POLITICS-CUBA: Anti-Castro Propaganda Blitz Misses Target

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jul 6 1998 (IPS) - A surprise propaganda operation launched by the U.S.-based anti-Castro Democracy Movement missed its target in Cuba Monday – in more ways than one.

Instead of running aground along Havana’s busy Malecon boardwalk, a raft on automatic pilot tied to a small blimp reading “democracy” and carrying humanitarian supplies ran ashore more than a kilometre away from the city.

Interior Ministry officials closed off access to part of the Chivo beach, located a few metres from the Havana bay, where reporters and bystanders could see a deflated raft and balloon lying on the sand.

Just a few metres away, a giant, multi-coloured balloon inflated for the filming of a movie riveted the attention of onlookers. “A film is being shot over there, and here we have a situation being analysed by the Interior Ministry,” said a local official, who asked foreign reporters to put their cameras away.

And a witness riding in a bus that drove past the Chivo beach at 7:30 AM (11:30 GMT) told IPS that he saw a balloon reading “democracy,” and that “someone in the bus said it was a movie they were filming.”

On Sunday night, the Democracy Movement communicated that a raft with a balloon would be reaching the Malecon early Monday morning.

By contrast with previous occasions, when the Democracy Movement has accompanied its actions with major publicity campaigns in the Miami press, the group kept its operation secret up to the last minute.

Although the surprise factor may have helped guarantee the raft’s landing on Cuban shores, the effect was drastically weakened when the craft ran off course.

A communique sent to the press says the raft contains a shipment of humanitarian aid, a symbolic exercise of the Democracy Movement’s right to help the Cuban people.

The raft also carried a recording to be broadcast at a specific time, stating that the group would not heed foreign laws or “the arrogant refusal” of the Cuban government designed to block its intention to provide humanitarian assistance to the island.

“This latest operation by the Democracy Movement is part of a new tactic within our non-violent strategy to demand the right to help the Cuban people,” says the communique signed by group- member Ramon Saul Sanchez.

A recent easing of U.S. sanctions against Cuba allowed shipments of humanitarian aid, but under strict conditions.

Incursions into Cuban air and water space by the Democracy Movement and Brothers to the Rescue, another Miami, Florida-based group of fervent anti-Castro Cuban exiles, began on Jul. 13, 1995, the first anniversary of the sinking of the ’13 de Marzo’ tugboat.

The tugboat sank on Jul. 13, 1994 with 32 Cubans attempting to emigrate without authorisation to the United States, when it crashed into a boat that was chasing it down.

“We are the champions of patience, but patience runs out,” President Castro said in July 1995, reacting to the first anti- Castro fleet, comprised of several boats, six small airplanes and two helicopters.

A number of Cubans saw one of the aircraft overflying the Havana shoreline, and an official report said others carried out low-level provocative flights over naval border troop units.

Similar actions, including the scattering of anti-Castro pamphlets from aircraft, were carried out in 1995. Then the “small airplane crisis” occurred on Feb. 24, 1996, when Cuban air forces shot down two civilian airplanes flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue – an incident which cut short a nascent thaw in relations between Havana and Washington.

In what was widely seen as a reprisal, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Helms-Burton Act which stiffened the blockade against Cuba. Meanwhile, however, his administration warned anti- Castro groups based on U.S. territory that it would not allow missions that violated Cuban territory or air or water space.