CUBA-DRUGS: Release of Former General Raises Spectre of Scandal

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Mar 19 1997 (IPS) - A former general involved in Cuba’s notorious 1989 drug trafficking trial of 14 high-ranking officers, the worst scandal to hit the government of Fidel Castro since it seized power in 1959, is back on the streets after serving nearly eight years in prison.

The handful of reporters attempting to approach the downtown Havana chapel where the funeral wake for former general Patricio de la Guardia’s father was being held were turned away Tuesday morning with the phrase “family members only.”

The release of De la Guardia, sentenced to 30 years in prison, coincided this week with the death of his father, aged 96. But observers say the decision had been taken beforehand.

His release from Wanajay prison, 50 kms east of Havana, sparked memories in Cuba of what was known as the “Ochoa case” for the division general executed on charges of drug trafficking and corruption, defined as treason by Cuban law.

The United States took advantage of the opportunity to accuse the government of Castro of participating in the international drug trade.

On the domestic front, the case gave rise to widespread indignation over the impunity with which the accused had acted, as well as doubts as to how such a thing could have occurred without Castro’s knowledge, or whether it was really an internal purge resulting from a power struggle.

De la Guardia’s release has fanned the flames of such doubts, which were never completely laid to rest. “The Ochoa case is not a closed case,” a university professor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IPS. Like many Cubans, he is not totally convinced that the whole truth was heard at the trial.

Attorney-general Juan Escalona, prosecutor in the case, said in an interview this month that for him the whole affair was “traumatic” – “a bitter duty.”

De la Guardia was found guilty of complicity, of being aware of and failing to report the activities of his twin brother, former army colonel Antonio de la Guardia, and those of general Arnaldo Ochoa, who along with two others of the 14 accused officers were given the death sentence.

According to official sources, a counter-intelligence probe launched in 1989 after drug-related radio communications with the United States and Colombia were detected, discovered that Antonio de la Guardia and Ochoa had organised two networks that, with sufficient authority to give orders to border guards, permitted a total of six tonnes of cocaine to be transferred to the United States through Cuba.

The 14 officers were charged with directly operating with the Medellin drug cartel of Colombia, and of raking in some 3.4 million dollars. They were also found guilty of smuggling diamonds, using their high posts in the Cuban detachment to Angola.

The trial marked a watershed in Cuba, where intellectuals frequently refer to something as having occurred “before or after the Ochoa case.”

Nearly eight years later, De la Guardia’s release coincides with a government campaign to uproot corruption among public functionaries and to boost its image as a “bastion” against drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

The official Cuban media has kept a tight-lipped silence since the former general’s release on Monday, avoiding any allusion to the case.

“Corruption is neither a volitional nor circumstancial decision,” Lidia Tablada, a member of the Council of State, wrote at the time of the trial. “It is…the result of a process.” At a meeting on the case reported by the government daily ‘Granma’ in 1989, Tablada urged an “analysis of the causes that permitted” the group of officers “to believe themselves exempt from punishment and all-powerful.”

De la Guardia came from a family of devout Catholics. He participated in the clandestine struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, joining the guerrillas in central Cuba. He did not meet Castro until 1961, and was named to the Interior Ministry in the early 1960s, where he created special army units and served as chief of staff.

The former general was part of the bodyguard of Chilean President Salvador Allende, killed in that country’s 1973 coup. He later headed the group of Cuban advisers who contributed to the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s (FSLN) 1979 triumph in Nicaragua, and was named military chief of the mission to Angola in 1986.

In 1991, he unleashed a new scandal when 20 pages of handwritten testimony were published abroad.