Democracies must see Cuba as a terrorist state.

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The true nature of the regime from Cuba has been avowed by the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) Luis Almagro, acknowledging that “the dictatorship from Havana uses state-sponsored terrorism against its own citizens”. Armed with recent ample proof of the regime’s re-incidence that for over 62 years, “conducts acts of violence to instill terror” internally as well as internationally, the message now is “it is time for democracy to return to Cuba”. It is urgent for democratic governments to see Cuba as a “terrorist state”.

Terror is “intense fear”, “extreme anxiety due to a looming peril or real or imaginary danger”. Terrorism is “the systematic use of terror”. The United Nations’ 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of Funding Terrorism, recognizes a “terrorist act” one “that is aimed to cause death or serious physical harm to a civilian or any other person. . . when the objective of said act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel it, to execute it or abstain from executing it”.

State Sponsored Terrorism as defined by Encarta Encyclopedia is “the systematic use, by a State’s government, of threats and reprisals, often considered illegal even within its own legislation, for the purpose of compelling the population to obedience or active collaboration”. Jurist Ernesto Garzon defines it as: “a political system whose recognition rules allows or compels the clandestine application, unpredictable and fuzzy, against openly innocent people, of coercive measures forbidden by the established legal system, it hinders or annuls the judicial protection of due process and turns the government into an active agent in the struggle for power”.

The “States Sponsoring International Terrorism” is a “designation applied by the United States Department of State to countries the US Government considers collaborators of terrorist organizations”. Cuba has been so designated, but Cuba’s actions go beyond sponsoring terrorism, it is a habitual and repeat offender of internal as well as international Terrorism of the State.

The OAS’ avowal that Cuba applies Terrorism of the State against its own citizens has been done within the context of a complaint by a group of activists who are in a “hunger strike in defense of human rights in Cuba”, fifty-five people in Cuba and eight abroad, denounce police repression against members of Cuba’s Patriotic Union (UNPACU in Spanish). This is only one incident of the thousands acts of terrorism of the State the Castroist regime executes for over 62 years.

For a long time, Cuban youth born into and indoctrinated by Castroism, repudiate the system and denounce “Terrorism of the State” that democratic governments and international organizations seem to ignore. Cuban youth have rebelled against the disgraceful regime, the inexistence of any rights, the misery, and the condition of prison they live in Cuba and against all the acts that simply stated are “Terrorism of the State”.

Protests in Cuba continue and are growing and artists, youth -supposedly indoctrinated to “defend the revolution”- repudiate it. The regime persecutes and imprisons them applying “Terrorism of the State” and groups, such as that of San Isidro, grow in their plight for freedom. Their slogan “HOMELAND AND LIFE” is the message for the peoples’ liberation with an extraordinary video/song recorded in Havana and Miami with six Cuban song writers of rap and reggaeton that cry out to the dictatorship “IT IS OVER!”.

“Terrorism of the State” is the methodology institutionalized by the Castro’s in Cuba and is in existence in the Americas in the 21st century following Castro’s alliance with Hugo Chavez who, since 1999, allowed it to survive and control other governments and countries with a populist message that soon thereafter became the 21st Century Socialism or “Castrochavism”. Dictatorships from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, with their odds, violations of human rights, crises, political prisoners and exiles, tortured, massacres and more, are the current visible side of the Cuban Terrorism of the State that has spread in the region.

Ever since the firing squad executions of 1959 and thereafter, the judicialization of repression, torture, going through the guerrillas and armed attacks phase, the organization and sustainment of terrorist groups and narcotics’ traffickers, urban guerrillas and the protection of terrorists and criminals, until the human trafficking conducted by the system of slaved physicians, or internationalists, all of it prove the practice of “Terrorism of the State” by the Cuban regime. The OAS avowal is an injunction for all democratic governments to see Cuba as a Terrorist State.
*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.