By Geraldina Colotti, on March 31, 2025.
Raul Capote speaking to a Cuban high school class with Resumen in English editor Alicia Jrapko, May 3, 2018. photos: Bill Hackwell
The University of Havana just celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Telesur, the multi-state news channel created by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez within the framework of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), with the aim of counteracting the “media latifundia” in Latin America. The channel is represented by a large delegation of journalists and operators, headed by its director, Patricia Villegas. It stands dedicated to Palestine have been set up, as well as a large stage for concerts and cultural shows, ready to host the closing night of the 4th International Colloquium Patria, under the slogan “We are people weaving networks”.
Three days of seminars, meetings, conferences and debates led by prestigious national and international guests (more than 400 from 47 countries): journalists, intellectuals, publishers and organized communities in the field of alternative communication. An occasion to also celebrate the 133rd anniversary of the creation of Patria, the newspaper founded by José Martí, who conceived the homeland as “humanity”. A concept applied in the present against xenophobic “small homelands”, the closures and the borders imposed by Donald Trump’s “techno-feudalism”.
Havana does not seem to have been affected by the umpteenth round of blackouts that have just ended, and which have not dampened the good humor of the Cubans: “When the sun is out we take advantage of the beach, when it is not out we take advantage of it to stay at home and make love,” a worker who cleans the garden tells us. In the midst of a small group of young people with piercings and braids, we meet with Raúl Capote, Fernández, a journalist for the Cuban daily Granma, political analyst and former agent of Cuba’s state security.
G.C. Having infiltrated the CIA and having gained insider knowledge of the destabilization plans against Cuba, his is a privileged perspective from which to observe what is happening today. What has changed since you stopped being an operative agent? How do you see the situation with the arrival of Trump?
We are living in a very complex situation, really very difficult, because with the resurgence of fascism in all its variants around the world, with a far-right government in the United States, with a vision, moreover, totally different to what we were used to, even from the US empire itself, well that makes things worse in many ways: Because we are facing an organized, articulate right with a defined purpose, and the response we have gotten from the left has been a response that could be described as disjointed. Despite the fact that we have met many times, that we have talked, that we have tried to organize an anti-fascist program at an international level, we have not had the possibility, perhaps for reasons that should be analyzed much more deeply, of really creating an anti-fascist front with all that it would entail: because we are facing a fascism that, as its very nature has always indicated, has no scruples whatsoever. In other words, we live in a world where a people like the Palestinians can be massacred and absolutely nothing happens, where things like what is happening in Syria can happen and everyone remains silent, simply because they don’t totally agree with my thinking or my beliefs. And so there are good murders, bad murders, good criminals, bad criminals. Of course, every crime always has a meaning, but “Israel” (the Zionist entity, to put it correctly), murders thousands of children and women, and the world has become accustomed, let’s say it frankly, to seeing horrifying images, without it arousing anything. Today we have a neighbor from here in Cuba, to the north of us, who with tremendous calm says that he is going to take over Greenland, which is supposedly an ally, or so they say. Or he says: I’m going to take over Canada, he says he’s going to take over the Panama Canal. If they are going to do this with allies of the United States, who are even members of NATO, and absolutely nothing happens, there is no response, let’s imagine what can happen with us!
And Europe’s response, even from the “center-left” parties that talk about pacifism, is to continue arming Zelensky. What do you think about this?
I think there is tremendous confusion, which also has to do with the great decline in Europe, not only of political thought, but of the political leadership of the left, where there is also a lack of radicalism. The European far right, European fascism, has appropriated thediscourse from the left, so the right has presented itself to the masses as the ones who are going to solve the problems that have been created, taking refuge in that new left that was built up over many years, that built up globalism over many years, that was a left tailored to the interests of that neoliberal globalism, and which still holds power in some European countries, but which responds to certain interests. So, the monopoly of the defense of nationalism, the defense of national interests, seems to be held by the right. So the right appears in a good light, talking about not wanting war, talking about peace, while the center and left governments are talking about war, a war whose consequences are unknown. I am not at all a supporter of Donald Trump, but Trump replies to the British minister, and quite rightly, he asks him: and can you beat Russia? You are talking about war with Russia, do you really have what it takes to beat Russia? You don’t have what it takes, in other words, they are leading Europe into a war that they cannot win, that nobody can win, which is the saddest thing of all. It’s a war that leads absolutely nowhere and that nobody is going to win. So, a lot of things are happening in this world, where there is clearly a change, a profound change is taking place, especially in the hegemonies, and that landing has two paths: either it could be a soft landing, a consensual landing, where everyone participates in that new vision of the world that many people defend, or a landing based on fascism, on the far right, governing the destinies of the world and dividing up the world, dividing up the forces of influence, and deciding where I command, where you command, where the other commands, and subordinating the rest of the world: because they need that change, because of the same technological development. And there we would have to go to Marx to understand it. The thing is that we haven’t forgotten Marx, even those of us who talk about Marx, we don’t use the tools that Marx bequeathed to us to analyze history and events, which is the most important thing; in other words, we don’t use the methodology that Marxism gave us to analyze history. So what is happening? Where are we going to end up now? If we don’t have an answer, if we don’t have a correct analysis of what is happening, where are we going to end up with such a high level of technological development, which needs to divide up the world and obtain power, the true real power of this capitalist world? What will they do tomorrow with the thousands of people who are going to be left without work, when technological advances and artificial intelligence leave millions of citizens in this world unemployed?
Speaking of Artificial Intelligence, and the impact it has on the sabotage of the electrical system and public services. That has been the theme here at the Coloquio Patria. How have you seen these events at a time when Cuba has relaunched itself despite the blackouts and everything? The streets are as vital as if nothing had happened.
You know that Cuba is, fortunately, a bastion. Patria has been a brilliant idea since it was created, and it has grown and transformed. I think the idea of doing it at the university is extremely interesting, not only because of the spaces, but also because of what the University of Havana means, and because of its very emergence, because using a newspaper like Patria is tremendously topical. Patria was Martí’s newspaper, created not only as an organ of a revolutionary party to wage war, but also as the organ of a revolutionary party to make a revolution, which is what Martí wanted to do in Cuba.
… And with a very different sense of the concept of homeland from the xenophobic one that fascists have…
Jose Marti,
Exactly, because it is Martí’s concept of homeland, which Martí defines clearly, that homeland is humanity, that is, it is the concept of homeland that Martí also defended. But it is also a newspaper that Martí creates at a time when US imperialism is emerging. Martí was waging a war against nascent imperialism. Let us never forget that US imperialism became what it is today as a result of the Spanish-Cuban-American War, the war that broke out in Cuba for independence, in which the United States intervened and appropriated the victory of the Cuban insurgent troops. And Cuba was at that time the victim of a very tough cultural war, the first in modern history, which led to a campaign of American discredit, where the press was used for the first time, Pulitzer was already there, the big American media were up to their necks in trying to influence people’s way of thinking and guarantee the denial of Cuba’s soverignty. So we are talking about a newspaper that faced that challenge for the first time. So it is true that today we are facing a different challenge, the times are different, but we are facing the same plan. Today we are facing an empire that is in decline, Martí faced it at its birth and now it is in decline, that is why it is so symbolic that an event is being created that bears the name of Martí’s newspaper. Because we are also facing a new world that is emerging, imperialism that is promoting fascism, the world that is promoting the far right at an international level. It is not the world we want, this is the world we have been fighting against all our lives, it is the world of exclusion, it is the world of racism, it is the world where you can act with absolute freedom, and at the same time murder, and kill, and invade, without anything really happening; with an international system that was created after the Second World War that practically doesn’t exist, because that new power that is emerging with such force is destroying the multilateral system, it is destroying the system that the United Nations created. Although it was never perfect, we all know what that meant, but it was the only system we had, it was the only place where people could perhaps express certain issues, where a very interesting debate took place somewhere, and it served, at least for people to let off steam, and for issues to be discussed. Today that is on the road to destruction, and we don’t know what is going to happen.
Has Cuba also been a laboratory for attacks using artificial intelligence, to bring about “regime change”? In 2010, the CIA created Zunzuneo, a kind of Twitter that operated covertly to gather information about Cuban users and then use that information to spread political messages aimed at generating destabilization, with the main objective of confusing young people. Can we consider it a precursor to the digital warfare strategy we see now with the use of bots and trolls on social media to spread propaganda and disinformation anonymously?
Yes, but now we are facing something else new, but many people don’t understand what is happening in the world today, until there are some that I have heard, even from the left, say “the Trump revolution”. No, Trump is not making a revolution, it is an involution, and we cannot lose sight of that, because he is changing the rules of the game, because that is what is happening now.
The subversion of the ruling class, as Gramsci said?
Yes, and now imperialism does not need organizations like USAID, it is not necessary, they spent 68 billion euros there. What is it going to use it for? It has a wealth of experience using digital companies. One example is the US entertainment industry, for the most part, they have imposed the culture war on the world, they have won the culture war in the world, and they maintain cultural hegemony in the world, using their great entertainment industry, their great cultural industry. So why do you have NGOs? Why do you use that kind of thing? If you can also count on an industry what the big tech companies mean today. Why did Trump appear surrounded by all the big owners of digital platforms? Because that’s where the war is coming from, he doesn’t need any of those old-fashioned things, that’s money down the drain.
Today it will be these companies that will take the lead, as Hollywood did in its day, as the entire entertainment industry did in its day. Today you have the internet, you have artificial intelligence, today you can promote a certain influencer on social networks through the digitization of the company, driving the content, rewarding the content you want to be seen and condemning to absolute oblivion the content you don’t want to be seen on social networks. The dictatorship of the algorithm.
That is the enormous power and that enormous power that these large companies have today capitalism never had. They have the possibility of waging that war and saving themselves millions of dollars. In every sense.