By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on September 30, 2023
diplomat Felix Garcia Rodriguez, machine-gunned on 55th Street in Manhattan on September 11, 1980.
Cuba is included in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism drawn up every year by the U.S. government. The arguments are ridiculous because there is not a single evidence that the island is a threat to anyone in the world.
But there it is, a poisoned gift from the Donald Trump administration before leaving the White House, which Joseph Biden has maintained to this day. It implies serious obstacles to trade and access to finance, in addition to tightening the already suffocating sanctions regime that Washington imposes on Cubans. However, the facts are stubborn and the country that labels its neighbor as a terrorist has a serious problem at home: endogenous terrorism.
Last Sunday, at 7:52 p.m., security cameras at the Cuban embassy in Washington captured a man dressed in black who stopped on the sidewalk while several passersby were walking by. He set fire to two bottles of fuel and threw them over the diplomatic mission’s security gate. The Molotov cocktails hit the window of the building. Fortunately, no one was injured. This is not the first time such an act has occurred.
In the early morning of April 30, 2020, Alexander Alazo, a Cuban-born Texas resident, unloaded his AK-47 against the same embassy, which was occupied at the time of the attack. The police report reported 32 bullet impacts “with intent to kill” and damage to both the exterior and interior of the building, with no human casualties. The Associated Press reported statements from the authorities who categorized the incident as a “hate crime”.
The perpetrator of these acts has not yet been tried. These are not isolated acts, but a pattern that has been going on for decades and has been directed against Cuban diplomatic facilities in the United States due to the ease of access to weapons at very low prices, the escalation of hate speech in the U.S. public sphere and impunity.
If the reader does not wish to be misled by too much information or believes that the accounts of Cuban investigators may be biased, take a few minutes to scour the New York Times, using the online search engine. You will find that it has cost lives, such as that of diplomat Felix Garcia Rodriguez, machine-gunned on 55th Street in Manhattan on September 11, 1980.
It has seriously wounded U.S. citizens, such as Louis Donofino and Gerald McLernon, policemen guarding the Cuban mission to the United Nations (UN) on October 27, 1979, when a bomb exploded, twisting the metal entrance to the diplomatic headquarters and shattering the windows of nearby buildings.
In the 1970s alone, searches of the journal return 49 entries outlining paramilitary actions, kidnapping attempts, shootings and bombings in Washington, New York and Miami against Cuban diplomatic offices and other facilities that offered travel services to the island.
The assassination of Felix Garcia and most of the attacks of those years were acknowledged through telephone calls to the Times editorial office by the terrorist group Omega 7. This group also claimed responsibility for the assassination of young Cuban Carlos Muñiz Varela, shot in the middle of the street in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on April 30, 1979.
If this sounds like a story from the past, you will find another piece of information in The New York Times. One name stands out among Omega 7’s collaborators: Ramón Saúl Sánchez. According to the newspaper, “Mr. Sanchez, under subpoena, refused to testify before a grand jury against one of the fiercest anti-Castro paramilitary groups, Omega 7,” which conspired to commit an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro in New York while he was attending the United Nations General Assembly in 1982.
His close ties to the terrorist organization were proven in court. He served four and a half years in an Indiana prison (The New York Times, 4/19/2000).
Ramon Saul Sanchez returned to New York, guest of honor at the actions organized against President Miguel Diaz-Canel in front of the Cuban mission to the UN, on September 21. Perhaps frustration over those lackluster protests in New York led to a couple of Molotov cocktails in Washington. There is no doubt that Cuba, victim of old and new terrorists from the ovens of Omega 7, is not the country that should be on that list.
Source: La Jornada translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English