Francisco Aruca on Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo - 2003

Francisco Aruca's discussion of Eloy Gutierrez-Menoyo on his English-language program Babel's Guide which was broadcast on Tuesday August 12, 2003. These are my quick summary notes of what I listened to. You should go an listen to this yourself, of course.

Aruca opened the program by discussing the recent appearance of a group of Cuban musicians who came to perform in the United States. Three of the group then decided to remain in the United States. He said that if relations were normal between the two countries, such actions by Cubans would happen far less often. This was two or three out of a group of thirty who made the decision to remain in the United States.

Aruca says he knows and respects Gutierrez-Menoyo. He provided some of Menoyo's background and then turned against the Communist tendencies which were exhibited at that time, as he describes them. Aruca then explained that he's a man who should be respected as a man who acts according to principle, as he has done his entire life.

He returned to Cuba in 1964, planning to organize an uprising. He was sentenced to 30 years in jail and served 22 years of the sentence. After he formed his groups CAMBIO CUBANO in 1993, the rightist Cuban exiles turned against Menoyo who rejected him fully.

In 1995 he returned to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro. He wanted to be permitted to be an oppositionist to the Cuban Revolution. He opposes US intervention in Cuba, and so he says it makes life harder for oppositionists in Cuba if you collaborate with the United States. This time he was in Cuba with his wife and three children. Last Thursday he announced he was staying in Cuba.

Aruca discusses the editorial published in the Miami Herald on the case.

Key points: 1-This is a man who deserves respect. It's not at all surprising that the armchair leaders we have in Miami question his relationship with the Cuban government. Even if Menoyo stayed in Cuba with the consent of the Cuban government it's still a very tough decision for him to have made. That doesn't take away from the weight of his decision. Aruca wasn't shocked by the ferocious criticism made of this man who lost one eye while in the Cuban prisons, and lost part of his vision in an auto accident in the United States. He's going to die in a way in accord with his ideas. When are we going to learn, he asks, that we have to respect people due to certain personal qualities.

Aruca quoted Antonio Maceo at the end of the ten- year war in 1868 who, at the end of the war he publicly embraced an enemy he had fought against in the war, because both of them deserved respect.

2-His intention is NOT to destabilize Cuba. He is 100% in opposition to the Cuban government, but not to destabilize the country. If he remains in Cuba

If the Cuban government decides to send Menoyo back to the United States, Cuba would have a full legal right to do so. The US would have to accept him back into the US. Aruca says he hopes that this will not happen. Menoyo went to Cuba on a two-week visa legally. Before Menoyo decided to remain in Cuba, in reports that Aruca had, Menoyo criticized the close relationship between some of the oppositionists in Cuba and the US Interests Section in Havana. This had gone unreported in the media in Miami. So in effect he was warning the opposition in Cuba to stay away from the United States. [Walter adds: I remember being struck by the absence of reporting on this in the Miami Herald, particularly in its editorial instructing Menoyo on how to handle himself on the island.]

The exile media is already saying that Menoyo's task in Cuba is to split the opposition inside the island. Aruca doesn't know if Menoyo will be allowed to remain in Cuba. That's up to the Cuban government to decide. But if they do let him remain on the island, it will have certain consequences for the opposition within the island. Since Menoyo's the kind of person who does what he says, he'll probably continue to do exactly what he has been doing in Florida, from inside the island. That would be telling the Cuban opposition that it in a way criticized the close relationship between some oppositionists on the island and what he [Aruca] referred to as the "US Embassy". Aruca read from an article in El Nuevo in which this fact was omitted.

So it would not be surprising that if he stays in Cuba and is permitted to do so, he would be continuing to say in Cuba what he's been saying all along in Florida. That is, he criticizes some Cuban opp

That will have consequences for the Cuban internal opposition, telling them to stay away from the United States. Aruca says this is very good and thus the opposition inside Cuba AND the US should not support "regime change" in Cuba just to support a segment of the exile community in Miami. Aruca says this will be good for the United States as well.

In Miami, the exile leaders who control how the money goes into Cuba which originates in the United States will clearly resent what Menoyo is advising. Thus, they will not appreciate what Menoyo has been saying all along about this. This should not be surprising. Those opposition groupings in Cuba will resent what Menoyo has been saying because they belong to the Cuban exile groupings in Miami

By disagreeing on how Menoyo will not be giving up any of his independence. He's just playing a different kind of opposition role. There are people in Cuba who are probably very mad at what Menoyo has been done. Aruca stresses that he doesn't know if Menoyo will be permitted to stay on the island. Aruca stressed this over and over again. Menoyo will probably continue to have relations with the same kinds of moderate exile groupings. This is a step which may have consequences.

He may end up providing a link to a more rational policy and more rational elements in the United States. He made it clear to Aruca that he doesn't plan to destabilize Cuba nor do I come here to have close relations with the US. He may end up playing a constructive role as well on how an opposition should play inside the island, compared to the kind of US-subsidized opposition inside Cuba.

Because of that, the right-wing Cuban exiles and the media who pander them, who have already been rejecting Menoyo ever since he arrived in Miami in the late 1980s. He won't be responding to those people, but to the more moderate exiles he's related to all along. None of those exiles can say what Menoyo has said: After spending 22 years in jail, something you cannot fake, he's now saying [in effect] that I was wrong and you cannot bring about change inside of Cuba through force. Not through embargo, either. He says he just has one of those approaches. As long as he behaves as he is behaving, Menoyo will always have respect.

If he finally stays in Cuba he may have more of an impact there in Miami than people imagine. If, as is true, that there's a growing segment of the Cuban community who are tired of the lying and manipulation and so-called leadership among the exiles. All these people want to do is be the chosen leaders of the exile community. Some of these exile leaders are worried about

If anything is going to be affected by Menoyo if he remains in Cuba it will be the right-wing radicals who disguise themselves as democrats but who have no interest in democracy.

Otto Reich's visit to Miami last week was designed to pacify the exiles. Dan Fisk and Adolfo Franco, the head of USAID were all promising that they would do something against Castro. IT was obvious they were trying to pacify the right-wing exiles in Miami.

Roger Noriega, the new assistant Secretary of State for Latin America has made it clear that policy won't be any tougher toward Cuba. They may provide more funds for the opposition in Cuba. But this will affect the legitimacy of such elements. Who will be more legitimate: the oppositionists in Cuba who accept funding from the US or those who reject such funding? What more can the US do without risking serious consequences?

So anything which contributes to different perspectives and good comparisons of different attitudes is good for all of us. If Otto Reich is the kind of ambassador this administration sends to Miami, the administration is in trouble! Reich is already accusing the government of Cuba of organizers of the recent hijacking of a boat to Miami. How could something which caused so many million dollars worth of bad publicity for the administration have been spontaneous? Can you imagine that?

Reich said there were no negotiations with the Cuban government. The Cuban government, Aruca explained, called us (he means the US). The Cuban government called us. The US was concerned about the sentencing. The Cuban government agreed that there would be no tough sentencing. As a matter of fact, the trial had just gotten started and the prosecutor asked for less than ten years sentencing for some of the guys. Aruca says if you don't want to call this negotiations, that's your problem. But that's exactly what took place.

That boat kept coming to the United States and the Cubans did nothing to stop it. What Reich ignores, because he wants to ignore, is that, as Francisco Aruca reminds listeners, of the great public relations cost the Cuban government paid some years ago when, on March 13 1994 when a tugboat sank in the harbor of Havana. He says that Cuba has been accused of deliberately sinking that tugboat, (though Aruca says that wasn't the case). In any event, ever since then, the Cubans have adopted a policy of not following any ships which were trying to leave the island.

The boat was in awful shape and it sank when the Cuban government tried to stop the boat by pouring water into it. Some people died on that boat. Here is a sample of the kind of bad publicity Cuba got over that event. I have no idea and haven't studied the details, but the consequences are clear enough: http://64.21.33.164/CNews/y98/jul98/10e2.htm

Reich ended his remarks by saying things which could be taken as critical of Cubans in general. When he said that Cubans who came to the US, especially recently, are so bad, and the reporter interviewing Reich responded, "Are we that bad?" Reich immediately backtracked, saying he had been quoted out of context. If Reich is the kind of man who is advising this administration on Latin American policy, this administration is in trouble and deserves to be.

The key is that things are changing for the good in the Cuban-American community, something he thinks is a very good thing.

Then Aruca took questions and responded to a range of them. He stresses he doesn't agree with Menoyo on some questions, but he's a person of principle, in Aruca's mind. Aruca himself spoke of his own experience as a rightist conspirator against the Cuban government, when he was a younger man in his twenties. It's a fascinating program so you should really try to listen to it as long as it's still archived on the website.

An taped interview with Menoyo was played on the Spanish program on August 12, which is called Ayer en Miami, at www.rprogreso.com

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW on the August 12 edition of Babel's Guide at www.rprogreso.com 

source:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/19589