Andres Gómez on tour in California

From June 16 to June 23, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five and the ANSWER Coalition hosted public forums in California, featuring Andres Gómez, a leader of the progressive Cuban community in Miami. San Francisco was the first of a five-city speaking tour throughout California. Other stops include Sacramento on June 20, San Jose on June 21, Los Angeles on June 22, and San Diego on June 23. The events were well attended and shed light on the work of pro-Cuba activists in Miami, a city where right-wing terrorist organizations openly plot against Cuba and its allies.

Woven into the presentations was the need to defend and fight for the freedom of the Cuban Five political prisoners, who were unjustly arrested and convicted in Miami. Chris Banks and Gloria La Riva of the Free the Five committee spoke on their struggle, as did other local activists.

Gómez spoke of his life and political evolution, which have been tied to the histories of both Cuba and south Florida. Between 1898 and the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Cuba was a de facto colony of the United States, led by a succession of puppet governments which saw to it that Cuba’s resources were used to benefit the ruling class of the United States and the Cuban capitalists. The Cuban administrators of U.S. interests were highly rewarded and formed a comprador bourgeoisie, capitalists who served the interests of the U.S. ruling class.

Gómez was born in Cuba in 1947 to wealthy parents. He and his family were among 130,000 Cubans to leave the island for the U.S. by 1962. Ninety percent of those, he said, were from the bourgeois class. These wealthy Cubans did not plan to stay in the U.S. for long. Instead, they expected the United States to invade the island, crush the revolution, and restore the privileges of the old class. The U.S. did indeed try to destroy the Cuban revolution through the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion but was defeated by forces led by Fidel Castro. Ever since, the U.S has imposed a severe blockade and sponsored terrorism against the island, through CIA operations and right-wing paramilitary groups that formed in Miami in the early 1960s.

Miami, like all major U.S. cities, saw an upturn in progressive organizing in the late 1960s in response to the civil rights movement and the imperialist war against Vietnam. Gómez, raised in a right-wing milieu, became involved in leftist struggles in his early 20s. Gómez began to question the anti-Castro rhetoric on which he had been raised, and along with other young Cubans whose families had left the island in the early 1960s, over time embraced the Revolution’s ideals. They decided to act on that belief.

Right-wing Cuban terrorism

In the 1970s, right-wing Cuban organizations began targeting not only Cuba, but progressive Cubans in Miami with violent attacks. Dozens of bombings took place in the mid-1970s, against progressive organizations, travel agencies, diplomatic offices and media outlets.

Despite the terror in Miami, Gómez helped found the Antonio Maceo Brigade (BAM) in 1977 with 54 fellow pro-Revolution Cubans living outside Cuba. The Brigade made contact with the Cuban government and asked permission to visit the island. On December 21, 1977, they became the first members of the Cuban diaspora to return to Cuba. Gómez claimed the experience of seeing Cuba’s revolutionary culture had a profound effect on him and he has since devoted his life to defending Cuba and working for radical change. He lives in Miami and spends much time in Cuba, writing on many aspects of Cuban society.

Gómez described Cuban society as one in which selfishness has been minimized because of the values built into the society since the revolution. Unity on the part of the people is what has made it possible for the revolution to survive the hostilities of the United States. Cuba rejected capitalism, and the greed associated with it, as a way of rejecting colonial subjugation.

The right-wing media in Miami, Gómez said, knows and understands nothing about Cuba, and translates its ignorance to the world. The Brigade attempts to pierce through the lies perpetrated throughout south Florida and educate people on the real nature of contemporary Cuba through public forums and their online magazine, “Areitodigital.”

The Cuban Five heroically defending Cuba in Miami

For more than 11 years, the Antonio Maceo Brigade has been involved in the struggle to free the Cuban Five, who were arrested for infiltrating counterrevolutionary terrorist groups in Miami. Gómez said that Cuban intelligence has been very successful in infiltrating these groups and had foiled many terrorist plots. He related a 2000 incident in which Fidel Castro, arriving at the Panama airport for an Ibero-American summit, identified the location of four terrorists—including Luis Posada Carriles—and explosives that were to be used in an attempted assassination plot against Castro. The Panamanian police were forced to arrest the terrorists. Such stories illustrate the need for the work of heroes like the Cuban Five.

Gómez spoke of the most recent terrorist attack in Miami. On April 28, Airline Brokers, one of only eight travel agencies in the U.S. to book charter flights to Cuba, was fire-bombed. The company had been booking flights for Catholics to visit Cuba during the visit of the Pope. After investigating for weeks, the FBI said on June 7 that its only lead was that a car had been spotted close to the targeted building on the night of April 28. Gómez ridiculed the idea that the FBI was ignorant of the identity of the bombers, The bureau, he pointed out, is much more effective at capturing those who try to stop terrorism in Miami than capturing terrorists.

But Gómez also expressed optimism that the culture of south Florida is changing. While many Cubans still immigrate to Florida, it is no longer primarily for political reasons. Instead, it is now a simple matter of some people wanting to move from a struggling economy to what is perceived as a more economically affluent society. This new generation of immigrants want normal relations with the Cuban government and oppose the travel restrictions and the U.S. blockade. Gómez noted that it was progressive Cubans in the U.S. who had contributed the most money to the effort to free the Cuban Five. This was, he explained, because those Cubans understand that the Five worked to protect them from the right-wing terrorists as much as to protect Cuba.

Economic changes in Cuba

Gómez also addressed the economic changes taking place in Cuba. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has had to rely more on commercial interaction with the capitalist market. The impact of the so-called “Great Recession” that began in the U.S. has made the financing of some of the benefits traditionally offered by the Cuban state unsustainable at their present level. Some economic sectors are being decentralized, allowing the Cuban state to cut spending. It also allows the state to tax some activities that had previously been black-market transactions, and are now legally-permitted economic operations.

In order to preserve the socialist core of the revolution, a changing society is being forced to make profound changes. Gómez characterized it as a dialectical process, and noted that in his many years of visiting Cuba he has been amazed at how fast the culture transforms and adapts. Gómez acknowledged that it would not always be clear to all that the changes taking place were being made so as to sustain socialism and that not everyone in Cuba would welcome these changes. He acknowledged a bureaucratic element that would try to hold back necessary changes.

Gómez characterized revolution as being a process of difficult changes, of hardship and pride. “Cuba,” he said, “is not trying to build socialism in ideal conditions. It is trying to do so in hell. Capitalism and imperialism are hell.” He finally quoted Fidel in saying, “The only thing we cannot afford is pessimism.”

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