LETTER
TO OBAMA
February
5, 2014
Mr.
President,
I
will not address the juridical flaws of the case against the Cuban Five. These
flaws are well known and others have written you about them. The Five were
tried in a kangaroo court and received very heavy sentences because of the
crimes of Fidel Castro.
What
are these crimes?
Clearly,
they have nothing to do with the state of political democracy in Cuba. The
United States has very good relations with the government of Saudi Arabia and,
as you know, there are no political freedoms there; indeed, there isn’t even
freedom of religion and the rights of women are severely curtailed.
Castro’s
crime – for which the Five are paying – is obvious: he humiliated the United
States. As Leycester Coltman, a British ambassador to Cuba, has written, Fidel
Castro is “still a bone . . . stuck in American throats. He had defied and
mocked the world’s only superpower, and would not be forgiven.”[1]
Where
did the Castro brothers defy the United States? One of the most important
places is southern Africa. I am sure you sensed this in your recent visit to
South Africa when you witnessed how warmly the South African people responded
to Raúl Castro. As the chair of the African National Congress said, when
introducing Raúl Castro, “We now will get an address from a tiny island, an
island of people who liberated us, who fought for our liberation.”
While
the Cubans were fighting for the liberation of the people of South Africa,
successive American governments did everything they could to stop them.
In
October 1975, the South Africans, encouraged by the Ford administration,
invaded Angola to crush the left wing Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola (MPLA). In response, 36,000 Cuban soldiers suddenly poured into Angola.
By April 1976, the Cuban troops had pushed the South Africans out.
Had
the South Africans succeeded in imposing their will on Angola, the grip of
white domination would have tightened over the people of southern Africa. It
was a defining moment: Castro sent troops to Angola because of his commitment
to what he has called “the most beautiful cause,”[2] the struggle against
apartheid. Castro, Kissinger explained, “was probably the most genuine
revolutionary leader then in power.”[3]
The
tidal wave unleashed by the Cuban victory in Angola washed over South Africa.
Mandela later recalled hearing about it while he was incarcerated on Robben
Island. “I was in prison when I first heard of the massive aid that the
internationalist Cuban troops were giving to the people of Angola. … We in
Africa are accustomed to being the victims of countries that want to grab our
territory or subvert our sovereignty. In all the history of Africa this is the
only time a foreign people has risen up to defend one of our countries.”[4]
This
Cuban victory over apartheid meant a defeat and a humiliation for the United
States. Enraged, the Ford administration ended the talks it had been conducting
with Cuba toward normalizing relations.
President
Carter also said there could be no normalization of relations until Cuba
withdrew its troops from Angola – even though the CIA conceded that the Cuban
troops were “necessary to preserve Angolan independence” against the continuing
threat posed by South Africa.[5] In June 1980, the South Africans launched
another major raid, advancing more than a hundred miles into Angola, stopping
only thirty miles south of the Cuban line protecting the country. The UN
Security Council responded with a tough resolution condemning the invasion, and
the US representative on the Council minced no words in his speech chastising
South Africa. When it came to vote, however, he abstained because the
resolution included language suggesting that if South Africa launched another
attack on Angola the Security Council might impose sanctions.
I am
sure you can appreciate the irony, Mr. President. The United States had
stationed large numbers of troops in Italy, West Germany and Turkey – countries
that faced no immediate military threat from the Soviet Union in 1980, but
Jimmy Carter denied the Angolans the right to have Cuban troops to protect
their country from the very real South African threat.
Castro
refused to bow to Carter’s demands, which meant that he sacrificed the
possibility of normalization with the United States (and the lifting of the
embargo) in order to protect Angola from the apartheid regime.
From
1981 to 1987, the South Africans launched bruising invasions of southern
Angola, encouraged by the friendly Reagan administration in Washington. It was
a stalemate until November 1987, when Castro decided to push the South Africans
out of Angola once and for all. His decision was triggered by the fact that the
South African army had cornered the best units of the Angolan army in the
southern Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale. And his decision was made possible by
the Iran Contra scandal rocking Washington. Until the Iran Contra scandal
exploded in late 1986, weakening and distracting the Reagan administration, the
Cubans had feared that the United States might launch an attack on their
homeland. They had therefore been unwilling to deplete their stocks of weapons.
But Iran Contra defanged Reagan and freed Castro to send Cuba’s best planes,
pilots, and antiaircraft weapons to Angola. Castro’s strategy was to break the
South African offensive against Cuito Cuanavale in the southeast and then
attack in the southwest, “like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow
and with his right – strikes.”[6]
On
March 23, 1988, the South Africans launched their last major attack against
Cuito Cuanavale. It was an abject failure. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff noted,
“The war in Angola has taken a dramatic and — as far as the South Africans are
concerned — an undesirable turn.”[7]
The
Cubans’ left hand had blocked the South African blow while their right hand was
preparing to strike: powerful Cuban columns were moving towards the Namibian
border, pushing the South Africans back. Cuban MIG-23s began to fly over
northern Namibia.
Among
the Cuban soldiers advancing toward the Namibian border were two young men
whose names are now well known: Fernando González Llort and Gerardo Hernández
Nordelo. Ten years earlier, René González Sehwerert had also fought in Angola.
These three men, together with Ramón Labañino Salazar and Antonio Guerrero
Rodríguez, are the five Cubans on whose behalf I am writing.
US
and South African documents prove that the Cubans gained the upper hand in
Angola. The Cubans demanded that Pretoria withdraw unconditionally from Angola
and allow UN-supervised elections in Namibia. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff
warned that if South Africa refused, the Cubans were in a position “to launch a
well-supported offensive into Namibia.” The South Africans acknowledged their
dilemma: if they refused the Cuban demands, they ran “the very real risk of
becoming involved in a full-scale conventional war with the Cubans, the results
of which are potentially disastrous.” The South African military was grim: “We
must do the utmost to avoid a confrontation.”[8]
Pretoria
capitulated. It accepted the Cubans’ demands: it withdrew unconditionally from
Angola and agreed to UN-supervised elections in Namibia.
The
Cuban victory reverberated beyond Namibia and Angola. In the words of Nelson
Mandela, the Cuban victory “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the
white oppressor … [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa … Cuito
Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent – and of my
people – from the scourge of apartheid.”[9]
You
were at Mandela’s memorial service, Mr. President, and you celebrated his
legacy. You saw the reaction of the South African people to Raúl Castro and to
the name of Cuba. Yes, Cuba changed the course of history in southern Africa
despite Washington’s best efforts to prevent it. In so doing Cuba offended and
provoked the United States – not only Ford, and Reagan but also Carter,
self-styled champion of human rights. In the American mind, Cuba was the
aggressor and the United States was, as always, on the side of the angels. As
US historian Nancy Mitchell has pointed out, “our selective recall not only
serves a purpose, it also has repercussions. It creates a chasm between us and
the Cubans: we share a past, but we have no shared memories.”[10]
Perhaps, Mr. President, what you saw in South Africa may inspire you to bridge the chasm and understand that in the quarrel between Cuba and the United States the United States is not the victim, and that the Five Cubans are, simply, political prisoners.
Piero
Gleijeses
Piero Gleijeses is a
professor of US foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies. His most recent book is Visions of Freedom: Havana,
Washington, Pretoria and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991, Chapel
Hill, 2013. His other books include The Cuban Drumbeat: Castro’s Worldview,
Seagull Books, 2009; Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa,
1959-1976. Chapel Hill, 2002; Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the
United States, 1944-1954, Princeton, 1992; The Dominican Crisis: The 1965
Constitutionalist Revolt and American Intervention. Baltimore,
1978 (revised edition: La esperanza desgarrada: la rebelión dominicana de 1965
y la invasión norteamericana, Dominican Republic, 2012).
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