Gulliver Against Twelve Thousand Dwarves / 14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, in his address to the 70th UN General Assembly. (MFA)
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, in his address to the 70th UN General Assembly. (MFA)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 31 October 2015 – Cuba 191, United States 2. This is called a diplomatic beating. One-hundred-ninety-one countries at the United Nations voted in favor of a resolution presented by Cuba against the commercial and financial restrictions imposed by the United States on the Castros’ government in 1961. Only two nations opposed it: The United States and Israel.

It has been happening for a long time. The novelty is that this year Obama’s government secretly celebrated it, although the law and common sense oblige American diplomacy to reject the resolution. The president himself has urged Congress to repeal the measure.

In any case, the United States, truly, was not defended. At the end of the day, these UN resolutions are not binding. It is pure propaganda within an organization so discredited that it chose Venezuela and Ecuador to belong to a committee that monitors the observance of Human Rights, which is like putting the fox to guard the henhouse.

What is interesting is how the Castros’ dictatorship consequently diverts attention from the real heart of the matter – the persistence of a Stalinist dictatorship derived from the Soviet model eradicated in the West a quarter of a century ago – and creates a fabricated perception: a poor island besieged by the greatest power on earth. David against Goliath.

How does it do it? To understand this we have to know that this small island, unproductive and mistreated, impoverished and beggared, who pays no one because it wastes its resources, has an exterior outreach of great power learned from the KGB: some 12,000 people dedicated to the task of promoting the causes chosen by Fidel Castro and inherited and continued by his brother Raul.

What are those causes? Essentially, the denouncing of the United States and of evil and exploitive capitalism. Everyone who opposes this common enemy is welcome: Iran and the ayatollahs, Gaddafi’s Libya in the past, today Putin’s Russia, “21st Century Socialism.” Everything. Anything.

Who are these 12,000 functionaries, the driving force of the Pharaonic diplomacy of Fidel, narcissistic, like so many, with the grandiose urgency to impose his will on the world?

First of all, the Directorate General of Intelligence, with its 1,500 officials, very well trained, scattered throughout the world. Every one of them seduces, recruits or manages a dozen local contacts. The members of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), another intelligence arm, present in every country and all international organizations. The 119 Cuban embassies, with 140 cities and 21 consulates general, all managed by State Security. The academic, literary or artistic institutions that have contacts abroad and travel and receive visitors. Whatever piece fits into the puzzles: a Silvio Rodriguez concert, a conference in Panama. Whatever.

Total: Thousands of people directly or indirectly linked to the political life and the communications of most of the nations of the world – and especially, those of the major Western countries – who are responding to the dictates of Havana.

I am not counting, of course, counterintelligence. That system, forged in the image of the East German Stasi, has in its ranks 0.5% of the population, some 60,000 people dedicated to the task of infiltrating and controlling “enemy groups
within the island, among whom are not only democrats asking for freedoms, but also Freemasons, Christian churches, suspicious collectives such as the LGBT, or the self-employed who are trying to run small home businesses to survive in the midst of so much repression and stupidity.

As soon as the message goes out about taking the annual resolution to the UN, this immense mechanism is set in motion to achieve the objective. There are always ties with the foreign ministries and the seats of government, even though formally they are enemies. Cuba looks after these personal relationships like gold dust.

Everything is used: From giving free medical treatment to the relative of a deputy, a general or a local police chief, to sending large sums of money to like-minded candidates for election, or cigars to heads of government, or getting a Don Juan to relieve the aching genitals of a Cuban spy of Puerto Rican origin, as happened to Ana Belen Montes.

This lady, condemned to 25 years in prison for spying, and whose pardon is now being considered by President Obama, reached a very high position in the Pentagon. Her official function was to gather all the analysis from different agencies and inform the White House about how dangerous the island was. But, in reality, she was secretly working for the benefit of Havana, revealing to the Castros the sources of American intelligence (which cost some lives) and telling the sweet story of a small and defenseless country that posed no threat to the security of the United States.

Washington, which has lost the reflexes it once had during the Cold War, does not know, cannot, or does not want to fight this enemy. Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, described how, shipwrecked in Lilliput, Captain Lemuel Gulliver is tied up and arrested by a legion of six-inch tall dwarfs. This is what is happening to the United States. It is not David against Goliath. It is Gulliver against 12,000 efficient dwarfs.