Category Archives: Cuban Revolution

Mariela Castro on Ending the Embargo – Swapping Cuban Five – Jailed U.S. Contractor Alan Gross

By DemocracyNOW – Amy Goodman

Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, calls on the U.S. to release five Cubans jailed for spying on anti-Cuban militants in Florida in exchange for Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen jailed in Cuba. The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 for committing espionage in southern Florida. They say they weren’t spying on the U.S., but trying to monitor right-wing violent Cuban groups that have organized attacks on Cuba. “I want the Cuban Five to go back to Cuba and for Alan Gross to go home,” Castro says. “I want an end to the financial, commercial and economic blockade that violates the human rights of the Cuban people, and the normalization of relations between both countries.”

Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up: Saul Landau

By DemocracyNOW.org – Amy Goodman

Award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, professor Saul Landau has made more than 45 films and written 14 books, many about Cuba. His latest film is “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up,” about U.S. support for violent anti-Castro militants. Landau joins us to discuss the history of the Cuban Five and U.S. support for a group of anti-Castro militants who have been behind the bombing of airplanes, the blowing up of hotels and assassinations. Today they are allowed to live freely in the United States. “What did Cuba do to us?,” Landau asks. “Well, the answer, I think, is that they were disobedient, in our hemisphere. And they did not ask permission to take away property. They took it away. They nationalized property. And the United States … has never forgiven them.”

The Nobel Peace Prize winner

I will hardly refer to the Cuban people, who one day rid their country of the United States domain, when the imperialist system had reached the height of its power.

Men and women of different ages paraded on May Day down the most symbolic squares in all provinces of the country.

Our Revolution emerged where it was least expected by the empire, in a hemisphere where it was used to act like an all-powerful master.

Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.

Today I am thinking particularly about the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its heroic struggle against the ruthless plunder of the resources with which Nature has endowed that noble and self-sacrificing people who one day sent their soldiers to faraway places in this continent to bring the Spanish military power to its knees.

Cuba has no need to explain why we have been in solidarity not only with all the countries of this hemisphere but also with many others in Africa and other regions of the world.

The Bolivarian Revolution has also been in solidarity with our homeland. Its support was transcendental during the years of the Special Period. That cooperation, however, in no way came up at Cuba’s request. Neither did we demand any condition from any of the peoples that required our educational or medical services. We would have offered Venezuela our maximum support no matter the circumstances.

For revolutionary Cubans, to cooperate with other poor and exploited peoples has always been a political principle and a duty towards humanity.

I feel great satisfaction to watch, as I did yesterday, through Venezolana de Televisión and Telesur, the profound impact that the adoption of the Labor Organic Law enacted by the Bolivarian leader and president of the Republic, Hugo Chávez Frías, caused among the people. I had never seen anything like that in the political landscape of our hemisphere.

I paid attention to the huge crowds that gathered in the squares and avenues of Caracas, particularly the spontaneous comments made by the citizens who were interviewed. I had hardly –ever, perhaps- seen the level of emotion and hope that transpired in their statements. It became evident that the overwhelming majority of the people are humble workers. A true battle of ideas is being powerfully waged.

Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, courageously stated that we are living through a change of times rather than through times of change. Both Rafael Correa and Hugo Chávez are Christians. But, Obama, what is he? What does he believe in?

One year after the murder of Bin Laden, Obama is competing with his rival, Mitt Romney, to justify that action which was perpetrated at a facility close to the Military Academy of Pakistan, a Muslim country allied to the United States.

Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois. According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged and the executioners were the ones who executed.

There is no doubt that Obama was a Christian; one of the facets of that religion helped him to learn the trade of conveying his ideas, an art that meant a lot to him during his meteoric rise to the upper echelons of his party.

The principled declaration of Philadelphia of July of 1776 stated that all men were born equal and free and that they were all endowed by their Creator with certain rights. As far as we know, three quarters of a century after independence the black slaves, with their wives and children, continued to be sold at public squares; and almost two centuries later, Martin Luther King, a Nobel Peace Laureate, had a dream, but he was murdered.

The Oslo Nobel Committee awarded Obama his prize, and he almost became a legend. However, millions of persons must have watched the images. Nobel Laureate Barack Obama traveled hurriedly to Afghanistan as if the world ignored the mass murders, the burnings of Muslims’ sacred books and the desecration of the corpses of murdered persons.

No honest person will ever assent to the perpetration of terrorist actions. But, has the US president any right to judge or kill, to become both the judge and the executioner and commit such crimes in a country and against a people on the opposite side of the planet?

We watched the US President in shirtsleeves, running up a steep staircase, walking at quick pace down an overhead corridor and stop to give a speech to a large military contingent that applauded unwillingly the words of the illustrious President. Those men were not all American-born. I thought about the colossal expenses this meant, whose burden is being borne by the world. After all, who is bearing the burden of that huge cost which exceeds already 15 trillion dollars? That is what the illustrious Nobel Peace Laureate offers humanity.

Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 3, 2012

7:50 p.m.

René González is in Cuba

Reprinted from Prensa Latina

René González, one of the five anti-terrorist Cuban fighters unfairly given harsh prison sentences in the United States, arrived to Cuba on Friday on a family, private visit in the wake of authorization by a US judge to visit his gravely ill brother.

According to information released by the TV news program, René arrived minutes alter midday.

On February 24, René had filed through his lawyer an emergency motion before the South Florida District Court, requesting an authorization to visit his brother, seriously ill in Cuba.

Nearly a month later, on March 19, Judge Joan Lenard, who have been handling the case of The Cuban Five since the start of their proceedings, authorized the trip for 15 days under certain conditions, including obtaining all US government travel permits needed.

She also set as a prerequisite failing a detailed travel schedule, his location in Cuba and information of contact in the country, as well as a systematic phone contact with his probation officer.

The judge also made clear that all conditions of Rene’s supervised release remain unchanged and he has to go back to the United States as soon as the two weeks pass from the date of his trip.

After having suffered 13 years of unfair prison, René is under a supervised release regime for another three years during which he has to remain in the United States, which constitutes an additional sanction.

The decision of authorizing his trip is fully in line with conditions established for his supervised release, which allow him to travel to Cuba after an approval by the probation officer or the judge.

Even the US Government, which has opposed all motions filed by René to be allowed a permanent return to Cuba and his temporary visit to his brother, admitted that conditions of his supervised release do not prevent him from visiting our country.

In this regard, as of March 7, 2011, the Attorney General’s Office argued that the terms of Rene’s supervised release do not prevent him from traveling to Cuba during that period. “Nothing will prevent him from requesting his probation officer (or the court, if he was denied that by the former) a permit to travel to Cuba to visit his wife, his old parents or other relatives.”

In the motion filed by his lawyer, Rene said he would comply with the terms established for the visit and return to the United States.

Despite the terms imposed, our people, with deep respect, welcomes home our beloved René, and do not stop fighting for his final, permanent return home along with his four close brothers, says the press release.

René González, along with his comrades Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González, was detained in 1998 in the United States for monitoring Miami-based violent groups operating against Cuba.