POLITICS-CUBA: Conflict with US Goes Beyond Embargo

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Nov 4 1999 (IPS) - The Cuban government appears keen on insisting that its ideological conflict with the United States would survive the eventual lifting of Washington’s nearly four decades old economic blockade, according to analysts here.

A lawsuit by social organisations in Cuba and a decision by a Havana court this week to sue the United States for 181 million dollars in damages allegedly caused by the embargo were interpreted as a symbolic gesture mainly aimed at marshalling evidence of the enormous material and human damages allegedly caused by Washington’s aggressive Cuba policy.

Whatever the United States decides with respect to the demand for 181 million dollars in compensation for the victims of the embargo, “the evidence is irrefutable, and the facts publicly acknowledged by the perpetrators,” said Cuban President Fidel Castro.

The social groups sued Washington for the deaths of 3,478 Cuban citizens and the physical disabilities of 2,099.

The trial, which took place in July, was covered live by state TV, which broadcast it again in “re-runs” – seen as an attempt by the Castro administration to impress the evidence of the damages caused by the embargo on the collective consciousness, and make it part of the official history for coming generations.

Nearly 193 expert and ordinary witnesses took the stand during the trial, in which U.S. documents declassified last year formed part of the evidence.

The long list of attacks denounced by the lawsuit included the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, support for armed anti-Castro groups in the 1960s, the alleged introduction of epidemics and pests on the island, and a number of assassination attempts against Castro and other communist leaders.

Castro alone was said to be the target of 637 conspiracies detected and aborted by Cuban security agencies, said expert witness José Pérez Fernández, who told the court that assassination attempts this decade had mainly targeted the president as he attended Ibero-American summits of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

The ninth Ibero-American summit is scheduled for Nov 15-16 in Havana, and at least five Latin American presidents have already announced their plans not to participate.

But the main concern this year is not who will fail to attend, but supposed plans by the Cuban exile community in the United States, and their right-wing supporters, to upset the summit.

In one of his characteristically lengthy televised speeches to the nation, which stretched into the early hours of the morning Tuesday, Castro directly accused the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana of plotting to sabotage the coming Ibero-American summit.

He specifically mentioned Charles Shapiro, the State Department’s coordinator of Cuban affairs, who urged dissident groups in Cuba to hold their own meeting parallel to the summit.

The president also referred to reports according to which the fervently anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), a powerful Miami-based Cuban exile organisation, is attempting to capitalise on criticism against the government by dissidents and the Catholic Church.

CANF is making a bid to present a united opposition front to the heads of state and government attending the summit, said Castro. He accused the bishop of Santiago, Cuba, Pedro Meurice, an outspoken critic of the Cuban regime, as being a part of that endeavor.

The Catholic Church reacted immediately. Cardinal Jaime Ortega issued a communique Tuesday rejecting “any attempt at political manipulation.”

Ortega stated that Meurice’s “words, homilies or public statements” were the result of his “conscience as a concerned pastor.”

“Neither prior to the Ibero-American summit, nor afterwards, will the Cuban church serve as an instrument” for ends other than preaching the gospel and seeking reconciliation and peace, said Ortega.

Several dissident leaders mentioned by Castro, including Elizardo Sánchez, the president of the illegal Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation, also denied taking part in a “conspiracy” to destabilise the Ibero-American summit.

Castro maintained that officials at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, who he accused of forcing Illinois Governor George Ryan to meet with dissident leaders during his visit here last week, were on the island “not only to extend visas, but also to make war and conspire” against the government.

On his visit, Ryan made it clear that he was in favour of a lifting of the embargo, a position he shares with an increasingly broad spectrum of interests in the United States.