BY LAURA GARZA AND MARTÍN KOPPEL
UNITED NATIONS - "The government of Cuba takes full responsibility for the patriotic action that was carried out in legitimate defense of the country's sovereignty and security," stated Cuban foreign minister Roberto Robaina, addressing a March 6 session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Robaina was referring to the events of February 24, when Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces shot down two Cessna aircraft from Opa-locka, Florida, that, defying explicit warnings from Cuban air controllers, were violating the Caribbean nation's airspace. The planes, flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based group led by Cuban- American counterrevolutionaries, were on a hostile mission headed toward the Havana area.
Robaina placed the blame for these provocations squarely on Washington.
"Many people, including our own friends in the United States, ask us: `Why did you shoot down those planes right at this time?' That is, `Why does this occur at such a delicate and dangerous moment during the nasty and unscrupulous electoral fights in the United States, on the eve of the November elections?' " Robaina said.
"This incident was not the consequence of a deliberate act by Cuba," the Cuban foreign minister stated. "It was not we who could prevent these violations from continuing. The U.S. government, from whose territory the acts of aggression were launched, was the only one that had this opportunity in its hands." He documented the years-long pattern of violations of Cuban territorial waters and airspace as well as terrorist attacks by U.S.-based counterrevolutionaries.
The Cuban foreign minister also denounced Washington's recent moves to tighten the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, particularly what he termed the "criminal Helms-Burton bill," which was being passed at that time by the U.S. House of Representatives, a day after its approval by the Senate.
U.S. president Bill Clinton has vowed to sign the measure. Reiterating his opposition to Cuba's revolutionary government, he said the sanctions will "send Cuba a powerful message that the United States will not tolerate further loss of American life."
A few days earlier, on March 2, the Clinton administration mobilized U.S. Coast Guard and Navy ships, along with fighter jets, in a show of force directed against Cuba. This armada accompanied a few dozen Cuban-American counterrevolutionaries who staged a boat flotilla in the Florida Straits, provocatively approaching Cuba's territorial waters.
The Cuban government issued a firm warning that it would defend the country against any violation of its airspace and waters. The rightists turned back well before their intended destination, stating that bad weather and seasickness made them cut the operation short.
Pattern of U.S. provocations, attacks
In his UN speech, Robaina explained, "The history of
aggression against Cuba and violations of its sovereignty and
territorial integrity did not begin February 24, but rather 37
years ago. On Oct. 21, 1959, one of the first violent actions
against the Cuban revolution was launched, just as today, from
southern Florida, when pirate planes dropped subversive
propaganda and bombed the country's capital, an attack that
cost our people valuable lives.
"The Opa-locka base itself, under the cover of a civilian agency, was used to train and prepare part of the air force that took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961," the Cuban official said.
"Since 1990, 14 infiltrations and armed pirate attacks have been carried out against our country by vessels from the southern United States, and dozens of terrorist plans have been aborted by us." Robaina added that Brothers to the Rescue had carried out 25 incursions into Cuban airspace in the past year and a half, including two in January.
"The Cuban population reacted with indignation and concern at such flagrant violations of our airspace," the foreign minister reported. The downing of the two invading planes has been highly popular among Cuban working people. Rallies protesting the U.S. plane provocations and hailing the shootdown have been held in factories, farms, and other workplaces throughout the island.
Brothers to the Rescue leaders portray themselves as a humanitarian group founded in 1991 to spot people leaving Cuba by raft and deliver them to safety. Despite their professed charitable goals, they have charged Cuban-Americans between $2,000 and $4,000 to "rescue" family members, according to Juan Pablo Roque. A former Cuban air force pilot, Roque went to Miami in 1992, where he joined Brothers to the Rescue. He returned to Cuba in mid-February.
The organization's stated cause has become harder to sustain as the number of rafters has dwindled since the signing of a U.S.-Cuba immigration agreement in September 1994. Since then, its "actions turned more provocative," according to an article in the February 25 Miami Herald.
The claims by leaders of Brothers to the Rescue of being "nonviolent" are belied by their records. Robaina noted that "Cuba is very familiar with the main leader of the organization, José Basulto. Recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency, he received training in Panama and Guatemala, and was surreptitiously sent into Cuba before and after the Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs] invasion. In 1963 he was sent in again as a radio operator for a terrorist commando. And in 1966 he worked for the CIA in Brazil."
On February 24 Basulto piloted a third Cessna plane that was out of Cuban airspace at the time the other two were intercepted and shot down.
Armando Alejandre, one of the four Brothers to the Rescue members aboard the two planes shot down over Cuban waters, had been arrested in Washington, D.C., in February 1994 for trying to jump the fence at the Cuban Interests Section. Last October, Alejandre, a volunteer Vietnam War veteran who stood six feet, seven inches tall, smashed the glass front door to the San Carlos Institute, a historic landmark in Key West, in another right-wing assault.
When Cuban air force pilots downed the aircraft flown by Brothers to the Rescue, Washington and the capitalist media launched an intense propaganda campaign against Cuba, claiming "civilian" planes had been shot down in international waters. Authorities in Havana have maintained from the beginning that the planes had penetrated the country's airspace and had been warned, a notice the intruders explicitly defied.
On March 3, Cuban television displayed several objects from the plane debris that Cuban helicopters and coast guard vessels had recovered 9.3 miles north of Cuba's coast - inside the country's 12-mile territorial limit - the day after the shooting. These were a black satchel with the letters "Solidex Performance Video" printed on it, navigation charts, and a plug-in battery charger.
The Noticiero Nacional de Televisión program also provided a detailed chronology of the February 24 events, quoting the exchanges between the air traffic controllers and the U.S. pilots.
As Washington launched a new round of hostile measures against Cuba, U.S. State Department officials met with Basulto for three hours on the night of February 26. The following day he announced, together with representatives of other Cuban- American right-wing groups, plans to send planes and a boat flotilla to the place - 21 miles from Cuban shores - where they said the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft had been shot down, and to drop flowers and wreaths there.
"America will protect its citizens in international waters and international skies," declared Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to justify the military move.
U.S. military moves
The Cuban government responded that it would "act with the
utmost restraint to avoid new incidents," Robaina stated. "If
they go to international waters, really there will be no
provocation," he said. But "provocations of Cuba will not
remain without a response."
A U.S. State Department spokesperson asserted that Washington had previously repeatedly "warned" Brothers to the Rescue about entering Cuban territory. When the flotilla was announced, the Clinton administration organized a military escort for it, asserting that its purpose was to prevent any boats or planes from "straying" inside Cuba's 12-mile limit.
Clinton declared a national emergency in south Florida, authorizing the U.S. Coast Guard to board or seize any vessel in U.S. waters. He justified this move by charging Havana with "reckless willingness to use excessive force, including deadly force, in the ostensible enforcement of its sovereignty."
The U.S. Coast guard deployed 11 cutters armed with machine guns, 6 helicopters, and 8 planes. The Air Force sent a squadron of F15 and F16 fighter jets into the region. In addition, the Navy sent the guided-missile cruiser Ticonderoga toward the Florida Straits to join the U.S. missile cruiser Mississippi and the missile frigate John Hall.
On March 2, a 35-boat flotilla left Key West along with 14 small planes led by Basulto, heading in the direction of Cuba. Choppy waters, however, proved stronger than the counterrevolutionaries' stomachs and convictions. Most of the boats turned back early. The remaining 14 vessels ventured about 43 miles north of Havana, where they dropped their wreaths and returned home. The planes flew over the announced site, dropped some flowers, and sped back to Florida.
"The counterrevolutionary show was a failure," declared Cuba's Radio Rebelde. "The show did not achieve its objectives."
Meanwhile, opponents of the Cuban revolution organized a rally and memorial service in Miami for the four pilots shot down over Cuban waters. Some 60,000 people, mostly Cuban- Americans, attended the event, held at the Orange Bowl.
Albright, the featured speaker, hailed the four counterrevolutionaries as "martyrs." As demonstrators chanted her name repeatedly, she declared, "We will tighten sanctions against the government of Cuba." Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the rightist Cuban American National Foundation, stated the White House moves against Cuba marked "a new reconciliation...a turning point between the exile community and the Clinton administration."
New U.S. measures against Cuba
A few days earlier Clinton announced a series of new
attacks on Cuba, including further restrictions on travel by
Cuban diplomats in the United States, the indefinite
suspension of all charter flights to the island, and the
expansion of Washington's Radio Martí propaganda station.
The U.S. president also said he would sign the so-called Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, known as the Helms-Burton bill after its sponsors, Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton. The measure would codify as law the current executive orders imposing economic sanctions against Cuba, meaning the U.S. trade embargo could not be eased without Congressional approval.
The Helms-Burton bill would restrict entry to the United States for non-U.S. residents who "traffic" in Cuban property that was expropriated from U.S. capitalists in the early 1960s. It would also allow U.S. citizens to sue companies based outside the United States that invest in such nationalized property.
The bill tightens the ban on sugar products of Cuban origin. Another provision, which the Russian government has particularly objected to, links U.S. aid to cutting off trade and military ties to the Cuban government.
Both houses of Congress had passed the measure in late 1995, but the White House had opposed the provision allowing lawsuits against foreign companies. On February 28, however, Clinton dropped his veto threat. The Senate and House then passed a compromise version of the bill, modifying the disputed clause. Clinton is expected to sign the measure rapidly.
The governments of Canada, the European Union, Mexico, and the Caribbean Community have all vigorously objected to features of the Helms-Burton bill that affect their trade. In a statement, the European Union said the measure constituted "an extraterritorial application of U.S. jurisdiction." Ottawa, like other U.S. imperialist rivals, has vocally expressed its opposition to the Cuban revolution, and joined the chorus denouncing the Cuban government's recent downing of the U.S. planes.
"If the intent is to try to pressure or threaten Cuba with statements of condemnation or sanctions, it is worth confirming here too that we have never given in to pressures or threats," stated Robaina at the United Nations. "We did not do so even when our people faced the concrete threat of nuclear annihilation during the October 1962 [missile] crisis. We will not do so now."
CNN reporters interviewed people in Havana the day the House passed the Helms-Burton bill. "It's a criminal law," commented one man. "They want to scare us, but they won't," said a woman on the street.