Dialing for Dollars in Cuba

There are so many things wrong with this story that it would be hard to know where to begin, so let’s start with Tuesday’s headline in El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish language fiefdom of the Miami Herald, which says “Dissident Cuban Woman Says Government Hounds but Doesn’t Allow a Defense.”

Now, aside from the striking fact that the Cuban woman in question, Martha Beatriz Roque, is given a free platform by a major U.S. daily from which to defend herself (and doesn’t) - something which is never offered those hounded by the United States government, Machetera’s going to take a wild guess here and say that if the Cuban government didn’t also invite her to appear on the Cuban political television program, Mesa Redonda (Round Table) where her grasping emails were unveiled, demanding payment for services rendered, it would have been to save her from being killed by the audience. Because Martha doesn’t just take money from anybody. She takes it from the ugliest people - Santiago Alvarez, the benefactor of Luis Posada Carriles, who blew up a Cuban passenger plane in 1976, killing all 73 people on board.

Alvarez, you’ll recall, spirited the aging terrorist Posada Carriles from Mexico to safe haven in the United States, aboard his vessel, the Santrina - a felony, incidentally, but one that has so far not been prosecuted since the government has been otherwise occupied slapping him on the wrist for his unusual weapons collection: “machine guns, rifles, C-4 explosive, dynamite, detonators, a grenade launcher and ammunition,” according to the Miami Herald.

Fidel Castro was the first person to point out that Posada Carriles had arrived on the Santrina, not as Posada Carriles claimed, on a bus crossing the Mexico/Texas border, but the U.S. press ran with the bus story for a very long time anyway. It worked out well in the end, as the lie about the bus trip was what the government finally used to charge and minimally sentence Posada Carriles instead of complying with international law and turning him over for extradition to Venezuela to be prosecuted in the 1976 plane bombing.

When not dialing for dollars (or specifically, euros) for herself and others, Martha apparently busied herself writing to the judge overseeing Alvarez’s prosecution, which might have paid off, had the letter not been lost at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Martha understood the consequences and wrote to her Miami confidante and intermediary for the terrorists, Carmen Machado,

“It’s a serious problem, since [Cuban] Security will surely bring out the original letter on Mesa Redonda, or in a book, or maybe they’ll bring me back to trial for it, since they’ve never had any proof against me despite all the years I’ve lived. I wanted you to know and for you to tell my friend, of whom I’m also very proud.”

Martha’s not the only one taking money from such despicable people. The U.S. government p.r. creation, the “Ladies in White,” (Damas de Blanco) takes terrorist money too. The “Ladies in White” are the Cuban wives of other so-called dissidents who don white clothing and head-scarves in the most cynical appropriation of the memory of the Argentine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who marched to demand the return of their children, abducted in the U.S. supported military dictatorship there.

The p.r. geniuses who thought up the “Ladies in White” have counted on a short public attention span and a compliant press, but Hebe de Bonafini, a real mother from Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo was perfectly blunt about the insult in an interview with Salim Lamrani in 2005:

Lamrani: The Cuban authorities arrested and harshly sentenced various people to prison terms, which the international press calls “dissidents,” for having collaborated with the economic sanctions against Cuba and for receiving subsidies from the United States. The French press has often alluded to the “Ladies in White,” the family of these “dissidents,” who march in Havana to ask for the liberation of their family members. Several media have referred to these people as the “Cuban Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.” What does Hebe de Bonafini, President of the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo think?

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