Celia
Hart on the Cuban Five
Five Political Prisoners in the United States, or “A Cloud’s Tail”
De
cinco presos políticos en Estados Unidos...o un Rabo de Nube
[The original Spanish version of this article was
posted on the web site www.rebelion.org
on August 19, 2006. The translation by W.T. Whitney, Jr., has been edited for Labor Standard. A note with general
background information on the case of the Cuban Five appears at the end of this
article.]
[We also alert our readers that a
demonstration for the Cuban Five has been called for September 23, 2006, in
[Introductory Note by W.T. Whitney: On
Cuban television August 10, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón stated that “what’s most important now is to raise
the solidarity of all people, everywhere—a mobilization. Outraged denunciation
is what is going to free them [the Cuban Five], apart from what happens in one
court session or another. We have to whip up a ‘cloud’s tail’ that will bring justice.”
[The “Cloud’s Tail” Alarcon
referred to is the title of a song by Silvio
Rodriguez, “Un Rabo de Nube”
(from 1978). The words are as follows:
|
Si me dijeran pide un deseo, |
If
they told me I could have a wish, |
|
preferiría un rabo de nube, |
I’d
choose a tail whipping down from the clouds, |
|
un
torbellino en el suelo |
a
whirlwind hitting the ground |
|
y una gran ira que sube. |
and a
great rage that keeps on rising. |
|
Un
barredor de tristezas, |
a
road-sweeper to clear away sorrows, |
|
un
aguacero en venganza |
a
heavy shower of vengeance |
|
que cuando escampe parezca |
which,
when it stops raining, |
|
nuestra esperanza. |
appears
as our hope. |
|
|
|
|
Si me dijeran pide un deseo, |
If
they told me to make a wish, |
|
preferiría un rabo de nube, |
I’d
choose a funnel from the clouds, |
|
que se llevara lo feo |
that
would blow away the ugly |
|
y nos dejara el querube. |
and
leave us only the cherubic. |
It
would seem that the nightmares of this summer for the people of
The
source of our sorrow this time is the decision of the judges of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in
Now,
by a vote of 10 to 2, with a foul and filthy ruling printed as an official
document, a positive assessment is made, confirming the deplorable, disquieting
farce of the original trial.
This
decision confronts us anew with some questions: What is this system of justice
in which we are making legal appeals? What can we hope for from this system?
And above all, how are we to focus our strength for future battles?
We
cannot be “saved from sin” unless we denounce the system of imperialist justice. This system is designed to protect the interests of the
capitalists.
A
system of justice that does not condemn its own murderous executive branch,
which has scattered-squandered tons of bombs in the Middle East and, besides
that, acts as an accomplice to the Zionists who make a mockery in carrying out
their rampages right under the stupid noses of the UN “peacekeepers”—the forces
of the UN, which are supposed to ensure international peace and security—such a
system of justice deserves only to be rejected. In my judgment it is a waste of
time to make appeals to [or within] this system.
It
seems to me ridiculous that many friends think imperialism possesses the
alternative of converting millions of dollars from the arms industry to
programs for science, health, and education.
If that happened, there would cease to exist a
capitalist empire which, like an insatiable dragon, needs all the oil, all the
water, and everything else on the planet that it can exploit.
With
imperialism, there is no “ethical” way of salvation.
The
judicial power in the
And
the three branches of government envisioned by Montesquieu [legislative,
executive, judicial] support one another like branches of one tree in order to
make sure of this main purpose [i.e., the global rule of
So
then, why are we trying to fool ourselves? If all we do is follow the
circuitous routes of U.S. “law,” we run
the risk of losing the strength we need to search for audacious and
enterprising solutions in relation to our five comrades imprisoned in that
country
The
magnificent team of defense lawyers is working under extremely difficult
conditions. Once the three-judge panel had ruled against the
We
are the ones who must draw the appropriate conclusions, put less wear on the
tongue and the keyboard trying to seek consolation from the selfsame
monstrosity [that caused the injustice].
Many
still have some faith in the North American judicial system, although such
confidence is infantile. For justice to be done nowadays would be equivalent to
my table rising up of its own accord through some sort of “Brownian movement,”
with the molecules of air rushing upward, overcoming the force of gravity. It’s
not impossible, but such an event would occur only when the solar system was no
longer alive—if then.
The
Five are political prisoners. As political prisoners they have been tried and
condemned. It is our responsibility to get them out—as political prisoners.
The
Five are not spies: there is not a single classified document “on the carpet”
[that is, no such document is adduced among the evidence]. But for the North
American system of power they are worse than spies. Spies can be dealt with.
Spying is considered a profession, and there were cases of spies being
exchanged in the old days with the former so-called socialist countries.
But
that is not the case here. The Five do have a profession, the only one the
ruling system will not tolerate. They are Cuban revolutionaries. Revolutionaries of the only country on earth that has preserved its
socialist character safe and sound. They are revolutionaries from Fidel
Castro’s country. And the North American laws have no leniency toward this
crime. So they impose the most severe penalties they can think of, and if they
have to violate their own sacrosanct judicial system, they do so without
hesitation.
And
the “judge” who sentenced the Five is of the same kind as those who supported Batista and Pinochet and would have
cold-bloodedly assassinated John F. Kennedy.
That’s who passed judgment against the Five.
The
Five are paying the price for everything those types would have liked to do to
Fidel but were unable to.
Since
the foul excrescenses in Miami lack the moral fiber
and the bare minimum of courage to come to Cuba and confront us directly, the
way Fidel did in a small boat with 82 men fifty years ago [landing on December
2, 1956], they take out their vengeance on our five comrades.
Our
Five are being punished for all the promises [of the revolution to the workers
and the poor] that were kept, the doctors we send around the world, the life of
Comandante Fidel, our revolutionary speeches, etc.
Is
the economic blockade against
So
we also have to keep in mind that we stand in opposition to this ruling force
of the world. And to expect that its laws will treat us favorably is to be
dangerously overoptimistic.
Being
in the opposition, we have to fight! And to take that stand
without fear and without any preconceptions. These five comrades are
innocent of the stupid charges for which they have been sentenced. That is
obvious. The prisoners in
The
difference is that the Cubans were fighting in a coherent and organized way for
the Cuban revolution. They are political prisoners just as much as Fidel was at
Moncada. And for exactly the same reasons, with the
aggravating condition that they are dealing not with the Batista dictatorship
but with a worldwide dictatorship disguised by expert techniques, like the
finishing touches applied in the illustrated magazines.
Fidel did not complete his sentence [of imprisonment
after Moncada]. He benefited from an amnesty granted
under pressure from the masses of
Not only because the Five are paying for our right to
be free, but also because they are defending the right of humanity to make a
socialist revolution. We have five prisoners of the class struggle. Imperialism
threatens us because we defend socialism—and only for that reason, for that and
that alone.
On
the other hand, fighting for their freedom is not merely an act of
justice. It is an urgent necessity. We
have five comrades who can be useful in the struggle, strong comrades, with the
experience of having been in enemy prisons. We must get them back to take their
places on the front lines.
Let’s
not give North American “justice” another second—this system not designed for
revolutionaries. And not one second more for weeping
or lamentations.
And
just as they have been incarcerated for their revolutionary labors, all the
revolutionaries of the world must be the first to get involved in the campaign
to free them.
I
make an appeal to all the forces of the organized left, to all social
organizations, and to every citizen who recognizes that socialism is the only
alternative to barbarism. And I am not just paraphrasing Rosa Luxemburg. We see
barbarism being carried out right before our eyes, right now, in the murderous
operations against
People
still keep talking to me about “socialism of the twenty-first century” and
“Keynesian solutions.” The capitalist system is waging new Crusades in the name
of God. They are returning to the basic principles of their world. Meanwhile,
do we want to launch ourselves into an ideological future with solutions based
on principles from the twentieth century? Can it be that the destiny of
twenty-first century socialism is going to be—capitalist reforms from the
twentieth century? My God!
The
task of liberating the Cuban Five should not fall solely on the shoulders of
the Cuban revolution. It is the responsibility of the international working
class.
They
[the Cuban Five] didn’t think twice about their
commitment. Back then, in the dark, decadent days of the 1990s; back then,
when the Communist Party of the
With
their lives and their jail sentences, they lifted up the banners of socialist
revolution. And of course they knew that imperialist laws make no allowances
for concepts of socialism. In fact, socialism, since it denies the right to
private ownership [of major means of production], technically is illegal
throughout the world, except in
As
far as democracy is concerned, Atilio Boron expressed
it quite well in a recent article published in the Cuban newspaper Granma on August
10. The title is “The Transition Has Already Happened, Stupid!” [a reference to the
I
don’t know if Rousseau could have comprehended that the social-political system
that would come after he’d done everything possible to ward it off would always
have poor people who have to sell themselves and others who can buy them. In
fact, that’s the essence of this misbegotten socioeconomic system.
Fortunately,
within a century after the death of the brilliant Rousseau, a German [Karl
Marx] revealed the obscure mechanisms by which this perfidious system of buying
and selling operates, and he sought to establish the means by which we can free
ourselves from it.
So
then, what kind of judicial system is this, in which we think justice might be
done?
It would be irresponsible
to leave the fate of the five unjustly imprisoned compañeros
solely to the expertise of their lawyers and to technicalities that are
tampered with by the system itself.
Is
there ever a trial in
They
don’t hate Fidel just because he’s been the leader of my revolution for so
long. What they despise is our social system. What they hate is that the people
know what their rights are. What they hate is that their fancy palatial homes
have been turned into schools. What they can’t abide is that our doctors—real
doctors, not mercenaries of the “health care industry”—restore the eyesight of
the poor. To them, [to the Cuban counterrevolutionaries in
It’s
enough to glance at the document sentencing the Five, officiously signed by
Judge Wilson, a former
Back
then [at the Moncada trial in 1953] they denied all
normal legal procedures and guarantees to the young lawyer [Fidel Castro], and
he was reduced to presenting his legal defense in a small anteroom of a
hospital in
[Editors’ Note: Fidel Castro’s speech, given under the
difficult conditions here described, turned the tables on his accusers and
denounced the whole system of Batista’s tyranny and the unjust social order it
maintained. The speech was reproduced and circulated clandestinely, under the
title “History Will
With
the passage of time, that young lawyer developed into the most capable and
committed spokesman and statesman for the cause of working people in all human
history—and not just because he’s given many more than 50 years of his life to
that cause. This statesman has taught us to how to govern while remaining in
the opposition [to the dominant social system]. He may be 80 years old, but he
continues to be the chief public offender against the rule of Capital. Even
when he’s sick and surrounded by the secrecy required in a situation of
struggle, he disturbs the imperialists’ sleep. He has never stopped being an
underground fighter.
Those
clear declarations by the Five, at their trial eight years ago, are the direct
descendants of “History
Will Absolve Me.” What has transpired is that the revolution has already become
international. Instead of the Isle of
Pines or Boniato [prisons where Fidel was held], our
prisons now are deep in enemy territory.
The
solution, therefore, is the Cloud’s Tail (“Rabo de Nube”) proposed by compañero
Ricardo Alarcon on August 10: a whirlwind of militant
and continuous solidarity that will envelop the whole world and succeed in
tearing down the bars. [See Introductory
Note on the reference to Alarcon and the song “Rabo de Nube.”]
Let’s
go into all those little corners of the world left for us by the imperial
power.
All
those who think of themselves as revolutionaries have to incorporate the
liberation of the five Cuban political prisoners into their programs of action.
We need to put a stop to the “collateral damage”—specifically, to see to it
that René gets to be with his wife and little Ivette
before she turns into an adult. And that Adriana can be with her husband. And
that the mothers are no longer driven crazy from the anxiety they are made to
endure when they ask permission to visit.
And
from my inkwell, I cry out to compañeros of all the
socialist tendencies—Marxists, Leninists, libertarians, and to my Trotskyist comrades, to all who think of socialism as the
only solution to the disaster that is the world, to everyone standing up
against barbarism—to take up the fight for the liberation of the Five as a
combat priority.
It
wasn’t by chance—I go back now to the beginning of this article—that it was in
August, after Fidel got sick and the summer was turned into a time of dread for
us, a few days after he made his proclamation to the people [telling of his
illness, the need for a drastic operation, and the temporary transfer of his
powers to Raul Castro and others], to top it all off, there came down on us the
brutal decision of the full court in Atlanta. There is a definite historical
connection between these two events.
I
will say more: when people ask me
nowadays who will take Fidel’s place after he is gone, the only reply that
occurs to me, the only revolutionary, Fidelista, and
above all, communist reply, the only reply that can fill my lungs with air and
invigorate my heart is this.
“I’ll tell you who will take his
place—René, Ramón, Fernando, Gerardo, Antonio.”
Note from Labor Standard
:
[The
following background information about the Cuban Five is adapted from a helpful
web site, www.freethecuban5.com ]
Who Are the
Cuban Five?
Who
are the Cuban Five? They are Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon
Labanino Salazar, Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, and Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez.
These
men are poets, artists, scholars, fathers, husbands, and sons; they were
arrested in September 1998, spent 17 months in solidarity confinement, and were
convicted in June 2001 in a
The
Cuban Five were convicted after a politically charged trial in
Nothing
could be further from the truth. The Cuban Five infiltrated Cuban-American
right-wing terrorist organizations based in
The
Cuban Five infiltrated these organizations to protect the national sovereignty
of their homeland,
With
a trial based in
Also,
in 14,000 pages of transcript, no espionage evidence was ever introduced. It
was found that the information the Cuban Five had amassed was not
government-classified, but public information that did not threaten national
security.
It
was clear that the charges brought against the Cuban Five were politically
motivated and fabricated, yet on June 8, 2001, they were found guilty of “espionage” and of
threatening “national security.”
On
March 10, 2004, oral arguments were heard at the 11 Circuit
Court of Appeals for a change in venue, on the espionage conspiracy, and
on Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo's murder conspiracy
conviction. The most important issue in the appeal was the change of venue. If
the court found that the trial should not have occurred in
The
[The following background information is also from the
Free the Cuban Five web site.]
On the Atlanta Court
On
August 9, 2006, exactly one year after a three-judge panel from the Eleventh
Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, unanimously overturned the
sentences of the Cuban Five, a majority of the full court has ruled against the
decision, reconfirmed the sentences, denied the Five a new trial, and ordered
the case back to the three-judge panel for consideration of the remaining
issues.
Two
of the three-judge panel allowed to vote, Justices Byrch
and Kravitch, opposed the full court's decision and
reiterated that this “was an exceptional case in which a change of venue was
imperative due to the latent prejudice of the community which made a fair and
impartial trial impossible.”
With
this ruling the Eleventh Circuit Court has ratified the [June 2001] decision of
the original
On
September 29, 2005, in a very unusual act, according to U.S. legal experts, and
with the evident objective of delaying the process and keeping the Five in
prison, the United States government appealed to the Atlanta court against the
three-judge panel’s decision.
The
three panel judges, whose sum total professional experience exceeds 80 years,
declared in their 93-page ruling that to form “an [impartial] jury in this
community [of Miami] was not a reasonable probability due to the existing
prejudice in the same.”
“In
this case a new trial was mandated by the perfect storm created when the surge
of pervasive community sentiment, and extensive publicity both before and
during the trial, merged with the improper prosecutorial references.”
The
[August 9, 2006] ruling adopted by the Atlanta court does not take into account
the atmosphere of violence and intimidation that exists in Miami, nor the most
recent things that have occurred in the city and been reported by the local
press, including the occupation of armories for the purpose of using weapons
against Cuba, public statements by terrorists who with total impunity admit to
their crimes against Cuba. All this confirms
On
May 27, 2005, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions stated
that in view of the facts and circumstances in which the [June 2001] trial took
place, the accompanying charges, and the severe sentences imposed, the trial
did not take place in a climate of objectivity and impartiality necessary for
the norms of a fair trial as defined in Article 14 of the International
Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and consequently requested that the
U.S. government adopt such measures as are necessary to remedy the situation.
The
legal process against the Five continues to be delayed.
September
12 is the eighth anniversary of the arrest of five men who should never have
been put behind bars and who, in spite of their innocence, are confined to
maximum security
This
is not the end of the case. Far from it. Now, as never
before, it is necessary to increase the fight for the freedom of these five
men, whose only purpose was to fight against terrorism and to preserve human
lives. We appeal to all the honest people in the world to join this battle,
particularly the International Days of Action for their freedom from September
12 to October 6, 2006.
Nothing
justifies their confinement.