Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 19:29:11 CSTFor immediate release
Contact: General Baker 313-868-1540
Jo Ann Capalbo 312-486-0028 (joann@noc.org)
CHICAGO -- The U.S. government's hostile attitude toward Cuba does not represent the interests of most Americans, according to the Chicago-based League of Revolutionaries for a New America.
"The Clinton administration's response to the shooting down of the two aircraft by Cuba is a crude attempt to focus the American people's attention away from the very real problems we have here at home, as well as an effort to intimidate the Cuban people," said General Baker, chair of the LRNA's Steering Committee. "Clinton's current policy doesn't reflect the needs and interests of the majority of Americans, and especially of the millions of our own brothers and sisters fighting to rescue themselves from permanent unemployment, homelessness, police terror and censorship, none of which was caused by the Cuban people or their revolution. In fact, the same U.S. government that is stepping up its provocations against Cuba is also attacking America's poor," Baker added.
"If only the United States had a government which defended the 80 million Americans living in poverty as fiercely as it defends the interests of the handful of wealthy Americans and right-wing Cuban exiles who stand to profit if the Cuban revolution is reversed," said Baker.
Baker said this latest crisis in Cuban-American relations "is a new call to the growing class of those who have been discarded by the economic and political system in this country to unite across all lines of color and nationality and step up the fight for our own freedom from poverty and repression, and for an America at peace with Cuba and all its neighbors around the world."
The serious confrontation that broke out at the end of February between the goverments of Cuba and the United States is only the latest of many since the triumph of the Cuban revolution of 1959.
The crisis arose when Cuban air force jets shot down two small aircraft flown by members of a Miami-based exile "humanitarian" group calling itself "Brothers to the Rescue." This last incursion into Cuba's airspace was only the latest in an ongoing series of provocations by this group, provocations which were carried out with the full knowledge -- and the implicit consent -- of the U.S. government. While the loss of life in this incident is regrettable, the blame for it must be laid squarely at the feet of Brothers to the Rescue and the Clinton administration. Cuba had many times warned both Brothers to the Rescue and the U.S. government that it would defend its territory against such ongoing provocations.
President Clinton has chosen to respond to the incident with the same hostility to Cuba and its sovereign rights that the extreme right-wing Cuban exiles who provoked the event have manifested for the past 37 years. In a way, this is only natural, because those exiles and the U.S. government have been working hand-in-glove against the Cuban revolution from the beginning. It also fits with Clinton's pattern of doing the bidding of the right wing.
"The truth is that Cuba has been a coveted prize of the worst elements of U.S. society for nearly 200 years. From Southern slaveholders and Northern industrialists who sought to annex or dominate Cuba in the 19th century, to the Mafia and other foreign exploiters who turned the island into a miserable vice den in the first half of the 20th century, they have tried to take that small island," Baker said.
"At the same time, the vast majority of ordinary Americans have had no other desire than to live in peace and friendship with the people of Cuba," Baker continued. "We can be sure that a government that represented the interests of most Americans would have a very different policy toward Cuba, and a very different approach to dealing with the economic crisis that is confronting millions of our people."
The League of Revolutionaries for a New America seeks to unite those who are fighting poverty and injustice in America around a strategy for victory.
Visit the League's web page at: http:/www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html