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Claudio Benedi is the author of the `Benedi Doctrine,' which condemns the institutionalized violations of human rights by totalitarian Communist regimes around the world, especially in Castro's Cuba. Moreover, Claudio has for a long time been in the forefront of those who denounce the Soviet military base in Cuba, in violation of the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement.
Claudio is an expert on inter-American affairs, and for the last three decades he has been fighting for the security of America and for the freedom of Cuba. Claudio is known as `the Diplomatic Dean of the Organization of American States.'
Mr. President, I ask that two documents be printed in the Record.
The first is the declaration of Dr. Benedi concerning the Soviet-Cuban geostrategic relationship, printed in the Diario Las Americas of Miami on May 2, 1990.
The second is the document presented by Dr. Manuel Antonio de Varona, president of the Junta Patriotica Cubana, and Dr. Claudio Benedi, Secretary for the Foreign Relations and Washington Representative of the Junta Patriotica Cubana, to the 20th Session of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States, at Asuncion, Paraguay, on June 4, 1990.
The documents follow:
`Relations between the USSR and Cuba are not merely economic, but mainly and fundamentally geostrategic, for the maintenance--in fact--of the base that the Soviets have attained in Cuba for their penetration into the Western Hemisphere, 90 miles from the U.S.', asserted Dr. Claudio Benedi, representative of the Cuban Patriotic Board in Washington.
That is the reason that, according to Benedi, explains that `despite the totalitarian Stalinist regime that Castro insists in maintaining, its total economic failure, and his opposition--apparent or real--to reforms introduced in the structure of the communist system by Gorbachev, he will be granted this year, for one more year, an increase of 8.7% in economic and commercial aid, in comparison with the previous year, while they say that they sign a protocol for the next lustrum, that will be formalized in 1991'.
According to Benedi, the importance of the fact is that, in accordance with statements made by the chief of the Soviet delegation that formalized the agreements with Cuba, Leonid Albakin, the commercial exchange with the island would be over $14,168 millions, which reaffirms the economical and military dependence that the Cuban regime has upon the USSR.
The interviewee recalled that, as columnist Patrick Buchanan recently affirmed in a recent article on Diario Las Americas, if the USSR needs investment capital, it should get ahold of the $5,000 annual millions that is given to Castro for the use of the island as a strategic base.
He likewise refers to the opinion of Senator Sam Nunn, chairman of the Armed Forces Committee in the U.S. Senate, who stated in Miami that `the Cuban economy is increasingly weakening, as a result of the reductions in the aid that it receives from the USSR, but (at the same time that it hurts the position of Castro) the possibility could exist that, as a compensation, Moscow will increase military aid' to Cuba.
He later detailed how the USSR uses the Cuban territory as a base for its warplanes and warships, as well as its main facilities, such as the Cienfuegos base, the espionage plant at Lourdes, where it has 6,000 troops and technicians, and 27,000 military personnel, a brigade organized as such and some airports intended for war activities.
The Soviets have provided Castro with 300 MiG 21s, 23s and 25s, and they have now furnished him MiG 29's.
Benedi says that the Cuban armed forces have a 15% of the population in arms, `one and a half million men and women, regular military and militias, in a country with 11 million inhabitants; but, who pays for that costly military machine? Not Castro exactly.
After analyzing the very grave economic situation of the USSR, which in the long run may influence a change in its programs of aid to countries such as Cuba, Benedi referred to a political event `of a great political transcendence for our Hemisphere'. That is, the Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Victor Komplektov, upon his return from Managua, said to Pravda that the USSR will continue economic cooperation with Nicaragua, even with the new government, and Washington analysts say that it could be a precedent for other communist totalitarian regimes. `Diplomats stationed here, in the capital, affirm that the USSR, in view of the serious problems it is facing, could be seeking this kind of solutions for the Cuban case, in order to maintain its base in the unlikely case that there could be future cases such as Nicaragua's. Those who state that', Dr. Benedi ends, do not seem to know the Stalinist nature nor Castro's megalomaniac paranoia, nor the sufferings and struggles of the Cuban people for 31 years, inside & outside of Cuba, for their freedom'.
Area Metropolitana de Washington,
Washington, DC, June 4, 1990.
Honorable Chairman of the Twentieth Ordinary Period of Sessions of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS):
Honorable Ministers of Foreign Relations:
Honorable Ambassadors and Representatives of the American States:
Distinguished Representatives of the Americas:
This General Assembly meets in historical moments for the Americas and for the world. For the Americas, because we are celebrating the Centennial of the Inter-American System, and for the world because of the unavoidable crisis of the totalitarian system of Marxist-Leninist socialism, that we expect to reach, in its full extension, the Stalinist redoubt in Cuba.
We, who have been born in the Cuban State, a member of this Honorable General Assembly, of the Inter-American System and of the Organization of American States (OAS) and directly concerned in our own right and affected by that which may be discussed or agreed upon in same, have the moral and legal duty of submitting to your learned consideration our position and denouncements to the effect that, as we suppose, linked by the same cause, they shall be taken into account by you.
The Cuban State is a part of the Inter-American System and of the OAS. What is excluded, now with a greater reason than yesterday, is the present government of Cuba, because of its being a Marxist-Leninist regime, totally incompatible with the Inter-American System. That incompatibility is still in force.
Cuba is a part of the Americas and it is linked to their fate. Said part is integrated in the whole, historically, geographically, politically, economically & ideologically, despite the fact that an extra-continental power (the Soviet Union) has tried to take it out of its geopolitics and geostrategy, through the use of a satellite government subjected to ideological servitude and to economic, political and military submission.
This Soviet Union's intervention in the internal affairs of the Americas, through its base in Cuba, has posed a challenge to the Continent of the Americas and produced a crisis in its institutions, values and principles, because of the overt and sneaky infiltration of the Marxists fifth column into the Inter-American power structures.
As we have already proven, we are not dealing with a super-structure of values, with an addition of principles nor with a mere reform; we are dealing with a subversive supplantation, with a displacement, with the destruction of the spiritual and material structures, in order to replace them with others that are alien to its history, its traditions and its culture. Marxists have understood it thus and, because of it, they have declared war on the Inter-American System, on the OAS and on those nations which represent those values and principles, and that is the reason why they attempt, by all means at their disposal, to introduce their Trojan Horse into the OAS, through the reinstatement of Castro's satellite Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist regime.
The historical sequence cannot be broken by grafting onto the heart of the Americas alien ideologies, such as Communism, whose impracticality and evil nature have been proven, one that destroys man, woman and peoples. That `tragic Utopia has made peoples to retrocede to unprecedented levels in the history of humankind', as Pope John Paul II has stated.
This Twentieth General Assembly of the OAS has no jurisdiction or powers to allow the entry of Castro's Marxist-Leninist regime to the OAS, because it was not the OAS who separated the present government of Cuba from it, but the application of the Treaty of Rio, and besides this meeting not having been assembled in accordance with the Treaty of Rio, not all the countries who are members of the OAS are signatories to the Treaty of Rio.
It must be likewise pointed out that at the Eighth Consultation Meeting of the Foreign Relations Ministers, assembled in accordance with the Treaty of Rio, a Resolution was passed which declared Marxism-Leninism incompatible with the Inter-American System, and that said Resolution is still in force. Despite efforts to repeal it, it is still in force and it is still binding, since the modification of said Treaty, that was made in Costa Rica, has not taken effect because the necessary number of required states have not ratified it.
In the hundred years that the Inter-American System has lasted, a constant preoccupation, besides a basic and substantially fundamental principle has been, and continues to be, to protect the countries of this Hemisphere, as it was wished by Simon Bolivar, the Liberator; Jose Marti, U.S. President James Monroe and all exalted men & women of the Americas, from the intervention of an extra-continental power in their internal affairs. This principle and foundation of our regional organization and our political philosophy about the defense of sovereignty and freedom, self-determination and the dignity of the human person, has been violated by the Soviet Union through its satellite Castro. That is why to let satellite Castro enter into the OAS is tantamount to become an accomplice of the Soviet Union and of the evil
Marxism-Leninism. Castro has just stated: `Marxism-Leninism or death', and that Marxism-Leninism is what is being attempted to introduce in the OAS, at a time when East European countries and other nations subjugated by the false Soviet Union are trying to erase every vestige of that `tragic Utopia'. Those who attempt such a thing can be defined as suffering from political underdevelopment, political daltonism; they cannot see the red and black colors.
The Socialist Constitution of Cuba, dated February 24, 1976, in its preamble, literally reads: `Based upon proletarian internationalism, fraternal friendship, the assistance and cooperation of the Soviet Union . . .' It remains undoubtedly proven that Castro's Marxist-Leninist regime is a satellite of the Soviet Union, a lackey of Soviet imperialism. What would we say, honorable delegates and members of this Twentieth General Assembly of the OAS, if any of our Latin-American countries wrote into the preamble of its Constitution the same, but referring to the United States? How would you qualify it? The answer is obvious; therefore, if we are honest, let us apply it to the satellite regime of Castro in Cuba. Is that the satellite that someone may attempt to bring back to the OAS?
We must be consistent and follow the historical sequence and the traditions of the Americas, instead of defrauding the founders of our nations; that is why we believe that it is fundamental that we make reference to the indispensable background that irrefutably supports our petitions and denouncements.
We have proven that a regressive transculturation has taken place in Cuba. The values and principles upon which a civilized coexistence of the free nations of this Hemisphere is supported have been destroyed, and other, falsely called values, which run counter to the Cuban people's tradition, culture and history, have been imposed.
Besides the human violation, there has been in Cuba an institutional violation of human rights. The human violation is committed both in the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, albeit in the former it is committed in a totalitarian manner, but the institutional violation (already known in the Americas and Europe as the `benedi doctrine') is only committed in the Marxist-Leninist regimes, because that kind of violation is intrinsic to such a system, which could not exist without it, because of its being a state totalitarian regime, in which the so-called State has all rights and individuals have none, vis-a-vis the State. The human person is left defenseless before the State. What is the State in communist regimes? The Communist Party. And, what is the Communist Party? A claque. And who rules that claque? The tyrant on duty. It was Stalin in the Soviet Union, and it is Castro in Cuba.
In the above mentioned Socialist Constitution, Article 61 provides the following:
`Article 61. None of the freedoms recognized for citizens may be practiced against that which is established by the Constitution and the laws, nor against the existence and purposes of the Socialist State, nor against the Cuban people's decision to build Socialism and Communism. Violation of this principle is punishable'.
Only a naive or deluded person, or an accomplice of communism, would believe that in Cuba, under the Marxist-Leninist system, there could be any vestige of democracy. To this it must be added, mainly and fundamentally, that a military and strategic Soviet base is in Cuba.
We have proven that the relationship between the Soviet Union and Cuba is geostrategic and not merely economic. That is why some people wonder that the Soviet Union would continue to subsidize Castro and his economic and social disaster with over $5 billion annually. It is cheap for the Soviet Union to maintain its base within the heart of the Americas.
The Soviet Union entered the Americas through Cuba, and it has established there, in fact, a military, political, ideological and subversive base. It has there over 27,000 military personnel (during the so-called `missile crisis', in 1962, the Soviet Union already had 40,000 military personnel). Besides, it has a nuclear submarine base at Cienfuegos; an electronic base--the largest and most up-to-date outside of the Soviet Union--operated by 6,000 military and technicians, and it utilizes the whole of the Cuban territory for its warplanes and warships. All of the above entrails, besides an affront, a threat to the security and peace in the Americas.
In the Nuclear missile crisis, in 1962, satellite Castro imperiled the Cuban people to extermination in a nuclear conflict, only to serve the interests of the Soviet imperialism. Nowadays, the danger is repeated, in the `cursi et recursi' or History, as Vico would say. The Cuban people continues to be imperiled through the same or similar reasons, and a holocaust could take place.
There does not exist a state of law in Cuba, as it has been repeatedly stated by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in whose Annual Reports to this General Assembly it has declared that in Cuba `There are maintained, therefore, the two main characteristics that have originated the lack of enforcement of civil and political rights: the non-existence of a state of law, since individuals are deprived of the recourses that would protect them from the actions of the state, and the lack of political alternatives for the population'. There, where a state of law does not exist, cannot be any protection for human rights. Who would like to make that monstrous regime compatible with the Inter-American System?
Let us add to the former that the International Commission of Jurists, an organization attached to the United Nations, after an exhaustive study and investigation, stated: `The rule of law does not exist in Cuba'. That statement is presently in full force. What accomplice of Marxist Socialism would dare to deny it?
There does not exist in Cuba the division of powers that is basic in the juridical and political structure of modern states, as Montesquieu declared. The Judiciary Power is submitted to the so-called National Assembly of the Popular Power, which is the same organism in charge of `approving' the regulations dictated by the hierarchy of the Communist Party, the true `power behind the throne'. And the latter, in turn, is dictatorially ruled by the `maximum leader on duty'. (Articles 70, 85, 86, 87 et sequitur, in the Constitution listed above.
On Articles 9 through 29, the division of powers is banished, private property rights are abolished, such as we understand them in the Western world, as well as the inviolability of the human person, freedom of education and all other rights recognized in the Americas about family, religion, etc. (Article 54)
On Article 52 the freedoms of expression and thought are eliminated. Press, radio and television are controlled by the Totalitarian State.
In the so-called `Socialist Legality', the principle of `analogy' (that had already been abolished in the civilized world and was re-established by Hilter) is enshrined.
There continues to exist in Cuba a continued pattern of violation of rights in their human dimension, and many Cuban political prisoners, both male and female, continue being given a `cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment', as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly stated; but we must warn you about possible maneuvers of `improvement in the treatment of some prisoners' that such a regime might attempt, and some limited freedoms that could be granted, with pre-conceived objective of `bettering the image' of the Marxist-Leninist system and of its leaders in the Western World, in order to confound the naive and hide the fact that the basic substance of violations of human rights in a communist regime, both in institutional dimension and in the human dimension, are intrinsically united to the regime and inseparable from it. It is not a case of more or less freedom, nor of a partial improvement or alleviation of the treatment given to the Cuban political prisoners of both genders, but of the system proper, which must generate those violations in order to stay in power through terror and force.
The visit of Pope John Paul II has been cancelled for this year. Terror against the civilian population has been recrudesced and the dissidents have been threatened with a modification of the Penal Code to include dissidence as a form of fellonious treason punishable by the death penalty.
Since the end of World War II, the Inter-American System has been getting ready to face the challenge of international communism, to prevent the intervention of an extra-continental power (directly, the Soviet Union) in the internal affairs of the Americas. Let us review a brief summary of that preparation:
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1. In 1947, the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Treaty of Rio) was approved, previous and similar to NATO (that is why the Treaty of Rio can be deemed as the NATO of the Americas). But we must underline that, while NATO was a deterrent in Europe to prevent communist expansion, the Treaty of Rio, debilitated by the ominous Kennedy-Khrushchev `understanding', could not prevent the Soviet Union from expanding its neo-colonialism and its imperialism to the Americas, through locating its base in Cuba.
2. In 1948, the juridical and political institution for the defense of the Americas was created: The Organization of American States (OAS). And it was not by coincidence that Fidel Castro and the communist agents infiltrated in the Americas tried to prevent the OAS from being created, by murdering Jorge Eliecer Gaytan and bringing about over 5,000 deaths and a great deal of destruction. But, despite that tragedy, the OAS was created to respond to the challenge. However, some leaders of the Americas, turning their backs to this tragic reality, have been weakening the OAS, creating parallel organizations that have diminished its efficiency and dynamism, upon usurping some of its functions. The OAS is what its states want it to be at a given time in its history. Thus, the organization is not to be blamed, but its members.
The United Nations Organization was created in 1945 and the OAS in 1948. Albeit the UNO is older, it has experienced basic reforms in its structure, despite its comprising the veto right that does exist in the OAS--in the latter, all member states enjoy a juridical equality--the OAS has experienced reforms, the latter being those of Buenos Aires and Cartagena de Indias and now, in the midst of present crisis and very untimely, instead of strengthening its present structures, which would be the wise thing to do, and fulfilling its treaties, covenants, agreements and resolutions in force, some are attempting to enter into a new process of reforms, with dubious or problematic results.
The Inter-American Conference, held in Caracas in 1954, to consider `the activities of the international communist movement, because of believing that it constitutes an intervention in the internal affairs of the Americas', formulated among others the following statement:
`That the domination or control over the political institutions of any of the American states on the part of the international Communist movement, having as its result the extension into the continent of the Americas of the political system of an extracontinental power, would constitute a threat against the political sovereignty and independence of the American states, and would endanger the the peace of the Americas, thus requiring a consultation meeting to consider the adopting of pertinent measures in accordance with the treaties in force'.
Nobody can deny that the international communist movement is in Cuba: `Marxism-Leninism or death'. There is the imperative juridical, political and moral mandate, in order to act `in accordance with the treaties in force'.
In the Seventh Consultation Meeting of Foreign Relations Ministers, assembled in accordance with the Treaty of Rio which is like the NATO of the Americas, in San Jose, Costa Rica, in August, 1960, it was agreed that:
`1. The intervention or threat of intervention, including a conditioned one, on the Part of an extra-continental power, in the internal affairs of any American republic is condemned, and we underline that the acceptance of the threat of intervention by an extra-continental power on the part of any American state, imperils the solidarity and security of the Americas, which obligates the Organization of American States (OAS) to condemn and reject it with and equal energy'.
There are exemplified the case of satellite Castro and the
intervention of an extra-continental power (the Soviet Union) in the internal affairs of the Americas, with a military, subversive, political, ideological, terrorist and economical base. How `energetically' are the present leaders of the Americas going to condemn and reject it?
In the Eighth Consultation Meeting of the Foreign Relations Ministers, assembled in accordance with the Treaty of Rio at Punta del Este, Uruguay, in 1962, a resolution was approved which, in our judgement, is the most important political statement in this Hemisphere for all of its history, in which it is declared that `the Marxist-Leninist doctrine is incompatible with the Inter-American System, and that the government that would declare itself--mind you that it reads `the government'--a Marxist-Leninist one, is separated from the System'. And, since the present government of Cuba has declared itself Marxist-Leninist, it is thus separated from the Inter-American System, from the OAS and from all of its organisms. The Cuban State continued, and it continues to be, a member of the System and of the OAS.
A Joint Resolution of the United States Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives) was approved--now known as the `Cuba-Symms Resolution, because of Senator Steve Symms having been its advocate--whereby the United States obligated itself to fight together with the Organization of American States (OAS) and with freedom-loving Cubans to attain self-determination and freedom for the Cuban people.
On October 22, 1962, the so-called `Missile Crisis' took place in Cuba, because the Soviet Union learned that its base on the island was in danger and it placed its nuclear missiles there, not to protect the Castro's satellite regime, but its base. Whoever may think otherwise is a naive person or a useful idiot.
By virtue of the `Missile Crisis', the so-called `Kennedy-Khrushchev Understanding' was signed, a disastrous political mistake on the part of the United States, which violates the Monroe Doctrine, the Treaty of Rio, the OAS's Charter and the Cuban people's rights of sovereignty and freedom.
The force of the Monroe Doctrine, that had been so efficient to deter the European States from intervening in the internal affairs of the Americas, and through which the United States protected our Latin-American countries from the ambitions for conquest of the Europeans, including then-Russia, has now been debilitated and rendered useless to prevent Soviet penetration in Cuba and Nicaragua; in the latter, the Soviet Union maintains its power, although it may have surrendered government half-way.
One of the most outstanding leaders for democracy in Latin-America, our fraternal friend Dr. Romulo Betancourt, an illustrious Venezuelan descended from the Liberator, Simon Bolivar, charged the Stalinist tyrant Fidel Castro with attacking and violating the Venezuelan sovereignty. The Ninth Consultation Meeting of the Foreign Relations Ministers, on July 26, 1964, condemned the Castro regime as an aggressor and violator of the Venezuelan sovereignty. The next step ought to have been the application of the Treaty of Rio to the agressor and violator. It was not done then, and that regime has continued, until this time, attacking and violating the sovereignty of the peoples of the Americas, as the President-elect of Costa Rica, Dr. Rafael Calderon, has stated, accusing Castro of intervening in the internal affairs of El Salvador by helping the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas. Those aggressions are consubstantial with the communist system implemented in Cuba.
`Pacta Sunt Servanda': One acts freely, but obligates oneself to the pact. The Cuban state has freely agreed with you the treaties, covenants, agreements and resolutions which are in force within the Inter-American System; that is why we now ask you to fulfill what you obligated yourselves to comply with.
Two nuclear plants are being built in Cuba, one of them precisely close to the Soviet submarine base in Cienfuegos. These plants are being built with the same Soviet technology that so noisily failed at Chernobyl, in the Soviet Union. They not only imperil the lives of Cubans, but are also a threat for the rest of the American States.
The satellite Castro, following orders from the Soviet Union, has refused to sign and ratify the Treaty of Tlatelolco on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in Latin-America. With what purpose? The comments are obvious.
We have learned from reliable sources that 15% of the Cuban population, that is, one and a half million people, both men and women, in the regular military and the militias, are upon arms. Since the Cuban economy has been destroyed by the communist system, Castro could not pay for the mobilization of those forces. Who pays for the expenses of those enormous military forces in a country with little over 10 million people? The answer is obvious: The Soviet Union.
We know that the Soviet Union has sent its satellite Castro 300 MiG warplanes, among them MiG 23's and MiG 29's, the latter being the latest warplane in the arsenal of the Soviet Union. It has already sent 10 and it has promised another 36. What does the satellite Castro need a war arsenal of that magnitude for?
The KGB (Soviet secret political police) has long taken over the Cuban intelligence and espionage services, known as the DGI (Directorate General for Intelligence). It has been verified that the Soviet Union had done likewise in Nicaragua.
What we have nowdays in the Americas is a crisis of identity, that is fostered when there are governments that fail to support the principles and values that have given them life and, turning their backs to their traditions, culture and history, embrace ideologies that deny their transcendental values and their juridical and political principles.
There is identity among the nations of the Americas, and through that identity they make up an organic and regionally structured whole in a System that given itself the juridical and political institutions capable of representing and defending it.
In order to attack and destroy the Americas, it is indispensable to attack and destroy the System based upon that identity and upon those principles, and that is exactly what is happening today. That is the challenge.
Understanding this, the extra-continental foreign forces that have infiltrated the Americas to subvert and destroy them, have begun by securing a base in Cuba and attempting to have another one in Nicaragua, and by devising a strategy to destroy the Inter-American System because of its absolute incompatibility, as well as tactics to fragment the OAS through separating the North from the South, or else trying to create parallel organisms.
The economic, political and social development--giving way to military interventions--in the last three decades, has been at times hampered, other times interrupted and in every case adversely influenced--the exodus of capital and skilled persons and the deactivation of national and foreign investments--by communist subversion, both urban and rural, sponsored by the Soviet Union through its satellite Castro and the Sandinista-Marxist movement of sub-satellite Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
The investments and assistance from the United States and the Western world are detouring towards the Eastern European countries that are rejecting communism because of its negative nature, instead of going to the Latin-American nations that want to bring communism, together with Castro, to the OAS.
The Inter-American System is theocentric and its values and principles comprise the belief in God, the full dignity of man and woman, their freedom, justice, peace and the idea that the resources existing in the Americas are at the service of the common good, administered by human beings for the benefit of men and women. The Inter-American System proclaims the unlimited respect to human rights, fraternity and brotherhood among men and women, vis-a-vis the class struggle, and love vis-a-vis hate; because of the above, it is incompatible with Marxism-Leninism, since the latter proclaims the barbarous practice of hate, instead of the Gospel of Love; the class struggle, state totalitarianism, militant atheism, the destruction of the sense of transcendence and the destruction of the human person; it is esentially anthropocentric.
Ideological pluralism--any euphemism used to cover the permissiveness that is an accomplice of Marxism-Leninism in the Americas--is a negation of democratic coexistence in the bosom of the Inter-American System. There cannot be any possible coexistence where all the attributes and conditions for coexistence are not given. We say `yes' to democratic pluralism, whereby representative democracy will be implemented--so many times mentioned in the OAS' Charter--whereby the people shall vote periodically, with full liberty, to elect its leaders in the plurality of democratic parties, which is the antithesis of Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. There cannot be any reciprocity. What they want is not coexisting, but destroying our democratic system.
There is no ideologic pluralism in the Soviet Union or Cuba, nor was there any in the former communist-subjugated countries. In the former, those who advocate ideological pluralism are deemed as `deviationists' and severely punished. Could we have `the wolf taken into the chicken coop'?
Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan old-guard Communist leader, was quoted as having stated that `there would be elections in Cuba for all positions, including that of President, and that independent political parties would be allowed'. This was widely published in the media of the Americas, but he was immediately ordered by Moscow and Cuba to retract those statements, and he said that `he had been misinterpreted, that he meant that there would be `elections' within the Communist Party in Cuba and that independent parties or movements would not be permitted'. That happened last month. There is the categorical answer for the deluded, the naive and the accomplices, who say or believe that there could be democracy and freedom in Cuba under the Communist system, while the totalitarian Stalinist tyrant and the Soviet base are there. `Upon the confession of a party, evidence is not needed'.
The Treaty of Tlatelolco on the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Latin-America, which is so important for the present and future of the Americas, has not been signed by satellite Castro. It is known that the Soviet Union has built a base for nuclear submarines at Cienfuegos, Cuba, which has been `visited' by warships capable of transporting and firing nuclear weapons. Now Castro is building nuclear plants, reportedly for `peaceful purposes'. We believe that the Soviet Union, which signed the II Protocol of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, has violated it. Why has Castro not signed it?
The government of satellite Castro has been charged with being involved in the illegal narcotics traffic, lending its air space and territorial waters to facilitate said traffic between Latin-America and the United States. There are courts which have accused high-ranking officials of the communist regime of Cuba of being involved in the illegal narcotics traffic. A few days ago, Castro met at La Habana the lawyers of his partner in crime, former General Manuel Noriega, in trying `to contribute evidence' to defend his disgraced partner. Why is Castro trying to defend a corrupt and narco-trafficker dictator, such as Noriega? The answer is obvious.
The so-called `Cold War' has not ended in the Americas. In order for it to end, many things would have to happen, among them the following:
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1. The return to the Soviet Union of the 27,000 Soviet military personnel who are presently in Cuba, the organized brigade with a force of 2,800 members, and the Soviet military technicians who are 6,000 strong, stationed at the electronic base of Villa Lourdes, La Habana. The dismantling of the nuclear submarine base installed at Cienfuegos. The return to the Soviet Union of the military personnel and `advisors' who are still in Nicaragua and with other subversive movements in the Americas.
2. The return to the Soviet Union of the nuclear and/or conventional weapons located in Cuba.
3. The breakup of the military and ideological and geostrategic submission links between Cuba and the Soviet Union.
4. The elimination of the communist system implemented by deceit, terror and force in Cuba.
5. The implementation of full freedom and democracy in Cuba.
6. The return to a free and democratic Cuba and of a government elected by the Cuban people in an internationally-supervised, secret and fair election, free from all fraud, to the Inter-American System and to the OAS.
7. The cessation of the subversive movement sponsored by the Soviet Union in several countries of Latin-America, such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Nicaragua and Honduras.
The Secretary General of the OAS, Ambassador Joao Clemente Baena Soares, in his eloquent speech of September 5, 1985, quoted the words of Joseph Stalin, the leader of Soviet communism: `Bring the machineguns. We are going to liquidate the diplomats'. This quotation should be present in the reformist deliberations of this Assembly, because Castro is an imitator of Stalin.
With all of this background, Honorable Ministers of Foreign Relations and Honorable Ambassadors of the American States, we, who have been born in the Free Cuban State, which is a member of this General Assembly, of the Inter-American System and of the Organization of American States, on behalf of the free people of Cuba and representing the Cuban Patriotic Board, which encompasses the majority of the organizations in exile and within Cuba, declare:
1. That there cannot be any freedom in the Americas, as a whole, if it does not exist in each of its components. And Cuba is a part of the whole.
2. That there cannot be any democracy in the whole, which is made up by the Americas, if it does not exist in each of its components. Cuba, which is a part of the Americas, is presently subjugated by a totalitarian, tyrannical, Marxist-Leninist regime of a Stalinist nature, convicted and self-avowed.
3. That there cannot be any peace in the whole, if it does not exist in each of its components.
4. That the whole (the Americas) cannot be deemed as independent when one of its components (Cuba) is submitted to tributary and feudal servitude, in the condition of a geostrategic base for an extra-continental power (the Soviet Union).
5. There could happen a holocaust in Cuba worse than that of Romania, if the American States would not help the Cuban people and act in solidarity with same to prevent that. Jose Marti, the Apostle of Cuban Independence, stated: `Watching a crime in silence is tantamount to committing it'. A crime is being committed in Cuba upon the Cuban people for the last 31 years, by a tyrant dressed in military garb who threatens, in his psychopathic megalomany, to stain with blood that country before surrendering the power to the legitimate representatives of the people.
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6. the Origanization of American States (OAS) is made up by free, equal, sovereign and independent nations; because of that, if a satellite government, `Marxist-Leninist to death'--as the Cuban government has stated--supported by an extra-continental power (the Soviet Union), endangers or tramples upon the rights of that state, the rest of the member states of the Inter-American System of the OAS have the moral and legal obligation, in compliance with the treaties, covenants, resolutions and agreements in force, to go to the defense of the subjugated state (Cuba) lest they shall incur, by their default, in the most serious mistake that History, in its day, shall condemn.
7. In accordance with the International Law of the Americas, this General Assemblyt is not competent to give entry to the present goverment of Cuba, because Castro was not separated from the Inter-American System and from the Organization of American States (OAS) by the OAS Charter, but by the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the Treaty of Rio) and the Resolution approved reads that `the Marxist-Leninist doctrine is incompatible with the Inter-American System, and any government which identifies itself as Marxist-Leninist is separated from the System'. And it continues to state that, `since the government of Cuba has identified as a Marxist-Leninist one, it is thus separated from the Inter-American System, from the OAS and from all organisms of the System'.
`Either Cuba is saved, or the Americas shall be lost', as it was stated by that illustrious patriot and journalist, a former President of the Inter-American Press Society, Dr. Guillermo Martinez Marquez.
Honorable Chairman, Honorable Ministers of Foreign Relations and Honorable Ambassadors and Representatives of the Americas: We respectfully request that these denouncements be considered as made, that this document be circulated among the member States, and that action be consequently adopted. We are in the vanguard of that struggle and we still expect and trust that you shall act in solidarity with us and join us, as the patriots and statesmen of the last century did, to help several countries of the Americas to become independent. Cuba is fighting for its second independence and the whole of the Americas has committed its history and dignity of free nations with the Cuban people.
We remain your with the highest consideration and respect.
Dr. Manuel Antonio de Varona, Chariman, Cuban Patriotic Board, Former Prime Minister and Chairman of the Cuban Senate; Dr. Jose Ignacio Rasco, Secretary for Foreign Relations; Dr. Claudio F. Bened-Beruff, Washington Area Representative.
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