Robert Noriega, US Assistant -Secreary of Sate for Western
Hemisphere Affairs, has accused the Cuban government of "involvement in support of individuals in various countries aimed at destabilizing democratic governments."
Noriega went on to say that Cuba is "making democratically elected governments vulnerable" within Latin America. Without a hint of irony, Noriega also accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of making his neighbours "very nervous when it comes to defending their institutional democracies."
This follows reports in the US magazine US News & World Report on October 6 last year that cited unidentified senior US military and intelligence officials as saying terrorist training camps are "operating in Venezuela with the full knowledge and support of the Hugo Chavez government" and that "Cubans are working inside Venezuela's paramilitary and intelligence apparatus."
Colin Powell also expressed concern. "I've been in senior national security positions on and off for the last 17 years. And through that whole period of time, Cuba has been trying to do everything it could to destabilize parts of the region."
House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (Republican, Illinois) said, in a letter to President Bush last October, that the Cuba-Venezuela partnership was a new "axis of evil" and other Latin American countries ought to endorse free trade and open markets rather than look to Cuba and Venezuela for inspiration. Castro: 45 years on, the Cuban Revolution and its leadership still has the ability to wind up Washington's neoliberal warmongers
As part of the alliance between Cuba and Venezuela Cuba has so far sent 10,169 doctors and dentists, 1200 sports coaches, 70 literacy trainers, 25 sugar industry experts and more than 500 other specialists to Venezuela, according to Julio Montes, Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba. Currently, Venezuela exports 53,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba.
n November last year Argentina's
ambassador to Cuba, Raul Taleb, said
he'd like to see other nations follow the example of Cuba and Venezuela. If Brazil and Argentina joined in they could create a strong alliance that maybe Ecuador and Bolivia would join.
This is precisely the scenario the US is worried about and helps to explain the escalating war of rhetoric coming from Washington, initially directed at Cuba but increasingly at Venezuela following the defeat of the Bush backed coup against Chavez.
Cuba and Venezuela offer not only examples that show alternatives to imperialist imposed neo-liberalism but are also consciously seeking to unite a group of Latin American countries around an anti-imperialist agenda.
Since taking office in January 200l, the Bush administration has escalated Washington's four-decade-long campaign to destroy the Cuban Revolution by:
• increasing the subversive activity of the US Interests Section in the Swiss embassy in Havana (Washington's unofficial diplomatic outpost in Cuba), including assigning more than $30 million approved by the US Agency for International Development to fund "independent" journalists in Cuba;
• violating migration agreements signed with Cuba, which allow 20,000 Cubans to emigrate a year to the US, by dramatically cutting the number of immigration visas issued by the US Interests Section in Havan: while encouraging illegal emigration fron Cuba through boat and aircraft hijackings On January 5 Washington refused to re-ope immigration negotiations; and
repeatedly accusing Cuba, without pro viding any evidence, of developing biologic weapons and of backing terrorists.
On October 10 last year Bush als announced the setting up of a "Presidentia Committee for Aid to a Free Cuba", headec by US Secretary of State Colin Powell anc Melquiades Martinez, a representative withir the Bush administration of the right-wing Cuban émigré terrorist groups in Miami, to advise the US president on further steps t overthrow Cuba's workers' and peasants government.
n a statement issued on October 13
the Cuban foreign ministry declarec
that the new measures announced b Bush "clearly demonstrate the US govern ment's unlimited commitment to the ultraright Cuban American sectors and their obsession to destroy the example repre sented by the Cuban Revolution.
"Cuba constitutes a moral and politica point of reference that the US government and the terrorist groups located in the sout of Florida cannot abide.
"Obsessed with putting an end to the example of dignity and social justice embod ied by the Cuban Revolution, they are taking courses of action that are steadily more dangerous and provocative."
In the coming months the solidarity of progressive activists everywhere is going to be essential to defend Cuba and Venezuela from escalating imperialist aggression.