The Three Executions
The hijacking of the Havana harbor ferry, the Baraguá, couldn’t have come at a worse time. It was the seventh hijacking in 7 months and came on April 2, a day before the trials of the dissidents were to start, making it easy for Cuba’s enemies, and not a few of its friends, to lump the two disparate events into one “wave of repression.”
The ferry was no more than a flat-bottomed self-propelled barge with a cabin, safe only for calm harbor waters, and that night there were 50-odd people on board including children and foreign tourists. The armed hijackers took it to sea in a highly dangerous Force 4 wind, ran it out of fuel, and threatened by radio to start throwing hostages overboard if they were not given enough fuel to reach Florida. The amazing part is how the Cuban coast guard convinced the hijackers to allow a tow of the drifting ferry to the port of Mariel where special forces set up a trap and divers prepared for the rescue. After many hours of standoff, it all ended in less than a minute when a French woman suddenly dove overboard and was followed en masse by the other hostages and the hijackers as well. The hostages were all rescued, and the hijackers quickly arrested.
In the trial the state asked for, and received, the death penalty for the three ringleaders of the hijacking, an action upheld by an appeals court because it was a terrorist act of extreme gravity even though no one was injured. Then the Council of State had to ratify or commute. Should Cuba end its nearly three-year moratorium on executions? Should they stir up condemnation from the world movement against the death penalty? Should they delay their decision and let those guys wait on death row for a while – not 15-20 years like in the States, but at least a few weeks so as not to show undue haste? Or should they commute to life and show mercy.
Frankly, being against the death penalty, I thought a combination of the last two would be best: wait and commute. But I didn’t know that at the time the Cuban security forces were investigating another 29 hijacking plots. From the Council of State’s point of view it surely looked like the beginning of a wave of hijackings encouraged as always by the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act and the wet-foot, dry-foot policy that discriminates against all non-Cuban illegal immigrants. Particularly galling to Cuba is the hero treatment hijackers have gotten in Florida and the fact that if a pilot flies a plane over there willingly, he’s not considered a hijacker and is guilty of no more than misappropriation of property.
If there is one principle that Cuba has always followed, at least since the missile crisis of 1962, it is never to give the United States a pretext for military action. Another Mariel exodus or rafters crisis, or indeed a wave of hijackings, would be just such a pretext, as Fidel later reasoned, for imposing a U.S. naval blockade, an all-out bombing campaign, and an outright invasion. They could avoid another Mariel or rafters episode, but they had to stop the hijackings immediately. And he was right. On April 25 the chief of the Cuba Bureau of the State Department told the Chief of Cuba’s Interests Section in Washington that the United States would consider any more hijackings to be a serious threat to U.S. national security. Understanding “one more and we take military action” would not be paranoia.
But the Council of State didn’t have to wait for that news. They knew it already. They ratified the sentences on April 10, and they were carried out the next morning. You can fault Cuba on the principle of “no death penalty under any circumstances,” but the fact is that Cuba is one of more than 100 countries that have it on the books. They had just seen what U.S. bombs and missiles had done to Baghdad, saw the painstaking work of two generations at risk, including their centers of science and technology, educational institutions, hospitals and clinics, their historic cultural heritage, but most important their people who would be killed and maimed. And they didn’t confuse the hijackers with dissidents. They were delinquents turned terrorists who had threatened vastly more than their 50 hostages.
It came as no surprise to Cuba when, with the executions and the sentencing of the dissidents at nearly the same time, the howling around the world began. They seemed to be ready for it to a degree, but you could sense a certain shock when long-time friends of the revolution like Eduardo Galeano and Jose Saramago joined the chorus of condemnation. They were joined by Chomsky, Zinn, Albert, Davis, Dorfman and others, whose works are treasures in my library, who signed the superficial statement of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy: “We the undersigned strongly protest the current wave of repression in Cuba…[against dissidents]…for their non-violent political activities…” Like the dissidents are not equal to terrorism, embargo, and psychological warfare as instruments in Washington’s unending campaign to convert Cuba into another American vassal. Fair enough if that’s what they want for Cuba. Pitiful if they signed without thinking.
A few weeks after the executions and dissident trials, at the May Day rally of more than one million people in Havana’s Revolution Square, the Rev. Lucius Walker, one of the most effective and committed U.S. Cuba solidarity activists, made an elegant plea for Cuba to abolish the death penalty. Fidel responded with appreciation, saying only that such an action was under study. Yet less than three weeks later another group of eight armed hijackers, arrested before taking over a flight on April 10, were tried and sentenced. Despite convictions for terrorism and violence, the ringleaders were sentenced to life imprisonment and the others to terms of 20 to 30 years.
Readers will note that the important legal and human rights issue of due process has not been addressed in these pages. Among the criticisms of both the dissidents’ and the hijackers’ cases were allegations that the defendants were railroaded without an opportunity for adequate legal defense. The problem in addressing this issue has not been helped by the lack of published information on the trials. For example, I have found no public chronology in any of the 75 cases from the moment of arrest to the opening of the trial that would include dates and times for events such as arrest, presentation of charges, and sessions spent by the defendant with a defense lawyer in preparation for the trial. Nor have the written charges nor the defendants’ responses and pleas nor the judges’ decisions been published with the exception of the sentences. This lack of information prevents assessment of due process.
Nevertheless the Foreign Minister went to pains to address these criticisms in his three hour-plus press conference of April 7, pointing out the Spanish colonial origins of summary trial procedures and their wide use around the world today. He also said that in the 29 trials (some trials had more than one defendant) 54 lawyers participated, of whom 44 were chosen by the defendants and 10 appointed as public defenders by the courts, adding that several lawyers served more than one defendant. Perhaps most important, he said that defendants were allowed to testify before the court answering the charges and submitting to cross-examination. He emphasized the number of people allowed to attend the trials, mostly family members and averaging about 100 observers per trial. Still, the lack of full information on the prosecution and trial procedures has left the door open for charges of lack of due process, charges that cannot be resolved until the courts provide more details.
Epilogue
In Washington, despite the black eye that Cuba is seen to have self-inflicted, the Congressional supporters of legislation to end or ease the embargo and to abolish the travel ban are again moving ahead with the introduction of new legislation for that purpose. While most condemned the April events, they are sticking with their principles, mostly in the belief that Americans who come to Cuba will change the Cubans. Over the years I’ve seen just the opposite happen, but ending the travel ban is certainly worthy, reasons aside.
The Bush administration, peopled as it is with hard line Cuban-Americans, continues to ratchet up the pressure with the expulsion of 14 Cuban diplomats in Washington and New York on vague espionage charges. Clearly a political, not a national security decision, someone in the FBI leaked the news that the White House had apparently told the State Department to expel Cubans, and State asked the FBI for some names. The FBI source added that none of the Cubans was the subject of an on-going espionage investigation. Conversely the Cuban-American congressional representatives from Miami, Ros Lehtinen and Díaz Balart, whine openly that Bush won’t take their calls demanding a swift end to the Cuba problem once and for all.
In Miami all those NGOs sucking at the teats of Aid for International Development (AID) and the National Endowment (NED) to keep their anti-Castro industry going, along with their comfortable life-styles, will have to go back to their computers and draw up new plans for civil society in Cuba. They’ll have to look for ways to salvage their counterpart fronts across the straits and for more Cubans with few enough scruples and just enough self-destructive instincts to take their money.
Over here in Havana, James Cason would do well to slip away on consultations back at the State Department and quietly retire. He did, after all, get 75 of “our guys” put away, some for quite a while, and all the anti-Cuban propaganda dividend flowing from his service to Reich in no way compensates. He’s finished in the Foreign Service even though he was carrying out Reich’s orders, for Cason, not Reich, is the one who’ll take the fall. Then again he might just find a fat new anti-Cuba career with one of the Miami NGOs.
At the U.S. Interests Section, State, AID and CIA officers will now have to start beating the bushes for new blood, sending names and background information for security clearances on people willing to work with the Miami NGOs following in the footsteps of the 75, and the Cuban security service will surely oblige with promising candidates as they always have in the past.
And the rest of us?
The threat of war in Cuba from Bush and his coterie of crusaders, all of them crazed with hubris after Iraq, is real. A military campaign against Cuba, coinciding with the already-underway 2004 electoral campaign, may be the only way he can hope to finally get himself elected, even if only for his second term. And every day the economy is working against him with no signs of improving for 2004. He knows the economy in ‘92 did his father in, and he may conclude that fulfilling his divine mission to extend U.S. military control of the world will need a crisis very close to home.
The time to mobilize against that war is now, and not a day can be lost.