Category — Havana

Jorge Castañeda, former Foreign Minister of Mexico, has written an article (preview only) for Foreign Affairs in which he believes the key to a successful foreign policy in Latin America is to focus on four critical issues — Cuba, immigration, trade, and the “two lefts”.

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Mara Salvatrucha gang members arrested by Honduran special police. (Photo: Reuters)

Several challenges will be posed to a transitional government once Castroism fades from existence (elements will certainly remain) and a semblance of democracy emerges. Organized crime will be one of them, particularly in the streets of Havana and other cities throughout the island, perpetrated by gangs.

The lessons learned (from strategy and tactics to combat) of the current gang and organized crime phenomena evolving in Central America and Mexico proves invaluable to a future transitional government in how to confront these internal security issues.

Dr. Max Manwaring (Professor of Military Strategy at the U.S. Army War College) has written an article titled: “Sovereignty Under Seige: Gangs and Other Criminal Organizations in Central America and Mexico” published in the Spanish edition of Air and Space Power Journal addressing the current security challenges posed by gangs and organized crime in the Americas.

He also wrote at the end of 2007: “A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty: Gangs and Other Illicit Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) in Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil“ published by the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College that is worth a read.

Manwaring points out in his excellent article, Sovereignty Under Seige:

Another kind of war within the context of a “clash of civilizations” is being waged in various parts of the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and everywhere else around the world today. Some of the main protagonists are those who have come to be designated as first-, second-, and third-generation street gangs, as well as the more traditional Trans-National Criminal Organizations (TCOs) such as Mafia families, Illegal Drug Traffickers, Warlords, Terrorists, Insurgents, etc. In this different (“new”) kind of war, TCOs are not sending conventional military units across national borders or building an industrial capability in an attempt to “filch some province” from some country. These non-state actors are more interested in commercial profit and controlling territory (turf) to allow maximum freedom of movement and action. In addition to drug smuggling, these criminal organizations are known to have expanded their activities—among others–to smuggling people, body parts, weapons, and cars; along with associated intimidation, murder, kidnapping, and robbery; money laundering; home and community invasion; and other lucrative societal destabilization activities. That freedom of action within countries and across national frontiers ensures commercial market share and revenues, as well as secure bases for market expansion. The corrosive effects of the associated criminal violence and gratuitous cruelty of that freedom of movement also generates a different kind of clash of civilizations. It is not a clash of Western and Eastern cultures. Rather, it is a clash of values. It is a clash of values between Liberal Democracy and criminal anarchy.

What makes all of this into a new type of war is that the national security and sovereignty of affected countries is being impinged every day, and TCO’s illicit commercial motives are, in fact, becoming an ominous political agenda. Rather than trying to depose a government in a major stroke (golpe or coup) or a prolonged revolutionary war, as some insurgents have done, gangs and other TCOs more subtly take control of turf one street or neighborhood at a time (coup d’ street), or one individual, business, or government office at a time. Thus, whether a gang or another TCO is specifically a criminal or insurgent type organization is irrelevant. The putative objective of all these illegal entities—the common denominator that directly links gangs, other TCOs, and insurgents– is to control people, territory, and government to ensure their own specific ends. That is a good definition of insurgency, a serious political agenda, and a clash of controlling values.

[H/T: SWJ]

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By Jerry Brewer via Mexidata.info

Totalitarian dictatorships still exist and, as a matter of fact, they are very much alive in Latin America. Democracies throughout the Americas must immediately address their governments’ counterintelligence missions, and their strategic long and short range vision to monitor aggression and other forms of insurgency within their homelands.

Cuba’s intelligence and spy apparatus has been described as a “contingency of very well-trained, organized and financed agents.” Too, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has adopted the previous Soviet-styled Cuban intelligence service (DGI) as his model for Venezuela’s security service, known as the DISIP, utilizing Cuban intelligence counterparts and advisors.

What is the history of Cuba’s communist trained spies?

Cuba has trained thousands of communist guerrillas and terrorists, and has sponsored violent acts of aggression and subversion in most democratic nations of the southwestern hemisphere. U.S. government studies within the intelligence community documented a total of 3,043 international terrorist incidents in the decade of 1968 to 1978. Within that study, “over 25 percent occurred in Latin America.”

Recent reports are that Cuba has been expanding intelligence operations in the Middle East and South Asia. This reported by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Cuba has consistently maintained a well-organized and “ruthless” intelligence presence within Mexico, as have the Russians. Much of their activity involved in U.S. interests that include recruiting disloyal U.S. military, government, and “private sector specialists. [Read more →]

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The Wall Street Journal tells the story of  Armando Valladares, author of Against All Hope which details his harrowing twenty-two year imprisonment as a political prisoner of the Cuban government:

In late December 1959, nearly a year after Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had been run out the country by a movement that had a goal of restoring the 1940 Cuban constitution, Fidel Castro was tightening his grip.

At the time, Armando Valladares was a 22-year-old government bureaucrat at the Post Office Savings Bank. One day a group from the Communist Party showed up in his office and put a sign on his desk that read “If Fidel is a communist, put me on the list. He’s got the right idea.”

Castro had not yet made public his communist intentions. But Mr. Valladares says that “the sign was part of the campaign by the party and by Fidel to prepare the population for communism, which most knew little about. The idea was that since Fidel had already made his name synonymous with the Cuban messiah, he must be right about communism.”

Mr. Valladares told his visitors that he didn’t want that sign on his desk. “Five or six days later, in the wee hours of the morning, they came to my house. My mother’s room was closest to the front door so she heard the knock and got up to see who was there. When she opened the door, the men pushed her out of the way and rushed into the house. I awoke with a machine gun against my temple.”

The young Valladares had a lot of company. Thousands were being rounded up. Some waited months for their trials. Many others were immediately marched before firing squads.

Mr. Valladares got his day in court within the week. The judge, he says, sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book and making jokes. The search of his home had produced “no evidence, no weapons, no propaganda opposing the state.” Nevertheless he was convicted as a potential conspirator against the Revolution and sentenced to 30 years. His cell mates applauded the decision, because the only other possible sentence was the death penalty.

[Read more →]

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Via BBC:

The number of political prisoners in Cuba has fallen in the past six months, according to a new report by the island’s main human rights group.

[...]

But the report also says that the authorities are continuing to take a tough line against dissidents.

It says that any change in the human rights situation remains “unlikely”.

There are an estimated 219 political prisoners currently held in Cuban jails, 15 fewer than in January this year.

But according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCHRNR) this does not represent a fundamental change in the treatment of dissidents under Raul Castro.

Instead, the latest half yearly report by this illegal but tolerated organisation points to a change in tactics, with a marked increase in what it calls arbitrary systematic detentions.

Instead of high profile arrests and imprisonment, opponents are picked up by police, often prior to planned meetings or rallies.

They are then released without charge, usually within 24 hours.

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La Razon reports on the creation of a super-ministry charged with overseeing the production of food (a vital national security issue for Cuba):

While rumors of a next government crisis runs insistently throughout Havana, the name of Ulises Rosales del Toro is beginning to be heard with greater impetus among diplomats and journalists.   Rosales del Toro is the current Minister of Sugar, a two star general, 66 years-old with a brilliant service record for the regime.

According to unofficial sources, it seems Rosales del Toro will play a vital role in the restructuring of the Cuban government once Raul Castro sends the plan to parliament (National Assembly) before the end of the year.

“I know what you know,” responded Vice-Minister of Sugar Juan Godefroy to a query made by a US news agency interested in the role of that ministry in the unification of four ministerial posts that are linked to the production of food in the country.

Expected unification

Even though there is speculation without official confirmation point to Rosales del Toro, former chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, as the center of the expected unification or reorganization of the Ministries of Agriculture, Sugar, Food and Fishery.

The restructuring of the departments linked to the production of food which is a national security issue in Cuba began with sharing by municipalities of “many decisions that have been up to now made centrally in the Ministry of Agriculture,” opined Cuban economists who asked to remain anonymous.

“Unification of decision making” in the sector will be reached through that path but they declined to advance the names of who will head the new structure.

[H/T: La Nueva Cuba.]

[Photo: BBC.]

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