The trials of the Cuban revolution. Interesting facts about them as well as the roles of Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Che Guevara and the historical forces that drove these events.

Submitted by Anglicanpolitics123 t3_yztzlf in history

One major feature historical feature of the Cuban revolution and its aftermath are the political trials and executions that took place. They are both well known and little understood historically at the same time. So here are some interesting historical facts surrounding these events.

The crimes of the Batista era, the Law of the Sierra, and the influence of the legal precedents of Spanish Law and Nuremberg

  • It is well known that Castro and Che came into power overthrowing another dictator named Fulcencio Batista. According to analysis done by various groups, including the CIA at the time, "It [was] estimated that roughly 20,000 politically inspired murders and deaths during revolutionary action occurred during Batista's last term in office--March 1952 to 31 December 1958"(Political murders in Cuba--Batista Era Compared with Castro Regime, January 1963 CIA memorandum)
  • This background is itself important because according to studies done on this period, "During the rebellion against Fulcencio Batista's, the general command of the rebel army led by Fidel Castro introduced into the liberated territories the 19th century Penal Law commonly known as Ley de la Sierra. This law included the death penalty for extremely serious crimes whether perpetrated by the dictatorship or by supporters of the revolution. In 1959 the revolutionary extended its application to the whole of the republic and to war criminals captured and tried after the war of liberation. This latter extension, supported by the majority of the population, followed the same procedures as the trials held by the Allies in Nuremberg after World War II"_Ramon Treto Gomez(Thirty Years of Cuban Revolutionary Penal Law, pg 115-116)

Out of the three, Che Guevara was surprisingly the most moderate when it came to the trials of that era

  • Che Guevara has the reputation of being the most hardline out of those who led the Cuban revolutionary movement. In some respects he definitely was the most ideological compared to Castro, but when it came to the trials of the post revolutionary period he was surprisingly the most "moderate". Raul Castro at the time was the most ruthless in terms of being least likely to preside over trials that had due process. Fidel Castro presided over trials that typically involved bombastic speeches accompanied with calls for "to the wall" for the accused, which was pretty much a show trial.
  • Che Guevara surprisingly by contrast did not presided over bombastic, show trial like judgements. According to scholars analysing this period, "He went over the cases with the judges and reached his final verdicts coldly and neutrally, on the basis of evidence alone. According to Borrego, Che too great care in selecting judges and prosecutors. For instance, rebels who had been mistreated were not allowed to pass judgement on their former torturers. 'There were sometimes prosecutors who were on the extreme left' Borrego explained. 'One had to moderate those who always asked for the death sentence'"_Jon Lee Anderson(Che, pg 371)

Both Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries were driven by the pressures of public opinion

  • Scholarship on this period universally agrees that the trials of the Cuban revolution had public support. "There was little overt public opposition to the workings of the revolutionary justice. On the contrary. Batista's thugs had committed some sickening crimes and the Cuban public was in a lynching mood. Newspapers were full of morbid revelations and gruesome photographs of the horrors and brutalities that had taken place under Batista. Bohemia published snide interviews with suspects awaiting trial and provided sanctimonious captions to pictures of the executions"_Jon Lee Anderson (Che, pg 372)
  • But it was simply that there was public "support" for the trials of the Cuban Revolution. There was in many cases active public pressure on the revolutionaries. Scholarship shows that "Despite the impression the U.S. media gave of the executions, there were some efforts to formalize, and even slow down, the trials. For example, on January 16, Raúl Castro announced that trials would be temporarily suspended in order to put together more convincing evidence against the defendants. The pace of executions may also have slowed as invitations were extended to several U.S. congressmen to attend the massive January 21 rally. As Castro warned, “Be assured that we are going to be much more benign than what the people want. . . . f we follow what the people want, we would have to shoot all the informers, which is a considerable quantity, but you can’t. One has to punish the exemplary cases, the minimum. For the rest, there are other punishments. Not everyone has to be shot'. But the public often felt the sentences were not harsh enough. As a tribunal member, Orlando Borrego, later recalled, people “thought the sentencing was too benign. . . . Sometimes one asked for [a sentence of] ten years and the people wanted it to be twenty.” Toward the end of the month trials were again delayed, and now appeals were permitted in all cases. Again the delays caused consternation, and soon new legal steps were taken to hasten the trials: the constitution was altered for ninety days in order to hasten detentions; prisoners were now allowed to be tried in any part of the island, not simply where the alleged crime had taken place; and six new courts were created in Havana to try war criminals. Meanwhile, local protests continued. In Manzanillo, when two soldiers received prison terms instead of death, and one corporal was acquitted, the decision sparked a two-day riot. In Santiago the acquittal of a notorious man provoked tumultuous protests; and when the Tribunal Superior de Guerra overturned the death sentence given by a local tribunal in Pinar del Rio, sentencing the three defendants to prison sentences instead, public outrage took on ominous overtones, including veiled references to the potential such decisions had to breed counterrevolution"_Michele Chase(A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin America's Cold War/The Trials: Violence and Justice in the Aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, pg 182-183)
  • Essentially what was said above was that when Castro would give a sentence that was considered not sufficiently harsh enough, he would face a backlash from the public which sometimes in some provinces in Cuba turned to protests and riots. Continuing in this vein the scholarship also states "In February 1959, in several towns in Oriente Province, local anger over what were considered insufficiently harsh sentences developed into organized protests, including a brief transportation strike and declarations to a local newspaper. Two rebel army commanders were sent to stop the disturbances and release a statement of warning '*The problem posited by the people of Palma Soriano, protesting because Revolutionary Justice is being applied slowly and benignly [con mucha demora y benigdad] has served to allow Contramaestre to use the same incorrect procedure [protests]. . . . We say it is incorrect because they are using the same demagogic methods from 20 years ago, using public agitation to get attention. [But] a popular government, a government whose leaders cannot be called politiqueros or demagogues, a government that is resolving as quickly as possible all the problems brought on by the disintegration of a corrupt state, a government that loves liberty, respects individual rights, and is incapable of using public force against the people, because it emerged from the people . . . a government like this cannot be blackmailed with demagogic protests, disturbances of public peace. . . . We responsibly demand . . . that there be no more acts such as those in Palma and Contramaestre. [We ask that] when some injustice is committed, you go to the corresponding organisms, and you will see that justice will be done quickly."_Michele Chase(A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin America's Cold War/The Trials: Violence and Justice in the Aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, pg 183)

Historical memory of Cuban and Latin American history influenced the decisions of the trials

  • For the Cuban revolutionaries historical memories would have had an impact on the trials of this era though for Fidel Castro the memories emphasized would have been slightly different from Che Guevara. Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries when conducting the trials of the Cuban revolution would have looked back to the events of 1933. Whats' called the Cuban Revolution of 1933. After the resignation of Cuban President Gerardo Machado, dissatisfaction grew with the provisional government that came after him. Essentially in the ensuing chaos that took place mob justice prevailed where the people took things into their own hands which created chaos and instability.
  • Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries look on those events of the past in the 30s and it informed their decisions. They saw the political trials as a way to appease the people in order to prevent the chaos of past days from re-emerging, as mentioned. This perspective is affirmed in the scholarship that states "Those who were in Cuba then were well aware that if the revolutionary government had not at that moment applied severe legislation against the few hundred torturers, bombers and other brutal criminals long employed by the Batista regime, the people themselves would have taken justice into their own hands, as happened during the anti Machado rebellion, and thrown society into chaos"_Ramon Gomez Treto(Thirty Years of Cuban Revolutionary Penal Law, pg 116)
  • For Che Guevara the emphasis would have been on his experiences in Guatemala and Argentina. Lets remember he was the international revolutionary of the group who famously travelled across Latin America on his motorcycle. Che was present in Guatemala during the Guatemalan revolution of Jacobo Arbenz in the 1950s. The Eisenhower Administration, defending the United Fruit Company, initiated a coup detat to overthrow Arbenz's regime. The key to the success of the coup was flooding the radio waves with propaganda and disinformation, and also getting key generals of the military to betray Arbenz, leading to his overthrow. Che was determine not to let that happen again. So to prevent a potential coup Che supported government control of the media to prevent CIA disinformation tactics as well as the trials of the revolution to purge the military of factions that could be used for a coup.
  • Che's experience in Argentina was also a factor as well. It should be remembered that he was Argentine. And for most of his life till his early twenties he lived in Argentina. This included WWII. It is well known that after WWII Nazi war criminals and collaborators escaped the Nuremberg trials. And one of the destinations they headed to was Latin America, specifically Argentina under Juan and Eva Peron's government. The trials of the Cuban revolution took place 14 years after Nuremberg. In living memory. And just like how Nazi war criminals fled across the atlantic there was a fear that Batista war criminals would flee across the Caribbean(which they did).
  • What's interesting to analyse in all of this are the motivations and perspectives. The memories of both of them would have been known to both and would have influenced both. But they emphasised different memories still. Castro approached the Cuban revolution's trials from a nationalist perspective. Che Guevara from an Internationalist perspective.
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FeriQueen t1_ix2wvon wrote

A fascinating post! Thank you.

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No_Care_6889 t1_ix3jtvl wrote

Such a good read. I enjoyed this post so much. Thank you.

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TheLoosyGoose t1_ix3tisk wrote

Very interesting stuff, thanks for taking the time and effort to bring it all here for us.

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redditmademeregister t1_ix56qvu wrote

>According to analysis done by various groups, including the CIA at the time, "It [was] estimated that roughly 20,000 politically inspired murders and deaths during revolutionary action occurred during Batista's last term in office--March 1952 to 31 December 1958"(Political murders in Cuba--Batista Era Compared with Castro Regime, January 1963 CIA memorandum)

The only source here is the aforementioned CIA memorandum. There is a lot of context missing.

>This background is itself important because according to studies done on this period <snip> Ramon Treto Gomez (Thirty Years of Cuban Revolutionary Penal Law, pg 115-116)

This is on JSTOR and other similarly gated sites.

Something to note about the author: Raúl Gómez Treto, a lawyer who received his doctor of law degree from the University of Havana in 1954, is a senior legal advisor to the Cuban Ministry of Justice. (emphasis mine)

In the second paragraph of this work he writes:

>In a democratic society such as Cuba, the law governs the behavior of every citizen, the ruler as well as the ruled.

Cuba is not a democracy and referencing a source that seems to be biased should be explicitly pointed out.

>Che Guevara surprisingly by contrast did not presided over bombastic, show trial like judgements. According to scholars analysing this period, "He went over the cases with the judges and reached his final verdicts coldly and neutrally, on the basis of evidence alone. According to Borrego, Che too great care in selecting judges and prosecutors. For instance, rebels who had been mistreated were not allowed to pass judgement on their former torturers. <snip>

Scholars is disingenuous here. The only source here is Jon Lee Anderson's Che: A Revolutionary Life (likely the first edition). The updated edition can be found online or can be purchased from your favorite book reseller. Here again things are taken out of context. From the revised edition of the book:

>“There were over a thousand prisoners of war,” explained Miguel Ángel Duque de Estrada, who had been put in charge of the Cleansing Commission. “Many didn’t have dossiers.
>
>We didn’t even know all of their names. But we had a job to do, which was to cleanse the defeated army.”
>
>The twenty-one-year-old accountant Orlando Borrego, who administered La Cabaña’s finances, was also a tribunal president. “It was very difficult because most of us had no judicial training,” Borrego recalled. “Our paramount concern was to ensure that revolutionary morality and justice prevailed. Che was very careful. Nobody was shot for hitting a prisoner, but if there was extreme torture and killings and deaths, then yes—they were condemned to death. ... The whole case was analyzed, all the witnesses seen, and the relatives of the dead or tortured person came, or the tortured person himself.”
>
>Che told some hostile Cuban television interviewers that he never attended the trials or met with defendants himself. He went over the cases with the judges and reached his final verdicts coldly and neutrally, on the basis of the evidence alone. According to Borrego, Che took great care in selecting judges and prosecutors. When it came to the executions themselves, however, Che evidently overcame his earlier reservations about the American volunteer Herman Marks, who had been a problem in Camagüey. Marks reappeared at La Cabaña, where he took an active role in the firing squads.

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redditmademeregister t1_ix57n1j wrote

>Both Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries were driven by the pressures of public opinion

This is a completely misleading narrative. The narrative here seems to suggest that the trials we only instituted because the public wanted them. The trials were started by the revolutionaries and then public opinion fed them:

>... the trials led by the new revolutionary authorities wove together legal and honorary justice in a way that garnered mass support and laid the foundations for the consolidation of the new regime.

From the same source (A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War (American Encounters/Global Interactions)):

>Perhaps solemn, "rational," privately conducted executions might have been acceptable to U.S. critics, but the Cuban newspapers' daily gloating over the Batistianos' comeuppance and the circus-like atmosphere of the trials (the "popcorn-munching atmosphere," as described by Time Magazine) seemed suffused with vengeful relish. As two journalists wrote, "To those accustomed to Anglo-Saxon justice, it was repulsive to see a defendant tried in a sports arena." Yet many Cubans insisted it was not revenge, it was simply justice. If Batista's men fell before firing squads, they had been condemned "without the spirit of revenge"

Jon Lee Anderson's book gives a little more context about this event:

>in late January Fidel had decided to hold some high-profile public trials—of Major Sosa Blanca and several other ranking officers accused of multiple acts of murder and torture—in Havana’s sports stadium. The plan backfired, however. Attending foreign reporters were nauseated by the spectacle of jeering crowds and hysterical cries for blood.

This is nearly identical to the public executions in England and Europe during Medieval or Early Modern time periods.

There seems to be a romanticization of the Cuban revolution and lionizing the main actors:

There are other lesser known people from that time like Huber Matos:

  • In January 1959, he rode into Havana atop a tank in a victory parade alongside Castro and other revolutionaries.
  • In July 1959, Matos denounced the direction the revolution was taking by giving openly anti-communist speeches in Camagüey.
  • In September 1959, Matos wrote: "Communist influence in the government has continued to grow. I have to leave power as soon as possible. I have to alert the Cuban people as to what is happening."
  • Convicted of treason and sedition by the revolutionary government, he spent 20 years in prison (1959–1979) before being released in 1979.

Much can be said about the revolution in Cuba and the events after that. This isn't something that happened over 200 years ago. People that were alive then are still alive now. Before we go lionizing these people from academic works we could simply ask them what their thoughts are. You'd be surprised what you hear.

Full sources:

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Anglicanpolitics123 OP t1_ix5dpxj wrote

(i)If you continued reading my OP I do reference the fact that the revolutionaries themselves did want the trial. In fact the section on how historical memory influenced the trials of the Cuban revolution I explicitly speak about how Che Guevara himself did want the trials precisely to prevent a Guatemala like situation from happening. But here is something that you are not contending with in your response

  1. Fidel Castro explicitly in the Cuban revolutionary war made a holding those from the Batista era accountable as one of his promises when getting into power. So those trials in that context aren't a surprise
  2. You say that its a misleading narrative to say there was public pressure on the revolutionaries. No it isn't. The revolutionaries promised that they would bring trials for those a part of the Batista regime. But as the evidence I brought up demonstrated, there was debate as to whether there should be acquittals or prosecutions as well as whether life in prison vs capital punishment was a sufficient punishment. Now can you tell me precisely why it was that when Castro would halt the trials of the revolution that he faced a backlash from the public? Why were there protests and even riots in provinces in Cuba when the punishments weren't sufficiently harsh enough? Why did Castro have to send his own commanders to calm those disturbances? Those are the factors you aren't considering.

(ii)You seem to have gone into my post history and are saying I am romanticising the Cuban revolution. I'll be straight up. I am someone who admires the achievements of the Cuban revolution when it comes to advances in health care, women's rights, land reform, the abolition of segregation, driving the Mafia out, as well as their contributions to things like Medical Internationalism and the struggle against Apartheid. So yeah......those are things to definitely admire.

At time if you actually read those posts carefully you would know that while admiring the achievements of Castro and Che, I also give criticisms of their autocratic policies. I criticise Marxist Leninism's one party ideology. I criticise the lack of freedom of press. I criticise the banning of freedom of assembly, and I also criticise Castro's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. So that sense Castro and Che are no different from other historical revolutionaries who have major achievements and flaws. George Washington was a slave owner who codified slavery into America's laws. And yet he was a man achieved the building of a new nation and the founding of a democracy. Simon Bolivar, predecessor to Castro and Che, was an autocrat in his rule of Venezuela and set the stage for Latin American military juntas. And yet he had achievements in terms of liberating Latin America from Spanish Imperialism and abolishing slavery. I see Castro and Che as being no different in that historical light.

Lastly what I also do is in terms of pointing out the problems and flaws of the Cuban revolution I provide historical and social context as to what were the factors that drove them to those decisions, even if it's bad ones. So why did Fidel Castro place Missiles in Cuba, even though that was a terrible decision? Because of the threat of an American invasion. Why did Che Guevara support the banning of independent media in Cuba? Because of his experiences in Guatemala and the Cold War of U.S tactics of engaging in information warfare when organising coups. What I am doing here with the trials are no different.

(iii)Sure. Include discussions of Huber Matos and other dissidents. I have no problem with that.

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Anglicanpolitics123 OP t1_ix5b2vk wrote

(i)Yes. Cuba isn't a democracy and the source referenced was someone who did come from the Cuban Ministry of Justice. At the same time it is still an important source precisely because of the fact that its the archives of Cuba's Ministry of Justice that contains the relevant information on these cases in the first place.

(ii)No one is denying that Che Guevara wasn't himself ruthless. The point being though is that compared to Fidel Castro Che was much more likely to hear appeals and take them seriously based off the hard evidence that we have.

(iii)What evidence do you have that Jon Lee Anderson is being disingenous? Anderson is a respected scholar when it comes to Cuban History and the history of Latin America itself. It was in fact his biography of Che that played an important role in Cuban and Argentine anthropologists being able to locate Che Guevara's body in the fields of Bolivia 30 years after his execution. So we are speaking about someone with an enormous amount of credibility in the field.

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redditmademeregister t1_ix6fyg7 wrote

I’m saying that you’re being disingenuous and playing fast and loose with the truth.

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Anglicanpolitics123 OP t1_ix6rpe3 wrote

umm I'm not playing fast and loose with the truth. You only think I'm doing that because you have a clear ideological bias. You do realise that I couldn't quote every single aspect of the sources mentioned because reddit has a limit in terms of how much content you can place in an OP right? I had to be selective in terms of what I quoted out of the vast information I was reading on the topic. And the things I quoted were in line with the facts of the situation.

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iFixDix t1_ix4f4rq wrote

Thanks for the interesting read.

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John___Farson t1_ix56imo wrote

A good read, thanks!

Accounts of Che Guevara's 5-month tenure as commander of La Cabaña prison seem to paint him as either; A blood-crazed maniac who enjoyed personally overseeing the executions, on the one hand, or as someone who approved almost all the appeals which he was able to.

Like most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

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Vessarionovich t1_ix5vvzl wrote

A truly moderate, benevolent regime!....tragically misunderstood by the millions of Cubans who have chafed under it all these years.

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Anglicanpolitics123 OP t1_ix63shw wrote

So apparently you missed the part where the majority of Cubans supported the Cuban revolution and also.....would protest when Castro pursued lighter sentences during the trials of the Cuban revolution.

Also....the whole reason for the failure of American attempts to overthrow Castro such as the Bay of Pigs was due to popular support that Castro had. The Office of the Historian in the U.S State Department explicitly states as such in their official records when speak about the reasons for why the Cuban embargo had to be put in place.

"Salient considerations respecting the life of the present Government of Cuba are:
1.
The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent).
2.
There is no effective political opposition.
3.
Fidel Castro and other members of the Cuban Government espouse or condone communist influence.
4.
Communist influence is pervading the Government and the body politic at an amazingly fast rate.
5.
Militant opposition to Castro from without Cuba would only serve his and the communist cause.
6.
The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.
If the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."_Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs Mallory(April 6, 1960 Memorandum)

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Vessarionovich t1_ix8pt54 wrote

&#x200B;

&gt;Also....the whole reason for the failure of American attempts to overthrow Castro such as the Bay of Pigs was due to popular support that Castro had.

Gee, I thought it might have had something to do with Soviet military assistance.

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the_grinning_cat t1_ix5z6j6 wrote

> tragically misunderstood by the millions of Cubans who have chafed under it all these years.

I wonder if the economic blockade instituted by the US and supported only by two countries in the world (USA and Israel) has something to do with this... I guess people want to leave their Home Country where they have free healtcare and education for no reason at all.

I'll propose you this: tell USA to completely abandon economic imperialism against Cuba, let the island trade freely with the whole world, and let's see in a couple of years how many people still want to leave. My guess: not many. And with the inevitable economic growth, most will want to return.

But hey, do they even teach about the economic blockade in American schools any more?

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Vessarionovich t1_ix8p8hm wrote

America's economic embargo of Cuba didn't prevent $billions in annual Soviet aid to Cuba throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it didn't prevent the billions that came from Venezuala in the 90s and early 2000s, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the systemic political repression that has defined the Communist regime in Cuba since its inception.

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the_grinning_cat t1_ixd85sl wrote

Do you have any source on the "billions" of aid to Cuba from decades ago? But nevertheless, do you actually think that makes a dent in the argument? Aid for basic necesities, while useful and necesary, won't fix any of the problems caused by not being able to freely trade with the world. Which is what the USA and Israel prohibit Cuba to do. How far do you think Israel (to give an example of a similar sized country) would go with an economic blockade of the extension and duration that the cuban blockade has had?

> and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the systemic political repression that has defined the Communist regime in Cuba since its inception.

First of all, all countries have "political repression". For example, in the US political repression is strictly enforced against communists, and communist parties have historically been persecuted, criminalized and sabotaged by the FBI and the CIA. In many eastern europe "democracies" communist parties are outright outlawed. So don't talk about political repression as if it was something characteristic or unique to Cuba, when all burgouis democracy have it.

Second, economic embargo, and coup attempts in Cuba have everything to do with internal politics. The US has tried, since the inception of Cuba, as you said, to destroy the communist revolution. For that, it has tried assassinations (I guess assassinations are OK when the US does them!), coups, guerrillas, terrorism, propaganda campaigns, economic warfare, etcetera, etcetera.

How should a Country react against such persistent attempts to destroy it? Don't you think that it is necesary, for the survival of the revolution, to identify capitalist attempts at destruction and reactionary counter-revolution?

And the repression in Cuba is purely political. You don't have repression against minorities, against women, against LGBTQ people, racial repression, etcetera. You are free to live your life as you please. Just don't try to coup the government or assassinate the president, that should be simple to do for everyone except CIA agents, right?

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Vessarionovich t1_ixeoeiz wrote

&gt;Do you have any source on the "billions" of aid to Cuba from decades ago?

According to the US government, aid in 1983 alone totaled $5.3 billion....far, far more than any US aid given to any Latin country then or now...

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp85t00287r000400450001-0

&gt;Aid for basic necesities, while useful and necesary, won't fix any of the problems caused by not being able to freely trade with the world.

What kind of apologia are you advancing here? The aid was massive....far transcending "basic necessities".

&gt; Which is what the USA and Israel prohibit Cuba to do.

Again, a bizarre representation. Israel and the USA are the only countries in the world to boycott the Cuban economy. They don't prohibit Cuba to trade with and receive aid from the rest of the world. Why hasn't that trade and aid done anything to help Cuba's decrepit economic system? Perhaps because it is the same stultifying socialist system that strangled the Soviet Union and compelled China and Vietnam to pursue market reforms.

&gt;How far do you think Israel (to give an example of a similar sized country) would go with an economic blockade of the extension and duration that the cuban blockade has had?

Israel has indeed suffered an economic block-aid from much of the Muslim world for the entirety of its existence. Yet, it's doing so well economically that some Arab countries have abandoned the effort so as to benefit from economic relations with Israel.

&gt;For example, in the US political repression is strictly enforced against communists, and communist parties have historically been persecuted, criminalized and sabotaged by the FBI and the CIA.

I see. Communists in the USA are arrested and imprisoned in the USA just like non-Communist activists are arrested and imprisoned in Cuba? Believe it or not, the Communist Party of the USA exists legally....its representative runs for President every 4 years. Is there any non-Communist equivalent in Cuba? Better do some remedial studying.

&gt;You are free to live your life as you please. Just don't try to coup the government or assassinate the president, that should be simple to do for everyone except CIA agents, right?

Tell that to the hundreds of human-rights activists languishing in Cuban jails for daring to speak out and demonstrate in defense of freedom!

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the_grinning_cat t1_ixh93tw wrote

> Again, a bizarre representation. Israel and the USA are the only countries in the world to boycott the Cuban economy. They don't prohibit Cuba to trade with and receive aid from the rest of the world.

This is just a lie man, and lying is bad. The US by itself is already a good chunk of the world economy, obviously. But besides that, the US prohibits foreign companies that want to trade with Cuba from engaging in bussiness with the US. So if, say, a german company wants to sell their products in Cuba, that means they won't be able to do it in the US. And there are multiple similar mechanisms, regulations and sanctions that make it very difficult to trade with the US and with Cuba at the same time, or to do bussiness with both countries or with US allies, and so on. And can you guess which market is any company going to choose? Tiny communist island, or the biggest economy in the world?

The claim that Cuba can "freely" trade with other countries is propaganda, plain and simple. This is the bullshit that the US media promotes.

> "Of course the U.S. cannot prohibit firms from other countries from trading with Cuba," Richard Feinberg, a professor of international political economy at the University of California-San Diego, said in an email. "However, the U.S. has instituted various economic sanctions that make that trade and investment riskier and more costly, creating serious disincentives." USA Today

The cynicism you have to have to say that trade from other countries is "seriously discouraged" by the largest economy in the world, while at the same time claiming that Cuba is able to freely trade with other countries, is repugnant.

>Israel has indeed suffered an economic block-aid from much of the Muslim world for the entirety of its existence. Yet, it's doing so well economically that some Arab countries have abandoned the effort so as to benefit from economic relations with Israel.

Lobby groups were able to sanction laws against boycotting Israel. So not only they are not sanctioned by the largest economy in the world, they have laws against boycotting them. Imagine that! I can't think of any other country in the world that has laws against boycotting that country.

> I see. Communists in the USA are arrested and imprisoned in the USA just like non-Communist activists are arrested and imprisoned in Cuba? Believe it or not, the Communist Party of the USA exists legally....its representative runs for President every 4 years. Is there any non-Communist equivalent in Cuba? Better do some remedial studying.

Communist parties in the US and in most of western europe were dismantled during the cold war, you should know. Unrelentless persecution, infiltration, sabotage, false flags, criminalization and assassination of political activists caused a chilling effect and destroyed this organization. I don't know if you are being disingenous or you actually don't know the level of persecution and sabotage that these organizations had in the past. The black panthers were at a time, the largest communist and revolutionary party in the US. And they were chased to literally death. You should know that. Anti-war activists were thrown in jail, repressed with bullet and batons, killed in clashes with the police, suffered from false accusations, and so on.

The CPUSA is able to legally exist because they are so weak and tiny. How can you not see that? If any communist party gained any kind of traction in the US, it would be sabotaged, criminalized and persecuted. This is not an opinion, it is an assertion based on verifiable past experiences.

> Internal repression did and does exist in the United States, but it was not mostly subtle, it was mostly overt. The presence of police—with guns, clubs, dogs, tear gas, and firehoses—is not subtle. Burning crosses are downright ostentatious. Deployment of the National Guard to put down urban uprisings was common practice—there were over 1,000 urban uprisings between 1960 and the mid-‘70s, which means hundreds of instances of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and columns of soldiers invading American cities. According to the most conservative estimates, between 1965 and ’67, around 130 black men were killed and 28,000 arrested in various instances of urban unrest (when you consider that 43 people were killed in Detroit in July 1967 alone, those numbers seems way too low).31 The McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 established a concentration camp system (6 were completed) where accused subversives would be interned in the case of national emergency; Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and Martin Luther King all warned that this law could be used against their movements.32 In 1950, the FBI actually drew up a list of 12,000 accused subversives who were to be rounded up and held in Guantánamo Bay-style indefinite detention–the only reason they weren’t is that Truman declined Hoover’s demands to incarcerate them. After the riots that followed MLK’s assassination, the Army drew up apocalyptic plans under the rubric of Operation Garden Plot to deploy brigades to 25 cities to wage an open counterinsurgency war. If resistance to the status quo had intensified in the 1970s, rather than waned, the Pentagon was ready to turn American cities into “scenes of destruction approaching those of Stalingrad during World War II,” in the words of one Army general.

Noam Chomsky and the compatible left

> Tell that to the hundreds of human-rights activists languishing in Cuban jails for daring to speak out and demonstrate in defense of freedom!

Lol, "in defense of freedom". Freedom from whom, freedom to do what? Freedom to marry whoever you want, to eat every day, to have a house, to have higher education, to rest, to leisure? Or freedom to restore capitalism, to prostitute children and reintroduce gambling? Freedom to make Cuba a US colony again, like during the Batista years? Freedom to do what?

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Vessarionovich t1_iyaw6o9 wrote

Your desperate prevarications don't change reality.

  1. Cuba trades with many countries in the world that are major trading partners with the USA. Canada is Cuba's largest source of exports.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Cuba/Trade

  1. Has it ever occurred to you that the CPUSA is weak and tiny because they have no popular support? Regardless, they operate legally and are NOT repressed, unlike ALL non-communist Cuban parties.

  2. Freedom from whom? freedom to do what?"

Freedom from an oppressive government that brooks no opposition.

"Freedom to do what?

I realize that given your ideological proclivities, you're not very creative....but how about the freedom to vote in fair elections!...the freedom to start political parties, engaging in freedom of the press, and most importantly, having the freedom to criticize the government without being arrested (which is currently NOT the case; hundreds of human rights activists are languishing in Cuban jails, and you, purveyor of all that is good and righteous, could not care less).

You see.... your arguments can't stand the light of day....because they are constructed on intellectual and moral bankruptcies. Isn't it time to grow up and stop believing in chimera's like communism? It's been an economic and political nightmare everywhere it's ever been tried.

I've said my piece. Experience has taught me that the mind of a radical leftist is so ideologically straight-jacketed that a constructive dialogue is impossible. Therefore, I will neither respond to your reply...nor bother reading it.

Have a great night friend.

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the_grinning_cat t1_iychmng wrote

Cuba barely trades to survive, not to thrive or grow. At one point is beneficalto the US that Cuba is able to get the bare minimum to subsist. Otherwise the people would just fucking die and the US would be too explicit in their genocidical intentions against cubans. You cant be too explicit when commiting a genocide, right? And the cuban embargo is that, a genocide.

And regarding the CPUSA, in every complex phenomenon there are multiple causes. Communism parties represent the interests of the proletariat, and were historically responsible for the few concessions thst the capitalist class gave to workers (8 hour work day, vacations, child labor, etc.). So naturally they should have the support of all proletariats. But there are two facts:

  1. Communists were suppressed (either by assasination, imprisonment, blackmail, deportation, violence, etc.) from public life. Currently the violence is subtler, but when it truly mattered (50s, 60s and 70s) they were savagely repressed. If you care about history you should know that.

  2. American workers have suffered from decades of Cold War "red-scare". Massive anti communist propaganda that pits the workers against their interests.

And regarding the freedom, you can do those things in Cuba! You can engage in constructive discussion, just don't try to overthrow the government. The government is not totalitarian. It listens to its own people.

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