Last chance for justice for the Miami Five?

Fourteen years ago today, five Cubans were unjustly imprisoned in US jails for trying to stop violent attacks against their country.

The Miami Five, who were infiltrating US-based terrorist groups when seized on September 12 1998, have since won the support of human rights, legal and religious organisations - but they have received scant justice from the US legal system.

And Martin Garbus - lawyer for one of the five, Gerardo Hernandez - says far more than their freedom is at stake if the latest appeal on their behalf fails.

Numerous previous appeals have failed and it had seemed that their only hope was a presidential pardon. But new information, not available at the time of the trial, provides a last opportunity to take their fight for justice back to the courts.

In an affidavit filed on August 31 the renowned lawyer argues that the US government's unprecendented payments to journalists during the original trial threatens not only the integrity of the case against the five, but the integrity of the US legal system itself.

Sixty-six pages of evidence calls for Hernandez's conviction to be set aside - or if this is refused for the US government to at least disclose information it is withholding from the defence team and for an oral hearing.

Evidence in the affidavit demonstrates that a US government agency deliberately hired and paid secret propagandists to influence the jury to convict Hernandez, who faces the harshest prison sentence of the group - double life plus 15 years - and the real prospect of never leaving prison unless his conviction is overturned.

"The government's successful subversion of the Miami print, radio and television media to pursue a conviction is nearly incomprehensible. It is unprecedented," the submission states.

As Cuba's National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon pointed out recently, this would mean the US government had conspired with the media to "condemn the accused beforehand and render a fair trial impossible" - a serious violation of the US constitution.

"The nature of the conspiracy was to use the media to unleash an unprecedented propaganda campaign of hatred and hostility," Alarcon says.

"To this end they used a large group of 'journalists' - in fact government cover agents - who published articles and comments time and again, day and night, to produce a flood of misinformation."

In just one example of this relentless media onslaught, the affidavit shows that between November 27 2000, when the trial started, and July 8 2001, when the five were found guilty, the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald alone had published 1,111 articles on them - an average of more than five a day.

"It was impossible to escape the permanent flow of propaganda anywhere in south Florida," Alarcon adds. "If all this were not enough, the 'journalists' also harassed witnesses and jurors. The latter complained to the judge that they were frightened because they were followed with cameras and microphones."

Ironically, it was a journalist from one of the biggest offenders, the Miami Herald, who first exposed the illegal payments in 2006.

This action was not without consequences for the reporter, Oscar Corral. Shortly after his article was published his editors were forced to move him and his family to a safe house after he was, in his own words, "subject to a campaign orchestrated to intimidate, harass and silence. It was heavy artillery fire.

"Some threats were very specific and mentioned my family."

But Corral's exposé was just the tip of the iceberg. Subsequent freedom of information requests have brought new names to light, but the full numbers are still unknown.

The affidavit argues that the US government should release a complete list of payments and contracts, a request that has unsurprisingly been vehemently resisted so far.

The names uncovered to date have dubious journalistic credentials to say the least.

According to Alarcon, "all of them, without exception, were members of or had close links with organisations in Miami that cultivate violence and terrorism. Some of them are themselves convicted and confessed terrorists."

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of US taxpayers' money paid for these people to write hate-fuelled propaganda about the five and Cuba before and during their trial. The US public was kept in the dark.

Such secret propaganda is forbidden by the country's constitution and for this reason Alarcon stresses that the recent affidavit is of "exceptional importance - especially for true journalists, those who perform with honesty a profession some others corrupted and turned into an instrument to kidnap five innocent men."

The affidavit concludes: "Every dollar for every article, image, radio or television show that was spent on this secret programme violated the integrity of the trial.

"Every person who decided to pay, paid, took funds or covered up those payments in this secret programme violated the integrity of the trial."

Alarcon notes that the media's role in the case of the Miami Five was the "great irony" of their predicament.

"In Miami the media was a decisive tool to condemn them. Outside Miami, they are punished with silence."

Help us break the silence on the Miami Five

To help break this silence in Britain and mark the 14th anniversary of the arrest of the Miami Five, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign is organising a candle-lit vigil outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square on Tuesday September 18 from 6pm.

Aleida Guevara, daughter of Che, will speak alongside leaders from the British trade union and labour movement.

Aleida will also speak on the Five as part of CSC's Remembering Che tour, which begins with a public meeting at the House of Commons on Monday September 17 at 7pm and goes on to Nottingham, Derby, Newcastle, Glasgow, and Oxford. Full details here. 

This article originally appeared in the Morning Star. 

Aleida Guevara draws huge crowd in Nottingham

Aleida’s visit started at the University of Nottingham where pure serendipity meant that she was able to charm and sing to assembled academics at the bi-annual Cuba Research forum. She made reference to the human effects of the blockade and rich mix of cultural and ethnic heritage that the Cuban people share, including the statistic that 70% of the population has an element of indigenous genetic make-up.

A brief visit to the Robin Hood statue followed as this had been a dream of hers from childhood to visit Nottingham, the home of the mythical hero.

So to the meeting, held at the Refugee Forum, it had attracted much interest and by 6:15 it was clear that the room would be full, about 250 in a room meant for 70. About 50 at least got turned away or had to wait for some time to get in. The first thing Aleida did was give away her chair so someone with a greater need could use it.

Luis Marron spoke first, encouraging everybody who had not already done so to join Cuba Solidarity and get their organisations to affiliate. He spoke too about the solidarity work he had been involved with particularly in the trade union movement while posted here.

Aleida spoke without notes and with humour, clarity and passion for her cause, that of the revolution, the return of the Miami Five and for Cuban sovereignty. For instance on the blockade she said it was easy to speak on this but it is more difficult to experience it especially when a child needs medicine that Cuba could pay for but cannot get because a patent is held by the US.

On terrorism (let’s remember that the meeting was on 11th September, the anniversary of not just terrorism in the US but also the bloody coup against the popular Allende-led government in Chile) she asked whether or not bombing a civilian airline was terrorism or similarly poisoning water supplies or introducing infectious diseases or launching seaborne invasions. This was why Cuba had to infiltrate and get information on terrorist groups operating from the US. So on the Miami 5 she simply demanded that the US obeyed its own laws and followed a proper judicial process. However, progress on this and on the blockade would only come from pressure of people and international solidarity. On intervention and regime change she asked, who gave the right to western nations to intervene and interfere in the internal affairs of developing nations.

She ended by surprising us once again by singing beautifully from a poem from Jose Marti: to a dear friend you must give a white rose but also to an enemy a white rose should be cultivated from the heart.

Aleida Guevara tells TUC fringe trade union support helps Cuba extend internationalism

Aleida Guevara – daughter of Che Guevara – received a standing ovation after delivering a powerful speech against the US blockade of Cuba at a CSC fringe meeting at TUC conference on Monday.

Over 250 delegates attended what Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey called “the biggest fringe meeting at the TUC” as Aleida spoke about a “blockade which marks everybody”. 

“In health, the blockade is felt very strongly,” she said. “For instance, there was a child diagnosed with a heart condition but we didn’t have the necessary equipment to treat. We have the know-how and the money to buy the equipment – but no-one will sell it to us because it is licensed by an American pharmaceutical company.”

Despite struggling under a fifty year-old blockade, Cuba has made exceptional advances in the field of healthcare and the development of medicines and vaccines. As Aleida noted, “Cuba is producing a vaccine to treat lung cancer, but the US government won’t allow EU pharmaceuticals to buy it. Why should we allow this to happen?”

Aleida thanked the trade unions for their continuing solidarity and said that this support “has allowed us to extend solidarity to the rest of the world. There are more than 24,000 health professionals working in 66 countries around the world, and this doesn’t include the projects we have in the ALBA countries like Venezuela where we have 10,000. All this is possible because your solidarity exists”

Len McCluskey, said he was proud of the role Unite has played in support of CSC, the Cuban people and the Miami Five. “If there is a still a branch in this room that isn’t affiliated to CSC, then please do. Our solidarity links are very important to what happens in Cuba.” 

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said that his union stood with the Cuban people – not just against the blockade – but because of the example which Cuba provides. “Why do the RMT believe that Cuba is such a beacon? Because they have decided to go down a different route. They have shown that there is a different world out there not based on the size of your wallet.”

“We have to decide what sort of a world we want to live in. The Cuban people don’t have a problem with the American government, it’s the American government that has a problem with them. Cuba is fighting for a different world that lives in peace, a world with housing, education and health. Viva Cuba!”

In his last TUC as General Secretary, Brendan Barber said he was “honoured to be the first TUC General Secretary to visit Cuba” and “proud of the links and relationships we have built up with trade unions in Cuba”. He urged the movement to intensify its support for the Miami Five on the fourteenth anniversary of their arrest. 

As Aleida concluded, “no country has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another. Fidel taught the Cuban people that if the people unite, there is no power in the world that can stop it. We are united, only 90 miles away from the US, and we have been able to maintain a socialist society. We have many problems, but we have heart.”

“Thank you for your resistance. In my country, it is very easy to be a revolutionary, but for you to keep going with solidarity, this gives us a lot of strength.”

Click here for full details of Aleida Guevara's speaking tour. 

Why Che's daughter fights to preserve his image as idealistic revolutionary

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara with Aleida

The following article appeared in the Observer ahead of Aleida Guevara's 'Remembering Che' tour.

She has the eyes of her father, a gaze that became an emblem for the 20th century. She also has his deep sense of social injustice, but Dr Aleida Guevara has always had to share her "papi" with the world.

While she doesn't mind the posters, the flags, the postcards, graffiti paintings and T-shirts, Dr Guevara and her family are trying to clamp down on "disrespectful" uses of her father's famous photo, taken by Alberto Korda in 1960. Not easy when it is the most reproduced image in the world.

"It's not so easy, we do not want to control the image or make money from it, but it is hard when it's exploited," Dr Guevara smiles. "Sometimes people know what he stands for, sometimes not. Mostly I think it is used well, as a symbol for resistance, against repression."

Che on a bikini was one they couldn't stop, but Che, a teetotaller, on a vodka bottle was a battle won for the family with the help of the UK Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

Next month marks the 45th anniversary of the killing of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the guerrilla who helped lead the Cuban revolution and became an icon of rebellion. This year is also the 50th anniversary of the US "blockade", the ongoing commercial, trade and travel embargo which has stifled Cuba's economy. The cold war era-style standoff still sees America spend millions beaming propaganda radio and TV stations into Cuba. Cubans remain the only immigrants the US encourages in with automatic citizenship.

An underdeveloped country offering world-class education and healthcare for all, Cuba maintains anti-dissident policies, imprisoning journalists and anti-government activists. Despite a mass prison release of dissidents in 2011, Cuban authorities, says Amnesty International, "do not tolerate any criticism of state policies outside the official mechanisms established under government control. Laws on 'public disorder', 'dangerousness' and 'aggression' are used to prosecute government opponents. No political or human rights organisations are allowed to obtain legal status."

Dr Guevara is in the UK for another anniversary, the 14th year since the Miami Five – spies entrusted with infiltrating anti-Castro terrorist groups operating from Florida – were jailed by the US. The 51-year-old Havana paedriatician will lead an evening vigil in London outside the US embassy on 18 September. "I'm not political," she insists, "but I care about injustice."

Aleida was seven when Che was killed in a remote Bolivian hamlet by a group of Bolivian soldiers and CIA operatives. With only shadowy memories of her father, she has got to know him through his diaries and the reminiscences of others, including the man she calls "Uncle" – Fidel Castro.

"Fidel has told me many beautiful stories about my father, but I cannot ask him too much, he still gets very emotional at the thought of Che. For example, my father had terrible handwriting, so my mother was asked to transcribe his diaries. When Raúl Castro came to our house to collect the manuscript, my mother knew that Raúl and Fidel also kept diaries, so she said 'if there are accounts in the diaries that differ then you must go with Che's, because he is not here to defend himself'. Raúl got very angry and said 'No, while Fidel and I are alive, Che is alive. He is always with us.' They were crying then.

"If Che hadn't died in Bolivia, he would have died in Argentina trying to change things there," she says. "Maybe it would be a different continent today. My mother always says that if my father had lived we would all have been better human beings."

Che was a medical student in Argentina when, on a motorcycle tour around Latin America in 1952, he became incensed by the poverty he saw. He took up political theorising and then arms, joining the revolution that overthrew Cuba's vicious Batista regime.

It was then, as the middle class and wealthy fled Cuba for Miami, that a bitter chasm opened between the two nations, and it has deepened from president to president. The promise of President Obama to tackle the Cuban issue has come to nothing so far. "We had great hopes, but we are disappointed in Obama, maybe things have even got worse for us," Dr Guevara says.

Revolution, she believes, simmers on in Latin America, where the gulf between rich and poor is escalating and she blames, as Che did, creeping American-led industrialisation. "This economic crisis is even more dangerous than any before for Latin America. It's not only about oil now, the US want water too. Brazil is destroying its rainforest to mine out iron, Mexico is a dumping ground for unwanted waste. This time the land is being destroyed as well."

Critics of Che claim the photogenic young man in battle fatigues who wrote poetry overshadows the brutality of his revolution. Guevara showed no qualms about killing. "It was a revolution," says his daughter. "Of course, I would rather there was no bloodshed but that is the nature of revolution. In a true revolution you have to get what you want by force. An enemy who doesn't want to give you what you want? Maybe you have to take it. My father knew the risk he took with his own life.

"I was angry, of course, growing up without a dad, but my mother always says, love your father for who he was, a man who had to do what he did. My father died defending his ideals. Up to the last minute he was true to what he believed in. This is what I admire."

But she says she would like to have been able to argue with him. "When I was six he sent me a letter. In it he said I should be good and help my mother with household chores. I was angry because my brother's letter said 'I will take you to the moon' and my other brother's read 'We will go and fight imperialism together'. I was annoyed – I wanted to go to the moon, why couldn't I fight imperialism?"

Dr Guevara is the eldest of Che's four children with his second wife, Aleida. "We didn't have privileges growing up as Che's children. My colleagues didn't know who I was until I first talked on Cuban TV in 1996. But it's important not to keep silent, because there is injustice being wrought."

Che Guevara's doctor daughter coming back to Derby

Preview of Aleida Guevara’s visit to Derby as part of ‘Remembering Che’ tour as appeared in the Derby Telegraph.

THE daughter of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara is to visit Derby for the second time in three years.

Dr Aleida Guevara works as a doctor of children's medicine and is taking part in a national workshop for health professionals in the city on September 11.

She will be speaking about the role Cuban doctors perform working overseas. There are 20,000 doctors in more than 70 different countries worldwide.

In 2009, she also took part in an international workshop on children's health and medicine at the then Derby City General Hospital and praised the NHS, describing it as "one of the best healthcare systems in the world".

Imti Choonara, professor in child health at the University of Nottingham and based at Derbyshire Children's Hospital, said: "I am delighted that Aleida Guevara was happy to come to Derby again.

"The university's academic division of child health has strong links with Cuba and has published joint research together looking at the side effects of medicines in children. It also has a bilateral agreement with the University of Havana and joint workshops are frequently held between the two universities."

Che Guevara's daughter recalls her revolutionary father

A two-year-old Aleida Guevara in the arms of Fidel Castro, and her father, Che, holding a cigar

Aleida Guevara will tour the UK in September in a special ‘Remembering Che’ speaking tour organised by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Full details here.

The following interview was written by Libby Brooks for the Guardian in 2009.  

Aleida Guevara talks about having to share her 'Papi' with the world – and her dislike of the commercialisation of his image

Aleida Guevara was four and a half when her father left Cuba. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, iconic Argentine guerrilla leader, Marxist theorist and second-in-command of the Cuban revolution, departed the island for Africa in 1965 after falling out of political favour with Fidel Castro. She saw him only once again, before his execution by the CIA-backed Bolivian government two years later.

Castro granted the visit on condition that it was clandestine. Guevara, concerned that the children's chatter about "Papi's" re-appearance might endanger his family, arrived back in Havana heavily disguised. He was introduced at supper as a friend of their father.

"After supper, I fell and hit my head," Aleida recalls. "He was a doctor, of course, so he treated me, but then he picked me up and cuddled me. I remember a feeling of complete protection and tenderness. Later I said to my mother, 'I believe that this man is in love with me.'" She laughs at her childish grandiloquence. "I was only five. But I knew that this man loved me in a very special way. I didn't know that it was my father, though, and he couldn't tell me."

Aleida, now 49 and with two daughters of her own, has come to Britain as a guest of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign to promote a year-long festival of Cuban culture. A committed Marxist and medical doctor, just as her father was, the thick, bobbed hair, broad features and deep-set eyes are immediately reminiscent of the face without which no student common room is complete. "When I see [his face] commercialised, or used for advertising," Aleida intones sharply, "I don't like it."

Ensconced in a functional committee room at Unison's north London headquarters, Aleida tugs a fine red shirt across her solid shoulders. She has inherited her father's charisma and mellifluous exposition, but exercises it more intimately. Talking about politics, she employs the language of emotion rather than that of arid ideology.

Guevara's legacy, she tells me, is his life. "My father knew how to love, and that was the most beautiful feature of him – his capacity to love." She touches my arm. "To be a proper revolutionary, you have to be a romantic. His capacity to give himself to the cause of others was at the centre of his beliefs – if we could only follow his example, the world would be a much more beautiful place."

So why is it that Cuba, an island that throughout its history has been coveted, bullied and demonised by mightier nations, continues to draw worldwide fascination? Her answer may seem simplistic, but it is instant: "Because of Cuban men and women. We're a cultured, educated people – and possibly one of the only ones in the world to say no to the United States."

That "no", of course – regardless of whether it was dictated by an iron regime, as some would argue, or articulated by the populace – has manifested devastating consequences. The vicious embargo imposed on Cuba by the US the year after its revolution continues to suffocate the country. And as a practising paediatrician, Aleida is all too familiar with the daily realities of the blockade.

"There was a case of a girl, six months old," she says. "She had a condition where the digestive system would flood with blood, and the only treatment available is patented by the US. Cuba had the money to pay, but not one company in the whole global medicine market would offer it." She presses together her thumb and forefinger in a gesture of frustration. "Any pharmacological distributor daring to deal with Cuba would be investigated by the FBI. The government can pull out investment or boycott their goods. We couldn't get the medicine and the baby was dying. The only sin of that girl was the fact that she was born in Cuba."

There has been much speculation about how Barack Obama intends to alter US policy towards Cuba, following his announcement of "a new beginning" to their relationship at a recent Americas summit, and his easing of travel restrictions on Cuban Americans wishing to visit their homeland. Aleida is sceptical. "What Obama has done is to return to the policy that existed under the Clinton administration. There's nothing new here. He promised to close Guantánamo, but that hasn't been done. There is a lack of continuity between what he says and what he does. So far we haven't seen anything that would indicate a change of course.

"If the blockade was lifted, things would change immeasurably. The Cuban economy would flower. That's the missing link."

Coincidentally, in advance of Aleida's visit, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign has unearthed what are believed to be the earliest colour photographs of her father, taken by a British international brigade volunteer who travelled to the island in 1960, the summer before Aleida was born. The elderly woman unearthed her slides in a shoebox full of mementoes, never having realised the significance of the man she snapped on her colour camera. So how did Aleida feel when she first saw the photographs? "It was beautiful," she says. "The woman who took the photos actually worked in Cuba building a school. So even in the old days there were people giving their solidarity. That's the value of the photos to me."

Her father looks like he always did, she says; natural and with people surrounding him. "I'm very grateful to this woman for giving me a piece of him that I knew existed but had never seen. But what I am most grateful for is that she remains in solidarity with Cuba."

Her mother will be pleased to see them too, she adds. Aleida March was a member of Castro's guerrilla army when she met her future husband in the Cuban bush, and impressed him with her knowledge of the local terrain (Guevara was previously married to exiled Peruvian revolutionary Hilda Gadea). Now in her 70s, March has published a memoir about her life with Guevara, and how she raised their four children after his death. "You can buy it in any language you want except English," her daughter teases. "Do you read Turkish?"

The ideals of both parents inevitably influenced Aleida's own consciousness, but you can't impose ideals on children, she cautions. "You can only show by example."

It sounds far-fetched that a man intent on fomenting leftwing revolution in post-colonial Congo would find the time to make up animal stories for his faraway children, but Aleida says he did just that.

"My father didn't have the opportunity to enjoy our childhoods. But when he was away, which was most of the time, he would send us stories and drawings on postcards. My brother Camilo was told off at nursery school for using swearwords, and my mother confronted Che because he had a habit of swearing – as all Argentinians do," she notes archly. "He was in Africa and he wrote to Camilo telling him that he couldn't swear at school, or Pépé the Caiman [a reptilian character invented by Guevara] would bite off Che's leg." She grabs my calf. "So he had to stop swearing to protect his father."

Domestic as these reminiscences are, Che has, of course, never been solely Aleida's Papi or property. Alberto Korda's iconic portrait, taken at a funeral service in 1960 – jaw clenched, eyes to the horizon, unkempt locks under a red-star beret – has been reproduced on posters, T-shirts and advertising hoardings ever since. His image, if not his ideals, has entered the lexicons of adolescent rebellion and creative subversion. Last weekend, I spotted a teenager swinging a Che bag down Oxford Street and asked him why he'd bought it. Che was this cool guy who talked about revolution, he said. What revolution meant, he found harder to articulate.

"When you see a child carrying his image on a march and the child says to you, 'I want to be like Che and fight until final victory', then you feel elated," Aleida says. "But the most surprising thing is that this event happened in Portugal, not in Cuba."

But how does she feel about the use of his image in the El Commandante pub in Holloway, London, and the Che memorabilia crowding every proto-conscious market stall? She frowns. "I saw him used to advertise an optician's in Berlin. A fashion designer showed his underwear designs in New York reprinting his face." The thumb and forefinger connect once again. It all depends on the context. "But if a young person wears the T-shirt and starts to understand who this person was, then that's fine."

Aleida is similarly ambivalent about Hollywood's recent obsession with her father. Walter Salles's Motorcycle Diaries, which traced Guevara's early, transformative travels throughout Latin America, was a magnificent film, she enthuses, that showed a young person learning about poverty and refusing to turn his back on it. The more recent two-part biopic Che, starring Benicio Del Toro, was disappointing. She had expected a more complete presentation of the revolution.

The vocabulary of struggle, consciousness and sacrifice that Aleida uses may feel anachronistic to a British audience versed in the minor political narratives of personality conflict and fiddled expenses. But there is another story about Cuba, still to be told. As the west waits eagerly for further dispatches about Castro's failing health, for Aleida, his demise can only usher in a new beginning.

"The US propaganda machine has dedicated itself to telling everybody that the revolution depends on just one person. But there is an inner conviction among the Cuban people. So, when the time comes when Fidel isn't with us physically any more, they will find a way forward. And if they can't do that, they will disappear. Pablo Milanés said once it is preferable to sink in the sea than to betray the glory that once lived. And for us that rings true."

Trade Unions for Cuba eNewsletter – Issue 3

The third issue of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign’s eNewsletter ‘Trade Unions for Cuba’ is now available online. The newsletter aims to celebrate collaboration between CSC, British trade unions and trade unions in Cuba. It brings up-to-date news on trade unionism in Cuba, reports on CSC’s work with unions domestically, mobilises campaigns and promotes events, brigades and tours.

The Summer 2012 editions reviews the recent visit of the wives of the Miami Five to the UK and reports on CSC’s trade union conferences throughout the Spring.

It also features previews of exciting events coming up at TUC Conference, Labour Party Conference, the Vigil for the Miami Five and Aleida Guevara’s ‘Remembering Che’ speaking tour.

The newsletter can be viewed here. Please feel free to forward to colleagues, share on social networking sites or print-off and distribute around notice boards and offices. If you would like to receive future copies, please email CSC Campaigns Officer Dan Smith.