Andrés Gómez, Director of Areítodigital / April 11, 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miami.- I have lived in Miami since November 29, 1960, and now
I’m 68 years old. I was 13 when I arrived with my family,
much like almost 130,000 Cubans who left their country in that
year as a result of the radical changes made by the Cuban
revolutionary process and war threats issued by the United States
that were partially carried out in April 1961, five months later,
with the Bay of Pigs invasion, the defeat of which those 55 years
ago will be soon celebrated by the Cuban people in revolution.

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, and not in Miami. After
living in that city for so many years I know very well that
“clear monument”, as Obama described Miami, calling
it an example of hope for the Cubans, especially the young
people,” in his well-timed and much-quoted speech of March
22 in Havana’s Gran Teatro.

Like others, I have written extensively about the idyllic and
unreal image of Miami that U.S. Administrations have stubbornly
insisted on creating and using as a contrast for more than 57
years, since the beginning of this long-lived nightmare, to the
great work and example that the Cuban people’s Revolution
has been. This virtual vision is the “clear
monument” that Obama brought back to life in his speech.

Above all else, Mr. Obama, Miami is the irrefutable example of
the Cuban people’s success in maintaining and developing
their socialist revolutionary process and, therefore, their
independence and sovereignty. Miami is conclusive proof of the
defeat suffered by the Cuban counterrevolutionaries and their
imperial masters in their attempts to destroy Cuba’s
independence.

Miami, the clear monument that Obama presents to the Cuban people
as their hope for the future. It is where his terrorists live,
those of the U.S. governments, who have planned and committed
acts of terrorism against the Cuban people. These victims, killed
as a result, have been men and women that include many, many
members of that youth that you, Mr. Obama, constantly encourage
to forget the past.

And those victims have also been boys and girls, fathers and
mothers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, sons and
daughters, female and male friends and neighbors…
It’s an endless list, Mr. Obama. Not to mention, Mr.
President, the suffering of their families and friends for the
loss and absence of their loved ones in so many years of horror.

In 57 years there have been thousands of terrorist acts against
the Cubans as a result of the State Terrorism policy designed by
U.S. governments, one of which you preside over today, brother
Obama, as you were called by Fidel, whom these U.S. terrorists
have tried to kill countless times.

You see, it was those U.S. governments which in 1959, two years
before you were born, started to recruit, train, arm, fund and
lead those terrorists who lived or are still living in Miami.
Some of them, who have died –of natural causes, by the
way– and the U.S. government has protected them and let
them do what they do with total impunity.

Those terrorist monsters are now living freely here in Miami,
your “clear monument” and example to the Cubans,
“especially the young people”. They don’t worry
that they will ever be brought to justice for their heinous
crimes as required by law and decency, thanks to the protection
that your government, Mr. President, gives them.

How many are the Cuban victims of that terrorist policy? Official
figures have it that 3,478 have died and 2,099 have been
physically disabled. Given the horror caused by the imperial
policies of aggression and war against other peoples in the last
decades, maybe the readers will not be shocked by the number of
Cuban men and women who have died or been disabled in all these
years of sustained terrorist campaigns led by the United States.

Fidel managed to put into the right context in his memorable
speech of October 6, 2011 in memory of the 73 victims of the
loathsome act committed by these same beasts when they planted a
bomb on a civilian plane of Cubana Airlines and blew it out of
the sky 35 years before that day.

Fidel explained then: “Comparing the Cuban population [on
October 6, 1976] with the U.S. population last September 11,
it’s as if seven American planes, each with 300 on board,
had been shot down on the same day and at the same time…
And if we compared the two populations, the 3,478 Cuban lives
lost to these terrorist acts originated in the United States, it
would be as if 88,434 Americans had been killed by terrorists, a
number equivalent to the number of American soldiers killed in
the Vietnam War and the Korean War together.”

Just as the experiences and outcomes of this vile and endless
U.S. policy of State Terrorism have been terrible for the Cuban
people, so too have they been for us Cubans who, also for
decades, have defended our people right from the dens where these
monsters who spearhead such a policy are living and enjoying the
impunity offered them by Washington.

Next April 28 will mark the 37th anniversary of the bomb attack
in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that caused the death, one day later,
of Carlos Muñiz Varela, our companero at the National
Committee of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and his terrorist
killers, who are members of the Miami-based Cuban extreme right,
are yet to be taken to court so that justice is done.

The federal authorities in charge of these dreadful matters, and
mainly the FBI, Mr. President, are to blame for the fact that
nothing has been done about it. They refuse to disclose the
evidence they have that can prove those murderers guilty.

In Puerto Rico, however, Carlos’s family and friends,
Cubans and Puerto Rican alike, under the guiding hands of
Carlos’s son –now considerably older than his
father when he fell in 1979 at the age of 25– and our
comrade Raúl Álzaga, keep demanding justice for both
Carlos and Santiago Mari Pesquera, a young Puerto Rican
pro-independence fighter, recently recalled again by our comrade
of old, Ricardo Alarcon, in an excellent article.

So how is it, Mr. President? What’s with the “clear
monument” that you hold Miami is as an example of hope for
the Cubans, “especially the young people”? What
about those scoundrels who are your terrorists, Mr. President,
still free and unpunished thanks to your decision, not that of
other presidents –ten of them, to be precise– who
ruled before you, but your own one?

Here in Miami, alive and free and waiting for your decision to
bring them to justice as required by law, are, among others:
Félix Rodríguez, Luis Posada Carriles, Pedro Remón
Rodríguez, Ernesto Lluesma Pares, Ruperto Pérez Ortega,
Frank Castro Paz, Santiago Álvarez Magriñat, Reynol
Rodríguez González, Osvaldo Bencomo Robaina, Sergio Ramos
Suárez, Armando Ruiz Maceira, Secundino Carreras Bencomo,
Ramón Saúl Sánchez, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Antonio de
la Cova, Virgilio Paz Romero, Héctor Fabián, José
Dionisio Suárez Esquivel and Luis Crespo.

Not many of them are mentioned here, Mr. President, Sir. The
above names are just a sample of your terrorists. Many, however,
are their heinous crimes.

[/t]