Why
Fidel Castro Loves the Embargo
By Servando Gonzalez
April 29, 2016
On December 16, 2015, I got a phone call from
a producer at Radio Martí. They wanted to interview
me about the possibility of the end of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
Even though I was surprised — most likely they had not read
any of my books — I accepted the offer.
Radio Martí is a radio station created by the CIA in 1985
following the lines of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Its true purpose was to disseminate pseudo anti-Castro propaganda
to keep the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida happy and giving their
votes to the traitorous Republican Party. Being less gullible
and much more cynical than the Europeans, Radio Martí
never reached a large audience among the Cuban people.
The next day, at the beginning of the interview, the journalist
told me I had been selected for it because of my advocating the
end of the embargo. I corrected her, saying that I had never advocated
anything; I just had always been against the embargo for many
reasons, the main one because the embargo only benefited Castro,
adding that the embargo actually was created to give Castro a
justification for the economic destruction of Cuba. Finally, I
said that while Castro was alive in Cuba, he would do anything
he could to avoid the end of the embargo or a rapprochement with
the U.S.
Not surprisingly, the interview didn’t last long. Evidently,
those were not the answers they were expecting. They never called
me asking for more interviews.
Recent events, however, have proven I was right.
Just a few hours after Obama’s poorly-conceived, ill-timed
and sloppily executed visit to Cuba ended, Fidel Castro wrote
an irate article strongly chastising Obama for his speech to the
Cuban people. [1] Obviously, Castro doesn’t like the U.S.
efforts to mend relations with Cuba, much less to end the embargo.[2]
However, in order to understand what is really going on in Cuba
we need to know two things: first, that Fidel, not his brother
Raúl, is the one still in power and having full control
of the Cuban government and; secondly, that Fidel has always felt
an irrational deep hatred for America and Americans.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding Castro’s evident contempt
toward the U.S., most Americans do not seem to understand that
Castro cannot care less about the United States. This is best
evidenced in the attempts of several administrations to reach
an accommodation with Castro and Castro torpedoing those attempts.
For example, in 1971 President Nixon hinted at a possible reconciliation.
To his surprise, Castro’s angered response was that “Normal
relations with the imperialists would mean renouncing our elementary
duties of solidarity with the revolutionary peoples . . . of Latin
America.[3]
Three years later the U.S. attitude towards Cuba seemingly had
softened, and the Ford administration began seeking a better understanding
between the two countries. In November 1974, less than three months
after Ford became President, secret talks between American officials
and representatives of the Castro government took place, and the
possibility of an improvement in relations was explored. On September
23, 1975, Assistant Secretary of State William D. Rogers openly
mentioned the U.S. desire to improve relations with Cuba.
Then, when everything indicated that the two countries were moving
toward better understanding, American intelligence discovered
the first signs of Castro’s involvement in Angola. On December
20, President Ford called a press conference, stating “The
action of the Cuban government in sending combat forces to Angola
destroys any opportunity for improvement in relations with the
United States.”[4]
Two years later, in 1977, during the Carter administration, another
effort was made to reach more normal U.S.-Cuba relations. On February
3, 1977, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance expressed U.S. willingness
to begin a new cycle of discussions with the Castro government.
On September 1977, both countries opened interests offices as
a first step for the normalization of diplomatic relations.
But then, on July 17, 1977, Somalian dictator Siad Barre invaded
Ethiopia, and, soon after, Castro decided to militarily support
the invasion. By January 1978, several thousand Cuban troops,
equipped with tanks and artillery, had joined the Somalis in their
invasion of Ethiopia. Castro’s decision cut short any American
desire to improve relations with Cuba.
In early 1996, the Clinton administration took a series of steps
toward a rapprochement with the Castro regime. Secret talks were
held in Havana between Cuban government and Washington officials.
Then, on February 24, 1996, Cuban MiGs shot down two unarmed American
civilian planes over international waters, killing four Americans.
The planes belonged to the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue
organization, an anti-Castro group providing help to rafters escaping
from Cuba. The incident brought the rapprochement process to an
abrupt halt.[5]
Then, during the last months of 1998, the ever-faithful liberals
in the Clinton administration, who apparently didn’t get
it that Fidel Castro was not interested at all in improving relations
with the U.S., tried again to win Fidel’s love by unilaterally
taking some measures directed at softening the conditions of the
embargo. To everybody’s surprise the reaction of the Castro
government was outrage and criticism.[6] Finally Castro rejected
the deal, allegedly because of the financial conditions attached.
Clinton’s aggressive and treasonous measures, Castro’s
officials claimed, were intended to undermine and attack the revolution.
And so on and on, ad nauseam.
In early 2015, Obama unexpectedly removed Cuba from the list of
state sponsors of terrorism, seeking to normalize relations between
the two countries. Then speaking in July from the White House,
Obama declared, “This is a historic step forward in our
efforts to normalize relations with the Cuban government and people,
and begin a new chapter with our neighbors in the Americas.”
But late last year, resorting to the same modus operandi,
Castro drove a nail in the coffin of the end of the U.S. embargo.
It was reported that Cuban military operatives had been spotted
in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar
al-Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made
tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S.[7]
To add insult to injury, Castro ordered Raúl[8] to breach
protocol by not receiving Obama at Havana’s airport. A person
with more intelligence, dignity and guts would have recognized
the affront and ordered the Air Force One pilots to turn around
and fly back to the U.S. But the impostor lacks these qualities
— that was one of the reasons the CFR conspirators selected
him as President — and seemingly was not insulted by the
offense and kept smiling like the fool he is during the whole
visit. Actually the Castros gave Obama the treatment he deserves.
Despite Fidel Castro’s claims on the contrary, one has to
conclude that the disastrous state of the Cuban economy, which
has brought poverty, malnutrition, disease and all sorts of calamities
to the Cuban people, is by Castro’s design and not by mistake
or as a result of the U.S. embargo.
Contrary to Castro’s assertions, he has benefited enormously
from the U.S. embargo. Far for hurting him, the U.S. economic
embargo has greatly helped Castro. It has given him a excuse to
claim that the embargo, not Castro’s actions, is the cause
for the dismal state of Cuba’s economy.[9]
While the Cuban people lack adequate food supplies, Castro has
been exporting food to finance his military adventures abroad.
Just a few years after Castro took power in Cuba, a strict system
of food rationing was imposed, and is still in force. The daily
diet to which most Cubans have been restricted for almost 37 years
of rationing is not only inferior to the diet of the 1950s, but
also to the nutritional ration normally allocated to slaves in
the colonial Cuba of 1842. A final example will provide an indication
that the true reason for food scarcities in Cuba is not the American
embargo.
One can understand that, because of the embargo, Cubans cannot
drink Coca-Cola or eat Burger King’s hamburgers. But Cuba
is a big Island with plenty of fertile soil, and a climate that
supports four crops a year. Since the Fifties, Cuba was self-sufficient
in the production of basic foods for self-consumption, including
beef, poultry, fish, vegetables, rice, beans, etc. Now, for the
sake of argument, let’s accept that because of the embargo
Cuban farmers lack the adequate machinery, fertilizers, and the
like to produce enough food. But how about fish? Cuba is a long,
narrow island with miles and miles of seacoast where fish and
seafood are varied and plentiful. Why, one may ask, don’t
Cubans fish to supplement their meager food rations? The answer
is very simple: because Fidel Castro strictly prohibits it, the
same way he has for many years prohibited Cubans to engage in
almost any productive activity he cannot fully control.
Just casting a fishhook on a line over the Malecón, Havana’s
promenade facing the sea, would allow a Cuban to bring home a
red snapper or some other nutritious fish and have a wonderful
dinner almost free. But, although that would make him and his
family very happy, it would make Fidel Castro very angry, because
other people’s happiness is the worst offense one can inflict
on Cuba’s major misery specialist.
So, one has to conclude that the true embargo on the Cuban people
is not the inefficient U.S.-created embargo, but Castro’s
very effective one. He has created a real-life “Hunger Games”
situation in Cuba.
My idea that the embargo was specifically created to help Castro
is not a farfetched one. Actually, Castro himself confirmed it.
In his Memoirs, published in 2005, former Spanish President
José María Aznar wrote that, during a private meeting
in October 1998 while Castro was visiting Spain, he told Castro
that, if he had the power, he would end the embargo right away,
but Castro told him that, although he publicly condemned the embargo
to criticize the U.S., he “needed it for this and the next
generation.” Aznar added that he was shocked by Castro’s
cruelty and hypocrisy in using this duplicitous speech and using
he Cuban people as pawns to blame others and thus perpetuate himself
in power.[10]
Finally, it is important to understand the Obama is just a puppet
in the hands of the Council on Foreign Relations globalist conspirators.
His efforts to initiate a rapprochement with the Castro government,
culminating in his visit to the Island, just follow a plan carefully
concocted at the CFR to continue Castroism after Castro’s
death.
The plan was delineated in the 2001 CFR document U.S.-Cuban
Relations in the 21st Century: A Follow-On Chairman’s Report
of an Independent Task Force Sponsored by the Council on Foreign
Relations.[11] The Report was the continuation of a similar
one issued in 1998 whose “recommendations” —
further proof that the U.S. government is under full CFR control
— were immediately adopted in toto by the Clinton administration.
The Report shows that the CFR conspirators have been working frantically
to prepare the conditions for a “peaceful, democratic transition
after Castro”— CFR lingo for “Castroism after
Castro.” Some of the “suggestions” in the Report
are: softening the embargo, lifting the travel ban for American
tourists and businessmen who want to visit Castro’s paradise,
and military-to-military “confidence building” between
U.S. and Castroist officers.
Following CFR’s “suggestions,” a group called
the Cuba Policy Foundation was created to push the Report’s
agenda. The CPF was funded mostly by the Arca Foundation, a CFR
front. For years, the Arca guys have been bankrolling every pro-Castro
group who has asked them money.
Later, the CFR conspirators chose Julia Sweig as their designated
hitter to push the unconditional end of the embargo and the restoration
of U.S. relations with Cuba. Since then, she has been churning
out innumerable books and articles advocating these policies.
Castro’s response was swift and strong. In Early April,
2003, he cracked down on dissidents, sending a large group of
them to jail and eventually sentencing 75 to prison terms as long
as 30 years. Coinciding with the crackdown on dissidents, he ordered
three black men who had hijacked a boat trying to escape to Florida
to be shot.
Castro, a Jesuit-educated fascist at heart, has always been a
closet racist. In private conversations with his close associates
he always blames blacks for most problems in Cuba. Close witnesses
affirm that in informal exchanges with his men, Castro repeatedly
called the hijackers “los tres negritos” (lit. “the
three little back men”). Not surprisingly, in private they
always call Obama “el negro” (the Negro).[12]
Nevertheless, one must keep in mind that, even though Castro is
a CFR agent, contrary to Obama, the Clintons and the Bushes, he
has never been a CFR puppet. Actually, sometimes he has acted
as the tail wagging the CFR’s dog. So, It was foolish to
believe that he was going to deal with the puppet when he can
deal directly with the puppet’s masters.[13]
As I mentioned above, Castro began his anti-Obama rant with the
phrase: “We don’t need the empire to gives us anything.”
Well, if by “we” he doesn’t mean the Cuban people
but the Castro family, he is absolutely right. In 2005 Forbes
magazine published a list of world billionaires. According to
Forbes, at the time Castro was worth 1.4 billion dollars. Also,
recently Mexico’s Excelsior newspaper reported that Fidel’s
son, Antonio Soto, frequently visits Greece and Turkey on board
his private luxury yacht.[14] No wonder Fidel Castro loves the
U.S. embargo so much.
The bottom line is that, despite CFR efforts to implement Castroism
after Castro, there will be no change in Cuba while Castro is
alive and in power in the once-prosperous Caribbean Island.
Notes:
1. Castro calls the embargo a “blockade,”
and at one time, while he was still harboring plans to launch
a nuclear attack on the U.S., during a speech at the U.N. in October
1996 he referred to it as having the effect of “noiseless
atom bombs.” On Castro’s plans to launch a nuclear
or bacteriological attack on the U.S., see Servando Gonzalez,
The Secret Fidel Castro (Oakland, California: Spooks
Books, 2001), pp. 53-75.
2. In a long condescending article titled “Brother Obama,”
published in Cuba’s main newspaper, Castro tells Obama,
“We don’t need the empire to give us anything”
Granma, March 28, 2016, http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2016-03-28/brother-obama.
See also, Azam Ahmed, “Fidel Castro Criticizes Barack Obama’s
Efforts to Change Cuba,” The New York Times, March
28, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/world/americas/fidel-castro-criticizes-barack-obamas-efforts-to-change-cuba.html?_r=0
3. Granma Weekly Review, May 2, 1971. Also, Editorial,
“No Ping-Pong for Castro,” The New York Times,
April 21, 1971.
4. “Toward Improved United States-Cuban Relations,”
a report of a special study mission to Cuba, printed for the use
of the Committee on International Relations, May 23, 1977, p.
63.
5. David Rieff, “Cuba Refrozen,” Foreign Affairs,
July/August 1996, pp. 62-76
6. See Ellis Cose, “Castro no cede un ápice. Fidel
no le ve mucho valor a una iniciativa de EEUU,” Newsweek
en Español, January 20, 1999, p. 17. See also, AFP,
“El régimen castrista rechaza las medidas de EEUU
para flexibilizar el embargo,” La Razón, January
10, 1999.
7. “Top Cuban general, key forces in Syria to aid Assad,
Russia, sources say,” FoxNews, October 14, 2015,
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/14/cuban-military-forces-deployed-to-syria-to-operate-russian-tanks-say-sources.html
8. Some Castro lovers at the CFR and the National Security Archive
— a CIA front — are working hard to sell the lie that
Raúl Castro is actually the man in power in Cuba. See,
i.e., Philip Brenner, John M. Kirk, et al., A Contemporary
Cuba Reader: The Revolution Under Raúl Castro (New
York: Rowan & Littlefield, 2015). In the Preface, the authors
claim, “It became clear that a peaceful succession of power
had occurred in Cuba,” p. xi. Recent events, however, show
that Fidel Castro is still in command in Cuba.
9. Kaz Vorpal, “Does the Cuban Embargo Hurt Castro or Help
Him?,” http://smart.net/~kaz/cuba.html.
10. Gonzalo Guillén, “Lanzan en Bogotá un
crítico libro de Aznar,” El Nuevo Herald,
September 12, 2005, http://www.miami.com/mld/elnuevo/news/world/cuba/12620367.htm
11. http://www.cfr.org/americas/us-cuban-relations-21st-century/p3858
12. Frances Martel, “Cuban State Media: ‘Negro’
Obama ‘Incited Rebellion and Disorder,” Breitbart,
March 31, 2016, http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/03/31/cuban-state-media-negro-obama-incited-rebellion-disorder/.
During his days as a guerrilla fighter in the mountains, Castro
always referred to Cuban President Batista as “negro de
mierda” (shitty nigger). Batista was a dark-skinned mulatto
of humble origin.
13. The fact that Obama is a CIA-CFR creation is extensively documented
in my new book Barry Soetoro (a.k.a. Brack Hussein Obama:
The Puppet and His Puppetmasters (Oakland,. California: Spooks
Books, 2016).
14. “Captan al hijo de Fidel Castro en lujoso yate en Grecia,”
Excelsior, April 7, 2015, http://www.excelsior.com.mx/global/2015/07/04/1032782
----------------------------
Servando Gonzalez, is a Cuban-born American writer,
historian, semiologist and intelligence analyst. He has written
books, essays and articles on Latin American history, intelligence,
espionage, and semiotics. Servando is the author of Historia
herética de la revolución fidelista, Observando,
The
Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol, The
Nuclear Deception: Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis
and La
madre de todas las conspiraciones: Una novela de ideas subversivas,
all available at Amazon.com.
He also hosted the documentaries Treason in America: The Council
on Foreign Relations and Partners in Treason: The CFR-CIA-Castro
Connection, produced by Xzault Media Group of San Leandro,
California, both available at the author's site at http://www.servandogonzalez.org.
His book, Psychological Warfare and the New
World Order: The Secret War Against the American People is
available at Amazon.com.
Or download a
.pdf copy of the book you can read on your computer, iPad,
Nook, Kindle or any other tablet. His book, OBAMANIA:
The New Puppet and His Masters, is available at Amazon.com.
Servando's book (in Spanish) La CIA, Fidel Castro, el Bogotazo
y el Nuevo Orden Mundial, appeared last year, and is available
at Amazon.com
and other bookstores online.
His most recent book, I
Dare Call It treason: The Council on Foreign Relations and the
Betrayal of the America is available
at Amazon.com and other bookstores online. |