12/2/2017 Cuba After Ochoa by Karen Lee Wald (1990)

CUBA AFTER OCHOA

OR "THEY SHOOT DRUG
TRAFFICKERS, DON'T THEY?"
By Karen Lee Wald (originally published 1990)
===================================
(A few words updating this essay, May 10, 2003.)

The current situation made me think about the Ochoa

case: although it wouldn't seem so at first glance, there
are many similarities. First, Cubans are once again torn
between their aversion to having to use the seldom-used
death penalty and their belief that if they don't, many more
lives will be lost. In the case of Ochoa, they later found
that the CIA had been monitoring, if not provoking, those
contacts with drug-runners and was just waiting for the
right moment to use that as an excuse to attack Cuba.
Similarly, the US has been stepping up its provocations of
Cuba since Bush came into office in the hope that Cuba or
Cubans would respond in some way that would justify an
intervention at this time.

Another mass migration, or the continuation of hijackings

that the US government could claim (as it has done) are a
"threat to US National Security" would be all that would
be needed for the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell clique to
unleash their storm troopers. So the Cuban government
felt it needed to take drastic measures, and most Cubans
on the island probably feel less sympathy for those
currently incarcerated -- who probably WERE
collaborating with the US -- and even for those who were
executed than they did for Ochoa, who had been a
national hero.

It's hard for most Americans to understand how Cubans

would feel about those hijackers because they didn't see
the images of those men holding knives and machetes to
the throats of the passengers on the ferry, threatening to
kill them or throw them overboard to the sharks one by
one if their demands were not met. That kind of behavior
doesn't elicit much sympathy from the general population
anywhere in the world. But most US and foreign news
articles completely omit reference to this -- although they
would be harping on it over and over if the shoe were on

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the other foot -- so Americans can't understand why the

government acted so "drastically".

Karen Lee Wald

May 10, 2003
================================

CUBA AFTER OCHOA

OR "THEY SHOOT DRUG
TRAFFICKERS, DON'T THEY?"
By Karen Lee Wald

Havana

When it all began, it looked like just another series of

events in Cuba's three-year campaign to root out
corruption, inefficiency, Privilege and other sorts of
"wrong-doing" in order to produce a better, brighter
socialist society. Its end is not yet in sight.

In mid-June, two top Cuban government officials, one

civilian, one Military, were removed from office under a
cloud of accusations of Misconduct. The situations were
apparently unrelated. One dealt With Diocles Torralba,
minister of transportation. His removal came as no
surprise, given the sorry state of public transportation, and
a lifestyle that had already raised many Eyebrows. If
anything, the question was "why did it take so long To
remove him." stories of his flagrant misuse of public funds
and Ostentatious gift-giving (including houses and cars),
scandalous Behavior at private parties and similar tid-bits
of gossip Circulated about Torralbas for some time,
making people wonder how He had managed to hold onto
his post in this period of "rectification."

But the investigation on similar charges of division

general Arnaldo Ochoa, another Sierra Maestra veteran
who headed the Cuban forces in Angola, uncovered
corruption extending to until then unimaginable levels,
and turned this bit of "rectification" into The biggest
scandal in the thirty year history of the revolution.

The cases of Ochoa and Torralbas at first seemed

unrelated, and were reported as such. Although General
Ochoa had been criticized repeatedly for manifesting too
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much direct concern for economic rather than military

matters in the various countries where he was posted, the
deposed general had always justified his activities by
saying he was looking out for Cuba's economic interests.
He was always believed -- a sign of the trust and high
regard accorded him because of his past.

In part, too, this belief was probably due to his apparently

modest life-style. No one ever saw Ochoa flaunting luxury
automobiles, living in mansions, sporting jewelry or new
clothes. On his vacations in Cuba he behaved like any
other citizen -- "even waiting on line at the grocery store"-
- insist his friends and neighbors.

But somehow Ochoa did step out of line -- way out of

line. The original list of accusations against Arnaldo
Ochoa included references to "dissipation and corruption,
" "corrupting officers under his command, " "improper use
of funds and resources, Embezzlement" as well as the
vaguer claims of moral impropriety. But the gravest
accusations were saved for last: what Granma termed the
"unprecedented" action by Ochoa and officials of the
Ministry of the Interior "who are said to have made
contacts with international drug traffickers, reached
agreements with them... and possibly even cooperated
with them in some ..."

Noting that these actions could have been the basis for
"the Insidious campaigns against the revolution by [US]
imperialism, " Which the government and most people
had simply written off as anti-Castro propaganda, the
editorial promised a complete investigation of the charges
and a detailed accounting to the people of its findings.

Trying to end on a positive note, the editorial concluded:

"although extremely surprising and bitter for our people,
these events demonstrate that although grave defects of a
moral as well as physical order can occur among
individuals, in our country Absolutely nobody, no matter
how great his merits, nor how high he may be in the
hierarchy, can violate the laws and principles of the
revolution with impunity."

As the investigation unfolded, it became clear that the

scandalous Behavior attributed to Ochoa didn't stop there.
The discovery that 14 high-level officials of Cuba's
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Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) And Ministry of the

Interior (MININT) security forces were engaged In a
variety of illegal and corrupt actions, including
involvement with international drug traffickers, was the
most devastating -- And for awhile, the most demoralizing
-- event in three decades. And the harsh sentences meted
out -- the firing squad for former General and war hero
Arnaldo Ochoa, MININT colonel Tony de La Guardia and
their two top aides, and 10 to 30 years for the rest -- is by
no means the end of the story. Only a thorough, all-
encompassing house-cleaning leaving no stone unturned
and no official - no matter how highly-placed -- immune
can repair the damage done by these fourteen individuals.
What hangs in the balance is no less than the survival of
the revolution itself.

The 14 defendants were initially investigated on charges

of carrying out illicit business deals and black marketing
in the countries where they were based, in the case of the
far officers, or through businesses set up to get around the
us embargo, in the case of MININT.

Arnaldo Ochoa, general in charge of the Cuban military

mission in Angola, third-ranking military leader in the
country, and close confidant of President Fidel Castro and
his brother Raul, minister of the armed forces, one of two
men designated "hero of the Republic, " was in every way
Cuba's shining star. Part of the rebel Force that overturned
the Batista dictatorship in 1959, he had until now an
uninterrupted and unblemished military career. for Cubans
who pride themselves on their national independence and
Their internationalist concern for helping third world
countries, he was the symbol of everything good and pure
in the Cuban Revolution.

Tony de La Guardia and his twin brother Patricio also

fought with the "Fidelistas" in the 1950s, and went on to
reach the top levels of the ministry of the interior, the
institution which controls the police and all of the
country's security forces. Like Ochoa, they were
considered among "the best and the brightest" of the
Cuban revolution.

To a lesser degree, the same could be said about each of

the men and one woman who were involved with Ochoa
or the La Guardia brothers. All or almost all had long,
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notable histories in defense of their country and its ideals.

All considered themselves revolutionaries (and at their
trial, insisted they still do). All of them confessed and
criticized their actions -- some in a spirit of cooperating
with the security people who until that moment had been
their friends and colleagues, others only when confronted
with the incontrovertible proof of their actions and the
testimony of their alleged accomplices or subordinates.

It took almost no time for Bush administration spokesmen

and the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami and
Washington to air charges of political intrigue, uprisings in
the armed forces, and threatened coups d'etat, on the one
hand, or the idea of Ochoa and friends being used as a
scapegoat for a crime Fidel Castro actually authorized.
They would have liked to build a campaign around these
new "political prisoners, " but the attitude in the world just
now is not ripe for gaining support for international drug
traffickers. The ideal would have been to convince the
world that these men were really political victims of
Castro's Machiavellian designs. Failing this, that he too
was implicated.

To Cubans, this made little or no sense. If Ochoa, La

Guardia or any of their group had been a "pro-perestroika
faction" within the Armed forces, as claimed by the
wishful-thinkers in Miami, someone Inside Cuba would
have heard about it. That was never an element
Considered by rumored about on the island. If Fidel and
Raul Castro considered these men political opponents, the
easiest way to dispose of them without arousing public
indignation would have been to accuse them of
counterrevolutionary activities. There would have been
quick popular support for their incarceration or
eradication. But the government eschewed this easy way
out -- and instead, accused them of crimes that would be
most embarrassing for the government on an international
level. After years of irately denying that anyone in Cuba
was in any way involved in international drug traffic, the
last thing Fidel Castro would have invented was that some
of his most trusted military and defense aides were doing
just that.

The trial itself put an end to any such rumors for most
people inside Cuba. The details of the operations, how and
when people became involved, and the revelation of a
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special unit within the Ministry of theInterior engaged in

authorized smuggling of blockaded articles into Cuba
went a long way toward explaining how These men could
have gotten away with what they did without higher
authorities becoming aware. After hearing the testimony,
even Western diplomats from countries traditionally
hostile to Cuba expressed doubt that the Cuban president
knew what these men were doing. The government was
faulted not for having authorized these activities, but for
having so little control and accountability of such officers,
that they could do what they did. One of the main
criticisms voiced inside the country: that there was so little
control that high officials could decide to live above the
law and get away with it -- a situation which this trial and
the severe sanctions were designed to bring an end to.)

Most Cubans believed that all of the accused committed

high treason against the far, MININT, the people, the
country, and most of all against Fidel Castro. They tended
not to ask whether Castro was guilty, too -- which few
would have believed -- but rather, "how could they do that
to Fidel?! How could men with a history like theirs have
gone bad?" and "what's wrong with our system that such
flagrant abuses could go unnoticed for nearly three
years?"

In his statements to the court during the military tribunal

which convicted and ultimately executed him, Ochoa
vehemently denied the Miami claims that there had been
political intrigue against the leadership of Fidel Castro and
ridiculed the statement made over Radio Marti that he had
been drugged. The latter claim was based in part on
pictures of him with his head down and eyes glued to the
ground the first day of his trial. Explaining that posture,
Ochoa said, "If you could say shame is a drug, I was
drugged". He labeled anti-Castro Cuban exiles such as
Huber Matos and Rafael del Pino, who made these
charges, as "traitors" and "dogs who bark at their masters'
command."

Although most Cubans were horrified when they learned

what their former heroes had done, attitudes among the
general population flip-flopped several times during the
trial and afterward as to whether or not they should be
given the severest sanction: the death penalty. A sizable
majority advocated the death penalty when they first heard
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the charges against the accused. But many had second

thoughts after viewing the televised proceedings of the
trials. When he testified Ochoa appeared as a charismatic
figure who came across as a sincerely repentant and
courageous person who had lived modestly and carried out
all his dealings in the mistaken belief he could use the
money to help the army he commanded and the revolution
in general. This created great ambivalence among the
Cuban people, who admired his courage even while
saying his crimes were unforgivable. No one felt Ochoa or
the others should go free, but many had misgivings about
the death penalty.

It was only after all members of the Council of State,

including President Fidel Castro, explained their reasons
for refusing to commute the death penalties, that most
people in the country were convinced of the necessity (if
not necessarily the desirability) of this action. Those
reasons included the fact that Ochoa and most of the
others had -- contrary to the impression they initially tried
to give -- benefited materially from their actions. In
addition to a variety of consumer goods, all but one had
money stashed away in their homes or in foreign bank
accounts.

But more telling than demonstrations of their personal

greed was the actual and potential harm these officers did
to the institutions responsible for defending the revolution
and its leaders. Involving members of the armed forces
and internal security in drug dealing, even if only
indirectly, not only eroded Cuba's prestige internationally
but seriously damaged the confidence the Cuban people
had in these institutions.

This was part of the basis for the charges of treason that
led to the death penalty. The other, more concrete reason
was that their actions were believed to have compromised
the very security of the country. Given the CIA's direct
involved in international drug trafficking and the
probability it had evidence of their participation, Ochoa,
La Guardia et al., made themselves easy targets for US
blackmail.

Yet for Cuba internally, the trial went even beyond this.
men and women who had been illegally benefiting from
illicit business negotiations and living a lifestyle far
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beyond the means of the average Cuban should have stood

out like sore thumbs in a Revolutionary society like
Cuba's. The fact that they didn't was an indication of how
far the abuse of revolutionary principles and values had
gone. For too long now, officials of a certain level,
whether military or civilian, have been able to indulge in
certain privileges, materially or otherwise, with little or no
criticism voiced. In this sense, there was a direct relation
between the dismissal and investigation of the minister of
transportation and the trial of officers accused of high
crimes.

The military court martial was less a trial than a public

demonstration that such crimes will not be tolerated; that,
as the official newspaper Granma stated in an editorial,
there is no impunity for anyone, no matter at what level,
the Prosecuting Attorney -- Cuba's justice minister Juan
Escalona, serving in his capacity as brigadier general in
the army reserve -- raised these and other political
questions in his frequent diatribes against the defendants
during the four day court martial.

Escalona insisted that the actions of these men, more than

just crimes of greed and corruption, were treason to Cuba
because they undermined the prestige not only of the
government but of the very forces responsible for
defending the country. In addition, the trial forced the
government to reveal many of the activities and
mechanisms of these agencies, including very sensitive
ones aimed at breaking the us economic blockade against
Cuba by bringing in medical supplies, computers and
other products covered by the embargo.

It was the fact that they were already carrying out such
Authorized smuggling, combined with the high level of
trust the Castro brothers placed in them, that made it
possible for the de La Guardia group to successfully carry
out 19 drug-transshipment Actions without anyone in
Cuba raising questions about what was in The boxes --
marked "computers" and "tobacco" -- that were flown In
on small planes and re-loaded onto miami-bound
launches.

None of the defendants were accused of actual drug-

dealing, but of Taking commissions --totaling several
million dollars over three years -- for allowing the
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Colombian dealers to use Cuban airports and territorial

waters for refueling and reloading. They had pointedly
refused to allow the Colombians to set up a cocaine
factory inside Cuba, as members of the cartel had
requested. This was probably due less to a notion of
"drawing the line" than to their recognition that they could
not have gotten away with it. Although the Colombians
obviously made the request believing that the top
leadership of the country, including Fidel Castro, knew all
about these deals, La Guardia and others knew this wasn't
the case. They'd never asked for approval of their
transactions with the drug cartel because they knew they
wouldn't get it; they assumed --correctly for awhile -- that
no one would be the wiser if They secretly introduced this
element into their authorized Smuggling operations. But
actually bringing coca into the country and producing
cocaine would have been a whole new ballgame in which
their chances for maintaining secrecy were slim. For
awhile, they stalled the Colombians, eventually offered
some excuse as to why it couldn't be done.)

Escalona's first point of attack was the unauthorized

trading in Cuban products for diamonds, gold, ivory and
dollars engaged in by General Ochoa and his subordinates
when he was chief of the Cuban military mission in
Angola, and defrauding the Nicaraguan government by
taking large sums of money in exchange for weapons he
never produced and was never authorized to sell.

Charging commissions for business deals with countries

that are Cuba's allies, and engaging in black market
negotiations with them for food or weapons, he contended,
could seriously damage Cuba's relations with friendly
countries such as Angola and Nicaragua, where these
actions took place.

Regarding Ochoa's unauthorized "business ventures",

Escalona Railed: "it's hard to imagine a greater shame for
our internationalist combatants than to learn from the
mouths of the protagonists themselves that the head of the
Cuban military mission in Angola was selling sugar,
wheat, fish and salt on the black market for a few crumbs
of money, on the pretext that it was to improve the living
conditions of the troops, and which was really going into
his bank account in Panama....it's no less than making
money off the hunger of the Angolan people, who have
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suffered enough from foreign aggression....it's criminal to

speculate at the cost of such misery."

For Fidel Castro, who summed up his reasons for not

commuting the death sentences at the end of the trial, the
problem of Ochoa's misbehavior in Angola was even
greater. Cubans and Angolans were fighting and dying in
the historic battles of Cuito Cuanavale while Ochoa and
his aides were engaged in their "business deals, " he said.
If another general had not been put in command in
southern Angola, he charged, Ochoa's irresponsible
behavior -- among other Things, he is said to have missed
a crucial operations meeting and to have consistently
underestimated the strength of the South African forces --
could have meant the loss of that decisive battle, which
forced South Africa to abandon its attempts to overthrow
the Angolan government and to finally agree to the
Independence of Namibia.

But clearly the real sore point was the drug trafficking --
something the Cuban government took pride in
eliminating when it overthrew the Batista dictatorship, and
has held up as a banner of its revolutionary purity ever
since. Almost any of their other crimes might have
merited no more than dismissal from their posts, But
narcotics has long been anathema to the Cubans, who
associate it with the degradation they felt they suffered
when Cuba was Considered the us mafia's playground for
gambling, dope and prostitution.

Escalona, who as justice minister had participated in a

series of UN meetings regarding the drug trade, told
Ochoa during questioning that he had thus seen "the
consequences of drug consumption" in countries such as
the United States, where drug addiction is of epidemic
proportions. "Didn't you ever imagine, " he asked the
former general, "what opening a way for drugs meant in
terms of the death or degradation of hundreds or
thousands of citizens, of young people, even children of
the United States -- on the people of the United States?"

Regarding Ochoa's contention that he had planned to let

the Colombian cartel launder some of its drug money by
investing in Cuba's tourist industry, Escalona practically
shouted: "Do you think that this revolution deserves the
indignity of developing its tourism based on money
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stained by drugs, stained by the blood and degradation of

god knows how many hundreds of citizens from around
the world? Didn't you ever think of that?"

Even more infuriating to the revolutionaries was the fact

that these high officials gave the impression both to their
subordinates and to the drug traffickers that they were
carrying on their activities in the name of the Cuban
government.

Although in the trial itself Ochoa and others admitted they

had never informed their superiors nor themselves
believed they were carrying out an authorized activity
when they expanded their actions into the drug field, the
government's position is: "What if the enemy, instead of
us, had caught you? Who then would have believed that
this was not an activity initiated or condoned by the
highest level of the Cuban government?"

But even further, the drug-related actions exposed the

country to real risk. Assuming the CIA was monitoring (if
it did not in fact lure the Cubans into becoming involved
in Colombian drug dealing to entrap them) the
government argued that if men at such high level as Ochoa
and the La Guardia brothers had at some point in the
future been blackmailed by the CIA with evidence of their
drug dealings, the entire military defense and security
apparatus of the country would have been vulnerable.

There are other disturbing aspects, most of all the fact that
people who had dedicated decades to fighting for
revolutionary Ideals, often risking their lives, could have
become so thoroughly corrupted by the lure of money and
consumer goods -- a problem not limited to those involved
in this case.

The more far-reaching aspects of this scandal still plague

most Cubans. Has the effort to bring hard-currency into
the economy Through "mixed enterprises" and tourism so
thoroughly corrupted a sector of the population that even
the most valiant, heroic defenders of the revolution could
fall prey to temptations such as This? What else have
people involved in these "businesses" been doing? Isn't the
fact that high officials --business or government leaders,
especially those whose history dates back to fighting with
Fidel in the hills -- often live ostentatiously a temptation
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For others to follow their lead?

The more optimistic, from government officials to people

interviewed in the street, say that the country will come
out Stronger after this "house cleaning" is completed. But
that of course depends on the government not stopping
with these 14.

To indicate its intentions to carry out just such a "clean

sweep, " The central committee dismissed Interior
Minister Jose Abrantes, who was not implicated in the
scandal but had failed to detect that it was going on.
Appointed in his place is far general Abelardo Colome, a
member of the Central Committee's Politburo, And Raul
Castro's first deputy in the armed forces. (It was the FAR's
counter-intelligence units, not MININT's, that ultimately
uncovered and prosecuted the Ochoa and De La Guardia
groups.)

Colome's job now is to thoroughly investigate the causes

of the scandal and take all necessary measures to insure
that it never happens again. Although dissidents here view
this as putting more power into the hands of the Castro
brothers, it is being warmly received by others as a sign
that the government means business. Interestingly, this
view has also been repeated by some members of the Bush
administration. XXXXX

Resignations and dismissals of many other officials,

civilian and military, followed that of Abrantes. The
message is clear: corrupt practices and unjustified,
ostentatious "high living" is not to be accepted by anyone.

For all its negative repercussions internally and the blot on

Cuba's reputation, the incident could actually have long-
term positive results that go far beyond just prosecuting
and punishing a handful of corrupt officers. One of these
is to demonstrate that Cuba is sincere when it says it will
take all necessary measures against international drug
trafficking. (In addition to the trials, the Cuban
government has warned that it will shoot down any small
planes that refuse to identify themselves while using
Cuba's air corridors -- a known route for drug smugglers
heading from Colombia to Miami. That, however, may be
easier to proclaim than to carry out, given Cuba's lack of
sophisticated radar equipment for detecting such small
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craft. The US has urged the Cuban government to exercise

extreme caution in carrying out this threat, to avoid risk of
shooting down harmless passenger planes with faulty
radio equipment. That resulted in a misunderstanding
when both Cuban MIGs and a US Coast Guard plane tried
to force down a small, unidentified plane flying without
lights one night, reportedly enroute from Colombia to
Miami. The Cuban planes withheld their fire, and lost the
plane in the darkness. Some US wire services later
reported that the Coast Guard complained the Cuban
planes interfered with their attempt to intercept the plane.)

Another, is that it could actually lead to cooperation

between the United States and Cuba in what both espouse
as a primary goal: stopping the drug trade. While many
officials in the Bush Administration are taking a "wait and
see" attitude, others say they are considering asking the
Cuban government to cooperate by turning over the
testimony in the Ochoa-de La Guardia case to a Federal
court in Miami that is currently prosecuting two of the
Colombian drug-runners. The two men were implicated by
the defendants in the Ochoa trial, and those involved with
the Miami case say it appears some of the testimony in
Havana could be very helpful to the prosecution if such
cooperation actually took place, that could be a major first
step in repairing the still-frigid relations between Havana
and Washington.

END

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