[On line protest] [Events] [Material Aid] [Membership form] [Brigades] [Facts File on Cuba] [Cuba Si! index] [Other Cuba links] [CSC Contact] [Web contact] [Sponsors] [contents overview]
The Cuban gains have been accomplished in the teeth of one of the most prolonged campaigns of hostility and sabotage in modern times: most Cubans alive today have known nothing else. Here is a picture of US aggression in the Caribbean region.
In Guatemala the people elected the progressive leader Jacobo Arbenz in1951. A principal element in his programme was land reform. Washington decided that the popular reforms represented a threat to US interests. It was necessary therefore for the C IA to stimulate a campaign of terror and subversion, terminating in the US-sponsored invasion that succeeded in overthrowing the Arbenz government in 1954. The United States funded the Guatemalan army, trained its officers, and supplied its weapons.
In Chile in 1970 the Marxist Salvador Allende was democratically elected to power. On 8 September Washington's principal strategist, Henry Kissinger, ordered a "cold-blooded assessment" of the situation, including considerations of whether a Chilean military coup should be organised with US assistance. The CIA provided money and weapons to right wing officers planning the overthrow of Allende. Financial institutions under the control of the United States (the World Bank, the Export-Import Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank) acted to exclude Chile from the international credit markets. The coup duly took place in September 1973. US military attaches supported the Chilean army, a US Navy commando team penetrated the country, US ships were off the coast, and US fighter planes were held in a state of readiness at an Argentine base just across the border. The democratically ellected Salvador Allende was murdered, and there then began the repressive rule of the military dictator General Augusto Pinochet.
In Jamaica in 1972 the democratic socialist Michael Manley was elected prime minister - and US action was immediately taken to destabilise his government. Kissinger acted to withdraw US aid and to pressure other countries into blocking assistance. CIA-trained Cuban exiles were sent to the island to carry out terrorist acts.
In 1994 fresh evidence emerged to show that President Kennedy had orderedthe CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Cheddi Jagain British Guiana (now Guyana).
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the United States sustained a procession of right-wing governments in El Salvador for the transparent purpose of protecting the economic interests of wealthy Salvador families and US corporations.From 1980 to 1986 the US suppl ied El Salvador with more than $2 million aid, most of which was used to procure military hardware.
In the Dominican Republic the liberal Juan Bosch, (democratically elected president in December 1962 with 60% of the popular vote), began to implement a modest land reform programme and minor nationalisation. US aid came to a halt; the CIA and the US military began discussions with anti-Bosch army officers. In 1963 a CIA-orchestrated coup installed Colonel Wessin y Wessin as a new US friendly dictator. On 28 April 1965 President Johnson sent in the marines, later followed by the US army's 82nd Division: a combined force of about 23,000 troops.
Nicaragua was first invaded by US troops in 1854 to avenge an alleged insult to the millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt. Another US invasion took placein 1909, and from 1912 to 1933 Nicaragua was under American military occupation. In 1980 the US-backed forces , operating from sanctuaries in US-backed Honduras,managed to slaughter some 30,000 people. Ronald Reagan's 'freedom fighters' had achieved their purpose in the approved way: eyes gouged out, breasts cut off, castrations, lips sliced, tongues torn out, throats slashed, disembowelling...The suffering Nicaraguan people, desperate for another way, voted a majority for the ramshackled coalition headed by the US-supported Violeta Chamorro.The 1990 victory was not for democracy but for torture and violence.
In 1983 Reagan decided to send 6,000 elite troops to invade the small island of Granada, where some 800 soldiers, workers and militia had to be overcome.
Panama in the late 1980's....
The US invasion of Haiti in 1993 was part of a well-established pattern.
The above examples of US intervention - involving terror,
subversion, lies and military invasion - indicate the regional
context in which Cuba has struggled to survive over nearly four
decades. Washington has been well prepared to sanction torture,
sabotage, military aggression, economic strangulation,and the use of
starvation and disease as strategic weapons.
This is the political framework that Washington prefers to social
reforms; this is the regional environment in which Cuba struggles to
protect its social gains. Today, through US policies, Cuba is
ideologically isolated. Washington has worked hard to ensu re the the
popular leaders (Arbenz, Allende, Manley, Bosch, Ortega, Aristide and
others) who might have been naturally sympathetic to Cuban reform
have all been assassinated, tamed or marginalised.
[On line protest] [Events] [Material Aid] [Membership form] [Brigades] [Facts File on Cuba] [Cuba Si! index] [Other Cuba links] [CSC Contact] [Web contact] [Sponsors] [contents overview]