Why Fidel Castro loves the Embargo

On December 16, 2015, I got a phone call from a producer at Radio Martí. They wanted to interview me about the possibility of the end of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Even though I was surprised — most likely they had not read any of my books — I accepted the offer.

Radio Martí is a radio station created by the CIA in 1985 following the lines of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Its true purpose was to disseminate pseudo anti-Castro propaganda to keep the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida happy and giving their votes to the traitorous Republican Party. Being less gullible and much more cynical than the Europeans, Radio Martí never reached a large audience among the Cuban people.

The next day, at the beginning of the interview, the journalist told me I had been selected for it because of my advocating the end of the embargo. I corrected her, saying that I had never advocated anything; I just had always been against the embargo for many reasons, the main one because the embargo only benefited Castro, adding that the embargo actually was created to give Castro a justification for the economic destruction of Cuba. Finally, I said that while Castro was alive in Cuba, he would do anything he could to avoid the end of the embargo or a rapprochement with the U.S.

Not surprisingly, the interview didn’t last long. Evidently, those were not the answers they were expecting. They never called me asking for more interviews.

Recent events, however, have proven I was right.

Just a few hours after Obama’s poorly-conceived, ill-timed and sloppily executed visit to Cuba ended, Fidel Castro wrote an irate article strongly chastising Obama for his speech to the Cuban people.[1] Obviously, Castro doesn’t like the U.S. efforts to mend relations with Cuba, much less to end the embargo.[2]

However, in order to understand what is really going on in Cuba we need to know two things: first, that Fidel, not his brother Raúl, is the one still in power and having full control of the Cuban government and; secondly, that Fidel has always felt an irrational deep hatred for America and Americans.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding Castro’s evident contempt toward the U.S., most Americans do not seem to understand that Castro cannot care less about the United States. This is best evidenced in the attempts of several administrations to reach an accommodation with Castro and Castro torpedoing those attempts.

For example, in 1971 President Nixon hinted at a possible reconciliation. To his surprise, Castro’s angered response was that “Normal relations with the imperialists would mean renouncing our elementary duties of solidarity with the revolutionary peoples . . . of Latin America.[3]

Three years later the U.S. attitude towards Cuba seemingly had softened, and the Ford administration began seeking a better understanding between the two countries. In November 1974, less than three months after Ford became President, secret talks between American officials and representatives of the Castro government took place, and the possibility of an improvement in relations was explored. On September 23, 1975, Assistant Secretary of State William D. Rogers openly mentioned the U.S. desire to improve relations with Cuba.

Then, when everything indicated that the two countries were moving toward better understanding, American intelligence discovered the first signs of Castro’s involvement in Angola. On December 20, President Ford called a press conference, stating “The action of the Cuban government in sending combat forces to Angola destroys any opportunity for improvement in relations with the United States.”[4]

Two years later, in 1977, during the Carter administration, another effort was made to reach more normal U.S.-Cuba relations. On February 3, 1977, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance expressed U.S. willingness to begin a new cycle of discussions with the Castro government. On September 1977, both countries opened interests offices as a first step for the normalization of diplomatic relations.

But then, on July 17, 1977, Somalian dictator Siad Barre invaded Ethiopia, and, soon after, Castro decided to militarily support the invasion. By January 1978, several thousand Cuban troops, equipped with tanks and artillery, had joined the Somalis in their invasion of Ethiopia. Castro’s decision cut short any American desire to improve relations with Cuba.

In early 1996, the Clinton administration took a series of steps toward a rapprochement with the Castro regime. Secret talks were held in Havana between Cuban government and Washington officials. Then, on February 24, 1996, Cuban MiGs shot down two unarmed American civilian planes over international waters, killing four Americans. The planes belonged to the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue organization, an anti-Castro group providing help to rafters escaping from Cuba. The incident brought the rapprochement process to an abrupt halt.[5]

Then, during the last months of 1998, the ever-faithful liberals in the Clinton administration, who apparently didn’t get it that Fidel Castro was not interested at all in improving relations with the U.S., tried again to win Fidel’s love by unilaterally taking some measures directed at softening the conditions of the embargo. To everybody’s surprise the reaction of the Castro government was outrage and criticism.[6] Finally Castro rejected the deal, allegedly because of the financial conditions attached. Clinton’s aggressive and treasonous measures, Castro’s officials claimed, were intended to undermine and attack the revolution. And so on and on, ad nauseam.

In early 2015, Obama unexpectedly removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, seeking to normalize relations between the two countries. Then speaking in July from the White House, Obama declared, “This is a historic step forward in our efforts to normalize relations with the Cuban government and people, and begin a new chapter with our neighbors in the Americas.”

But late last year, resorting to the same modus operandi, Castro drove a nail in the coffin of the end of the U.S. embargo. It was reported that Cuban military operatives had been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S.[7]

To add insult to injury, Castro ordered Raúl[8] to breach protocol by not receiving Obama at Havana’s airport. A person with more intelligence, dignity and guts would have recognized the affront and ordered the Air Force One pilots to turn around and fly back to the U.S. But the impostor lacks these qualities — that was one of the reasons the CFR conspirators selected him as President — and seemingly was not insulted by the offense and kept smiling like the fool he is during the whole visit. Actually the Castros gave Obama the treatment he deserves.

Despite Fidel Castro’s claims on the contrary, one has to conclude that the disastrous state of the Cuban economy, which has brought poverty, malnutrition, disease and all sorts of calamities to the Cuban people, is by Castro’s design and not by mistake or as a result of the U.S. embargo.

Contrary to Castro’s assertions, he has benefited enormously from the U.S. embargo. Far for hurting him, the U.S. economic embargo has greatly helped Castro. It has given him a excuse to claim that the embargo, not Castro’s actions, is the cause for the dismal state of Cuba’s economy.[9]

While the Cuban people lack adequate food supplies, Castro has been exporting food to finance his military adventures abroad. Just a few years after Castro took power in Cuba, a strict system of food rationing was imposed, and is still in force. The daily diet to which most Cubans have been restricted for almost 37 years of rationing is not only inferior to the diet of the 1950s, but also to the nutritional ration normally allocated to slaves in the colonial Cuba of 1842. A final example will provide an indication that the true reason for food scarcities in Cuba is not the American embargo.

One can understand that, because of the embargo, Cubans cannot drink Coca-Cola or eat Burger King’s hamburgers. But Cuba is a big Island with plenty of fertile soil, and a climate that supports four crops a year. Since the Fifties, Cuba was self-sufficient in the production of basic foods for self-consumption, including beef, poultry, fish, vegetables, rice, beans, etc. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s accept that because of the embargo Cuban farmers lack the adequate machinery, fertilizers, and the like to produce enough food. But how about fish? Cuba is a long, narrow island with miles and miles of seacoast where fish and seafood are varied and plentiful. Why, one may ask, don’t Cubans fish to supplement their meager food rations? The answer is very simple: because Fidel Castro strictly prohibits it, the same way he has for many years prohibited Cubans to engage in almost any productive activity he cannot fully control.

Just casting a fishhook on a line over the Malecón, Havana’s promenade facing the sea, would allow a Cuban to bring home a red snapper or some other nutritious fish and have a wonderful dinner almost free. But, although that would make him and his family very happy, it would make Fidel Castro very angry, because other people’s happiness is the worst offense one can inflict on Cuba’s major misery specialist.

So, one has to conclude that the true embargo on the Cuban people is not the inefficient U.S.-created embargo, but Castro’s very effective one. He has created a real-life “Hunger Games” situation in Cuba.

My idea that the embargo was specifically created to help Castro is not a farfetched one. Actually, Castro himself confirmed it. In his Memoirs, published in 2005, former Spanish President José María Aznar wrote that, during a private meeting in October 1998 while Castro was visiting Spain, he told Castro that, if he had the power, he would end the embargo right away, but Castro told him that, although he publicly condemned the embargo to criticize the U.S., he “needed it for this and the next generation.” Aznar added that he was shocked by Castro’s cruelty and hypocrisy in using this duplicitous speech and using he Cuban people as pawns to blame others and thus perpetuate himself in power.[10]

Finally, it is important to understand the Obama is just a puppet in the hands of the Council on Foreign Relations globalist conspirators. His efforts to initiate a rapprochement with the Castro government, culminating in his visit to the Island, just follow a plan carefully concocted at the CFR to continue Castroism after Castro’s death.

The plan was delineated in the 2001 CFR document U.S.-Cuban Relations in the 21st Century: A Follow-On Chairman’s Report of an Independent Task Force Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.[11] The Report was the continuation of a similar one issued in 1998 whose “recommendations” — further proof that the U.S. government is under full CFR control — were immediately adopted in toto by the Clinton administration.

The Report shows that the CFR conspirators have been working frantically to prepare the conditions for a “peaceful, democratic transition after Castro”— CFR lingo for “Castroism after Castro.” Some of the “suggestions” in the Report are: softening the embargo, lifting the travel ban for American tourists and businessmen who want to visit Castro’s paradise, and military-to-military “confidence building” between U.S. and Castroist officers.

Following CFR’s “suggestions,” a group called the Cuba Policy Foundation was created to push the Report’s agenda. The CPF was funded mostly by the Arca Foundation, a CFR front. For years, the Arca guys have been bankrolling every pro-Castro group who has asked them money.

Later, the CFR conspirators chose Julia Sweig as their designated hitter to push the unconditional end of the embargo and the restoration of U.S. relations with Cuba. Since then, she has been churning out innumerable books and articles advocating these policies.

Castro’s response was swift and strong. In Early April, 2003, he cracked down on dissidents, sending a large group of them to jail and eventually sentencing 75 to prison terms as long as 30 years. Coinciding with the crackdown on dissidents, he ordered three black men who had hijacked a boat trying to escape to Florida to be shot.

Castro, a Jesuit-educated fascist at heart, has always been a closet racist. In private conversations with his close associates he always blames blacks for most problems in Cuba. Close witnesses affirm that in informal exchanges with his men, Castro repeatedly called the hijackers “los tres negritos” (lit. “the three little back men”). Not surprisingly, in private they always call Obama “el negro” (the Negro).[12]

Nevertheless, one must keep in mind that, even though Castro is a CFR agent, contrary to Obama, the Clintons and the Bushes, he has never been a CFR puppet. Actually, sometimes he has acted as the tail wagging the CFR’s dog. So, It was foolish to believe that he was going to deal with the puppet when he can deal directly with the puppet’s masters.[13]

As I mentioned above, Castro began his anti-Obama rant with the phrase: “We don’t need the empire to gives us anything.” Well, if by “we” he doesn’t mean the Cuban people but the Castro family, he is absolutely right. In 2005 Forbes magazine published a list of world billionaires. According to Forbes, at the time Castro was worth 1.4 billion dollars. Also, recently Mexico’s Excelsior newspaper reported that Fidel’s son, Antonio Soto, frequently visits Greece and Turkey on board his private luxury yacht.[14] No wonder Fidel Castro loves the U.S. embargo so much.

The bottom line is that, despite CFR efforts to implement Castroism after Castro, there will be no change in Cuba while Castro is alive and in power in the once-prosperous Caribbean Island.

Servando is the uthor of Psychological Warfare and the New World Order and I Dare Call It Treason, and the DVDs Treason in America and Partners in Treason, all of them available at NewsWithViews.

Footnotes:

1. Castro calls the embargo a “blockade,” and at one time, while he was still harboring plans to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S., during a speech at the U.N. in October 1996 he referred to it as having the effect of “noiseless atom bombs.” On Castro’s plans to launch a nuclear or bacteriological attack on the U.S., see Servando Gonzalez, The Secret Fidel Castro (Oakland, California: Spooks Books, 2001), pp. 53-75.
2. In a long condescending article titled “Brother Obama,” published in Cuba’s main newspaper, Castro tells Obama, “We don’t need the empire to give us anything” Granma, March 28, 2016. See also, Azam Ahmed, “Fidel Castro Criticizes Barack Obama’s Efforts to Change Cuba,” The New York Times, March 28, 2016.
3. Granma Weekly Review, May 2, 1971. Also, Editorial, “No Ping-Pong for Castro,” The New York Times, April 21, 1971.
4. “Toward Improved United States-Cuban Relations,” a report of a special study mission to Cuba, printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations, May 23, 1977, p. 63.
5. David Rieff, “Cuba Refrozen,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996, pp. 62-76.
6. See Ellis Cose, “Castro no cede un ápice. Fidel no le ve mucho valor a una iniciativa de EEUU,” Newsweek en Español, January 20, 1999, p. 17. See also, AFP, “El régimen castrista rechaza las medidas de EEUU para flexibilizar el embargo,” La Razón, January 10, 1999.
7. “Top Cuban general, key forces in Syria to aid Assad, Russia, sources say,” FoxNews, October 14, 2015.
8. Some Castro lovers at the CFR and the National Security Archive — a CIA front — are working hard to sell the lie that Raúl Castro is actually the man in power in Cuba. See, i.e., Philip Brenner, John M. Kirk, et al., A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution Under Raúl Castro (New York: Rowan & Littlefield, 2015). In the Preface, the authors claim, “It became clear that a peaceful succession of power had occurred in Cuba,” p. xi. Recent events, however, show that Fidel Castro is still in command in Cuba.
9. Kaz Vorpal, “Does the Cuban Embargo Hurt Castro or Help Him?,”
10. Gonzalo Guillén, “Lanzan en Bogotá un crítico libro de Aznar,” El Nuevo Herald, September, 12, 2005,
11. CFR: U.S.-Cuban Relations in the 21st Century.
12. Frances Martel, “Cuban State Media: ‘Negro’ Obama ‘Incited Rebellion and Disorder,” Breitbart, March 31, 2016. During his days as a guerrilla fighter in the mountains, Castro always referred to Cuban President Batista as “negro de mierda” (shitty nigger). Batista was a dark-skinned mulatto of humble origin.
13. The fact that Obama is a CIA-CFR creation is extensively documented in my book OBAMANIA: The New Puppet and His Masters (Oakland,. California: Spooks Books, 2011).
14. “Captan al hijo de Fidel Castro en lujoso yate en Grecia,” Excelsior, April 7, 2015.