Michael Parenti, foto: Bill Hackwell
January 25, 2026
Michael Parenti, the great Marxist scholar and unflinching intellectual has died at the age of 92. Parenti who wrote many books including The Face of Imperialism, God and his Demons, Democracy for a Few, The Assassination of Julius Cesar and to To Kill a Nation, took on US academia for relying on mainstream media sources in their analysis. Parenti was a supporter of many progressive causes including ending the blockade of Cuba.
In 2012 he wrote then president Obama a letter urging him to release the Cuban 5 who were being held in US prisons for monitoring the activities of terrorist Cuban exile groups operating with impunity in Southern Florida. In Parenti’s letter he urges Obama to think outside the mold of previous US administrations and negotiate their release. Two years later Obama did just that when he briefly opened the iron curtain of the blockade and the Cuban 5 returned to their homeland. Below is Parenti’s letter:
October 5, 2012
Dear President Obama,
This past month marked the 14th anniversary of the unjust incarceration of the five Cuban men who came to the United States to monitor the activity of anti-Cuban terrorist groups operating with impunity in Southern Florida. The Cuban Five came with no weapons, no intent on harming US citizens or undermining US policy.
Their mission was predicated on preventing more harm to their country and US citizens as well.
Despite the mainstream media’s silence in the US regarding the case, many have managed to hear about the Cuban Five through alternative media channels. And many have denounced the unfair and unwarranted convictions.
On March 9, 2009 in an unprecedented show of support, twelve amicus briefs called on the US to review the case.
Numbering among the Cuban Five supporters were ten Nobel Peace Prize winners, the entire Mexican Senate, the National Assembly of Panama, members from every political group within the European Parliament, including three current vice-presidents and two former Presidents and hundreds of lawmakers from Brazil, Belgium, Chile, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Scotland and the United Kingdom. In May 2005 the UN Group on Arbitrary Detentions declared the incarceration of the Cuban Five to be unjust and arbitrary, in contravention of Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
President Obama, your administration has treated Cuba with the same failed policy of unrelieved antagonism as your predecessors. Cuba has never attacked or threatened the US and as Pentagon generals and State Department officials have stated on numerous occasions Cuba has never been a threat to the national security of the United States.
In Cuba the Five are considered heroes to 11 million people. If these five men had done the same thing for the US you would be presenting them with medals.
The Cuban government has made it clear that they are willing to sit down and discuss a range of issues that are of interest to both countries including the freedom of the Cuban Five.
The only thing they ask that it is down in an atmosphere of mutual respect, without preconditions.
Negotiating the release of these anti-terrorists fighters would set you apart from the arrogant colonial view that has so dominated US policy towards Cuba.
Sincerely yours,
Michael Parenti
Berkeley California
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US