin Books, 1975) plus other books and
articles. Deported in 1977 by the U.K and four other NATO countries, he has
lived since 1978 with his wife in Hamburg, Germany. He travels frequently to
Cuba and South America for solidarity and business activities, and in 2000
he started an online travel service to Cuba:Ã www.cubalinda.com.
