Cuba is a springboard to spread socialism to Latin America, U.S., says Cuba expert
The American Left contributed to the emergence of the communist regime in Cuba through planning, preparations, and media coverage to make Cuba the driving force for spreading socialism to the United States and Latin America, said Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, co-founder and spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a U.S.-based organization that supports human rights in Cuba.
Gutierrez-Boronat is also an award-winning author, invited lecturer at Georgetown University, and community leader. He holds a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of International Studies.
An institutional and political crisis in the 1950s in Cuba—when a military government took over the country—led to an insurrection, Gutierrez-Boronat told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program in an interview on Jan. 28.
“Then Castro and his acolytes took control of the country with great support from American liberals in every way you can imagine.”
In 1952, Fulgencio Batista, seeing that his chances to win the presidential election in Cuba were thinning after he trailed third in polls, staged a military coup, thus becoming Cuba’s dictator.
A year later, Fidel Castro, a lawyer leading a small group of revolutionaries, started a rebellion against Batista which culminated in the overthrow of the unpopular dictator in 1959. After seizing power, Castro imposed socialism on Cuba through a radical program of land reform and industrial nationalization.
A Springboard for Socialism
It is very clear in Che Guevara’s writings that the purpose of the Cuban revolution was to create a platform through which socialist revolution would spread to the United States and Latin America, Gutierrez-Boronat said.
Guevara was a Marxist revolutionary from Argentina who played a prominent role in the Castro-led revolution.
“Castro was surrounded by international advisors” who helped him design a totalitarian state in Cuba, the activist said.
“Through a combination of planning and preparation by the Cuban Communist Party, and the U.S. Communist Party, and other left-wing forces, an opportunity emerged, and Cuba became a force for socialism in Latin America.”
From the very onset, the Castro regime wanted to take over Venezuela, and in fact, Cuba sponsored an armed invasion of Venezuela in 1967.
“The same thing was repeated in key countries which [Cuba] thought were essential to creating the united socialist republics of Latin America, and of course, to also cause social tension, class struggle and radical transformation of the United States,” Gutierrez-Boronat explained.
”That has always been the plan. It’s always been part of what the regime–and they don’t hide it that much–of what the regime states it wants to pursue.”
Gutierrez-Boronat cited Herbert Marcuse, a prominent Marxist scholar of the Frankfurt School associated with Columbia University. In his book “An Essay on Liberation,” Marcuse clearly states “that the Cuban Revolution was essential for socialism in the U.S.,” Gutierrez-Boronat said.
The Cuban regime, since taking power, has been a place to train American left-wing activists, indoctrinate, and create underground cells and espionage networks in the United States, Gutierrez-Boronat continued.“Throughout the region, it facilitates any kind of activity aimed at opposing America’s plans and subverting democracies.”
How the Media Built Castro’s Image
Gutierrez-Boronat asserts that media played an important role in building Castro’s image in America. For example, New York Times journalist Herbert Matthews was “essential in building the Castro myth,” the activist said.
Two years before Castro came to power, Matthews went up into the Sierra Maestra mountains in Cuba, where Castro was organizing a guerrilla movement against Cuban dictator and then-president Batista.
Castro barely had 20 people following him, but Matthews portrayed him for the consumption of the U.S. public, as though he already had an army of hundreds, Gutierrez-Boronat said.
A few months after gaining power in 1959, Castro visited the United States, where he was presented as a democratic reformist, anti-communist, and pro-American, Gutierrez-Boronat said. “All that was false. They were already building a communist state in Cuba.”
Matthews’ coverage of Castro, as well as Castro’s visit to the United States, were steps taken to somehow deflect public attention from what the Left was really doing inside Cuba, Gutierrez-Boronat said.
During his American trip, Castro told the American media, “I have said very clearly—we are not communists.”
Castro also claimed at that time in a CBC interview: “Our opinion is that … everybody has the right to think as they want [and] this is a democratic principle. We have no reason to forbid any kind of opinion, the opinion is a principle of democracy, and that is the only reason for that we don’t forbid any idea.”
“We are not afraid of an idea because we have our idea, and we believe in our idea,” Castro added.
Only two years later, Castro finally admitted in a televised speech, “I am a Marxist-Leninist and shall be one until the end of my life.”
Repairing Socialism’s Image
“By 1959, Khrushchev had revealed the crimes of Stalin at the congress of the communist party. The [Soviet] invasion of Hungary in 1956 had taken place, along with the crushing of the East German worker strikes; all of that was in the air. People saw how repressive communism was,” Gutierrez-Boronat explained further the positive media coverage of the Cuban communist leader.
“[At that time,] the Left needed a successful socialist revolution that didn’t have any of the stains of the bad reputation that Stalinism had already gained in the world.
“Then along comes this revolution in a tropical country with some charismatic leaders promising utopia and heaven for Cubans. They began to build that up from the very onset.”
The famous secret speech, given in February of 1956 by then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, denounced his predecessor Josef Stalin for his crimes, and triggered a series of grassroots movements in Eastern European countries dominated by the Soviet Union.
In June of 1956, protests erupted in Poland and Polish communist leaders used military force with tanks to quell the unrest.
The most severe protests demanding democratic reforms broke out in Hungary, in the fall of 1956. The Soviet Union resorted to invading the country to maintain its dominance there.
Earlier, after the death of Stalin in 1953, workers in communist East Germany had risen in protest against government demands to increase productivity Within days, protests and riots spread across the country. The Soviet occupation authorities suppressed the rioting using massive military force.
Media Blackout of Cuban Protests
To this day, because Cuba is supposed to be the driving force for spreading socialist revolution in the region, there is still an attempt to protect the Cuban regime from any bad publicity it generates for itself, Gutierrez-Boronat said. He referred to mass protests against the communist regime in July of 2021. The protests in Cuba were the largest against the regime in decades.
Protesters demonstrated against human rights abuses, a lack of freedom, and a worsening economic situation in the communist-ruled country.
Since then, “thousands of Cubans have gone out to publicly protest against the regime, especially young artists, women, youth, all demanding change, and demanding the end of communism,” Gutierrez-Boronat said.
The protests continue and hundreds of protesters have been arrested and imprisoned, but the media do not report on it, Gutierrez-Boronat said. Although protests can be seen on video recordings, “there seems to be a literal blackout on what’s going on in Cuba with the citizen defiance of the regime.”
In the past few months, videos and photographs have appeared, showing families collaborating to set up barricades as a form of protest so police cannot enter neighborhoods, Gutierrez-Boronat said. “That was unheard of in Cuba five years ago or three years ago. It’s a new phase of resistance by the Cuban people.”
Communist regimes initially seek to destroy the economy to control the people, Gutierrez-Boronat said. “In the case of Cuba, they had to control and destroy Cuban agriculture in order to control [the] food supply.”
“They need to control food to control cities, and they need to control cities to control the middle class because the middle class can oppose them successfully … But once they unleash these forces of destruction, they lose control.”
“And this is what drives the insurgency forward. The regime still has a strong security apparatus that can prevent the emergence of a unified national movement, but they can’t destroy the movement as it is now; organic, based in neighborhoods and towns, and flourishing.”
To break the information blockade on what is happening inside Cuba, Gutierrez-Boronat and other activists participate in international conferences, organize protests, and meet with political, labor, and student leaders to “get the word out.”
“It has been successful,” Gutierrez-Boronat said. ”A network of solidarity for a free Cuba has emerged over the past few years, and we greatly contributed to that.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/cubas-communist-regime-emerged-with-support-of-american-left-orlando-gutierrez-boronat_5053125.html
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