HAVANA, NOVEMBER 4, 2021
The United States government is the real organizer of November provocation
Plans hatched by the U.S. government and its internal operators to overthrow the Revolution and their pretensions to hold marches in several provinces across the countrywere discussed recently by Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, member of the Communist Party of Cuba Secretariat and head of its Ideological Department
Author: Gladys Leydis Ramos López | internet@granma.cu
november 4, 2021 12:11:25
Plans hatched by the U.S. government and its internal operators to overthrow the Revolution and their pretensions to hold marches in several provinces across the country were discussed recently by Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, member of the Communist Party of Cuba Secretariat and head of its Ideological Department.
In the presence of representatives from youth and student organizations, Polanco explained that his statement was among the many public condemnations made in the wake of comments by Party First Secretary and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, during the closing of the Central Committee’s second plenum.
Polanco recalled that between September 20 and 27, a small group of citizens submitted similar documents in which they announced the decision to hold supposedly peaceful marches to the headquarters of provincial and municipal governments in eight territories of the country.
This decision, he underlined, was more than a request since those submitting it were certain the march, conceived with national scope and in evident coordination with its promoters, would take place; meanwhile, the answer given by the authorities on October 12 provided precise arguments on the illegal nature of this act in relation with items 56, 45 and 4 de of the Constitution.
Among the reasons given to decline the request, he added, it was clarified that the public projections of the promoters and their links with subversive organizations and agencies financed by the U.S. Government have the clear intention to promote a change of the political system in Cuba, therefore, the announced march is another provocation related with that strategy, which has been previously mounted by the United States in other countries.
He recalled that, upon its announcement, the march received the support of U.S. legislators, political operators and the media that encourage actions against the Cuban people, promote destabilization and call for a military intervention.
Warning: This has been tried before
It is obvious that we are witnessing a new episode of the unconventional war, soft coup or the nonviolent struggle manual that the United States has executed during contemporary times in several countries such as Yugoslavia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, said the member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee.
According to the circular 18-01 (tc-1801), one of the main doctrinal documents of the U.S. Army Special Forces on unconventional warfare, some of the elements of this kind of warfare include taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of the government they wish to overthrow, to make it distant from the population, turn the citizens with a neutral standing against the government, and to exploit these elements through subversion, he detailed.
Furthermore, he added, if these methods do not bring the desired results, they would resort to armed conflict, by promoting insurgence.
The most notorious example, he said, is the guarimbas in Venezuela, violent actions of the opposition of that country held during the years 2013, 2014 and 2017 to try to overthrow the Bolivarian government and, in that endeavor, the cause countless economic and human damages in that sister nation.
The evidences are collected in a report of the Venezuelan government entitled “Venezuela’s truth against infamy. Data and testimonies from a country under siege,” published in September 2020, where it is informed that the total toll of the violent protests in February 2014 reached the total number of 43 people, meanwhile, in the ones that took place from April to June, 2017, causing 21 deaths and 1,958 injuries.
Moreover, the U.S. State Secretary in 2014, John Kerry, issued a statement in which he said that the protests taking place in Venezuela that year were peaceful and accused the government of Venezuela of using the force to confront protesters, he continued.
However, a detailed examination showed that most of the protests in 2017 broke international and national laws in force and they all ended up in actions of extreme violence.
In this sense, Polanco continued, three unprecedented practices in the recent history of the country were registered: the burning alive of people identified as followers or supporters of the national government; the use of children and teenagers to prepare incendiary bombs, guard the barricades and attack security forces and the combination of religious and patriotic symbols with high levels of violence.
Regarding the financing of subversive actions in other countries as a periodical practice of the U.S. government, Polanco referred to the organizations created for that purpose, with millions in funding, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development.
There are plenty of references of NED financing events, courses and even organizations, especially the Center for Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL), which is part of the wide network of non-governmental organizations used by the United States to channel the financing and training of its political operators.
He gave the example of NED’s funding of CADAL to the tune of $107,000 in 2017 and $100,000, earmarked for the project entitled “A regional approach to promote democratic values in Cuba.” Two Cuban citizens, Manuel Cuesta Morúa and Yunior García Aguilera, signatories of the letters announcing the intention to hold the marches in November, travelled to Argentine in 2018 to take part in the event organized by CADAL and coordinated by the project “Times of change and the new role of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba.”
Moreover, CADAL and its director Gabriel Salvia have been actively supporting the provocation set to take place in November in Cuba, he denounced.
Those two promoters, he clarified, would also continue their preparation in 2019 in a workshop sponsored by the Universidad San Luis Campus Madrid, where they received lessons from Richard Youngs, an expert in public protests as a method of political change.
Regarding the financing, he stressed out that the U.S. Agency for International Development has granted, at the end of September, $6,669,000 for subversive projects in Cuba, out of a total of 18 million that it can allocate for these projects through 2023.
Among the beneficiaries are the digital media DNA, which received $2,031,200 and Cubanet, which received $708,003, in addition to an organization called Cuban Democratic Directorate, which received $617,500. The latter is headed by Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, who has called time and again for military intervention in Cuba, and now publicly supports the marches as well.
Summing up, Polanco noted that more than 70 million were reserved for subversion during the Trump administration, in addition to more than one hundred million dollars to the Office of Broadcasting for Cuba, which operates Radio and TV Martí. It should be added, he pointed out, the millions of dollars that the intelligence community and the U.S. military apparatus devote every year against Cuba.
“The U.S. government is the real organizer of the provocation staged for November. The facts and statements prove it. High government officials are directly involved in its promotion. The U.S. government threatened new measures against Cuba if its local operators are not allowed to act with impunity. Cuba does not accept threats, nor does it allow itself to be intimidated; our history of resistance and dignity confirms this. Keep your threats to yourselves, we are not afraid,” he said.
It is not surprising either, he added, the support of anti-Cuban right-wing organizations and the hate-generating media nucleus in Miami, as seen in tweets, publications, resistance assemblies, as if the march were to be held in that city.
Another of the enthusiasts, informed the head of the Ideological Department, is the Cuban American National Foundation, which has provided plenty of guidance on how to attend and what to do in the supposedly peaceful and independent march; while one of the promoters of the demonstration, Saily González Velázquez, acknowledged the support of the foundation through its director of Human Rights, Omar López Montenegro.
Terrorist Ramon Saul Sanchez is also encouraging the march, added Polanco, and showed evidence of his toes with one of the main promoters of the actions planned for November.
