CUBA'S RENEWED SUPPORT FOR VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA - 1981/12/14

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Argentina Declassification Project - The "Dirty War" (1976-83)
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05168213
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: April 3, 2019
• Document Release Date: April 12, 2019
• Publication Date: December 14, 1981

Special
eeport No. 90
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Cuba's Renewed Support for
Violence in Latin America
December 14, 1981
Following is the text of a research paper
presented to the Subcommittee on
Western Hemisphere Affairs of the
*nate Foreign Relations Committee by
e Department of State, December 14,
981.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
SUMMARY
I. POLICIES
II. METHODS
III. CASE STUDIES
Central America
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Guatemala
Costa Rica
Honduras
The Caribbean
Jamaica
Guyana
Grenada
Dominican Republic
South America
Colombia
Chile
Argentina
Uruguay
WV. POSTSCRIPT
United States Department of State
Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, D.C.
PREFACE
Any formulation of U.S. foreign policy
for Latin America and the Caribbean
would be incomplete without in-depth
analysis of Cuba's role in the region.
Some of Cuba's international activities
have received publicity and attention,
but much has taken place out of the
public view. While understanding the
full range of Cuba's activities abroad is
obviously essential for governments
engaged in foreign policy planning, the
general public is often uninformed about
the nature and extent of Cuba's involve-
ment in other countries. This study of
Cuban activities in Latin America and
the Caribbean is being issued in the in-
terest of contributing to better public
understanding of U.S. foreign policy and
developments in the region.
The focus of this study is Cuba's ac-
tivities in the Americas. It does not at-
tempt to give a description of conditions
in the countries in which Cuba is active
or to analyze why violent groups de-
velop, but instead examines the degree
to which Cuba is directly engaged in
efforts to destabilize its neighbors by
promoting armed opposition movements.
Cuba is clearly not the sole source of
violence and instability in the region, but
Cuban activities militarize and interna-
tionalize what would otherwise be local
conflicts. In a region whose primary
needs are for economic development,
social equity, and greater democracy,
Cuba is compounding existing problems
by encouraging armed insurrection.
This report describes Cuban ac-
tivities that are either publicly known or
can be revealed without jeopardizing in-
telligence sources and methods. Cuban
involvement is not limited to the ex-
amples contained in this study.
SUMMARY
A country-by-country examination of
Cuba's activities in Latin America and
the Caribbean makes clear that Cuba
has renewed its campaign of the 1960s
to promote armed insurgencies. In par-
ticular, Cuba has stepped up efforts to
stimulate violence and destabilize its
neighbors, turning away from its earlier
policy of strengthening normal diplo-
matic relations in the hemisphere.
Since 1978, Cuba has:
� Worked to unite traditionally
splintered radical groups behind a com-
mitment to armed struggle with Cuban
advice and material assistance;
� Trained ideologically committed
cadres in urban and rural guerrilla war-
fare;
� Supplied or arranged for the sup-
ply of weapons to support the Cuban-
trained cadres' efforts to assume power
by force;
� Encouraged terrorism in the hope
of provoking indiscriminate violence and
repression, in order to weaken govern-
ment legitimacy and attract new con-
verts to armed struggle; and
� Used military aid and advisers to
gain influence over guerrilla fronts and
radical governments through armed pro-
Cuban Marxists.
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Unlike Che Guevara's attempts dur-
ing the 1960s, Cuban subversion today is
backed by an extensive secret intelli-
gence and training apparatus, modern
military forces, and a large and sophisti-
cated propaganda network. Utilizing
agents and contacts nurtured over more
than 20 years, the Castro government is
providing ideological and military train-
ing and material and propaganda sup-
port to numerous violent groups, often
several in one country.
Cuba is most active in Central
America, where its immediate goals are
to exploit and control the revolution in
Nicaragua and to induce the overthrow
of the Governments of El Salvador and
Guatemala. At the same time, Cuba is
working to destabilize governments else-
where in the hemisphere. Cuba provides
advice, safehaven, communications,
training, and some financial support to
several violent South American
organizations. In the Caribbean, Cuban
interference in the post-election period
has been blunted in Jamaica, but
Grenada has become a virtual Cuban
client.
Cuba's new drive to promote armed
insurgency does not discriminate be-
tween democracies and dictatorships.
And attempts by Cuba to destabilize
governments occur in spite of the ex-
istence of diplomatic ties.
This long-range campaign is directed
by the Cuban Communist Party, which
oversees farflung operations that include
secret training camps in Cuba, intelli-
gence officers abroad, training programs
for select foreign students, networks for
covert movement of personnel and
material between Cuba and abroad, and
propaganda suppOrt.
Cuba's enormous investment of
energy, money, and agents in this cam-
paign would not be possible without
Soviet help. Soviet assistance, now total-
ing over $8 million a day, enables Cuba
to maintain the best equipped and
largest per capita military forces in
Latin America and to channel substan-
tial resources abroad. In return, Cuba
usually is careful not to jeopardize ongo-
ing government relationships in Latin
America important to the Soviet Union.
The scope of Cuba's activities in the
hemisphere has prevented Cuba from
always keeping covert operations hid-
den. For instance, during 1981 alone:
� In Nicaragua, Cuba has quietly in-
creased its presence to 5,000 personnel,
including more than 1,500 security and
military advisers.
� In El Salvador, Cuba's key role in
arming the Salvadoran guerrillas was
exposed and Castro admitted supplying
arms.
2
� In Costa Rica, a Special Legisla-
tive Commission documented Cuba's role
in establishing an arms supply network
during the Nicaraguan civil war and
found the network was later used to
supply Salvadoran insurgents.
� In Colombia, Cuba was
discovered to have trained guerrillas at-
tempting to establish a "people's army."
Cuba's new policies abroad and its
reaction to emigration pressures at
home have reversed the trend in Latin
America toward normalization of rela-
tions with Cuba. During the last 2 years,
Colombia, Costa Rica, and Jamaica
suspended or broke relations with Cuba.
Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador withdrew
their ambassadors from Havana.
Cuban intervention is, of course, not
the sole source of instability. The origins
of occasional violent conflict in Latin
America lie in historical social and eco-
nomic inequities which have generated
frustrations among a number of people.
Sustained economic growth over the
past 20 years and resilient national in-
stitutions, however, have limited the ap-
peal of radical groups. But in some
countries, particularly the small nations
of Central America, dislocations result-
ing from rapid growth compounded
existing tensions, leading to the
emergence in several countries of radical
movements, which often originated with
frustrated elements of the middle class.
Subsequent economic reversals have sub-
jected already weak institutions to addi-
tional stress, making these countries
more vulnerable to the appeals of radical
groups backed by Cuba.
Cuba is quick to exploit legitimate
grievances for its own ends. But its
strategy of armed struggle is not based
on appeals to the "people." Instead,
Cuba concentrates on developing self-
proclaimed "vanguards" committed to
violent action. Revolutions, according to
this approach, are made by armed
revolutionaries.
Cuba's readiness to train, equip, and
advise those who opt for violent solu-
tions imposes obstacles to economic
progress, democratic development, and
self-determination in countries faced
with growing economic difficulties. The
spiraling cycle of violence and counter-
violence which is central to Cuba's policy
only exacerbates the suffering of or-
dinary people and makes necessary ad-
justments more difficult.
Cuba's renewed campaign of
violence is of great concern to many
countries, including the United States.
Cuba should not escape responsibility for
its actions. Exposing Cuba's efforts to
promote armed struggle will increase
the costs to Cuba of its intervention.
I. POLICIES
When it first came to power, the Cast
regime had its own theory of how to
spread revolution: to reproduce else-
where the rural-based guerrilla warfare
experience of Castro's 26th of July
Movement in Cuba. In Che Guevara's
words, the Andes would become the
Sierra Maestra of South America.
Initial attempts to repeat Cuba's
revolution elsewhere failed decisively.
During the late 1960s, the Castro
regime gradually reined in its zealots.
Without abandoning its ideology or its
ties to radical states and movements,
Cuba began to pursue normal
government-to-government relations in
the hemisphere. By the mid-1970s
Cuba's isolation in the Americas eased,
and full diplomatic or consular relations
were reestablished with a number of
countries.
But diplomacy proved unable to
satisfy the Castro government's ambi-
tions. First in Africa and now in Latin
America and the Caribbean, Cuba's
policy has again shifted to reemphasize
intervention.
On July 26, 1980, Fidel Castro
declared that the experiences of Guate-
mala, El Salvador, Chile, and Bolivia
teach us that there is no other way th
revolution, that there is no other "for-
mula" than "revolutionary armed strug-
gle." Castro's statement was an attempt
to justify publicly what Cuban agents
had been doing secretly since 1978: step-
ping up support for armed insurgency in
neighboring countries.
This study traces the development of
this latest phase in Cuba's foreign policy.
Early Failures. The original Cuban
theory held that a continental Marxist
revolution could be achieved by estab-
lishing armed focal points (focos) in
several countries. Operating in rural
areas, small bands of guerrillas could in-
itiate struggles that would spread
throughout the continent.
In 1959, Castro aided armed expedi-
tions against Panama, the Dominican
Republic, and Haiti. During the early
and mid-1960s, Guatemala, Colombia,
Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia all faced
serious Cuban-backed attempts to
develop guerrilla focos.
In seeking indigenous groups with
which to cooperate, the Cubans rejected
the orthodox Latin American Com-
munist parties, which they regarded as
ineffectual. Instead, they lent their su
port to more militant groups dedicate
to armed violence even when their
Marxism was not fully articulated.
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The Soviet Union was suspicious of
i
Cuba's policy of inciting armed violence,
referring to work through established
oscow-line Communist parties.
sagreement over this issue was a
serious point of friction for several
years. Cuba denounced the Soviet policy
of "peaceful coexistence" as a fraud,
arguing that it implicitly undercut the
legitimacy of aiding "national liberation"
struggles. At the 1966 Tricontinental
Conference, Cuba sought to enlist North
Vietnam and North Korea and create a
more aggressive revolutionary interna-
tionalism.
None of the Latin American in-
surgencies fomented by Havana, how-
ever, aroused much popular support.
The most severe blow to Cuba's policy
during this period came in Bolivia in
1967, when Che Guevara's guerrilla band
was opposed by both the peasantry and
the Bolivian Communist Party.
After this maverick approach failed
to establish a continental revolution,
Cuban foreign policy moved into closer
conformity with that of the Soviet
Union. Castro endorsed the 1968 Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia and accepted
Soviet views on East-West relations.
Within the hemisphere, Cuba generally
4113 onformed to the Soviet approach of
stering state-to-state relations with
several Latin American countries.
The Turn to Africa. In the
mid-1970s, Cuba renewed its penchant
for direct intervention, not in Latin
America but in Africa.'
� In Angola, 20,000 Cuban troops,
supported by Soviet logistics and
materiel, assured the supremacy of the
Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola, which had the strongest ties to
Moscow of the three movements com-
peting for power after Portugal's with-
drawal.
� In Ethiopia, the integration of
Soviet and Cuban operations was even
more complete, with the Soviets pro-
viding overall command and control,
materiel, and transport for 13-15,000
Cuban troops fighting against Somali
forces.
'Cuba's military and political activities in
Africa are intense and wideranging. Cuba
still maintains expeditionary forces of at least
15-19,000 in Angola and 11-15,000 in
Ethiopia. Cuba has military and security ad-
viser contingents in a number of other
African countries and in South Yemen.
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The Moscow-Havana Axis. These
African operations gave evidence of
Cuba's military value to the Soviet
Union. In areas of the Third World
where the Soviets were under con-
straints not binding on Cuba, Havana
could portray its actions as an out-
growth of its own foreign policy of sup-
port for "national liberation
movements."
Cuba's extensive and costly activities
overseas would have been impossible,
however, without Soviet aid. The Cuban
armed forces, some 225,000 strong, with
new sophisticated weaponry from the
Soviet Union, became a formidable
offensive military machine. Soviet aid
and subsidies to the Cuban economy
have climbed to more than $3 billion an-
nually or about one-fourth of Cuba's
gross national product. In December
1979, at a time when Soviet oil
deliveries to Eastern Europe were being
cut back and prices raised, Castro an-
nounced that the Soviet Union had
guaranteed Cuba's oil needs through
1985 at a price roughly one-third that of
the world market. The Soviet Union also
pays up to four and five times the world
price for Cuban sugar.2
In return, Cuba champions the no-
tion of a "natural alliance" between the
Soviet bloc and the Third World in the
nonaligned movement. At the Cuban
Communist Party Congress in December
1980, Castro explicitly endorsed the
Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and
defended the Soviet "right" to intervene
in Poland. He also reiterated that Cuba
is irrevocably committed to communism
and to supporting "national liberation"
struggles around the world.
Cuba's policies abroad are thus
linked to its relationship to the Soviet
Union. By intervening in behalf of
armed struggle in Latin America, Cuba
injects East-West dimensions into local
conflicts.
2According to the World Bank, Cuba's
per capita annual growth rate averaged
minus 1.2% during the period 1960-78.
Cuban economic performance ranked in the
lowest 5% worldwide and was the worst of
all socialist countries. Only massive infusions
of Soviet aid have kept consumption levels
from plummeting. Cuba today depends more
heavily on sugar_than before 195g. The in-
dustrial sector hapSeen plagued by mis-
management, absenteeism, and serious short-
ages in capital goods and foreign exchange.
The economic picture is so bleak that in 1979,
and again in October 1981, the Cuban leader-
ship had to warn that 10-20 more years of
sacrifice lie.ghead.
II. METHODS
Even when pursuing an open policy in
the 1970s of establishing normal diplo-
matic relations with a number of Latin
American countries, Cuba retained its
clandestine ties with remnants of the in-
surgents and other pro-Cuban elements
in Latin America, providing asylum,
propaganda, some training, and other
support. Between 1970 and 1973, Cuba's
security services moved arms and agents
into Chile. At the same time, Cubans
helped organize President Allende's per-
sonal security and trained many leaders
of the Chilean Movement of the Revolu-
tionary Left.
Cuba's renewed campaign to pro-
mote insurgencies draws on these con-
tacts and experiences and combines
several different elements.
Sophisticated Strategy. Learning
from Che Guevara's failure in Bolivia,
Cuban doctrine now emphasizes the
need to enlist support for armed strug-
gle through advanced training of local
guerrilla cadres, sustained aid and ad-
vice, and extensive propaganda ac-
tivities. The foco approach of the
1960s�when a Cuban-sponsored team in
the field was considered enough to spark
insurrection�has given way to a more
sophisticated strategy involving exten-
sive commitments and risks.
Soviet Support. A major difference
from the 1960s is that, instead of throw-
ing up obstacles, the Soviet Union
generally has backed Cuban efforts to in-
corporate nondoctrinaire groups into
broad political-military fronts dedicated
to armed struggle. Particularly in Cen-
tral America, Soviet ties to local Com-
munist parties and bloc relationships
have been used to favor insurrectionary
violence. For example, a senior Soviet
Communist Party functionary traveled
to Panama in August 1981 to discuss
strategy for Central America with
Cuban officials and leaders of Central
American Communist parties. The
Soviet Union has also used its extensive
propaganda network selectively to dis-
credit governments and build support
for armed opposition groups.
Allowing Havana to take the lead in
the hemisphere enables Moscow to main-
tain a low profile and cultivate state-to-
state relations and economic ties with
Major countries like Brazil and Argen-
tina.
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Cuba, in turn, is generally cautious
not to undercut the Soviet Union where
the Soviets have established valued rela-
tionships. In Peru, for example, Cuba
has been careful to exercise restraint to
avoid prejudicing the status of the 300
Soviet officials there or jeopardizing the
Soviet Union's arms supply arrange-
ment.
Central Control. Most of the covert
operations in support of this strategy
are planned and coordinated by the
America Department of the Cuban Com-
munist Party, headed by Manuel Pineiro
Losada. The America Department
emerged in 1974 to centralize opera-
tional control of Cuba's covert activities.
The department brings together the ex-
pertise of the Cuban military and the
General Directorate of Intelligence into
a farflung operation that includes secret
training camps in Cuba, networks for
covert movement of personnel and
materiel between Cuba and abroad, and
sophisticated propaganda support.
Agents of the America Department
are present in every Cuban diplomatic
mission in Latin America and the Carib-
bean�in at least five recent instances in
the person of the ambassador or charge
d'affaires. America Department officials
frequently serve as employees of Cuba's
official press agency, Prensa Latina, of
Cubana Airlines, the Cuban Institute of
Friendship with People, and other ap-
parently benign organizations. When too
great an identification with Cuba proves
counterproductive, Cuban intelligence
officers work through front groups,
preferably those with non-Cuban leader-
ship.3
Cuban military intelligence personnel
selected for clandestine operations in
Latin America, Africa, and the Middle
East go through an elaborate training
program conducted by Cuban, Soviet,
East German, and Czech instructors in
Havana, with special sessions in sur-
rounding cities. In addition to the
language and customs of the area to
which they are assigned, and typical in-
telligence operations such as infiltration
procedures and photography techniques,
the Cubans are instructed in handling
explosives. To disguise their true oc-
cupation, the intelligence agents are also
instructed in civilian skills such as auto-
motive mechanics, carpentry, and heavy
equipment operation.
3Cuba maintains some front organizations
set up in the 1960s. One of these, the Con-
tinental Organization of Latin American
Students, still holds irregular congresses of
student leaders from Latin America and the
Caribbean (the most recent in Havana in
August 1981) and publishes a monthly journal
distributed by the Cuban Government.
4
Armed Struggle. The new Cuban
offensive relies heavily on violence. In
outline, Cuba's strategy is to:
O Unite traditionally splintered radi-
cal groups behind a commitment to
armed struggle with Cuban advice and
material assistance;
O Train ideologically committed
cadres in urban and rural guerrilla war-
fare;
O Supply or arrange for the supply
of weapons to support the Cuban-trained
cadres' efforts to assume power by
force;
O Encourage terrorism in the hope
of provoking indiscriminate violence and
repression and generalized disorder in
order to weaken government legitimacy
and attract new converts to armed
struggle; and
O Use military aid and advisers to
gain influence over guerrilla fronts and
radical governments through armed pro-
Cuban Marxists.
The application of this strategy is
demonstrated in detail in the case
studies that follow. It should be noted,
however, that Cuba sometimes empha-
sizes certain tactics over others. In pur-
suing its long-term strategy, Cuba con-
cer.trates initially on building a network
of loyal cadres. When local extremist
groups are not capable of or committed
to armed struggle, Cuba generally draws
on them in support of active insurgen-
cies elsewhere while developing their
capacity and willingness for agitation in
their homeland. In addition, foreign
policy concerns may deter Cuba from
promoting armed struggle in a particu-
lar country. For example, Cuba at-
tempts to avoid activities which could
jeopardize its relations with the Mexican
Government since Castro seeks Mexico's
support to avoid isolation in the
heinisphere.4
Propaganda. Cuba's extensive
cultural exchange and propaganda ac-
tiv:.ties are tailored to support covert
operations and elicit support for armed
4Although Cuba is not involved in actions
directly threatening to Mexican internal
stability, Cuba has taken advantage of Mex-
ico's open society and its extensive presence
there�Cuba's Embassy in Mexico City is its
largest diplomatic mission in the hemi-
sphere�to carry out support activities for in-
surgencies in other countries. Mexico is a
principal base for Cuban contacts with repre-
sentatives of several armed Latin American
groups on guerrilla strategy, logistical sup-
port, and international activities.
struggle.3 For example, during the past
year, Cubans have used Mexico as a
base for coordination of propaganda o
behalf of insurgents in El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Colombia. Radio Havair
and other Cuban media recently have
publicized statements by Chilean Com-
munist Party leaders urging unity of the
Chilean left and calling for armed action
to topple Chile's government. Radio
Havana has directed broadcasts to Para-
guay urging the overthrow of the Para-
guayan Government.
Sports competitions, youth and
cultural festivals, and special scholar-
ships to Cuba provide channels to iden-
tify potential agents for intelligence and
propaganda operations. In Ecuador,
Cuban Embassy officers in Quito used
their ties with Ecuadoran students to
try to orchestrate pro-Cuba demonstra-
tions when the Government of Ecuador
threatened to suspend relations after
Cuba's forcible and unauthorized occupa-
tion in February 1981 of the Ecuadoran
Embassy in Havana, following its
seizure by a group of Cubans seeking to
leave Cuba.
Military Training. Witnesses and
former trainees have described several
camps in Cuba dedicated specifically to
military training, including one in Pin
del Rio Province and another near
Guanabo, east of Havana. The camps
can accommodate several hundred
trainees. Groups from El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Hon-
duras, Colombia, Grenada, the
Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti,
Chile, and Uruguay have been trained in
5Prensa Latina, the press agency of the
Cuban Government, has field offices in 35
countries, including 11 Latin American and
Caribbean countries, and combines news
gathering and propaganda dissemination with
intelligence operations. Radio Havana, Cuba's
shortwave broadcasting service, transmits
more than 350 program hours per week in
eight languages to all points of the world.
Cuba also transmits nightly mediumwave
Spanish-language broadcasts over "La Voz de
Cuba," a network of high-powered trans-
mitters located in different parts of Cuba. In
the Caribbean alone, Radio Havana's weekly
broadcasts include 14 hours in Creole to
Haiti; 60 hours in English; 3 hours in French;
and 125 hours in Spanish. Prensa Latina and
Radio Havana, in close coordination with
TASS and Radio Moscow, regularly use dis-
information to distort news reports trans-
mitted to the region, especially those con-
cerning places where Cuban covert activitie0
are most intense.
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these facilities during the past 2 years.6
0Recruits are normally provided false
ocumentation (sometimes Cuban pass-
orts) by Cuban agents in third coun-
tries and are flown to Cuba on civil air-
craft under cover as "students" or other
occupations. Panama has been used as a
regular transit point for Central and
South Americans to and from military
training in Cuba.'
Once in Cuba, trainees generally are
taken immediately to the guerrilla train-
ing camps where they usually are
grouped according to nationality and the
organization for which they are being
trained in order to promote a sense of
cohesiveness and esprit de corps.
Training normally lasts 3-6 months
and consists of instruction by Cuban
cadres in sabotage, explosives, military
tactics, and weapons use. Although
military training is frecfuently tied close-
ly to operational requirements�the
M-19 guerrillas who landed in Colombia
in early 1981 did so immediately upon
completion of their military instruction
in Cuba�witnesses report that political
indoctrination is also included in the cur-
riculum.
Many Cuban instructors are active
military officers and veterans of Cuban
xpeditionary forces in Africa. Soviet
ersonnel have been reported at these
camps, but they apparently do not par-
ticipate directly in the guerrilla training.
Political Training. Each year Cuba
offers hundreds of scholarships to
foreign students. All Cuban mass organi-
zations operate schools in organizational
6Latin Americans are not the only
trainees. In a May 1978 Reuters interview
published in Beirut, Abu Khalaf, a leader of
the military branch of Al Fatah, confirmed
that Palestinian agents have received train-
ing in Cuba since the late 1960s. Palestinian
organizations, with Cuban assistance, have
reciprocated by training various Latin
American groups in the Middle East. Libya,
which hosted a meeting of Latin American
"liberation movements" January 25-Febru-
ary 1, 1979, also has trained some Latin
American extremists.
'Public exposure in March 1981 of the
use of Panama as a transit point for Colom-
bian guerrillas trained in Cuba led to sharp
criticism of Cuba by the Panamanian Govern-
ment. Panama imposed greater controls on
activities of exiled Central and South
Americans, and the transit of guerrillas
through Panama appears to have ceased, at
least temporarily.
work and indoctrination open to care-
fully selected foreign students.8 In addi-
tion, some 11,000 non-Cuban secondary
school students, mostly teenagers, were
enrolled in 1980 in 15 schools on the Isle
of Youth alone. Cuba does not publicize
complete foreign enrollment statistics
nor does it release the names of those
trained. From the eastern Caribbean
alone, close to 300 students are current-
ly in Cuba studying technical and aca-
demic subjects. The study of Marxism-
Leninism is compulsory in many courses,
and military affairs is compulsory in
some. When governments have turned
down Cuban scholarship offers, as oc-
curred recently in Belize and Dominica,
Cuba has gone ahead and concluded
private agreements. Local Marxist-
Leninist groups with ties to Cuba play a
major role in selecting those students
who receive scholarships.
In sum, the infrastructure for Cuba's
intensified revolutionary agitation in
Latin America is a multifaceted yet
carefully coordinated mechanism. The
Cuban Communist Party, through its
America Department, provides cohesion
and direction to a complex network that
consists of intelligence officers, elements
of Cuba's foreign ministry, armed
forces, mass organizations, commercial
and cultural entities, and front groups.
This extensive apparatus is designed
to support one objective: a systematic,
long-range campaign to destabilize
governments.
8Courses in agitation and propaganda
open to foreigners include the Central Union
of Cuban Workers' Lazaro Pena Trade Union
Cadre School and similar courses run by the
Union of Young Communists, the Cuban
Women's Federation, the National Associa-
tion of Small Farmers, and the Committees
for the Defense of the Revolution. Even the
� Cuban Communist Party offers special
courses for non-Cubans in party provincial
schools and in the Nico Lopez National Train-
ing School, its highest educational institution.
The Cuban press reported graduation
ceremonies July 17, 1981, for this year's 70
Cuban graduates and announced that 69
foreigners had also attended advanced
courses at the Nico Lopez school. Foreign
students represented political organizations
from Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru,
Colombia, Ecuador, Jamaica, the Dominican
Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile,
Grenada, Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Sao
Tome y Principe, and South Yemen. Official
Cuban Communist Party newspaper Gramma
labeled their Presence "a beautiful example of
proletarian internationalism." Courses of in-
struction at the Nico Lopez school, which is
chaired by senior party leaders, include
"political training for journalists," "political
training for propagandists," economics, and
ideology.
III. CASE STUDIES
The Cuban activities described in the
case studies which follow must be con-
sidered to understand developments
within the countries in question. How-
ever, the focus of the case studies is
Cuban involvement in each country.
Readers should, therefore, guard against
assuming that the cases below provide a
comprehensive picture of the general
situation in the country where the
events described have taken place.
Central America
Nicaragua. In July 1979, internal
and external factors converged to bring
about the triumph of the anti-Somoza in-
surrection and the subsequent domina-
tion of the new Nicaraguan Government
by the Cuban-trained leadership of the
Sandinista National Liberation Front
(FSLN). These events provided a key
test for Cuba's new mechanisms and
strategy for promoting armed pro-Cuban
movements in this hemisphere.
Opposition to Somoza's authoritarian
rule in the late 1970s was widespread.
The 1978 killing of Pedro Joaquin
Chamorro, publisher of Nicaragua's
most respected newspaper, La Prensa,
converted many Nicaraguans to the
armed opposition of which the FSLN
was the core; FSLN assurances on
democracy and pluralism were accepted
by newly allied political moderates and
private businessmen. Internationally,
sympathy for the struggle against
Somoza led Venezuela, Panama, and
Costa Rica to aid the insurgents, while
Somoza stood practically without
friends.
This environment enabled Cuba to
disguise the extent of its support for the
FSLN and avoid disrupting the fragile
alliances between the FSLN and other
opponents of Somoza. Behind the
scenes, Cuba played an active role in
organizing the FSLN and in training
and equipping it militarily.
Cuba had provided some training
and arms to the FSLN in the early
1960s. Until late 1977, however, Cuban
support consisted mainly of propaganda
and safehaven.
In 1977 and early 1978, a high-
ranking America Department official,
Armando Ulises Estrada,9 made
9Ulises Estrada was given his first am-
bassadorial post in Jamaica following the July
1979 victory of anti-Somoza forces (see
Jamaica case study). He is currently Cuba's
ambassador to South Yemen.
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numerous secret trips to facilitate the
uprising by working to unify the three
major factions of the FSLN. Stepped-up
Cuban support to the Sandinistas was
conditioned on effective unity. During
the XI World Youth Festival in Havana
in late July 1978, the Cubans announced
that the unification of the three factions
had been achieved and urged Latin
American radicals present at the
meeting to demonstrate solidarity with
the FSLN by staging operations in their
own countries.
At the same time, Estrada concen-
trated on building a supply network for
channeling arms and other supplies to
guerrilla forces. International sympathy
for the struggle against Somoza provid-
ed a convenient facade for Cuban opera-
tions. In preparation for the first FSLN
offensive in the fall of 1978, arms were
flown from Cuba to Panama, trans-
shipped to Costa Rica on smaller planes,
and supplied to Nicaraguan guerrillas
based in northern Costa Rica. To moni-
tor and assist the flow, the America
Department established a secret opera-
tions center in San Jose. By the end of
1978, Cuban advisers were dispatched to
northern Costa Rica to train and equip
the FSLN forces with arms which began
to arrive direct from Cuba. FSLN guer-
rillas trained in Cuba, however, con-
tinued to return to Nicaragua via
Panama.
In early 1979, Cuba helped organize,
arm, and transport an "internationalist
brigade" to fight alongside FSLN guer-
rillas. Members were drawn from
several Central and South American ex-
tremist groups, many of them experi-
enced in terrorist activities. Castro also
dispatched Cuban military specialists to
the field to help coordinate the war
efforts. Factionalism threatened San-
dinista unity again in early 1979, and
Castro met personally with leaders of
three FSLN factions tO hammer out a
renewed unity pact.
When the insurgents' final offensive
was launched in mid-1979, Cuban
military advisers from the Department
of Special Operations, a special military
unit, were with FSLN columns and
maintained direct radio communications
to Havana. A number of Cuban advisers
were wounded in combat and were
evacuated to Cuba via Panama.
The operations center run by the
America Department in San Jose was�
the focal point for coordination of Cuba's
support. After the triumph of the anti-
Somoza forces in July 1979, the chief of
6
the center, Julian Lopez Diaz, became
Cuban Ambassador to Nicaragua. One of
his America Department assistants in
San Jose, Andres Barahona, was redocu-
mented as a Nicaraguan citizen and
became a top official of the Nicaraguan
intelligence service.
Castro has counseled the Sandinistas
to protect their Western ties to keep the
country afloat economically. But to in-
sure that the FSLN could move to domi-
nate the Nicaraguan Government, Cuba
has acted quickly to build up Sandinista
military and security forces.
Since July 1979, Cuba has provided
substantial military, technical, and
political assistance. Some 5,000 Cuban
advisers, teachers, and medical person-
nel work at all levels of the military and
civilian infrastructures." Of this
number, more than 1,500 military and
security advisers are actively providing
military instruction and combat training;
instruction in intelligence and counter-
intelligence activities; instruction on
security protection for the FSLN leader-
ship; and advice on organization of the
Nicaraguan police force. In addition,
Nicaragua has received within the past
year approximately $28 million worth of
military equipment from the U.S.S.R.,
Eastern Europe, and Cuba. This has in-
cluded tanks, light aircraft, helicopters,
heavy artillery, surface-to-air missiles,
anti-aircraft weapons, hundreds of
military transport vehicles, as well as
tons of small arms and ammunition.
Cuba presently is using Nicaraguan
territory to provide training and other
facilities to guerrillas active in neighbor-
ing countries. The Cuban Ambassador to
Nicaragua and other America Depart-
ment officials frequently meet with Cen-
tral American guerrillas in Managua to
advise them on tactics and strategy. In-
dividual Sandinista leaders have par-
ticipated in such meetings and have met
independently with Guatemalan and
Salvadoran insurgents. The FSLN also
'�The very quantity of Cuban advisers
has caused resentment among nationalist
Nicaraguans, leading to sporadic outbursts of
anti-Cuban feelings. On June 3, 1981, the
FSLN announced that 2,000 Cuban primary
school teachers presently in Nicaragua would
return to Cuba in July, at the mid-point of
Nicaragua's academic year. The Nicaraguan
Education Minister announced on June 18
that 800 of those departing would return in
September after vacations in Cuba, while
Cuba would replace the other 1,200 teachers
in February. By November 1981, however, all
2,000 Cuban teachers had returned to Nica-
ragua.
has cooperated in a joint effort by Cuba
and Palestinian groups to provide mili-
tary training in the Mideast to selected
Latin American extremists. Some San
dinistas were themselves trained by th
Palestine Liberation Organization, which
maintains an embassy in Nicaragua.
Between October 1980 and February
1981, Nicaragua was the staging site for
a massive Cuban-directed flow of arms
to Salvadoran guerrillas. Arms destined
for Salvadoran and Guatemalan guer-
rillas continue to pass through
Nicaragua.
El Salvador. Before 1979, Cuban
support to Salvadoran radicals involved
training small numbers of guerrillas,
providing modest financial aid, and serv-
ing as a political conduit between Salva-
doran extremists and Communists out-
side the hemisphere.
During the Nicaraguan civil war,
Cuba concentrated on support for the
FSLN. After the fall of Somoza, Cuba
began intense efforts to help pro-Cuban
guerrillas come to power in El Salvador.
When a reform-minded, civil-military
government was established in October
1979, Cuba's first priority was to tighten
the political organization and unity of El
Salvador's fragmented violent left. At
first, arms shipments and other aid fro
Cuba were kept low as the Cubans in-
sisted on a unified strategy as the pric
of increased material support. To forge
unity, Cuba sponsored a December 1979
meeting in Havana that resulted in an
initial unity agreement among the
Armed Forces of National Resistance
(FARN), the Popular Liberation Forces
(FPL), and the Communist Party of El
Salvador (PCES), which had itself
formed an armed wing at Cuban and
Soviet insistence. In late May 1980,
after more negotiations in Havana, the
Popular Revolutionary Army (ERP) was
admitted into the guerrilla coalition.
The new combined military com-
mand assumed the name of the Unified
Revolutionary Directorate (DRU). Dur-
ing this period, Cuba also coordinated
the development of clandestine support
networks in Honduras, Costa Rica, and
Nicaragua, sometimes using arms supply
mechanisms established during the
Nicaraguan civil war.
With unified tactics and operations
now possible, Cuba began to assist the
guerrillas in formulating military
strategy. Cuban specialists helped the
DRU devise initial war plans in the sum-
mer of 1980. The Cubans influenced the
guerrillas to launch a general offensiv
in January 1981. After the offensive
failed, guerrilla leaders traveled to
Havana in February 1981 to finalize a
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strategy to "improve our internal mili-
tary situation" by engaging in a
� "negotiating maneuver" to gain time to
regroup."
Cuba provided few weapons and am-
munition to Salvadoran guerrillas from
its own resources but played a key role
in coordinating the acquisition and
delivery of arms from Vietnam,
Ethiopia, and Eastern Europe through
Nicaragua." After the unmasking of
this network, Cuba and Nicaragua
reduced the flow in March and early
April. Prior to a guerrilla offensive in
August an upswing in deliveries oc-
curred. The arms flow continues via
clandestine surface and air routes. In ad-
dition, the Cubans over the past year
have established a network of small
ships to deliver arms to Salvadoran in-
surgent groups.
Cuba also assists the Salvadoran
guerrillas in contacts with Arab radical
states and movements to arrange
military training and financing for arms
acquisitions. In September 1980, Cuba
laundered $500,000 in Iraqi funds for
the Salvadoran insurgents. In March
1981, the Salvadoran Communist Party
Secretary General, Shafik Handal,
visited Lebanon and Syria to meet with
',Palestinian leaders. Cuba also coor-
dinates the training of a relatively small
number of Salvadoran guerrillas in
Palestinian camps in the Mideast.
Cuban training of Salvadoran guer-
rillas increased sharply in 1980 as Cuba
concentrated on building a trained army
able to mount major offensives. A
typical 3-month training program includ-
ed courses in guerrilla tactics;
marksmanship and weapons use; field
engineering; demolition; fortification
construction; land navigation; use of ar-
tillery and mines. One observer reported
seeing groups up to battalion size
(250-500 men) under instruction, sug-
"A guerrilla document outlining this
strategy was found in Nicaragua in February
1981. Guerrilla representatives later con-
firmed its authenticity to Western Europeans
with the disclaimer that the strategy
elaborately developed in the paper had been
rejected.
"The Cuban role as arms broker to the
DRU since 1979 has been documented in the
Department of State's Special Report No. 80,
Communist Interference in El Salvador,
February 23, 1981. In April 1981, when
Socialist International representative
Wischnewski confronted Castro with the
evidence in the report, Castro admitted to
Shim that Cuba had shipped arms to the guer-
rillas. In discussions with several Inter-
Parliamentary Union delegations at the
September 1981 IPU conference in Havana,
Castro again conceded that Cuba had sup-
plied arms.
gesting that some guerrillas trained as
integral units."
Cuba has provided selected guer-
rillas more intensive training on
specialized subjects. A former FPL
guerrilla who defected in fall 1981
reported that during 1980 he had re-
ceived 7 months of military training in
Cuba, including instruction in scuba div-
ing and underwater demolition. Soviet
scuba equipment was used. The group
trained as frogmen called themselves
"combat swimmers" and were told that
their mission was to destroy dams,
bridges, port facilities, and boats.
Cuba also gives political, organiza-
tional, and propaganda support to the
guerrillas. Cuban diplomatic facilities
worldwide help guerrilla front groups
with travel arrangements and contacts.
The Cuban press agency, Prensa Latina,
has handled communications for guer-
rilla representation abroad. Cuba and
the Soviet Union have pressed Com-
munist parties and radical groups to
support the insurgency directly, and
through solidarity organizations with
propaganda and facilities (office space,
equipment, etc.).
The Salvadoran insurgents have
publicly stressed the importance of
solidarity groups. A member of the
FPL, Oscar Bonilla, who attended the
Fourth Consultative Meeting in Havana
of the Continental Organization of Latin
American Students (OCLAE), a Cuban
front group, told Radio Havana in
August 1981 that OCLAE "has been the
most important means of solidarity of all
the peoples and has gotten us ready to
form an anti-interventionist student
front in El Salvador, Central America
and the Caribbean. . . . We believe that
it is good to carry out immediate plans
for actions which will permit us to stop
an imperialist intervention in El
Salvador. In this respect, the students of
Latin America will have to confront and
attack U.S. interests so that the United
States will see how the Latin American
and Caribbean student movement
responds to an aggression by im-
perialism in El Salvador."
With Soviet assistance, Cuba has or-
chestrated propaganda to distort the
realities of the Salvadoran conflict.
Unattributed foreign media placements
and efforts to organize protests against
the Salvadoran Government and U.S.
policy, which have accompanied official
propaganda, stress the theme of U.S. in-
"Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael
Rodriguez tacitly admitted that Cuba was
providing military training to Salvadoran
guerrillas in an interview published in Der
Spiegel on September 28, 1981.
tent to intervene militarily in El
Salvador.
Unfounded claims and accusations
originated by the Salvadoran guerrillas
are routinely replayed to a regional and
world audience by Cuba's Radio Havana
or Prensa Latina, then echoed by the
official Soviet Press Agency TASS,
Radio Moscow, and Eastern European
media. For example, a false report of a
U.S. soldier killed in El Salvador that
resounded widely in Cuban/Soviet propa-
ganda during 1980 was traced finally to
the Salvadoran Communist Party. This
rumor was to support an even bigger lie:
that hundreds of U.S. soldiers were in
El Salvador, building U.S. bases, and
herding peasants into Vietnam-style
strategic hamlets."
Guatemala. Castro has stepped up
Cuba's support to Guatemalan guerrillas
whom he has aided with arms and train-
ing since he came to power.
As elsewhere, Cuba has influenced
divided extremist groups to unite and
has conditioned increased Cuban aid on
a commitment to armed struggle and a
unified strategy. During 1980, discus-
sions about a unity agreement were held
among leaders of the Guerrilla Army of
the Poor (EGP), the Rebel Armed
Forces (FAR), the Organization of Peo-
ple in Arms (ORPA), and the dissident
faction of the Guatemalan Communist
Party (PGT/D). At the invitation of San-
dinista leaders, representatives of the
four groups met in Managua under
strict security to continue discussions. In
November 1980, the four organizations
signed a unity agreement in Managua to
establish the National Revolutionary
Union (with a revolutionary directorate
called the General Revolutionary Com-
mand�CGR). Manuel Pineiro Losada,
Chief of the America Department, and
Ramiro Jesus Abreu Quintana, head of
its Central American Division, repre-
sented Fidel Castro at the signing cere-
mony. Following the signing of the unity
agreement, representatives of the CGR
traveled to Havana to present the docu-
ment to Castro. ORPA publicized the
agreement in a communique issued
"At the time these reports first ap-
peared, the United States was providing
neither arms nor ammunition to El Salvador.
In January 1981, the United States respond-
ed to the Cuban-orchestrated general offen-
sive by sending some military assistance and
later sent American military trainers, whose
number never exceeded 55. There are no
U.S. combatants, bases, or strategic hamlets
in El Salvador. TASS continues to report
falsely that "hundreds" of U.S. military per-
sonnel are in El Salvador and participate in
combat.
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November 18, 1980. All parties agreed it
was significant that the unity agreement
was the first such document signed on
Central American soil.
After this unity agreement was con-
cluded, Cuba agreed to increase military
training and assistance. A large number
of the 2,000 or more guerrillas now ac-
tive have trained in Cuba. Recent
military training programs have included
instruction in the use of heavy weapons.
During the past year, arms have
been smuggled to Guatemala from
Nicaragua passing overland through
Honduras. The guerrilla arsenal now in-
cludes 50mm mortars, submachine guns,
rocket launchers, and other weapons.
Captured M-16 rifles have been traced
to U.S. forces in Vietnam. On June 26,
1981, Paulino Castillo, a 28-year-old
guerrilla with ORPA, told newsmen in
Guatemala that he was part of a 23-man
group of Guatemalans that underwent 7
months of training in Cuba, beginning
around February 1980. His group was
divided into sections for urban and rural
combat training in explosives and fire-
arms use. To get to Cuba, Castillo
traveled to Costa Rica from Guatemala
by public bus. In Costa Rica, a go-be-
tween obtained a Panamanian passport
for Castillo to enter Panama. In
Panama, other contacts equipped him
with a Cuban passport and he continued
on to Cuba. Castillo returned to
Guatemala via Nicaragua to rejoin the
guerrillas. He later surrendered to a
Guatemalan army patrol.
Guatemalan guerrillas have col-
laborated with Salvadoran guerrillas. In
January 1981, the EGP, ORPA, FAR,
and the PGT/D circulated a joint bulletin
announcing the intensification of their
activities in support of the general offen-
sive in El Salvador. The Salvadorans in
turn have provided the Guatemalans
with small quantities of arms.
Unity has not been fully achieved, as
the four groups have not yet carried out
plans to establish a political front group.
The joint military strategy, however, is
being implemented. The guerrillas have
stepped up terrorist actions in an effort
to provoke repression and destabilize the
government. For example, the EGP took
responsibility for placing a bomb in one
of the pieces of luggage that was to
have been loaded onto a U.S. Eastern
Airlines plane on July 2. The bomb ex-
ploded before being loaded, killing a
Guatemalan airport employee.
Costa Rica. Cuba took advantage of
Costa Rica's strong popular and govern-
mental opposition to Somoza's
authoritarian government and of Costa
Rica's open democratic society to estab-
8
lish and coordinate a covert support net-
work for guerrilla operations elsewhere
in Central America. The apparatus was
established during the course of the
Nicaraguan civil war and maintained
clandestinely thereafter. Costa Rica was
well disposed toward groups that op-
posed Somoza, including the Sandinista
guerrillas. Aid provided by Panama and
Venezuela was openly funneled through
Costa Rica to the Nicaraguan rebels.
Cuba, however, kept its role largely hid-
den.
A Special Legislative Commission
established in June 1980 by the Costa
Rican legislature revealed Cuba's exten-
sive role in arming the Nicaraguan guer-
rillas. The commission determined that
there were at least 21 flights carrying
war materiel between Cuba and Llano
Grande and Juan Santamaria Airports in
Costa Rica.15
Costa Rican pilots who made these
flights reported that Cubans frequently
accompanied the shipments. Although
Cubans were stationed at Llano Grande,
their main operations center for coor-
dinating logistics and contacts with the
Sandinistas was set up secretly in San
Jose and run by America Department
official Lopez Diaz. The Special Legisla-
tive Commission estimated that a
minimum of 1 million pounds of arms
moved to Costa Rica from Cuba and
elsewhere during the Nicaraguan civil
war, including anti-aircraft machine-
guns, rocket launchers, bazookas, and
mortars. The commission also estimated
that a substantial quantity of these
weapons remained in Costa Rica after
the fall of Somoza in July 1979.
The Special Legislative Commission
concluded that after the Nicaraguan civil
war had ended, "arms trafficking
[began], originating in Costa Rica or
through Costa Rican territory, toward
El Salvador, indirectly or using Hon-
duras as a bridge." Through 1980 and in-
to 1981 traffic flowed intermittently
through Costa Rica to El Salvador,
directed clandestinely by the Cubans.
In the summer of 1979, the Cubans
and their paid agent, Fernando Carrasco
Manes, a Chilean national residing in
Costa Rica, along with several Costa
Ricans previously involved in the
logistics effort for the FSLN, agreed to
continue smuggling arms to Salvadoran
guerrillas. The Cubans arranged for ac-
quisition of some of the arms and am-
munition remaining in Costa Rica from
the Nicaraguan airlift to supply the
Salvadoran insurgents.
riThe commission's report was issued
May 14, 1981.
This new Cuban operation was coor-
dinated from San Jose, first from their
secret operations center, then later
directly from the Cuban Consulate. Th
major coordinator, until his expulsion -
from Costa Rica in May 1981 following
the break in consular relations between
Costa Rica and Cuba, was Fernando
Pascual Comas Perez of the America
Department. Comas worked directly for
Manuel Pineiro and had the cover title
of Cuban Vice Consul in San Jose.
Cuban agents made arrangements to
store arms for transshipment to El
Salvador and to help hundreds of
Salvadoran guerrillas pass through
Costa Rica in small groups on their way
to training in Cuba. Cuban operations
have been facilitated by Costa Rica's
three Marxist-Leninist parties, which
have provided funds, safehaven,
transportation, and false documents.' 6
Terrorism had been virtually
unknown in Costa Rica until March 1981
except for scattered incidents of largely
foreign origin. The first Costa Rican ter-
rorists made their appearance in March
when they blew up a vehicle carrying a
Costa Rican chauffeur and three Marine
security guards from the U.S. Embassy
in San Jose. In April, four terrorists
from the same group were captured
after machine-gunning a police vehicle.
In June, the group murdered three
policemen and a taxi driver. Costa Rican
authorities have arrested some 20 ac-
cused terrorists and are continuing to in-
vestigate leads linking them to South
American terrorist groups such as the
Argentine Montoneros, the Uruguayan
Tupamaros, and Colombia's M-19, and
to Cuba itself. Two of the accused ter-
rorists are known to have received train-
ing in the Soviet Union.
Director of the Judicial Investigation
Organization Eduardo Aguilar Bloise
told a press conference August 12 that
captured terrorist documents indicated
that two Costa Rican peasants had been
given "ideological/military training" in
16In a recorded interview broadcast by
Radio Havana on June 16, 1981, Eduardo
Mora, Deputy Secretary General of Costa
Rica's Popular Vanguard Party (the Moscow-
line traditional Communist party, the least
disposed to violence of the country's several
Marxist parties and splinter groups) ex-
plained his party's position: "We establish ties
with all revolutionary organizations in Cen-
tral America. We have close ties and are will-
ing to give all the aid we possibly can in
accordance with the principles of proletarian
internationalism because we believe that th
struggle of the Central American people is
the struggle of our own people."
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Cuba and returned to work in the Atlan-
tic coastal zone of Costa Rica. The docu-
ments indicate that the two were in
uba from 8 to 12 months�possibly in
1978�and were financed by the terrorist
group known popularly in Costa Rica as
"the family." Aguilar said he did not dis-
count the possibility that others had
been trained in Cuba.
Although most of Costa Rica's
Marxist-Leninist parties have advocated
a peaceful line in respect to Costa Rica,
one group with close ties to Cuba�the
Revolutionary Movement of the People
(MRP)�while disavowing responsibility
for terrorist acts, has spoken of them as
"well intentioned." Some of the arrested
terrorists are known to have belonged to
the MRP at one time. On November 5,
the Office of National Security an-
nounced the discovery of a terrorist cell
clearly connected with the MRP. Among
the arms and terrorist paraphernalia
confiscated was an Uzi submachinegun
with silencer. Earlier, the authorities
had confiscated a "plan for Guanacaste"
from an MRP official which noted such
objectives as "prevent the electoral proc-
ess from developing in a festive at-
mosphere" and "the taking of power by
the armed people." The head of the
0nMRP has traveled many times to Cuba,
d Cuba has given training to other
RP leaders.
Honduras. Cuba provided
para-military training to a small number
of Hondurans in the early 1960s, but
relations with Honduran radicals were
strained until the late 1970s. Cuba then
resumed military training for members
of the Honduran Communist Party
(PCH) and integrated them into the "in-
ternationalist brigade" fighting in the
Nicaraguan civil war. After the war,
PCH members returned to Cuba for ad-
ditional training.
Since then Cuba has concentrated
primarily on developing Honduras as a
conduit for arms and other aid to guer-
rillas active elsewhere in Central
America. In January 1981, Honduran
officials discovered a large cache of con-
cealed arms intended for Salvadoran
guerrillas, which included M-16 rifles
traced to Vietnam. Smuggled arms have
continued to be intercepted.
While considering Honduras a useful
support base for insurgencies elsewhere,
Cuba is also working to develop the
capacity for insurrection within Hon-
duras. In the normal pattern, Havana
0 as urged splintered extremist groups in
onduras to unify and embrace armed
niggle. While holding back from levels
of support given to Salvadoran and
Guatemalan guerrillas, Cuba has in-
creased its training of Honduran ex-
tremists in political organization and
military operations. Cuba has also prom-
ised to provide Honduran guerrillas
their own arms, including submachine-
guns and rifles.
On November 27, Honduran authori-
ties discovered a guerrilla safehouse on
the outskirts of Tegucigalpa. Two guer-
rillas were killed in the resulting shoot-
out, including a Uruguayan citizen.
Nicaraguans as well as Hondurans were
captured at the house, where a substan-
tial arsenal of automatic weapons and
explosives was seized. Incriminating
documents, including notebooks which
indicate recent attendance in training
courses in Cuba, were also confiscated.
One of those arrested, Jorge Pinel
Betancourt, a 22-year-old Honduran,
told reporters the group was headed for
El Salvador to join Salvadoran guer-
rillas. Two additional guerrilla safe-
houses located in La Ceiba and San
Pedro Sula were raided on November
29, and authorities seized sizable arms
caches, explosives, and communications
equipment. These arms may have been
destined for use within Honduras.
The Caribbean
Jamaica. In the late 1970s, Jamaica
became a special target for Cuba. Fidel
Castro and other Cuban officials
developed close relationships with impor-
tant members of the People's National
Party, which governed Jamaica from
1973 until 1980. Cuban security person-
nel trained Jamaican security officers in
Cuba and Jamaica, including members of
the security force of the office of the
Prime Minister. Cuba also trained about
1,400 Jamaican youths in Cuba as con-
struction workers through a "brigadista"
program. Political indoctrination in Cuba
formed part of this group's curriculum.
A considerable number of these
Jamaican youths received military train-
ing while in Cuba, including instruction
in revolutionary tactics and use of arms.
During this same period, the Cuban
diplomatic mission in Jamaica grew.
Most of the embassy staff, including
former Ambassador Ulises Estrada,
were Cuban intelligence agents. Ulises
Estrada, who had served as a deputy
head of the America Department for 5
years, had a long history of involvement
in political action activities and intelli-
gence operations and went to Jamaica in
July 1979, after playing a major role in
Cuba's involvement in the Nicaraguan
civil war.
Cuba was instrumental in smuggling
arms and ammunition into Jamaica. A
Cuban front corporation (Moonex Inter-
national, registered in Lichtenstein, with
subsidiaries in Panama and Jamaica)
was discovered in May 1980 to be the
designated recipient of a shipment of
200,000 shotgun shells and .38 caliber
pistol ammunition shipped illegally to
Jamaica from Miami. Jamaican authori-
ties apprehended the local manager of
the corporation, accompanied by the
Jamaican Minister of National Security
and Cuban Ambassador E strada, as the
manager was attempting to leave the
country, in defiance of police instruc-
tions, on a private plane. The manager
subsequently paid a fine of U.S.
$300,000 set by a Jamaican court.
In 1980, weapons were reported
stockpiled in the Cuban Embassy for
possible use by Jamaicans during the
election campaign. M-16 rifles then ap-
peared in Jamaica for the first time and
were used in attacks against supporters
of the opposition Jamaican Labour Party
(JLP) and the security forces. Over 70 of
these weapons have been found by
Jamaican authorities. Some of the
M-16s found in Jamaica have serial
numbers in the same numerical series as
captured M-16s shipped to Salvadoran
guerrillas from Vietnam.
Ambassador Ulises E strada was
withdrawn from his post in November
1980, at the request of the newly elected
JLP government. In January 1981, the
Jamaican Government terminated the
"brigadista" program and recalled
Jamaican students remaining in Cuba
under this program. The government
decided to maintain diplomatic relations
but warned Cuba to stop its interference
in Jamaican affairs. Cuba continued to
maintain some 15 intelligence agents at
the Cuban Embassy in Kingston. On Oc-
tober 29, the government broke diplo-
matic relations with Cuba, citing Cuba's
failure to return three Jamaican fugitive
criminals as the immediate cause for this
action. On November 17, the govern-
ment publicly detailed Cuba's role in pro-
viding covert military training under the
curtailed "brigadista" program.
Guyana. In 1978, as many as 200
Cuban technicians, advisers, and medical
personnel were stationed in Guyana.
However, while claiming fraternal rela-
tions with Guyana's Government, Cuba
maintained contact with radical opposi-
tion groups. Guyanese authorities
suspected the Cubans of involvement in
a crippling sugar strike. In August 1978,
five Cuban diplomats were expelled for
involvement in illegal activities.
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Cuban military advisers have provid-
ed guerrilla training outside Guyana to
members of a small radical Guyanese op-
position group, the Working People's
Alliance. Five of the seven members of
the Cuban Embassy are known or sus-
pected intelligence agents.
Grenada. Cuban influence in
Grenada mushroomed almost immediate-
ly after the March 1979 coup led by the
New Jewel Movement of Maurice
Bishop. Bishop and his closest colleagues
were Western-educated Marxist radicals,
and they turned for help to Fidel Castro,
who proved willing to provide
assistance.
To allow close Cuban supervision of
Grenadian programs, a senior intelli-
gence officer from the America Depart-
ment, Julian Torres Rizo, was sent to
Grenada as ambassador. Torres Rizo has
maintained intimate relations with
Bishop and other People's Revolutionary
Government ministers, such as Bernard
Coard.
The Grenadian Government has
followed a pro-Soviet foreign policy line.
Cuban and Grenadian voting records in
international organizations have been
nearly identical, so much so that they
alone of all Western Hemisphere nations
have voted against U.N. resolutions con-
demning the Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan.
Cuban aid to Grenada has been most
extensive in those areas which affect the
security of its client government and the
island's strategic usefulness to Cuba.
Cuba has advisers on the island offering
military, technical, security, and propa-
ganda assistance to the Bishop govern-
ment. Many Grenadians have been sent
to Cuba for training in these areas. Last
year journalists observed Cuban officials
directing and giving orders to Grenadian
soldiers marching in ceremonies in St.
George's.
Cuba is aiding the construction of a
75-kilowatt transmitter for -Radio Free
Grenada. Grenada's state-controlled
press, enjoying a government-enforced
monopoly, currently hews to a strict
"revolutionary" line. Indications are that
the new transmitter will continue this
emphasis while providing facilities for
beaming Cuban and Soviet-supplied
propaganda into the Caribbean and
South America.
Cubas largest project in Grenada is
the construction of a major airfield at
Point Salines on the southern tip of the
island. Cuba has provided hundreds of
construction workers and Soviet equip-
ment to build the airfield. This airfield,
according to Grenadian Government
statements, is required to bring tourism
10
to its full economic potential and will be
used as a civilian airport only. Many
questions have been raised, however,
about the economic justification for the
project. The Grenadian Government has
ignored requests for a standard project
analysis of economic benefits. The
planned 9,800-foot Point Salines run-
way, moreover, has clear military poten-
tial. Such an airfield will allow opera-
tions of every aircraft in the Soviet/
Cuban inventory. Cuba's MiG aircraft
and troop transports will enjoy a greater
radius of operation. The airport will give
Cuba a guaranteed refueling stop for
military flights to Africa.
Bishop himself has given an implicit
endorsement of future military use of
the airfield. A March 31, 1980 Newsweek
report quoted Bishop's comments to a
U.S. reporter: "Suppose there's a war
next door in Trinidad, where the forces
of Fascism are about to take control,
and the Trinidadians need external
assistance, why should we oppose any-
body passing through Grenada to assist
them?"
Dominican Republic. With its
renewed commitment to armed struggle,
Cuba's interest in the Dominican
Republic has revived. Since early 1980,
the Cubans have been encouraging radi-
cals in the Dominican Republic to unite
and prepare for armed actions. Cuban
intelligence officials, like Omar Cordoba
Rivas, chief of the Dominican Republic
desk of the America Department, make
periodic visits to the island.
The Soviet Union, Cuba, and other
Communist countries have mounted ex-
tensive training programs for Dominican
students. In July 1981, the Moscow-line
Dominican Communist Party (PCD) for
the first time publicized the Soviet
scholarship program. Some 700
Dominican students are currently study-
ing at Soviet universities, principally
Patrice Lumumba University, with
another 75 in five other Communist
states (Bulgaria, Cuba, the German
Democratic Republic, Hungary, and
Romania). The PCD itself selects the
more than 100 students who begin the
Soviet program each year.
At the same time, the Soviet Union
has been pressuring the PCD to unite
with other extreme left organizations.
The PCD and the pro-Cuban Dominican
Liberation Party receive funds from
both Cuba and the Soviet Union and
send significant numbers of their
members and potential sympathizers for
academic and political schooling as well
as military training in Communist coun-
tries. Cuba also has given military in-
struction to many members of small ex-
tremist splinter groups like the Social
Workers Movement and the Socialist
Party.
South America
Colombia. Since the 1960s, Cuba
has nurtured contacts with violent ex-
tremist groups in democratic Colombia.
During the 1970s, Cuba established full
diplomatic relations with Colombia;
Cuban involvement with Colombian
revolutionaries was fairly limited,
although Cuba provided some training to
guerrilla leadership. Many leaders of the
April 19 Movement (M-19), including the
founder, Jaime Bateman�who also at-
tended a Communist cadre school in
Moscow�were trained in Cuba. Leaders
of the National Liberation Army (ELN)
and the Moscow-oriented Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) also
received Cuban instruction.
Cuban assistance to Colombian guer-
rillas was stepped up after the February
1980 seizure of the Dominican Republic
Embassy in Bogota. A number of diplo-
mats, including the U.S. Ambassador,
were taken hostage by M-19 terrorists.
As part of a negotiated settlement, the
terrorists were flown on April 17, 1980
to Cuba, where the remaining hostages
were released and the terrorists were
given asylum.
During mid-1980, Cuban intelligen
officers arranged a meeting of Colom-
bian extremists, attended by representa-
tives from the M-19, FARC, ELN, and
other Colohibian radical groups, to
discuss a common strategy and tactics.
The M-19 had previously held talks with
the Nicaraguan FSLN on ways to
achieve unity of action among guerrilla
groups in Latin America. Although the
meeting did not result in agreement by
Colombian guerrillas on a unified
strategy, practical cooperation among
the guerrilla organizations increased.
In late 1980, the M-19 set in motion
a large-scale operation in Colombia with
Cuban help. In November, the M-19
sent guerrillas to Cuba via Panama to
begin training for the operation. The
group included new recruits as well as
members who had received no prior
political or military training. In Cuba the
guerrillas were given 3 months of
military instruction from Cuban army in-
structors, including training in the use
of explosives, automatic weapons, hand-
to-hand combat, military tactics, and
communications. A course in politics and
ideology was taught as well. Members of
the M-19 group given asylum in Cub
after the takeover of the Dominican
Republic Embassy also participated in
the training program.
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InFebruary 1981, some 100-200
earm-e'd M-19 guerrillas reinfiltrated into
colombia from Panama by boat along
the Pacific coast. The guerrillas' mission
to establish a "people's army" failed. The
M-19 members proved to be poorly
equipped for the difficult countryside,
and the Cuba-organized operation was
soon dismantled by Colombian
authorities. Among those captured was
Rosenberg Pabon Pabon, the M-19
leader who had directed the Dominican
Republic Embassy takeover and then
fled to Cuba. Cuba denied any involve-
ment with the M-19 landings but did not
deny training the guerrillas."
Cuba's propaganda support for Co-
lombian terrorists was impossible to
deny. When a group apparently con-
sisting of M-19 dissidents kidnaped an
American working for a private religious
institute, Cuba implicitly supported the
terrorists' action through Radio Havana
broadcasts beamed to Colombia in
February 1981, which denounced the in-
stitute workers as "U.S. spies." Radio
Moscow picked up the unfounded ac-
cusation to use in its Spanish broadcasts
to Latin America. The American was
later murdered by the kidnapers.i8
0 Colombia suspended relations with
Cuba on March 23, in view of the clear
evidence of Cuba's role in training M-19
guerrillas. President Turbay commented
in an August 13 New York Times inter-
view: ". . . When we found that Cuba, a
country with which we had diplomatic
relations, was using those relations to
prepare a group of guerrillas to come
and fight against the government, it was
a kind of Pearl Harbor for us. It was
like sending ministers to Washington at
the same time you are about to bomb
ships in Hawaii."
Chile. After Allende's fall in 1973,
Castro promised Chilean radicals "all the
aid in Cuba's power to provide." Al-
though Cuban officials maintained
regular contact with many Chilean ex-
17Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael
Rodriguez explained in an interview pub-
lished in Der Spiegel on September 28, 1981
why Cuba had not denied training the M-19
guerrillas: "We did not deny this because in
the past few years many people came to our
country for various reasons to ask for train-
ing. We did not deny this desire. If a revolu-
tionary for Latin America wishes to learn the
technique and organization of resistance for
his own self-defense, we cannot refuse in
Otview of the brutal oppression. This also holds
rue for the Salvadorans."
18The U.S. citizen killed, Chester Allen
Bitterman, was working for the Summer In-
stitute of Linguistics, a religious group which
develops written forms of indigenous
languages.
iles, divisions among the exiles inhibited
major operations. The Moscow-line
Chilean Communist Party (PCCH),
holding the position that revolutionary
change could be accomplished by non-
violent means, was critical of "left-wing
forces" like the Movement of the Revolu-
tionary Left (MIR) with which Cuba had
close relations.
Throughout the 1970s, members of
the MIR received training in Cuba and
in some cases instructed other Latin
American revolutionaries. This training
ranged from political indoctrination and
instruction in small arms use to sophisti-
cated courses in document fabrication,
explosives, code writing, photography,
and disguise. In addition, Cuban instruc-
tors trained MIR activists in the Mideast
and Africa.
With its renewed commitment to
armed struggle, Cuba increased its
training of Chileans beginning in 1979.
By mid-1979, the MIR had recruited
several hundred Chilean exiles and sent
them to Cuba for training and eventual
infiltration into Chile. At the same time,
members of the MIR who had been liv-
ing and working in Cuba since Allende's
overthrow began to receive training in
urban guerrilla warfare techniques. The
training in some cases lasted as long as
7 months and included organization and
political strategy, small unit tactics,
security, and communications.
Once training was completed, Cuba
helped the terrorists return to Chile,
providing false passports and false iden-
tification documents. By late 1980, at
least 100 highly trained MIR terrorists
had reentered Chile, and the MIR had
claimed responsibility for a number of
bombings and bank robberies. Cuba's
official newspaper, Granma, wrote in
February 1981 that the "Chilean Re-
sistance" forces had successfully con-
ducted more than 100 "armed actions" in
Chile in 1980.
By late 1979, the PCCH was re-
evaluating its position in light of events
in Nicaragua, where the fragmented
Nicaraguan Communist Party emerged
from the civil war subservient to the
FSLN. In December 1980, PCCH leader
Luis Corvalan held talks in Cuba with
Fidel Castro, who urged Corvalan to
establish a unified Chilean opposition.
During the Cuban Party Congress that
month, Corvalan delivered a speech
which sketched a new party line calling
for armed struggle to overthrow the
Chilean Government and for coordina-
tion of efforts by all parties, including
the violent left. In January 1981, Cor-
valan commended MIR terrorist acts as
"helpful" and stated that the PCCH was
willing not only to talk with MIR repre-
sentatives but also to sign agreements
with the group. Several days after this
offer, Corvalan signed a unity agree-
ment with several Chilean extremist
groups, including the MIR.
Until January 1981, when the new
PCCH policy evidently had been ironed
out and validated by the agreement for
a broad opposition coalition, Corvalan's
statements were issued from such places
as Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Cuba,
and Peru�but never from Moscow.
Within 2 weeks of the agreement, how-
ever, Moscow showed its implicit ap-
proval of the policy change and began
broadcasting in Spanish to Latin
America�and to Chile in particular�
PCCH explanations of the new policy
and calls for mass resistance and acts of
terrorism to overthrow the Chilean
Government.
Terrorist activities by MIR comman-
dos operating in Chile have increased
substantially during the past year. These
have included increased efforts by MIR
activists to establish clandestine bases
for rural insurgency, killings of police-
men, and a number of assassination at-
tempts against high government
officials.
Argentina. The Cubans have a long
history of association with, encourage-
ment of, and active backing for ter-
rorism in Argentina. The Cubans were
linked to the two groups responsible for
unleashing the wave of leftist terrorism
that swept Argentina in the early and
mid-1970s, the Montoneros and the Peo-
ple's Revolutionary Army (ERP). Cuba
backed these organizations with advice
on tactics and instructions on recruiting
operations and with training in Cuba in
urban and rural guerrilla techniques.
During the height of Argentine ter-
rorism, the Cubans used their embasSy
in Buenos Aires to maintain direct
liaison with Argentine terrorists.
The Argentine terrorists were vir-
tually defeated by 1978. In that year,
Castro permitted the Montonero na-
tional leadership to relocate its head-
quarters in Cuba. Today, the Montonero
top command, its labor organization, and
its intelligence organization, among
other units, are all located in Cuba. The
Cubans facilitate the travel and com-
munications of Montoneros, supplying
them with false documentation and ac-
cess to Cuban diplomatic pouches. Mon-
toneros have been among the Latin
American guerrillas trained in guerrilla
warfare over the past year in the Mid-
east as part of a cooperative effort be-
tween Palestinian groups and Cuba.
Following the move of their high
command to Havana, the Montoneros
made repeated attempts to reinfiltrate
11
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Argentina. In late 1979, small groups of
infiltrators eluded detection and were
able to carry out several terrorist ac-
tions, including four murders. Subse-
quent attempts by the Montoneros to
infiltrate terrorists in early 1980 proved
unsuccessful.
With Cuban support, Montoneros
are active outside Argentina. Cuban-
trained Montoneros were among the
members of the "internationalist
brigade" that Cuba supported in
Nicaragua in 1979. This connection was
highlighted when Montonero leader
Mario Firmenich attended the first an-
niversary of the July 1979 victory, wear-
ing the uniform of a Sandinista com-
mander. Montoneros have been active
elsewhere as well. Montoneros largely
staffed and administered Radio Noticias
del Continente, which broadcast Cuban
propaganda to Central and South
America from San Jose until it was
closed by the Costa Rican Government
in 1981, after war materiel was dis-
covered on its installations.
Uruguay. After the failure of the
urban insurgency organized in the early
1970s by the National Liberation Move-
ment (MLN-Tupamaros), several hun-
dred Tupamaros went to Cuba. During
the mid-1970s, Cuba provided some of
them with training in military and ter-
rorist tactics, weapons, and intelligence.
Several of these former Tupamaros
subsequently assisted Cuba in running
intelligence operations in Europe and
Latin America. Some participated in the
Cuban-organized "internationalist
brigade" that fought in the Nicaraguan
civil war.
Cuba continues to pro}iide propa-
ganda support for the Tupamaros and
the Uruguayan Communist Party. Radio
Havana reported on June 30, 1981 that
the leader of the Communist Party of
Uruguay attended a ceremony "in soli-
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clarity with the Uruguayan people's
struggle" at the headquarters of the
Cuban State Committee for Material and
Technical Supply in Havana. Pro-Cuban
Uruguayan leaders are given red carpet
treatment when they visit Havana and
are usually received by at least a
member of the Cuban Politburo.
IV. POSTSCRIPT
Cuba's renewed campaign of violence
has had a negative impact on Cuba's
relations with its neighbors. Cuba's
policies abroad and its reaction to
emigration pressures at home have
reversed the trend in Latin America
toward normalization of relations.
Although the Castro government has
developed close ties to Nicaragua and
Grenada, Cuba finds itself increasingly
isolated throughout the Americas.
Peru nearly broke relations and
removed its ambassador in April 1980,
when the Cuban Government encour-
aged Cubans eager to leave the island to
occupy the Peruvian Embassy. After
more than 10,000 Cubans crowded into
the embassy compound, Castro thwarted
efforts by concerned governments to
develop an orderly departure program
and opened the port of Mariel to emigra-
tion, also expelling many criminals and
the mentally ill, and ultimately allowing
more than 125,000 people to leave under
sometimes perilous conditions. But Cuba
still refuses to issue safe conduct passes
to the 14 Cubans who remain cloistered
in the Peruvian Embassy in Havana to-
day.
Cuba's neighbors were further
shocked when Cuban MiG 21s sank the
Bahamian patrol boat "Flamingo" on
May 10, 1980 in an unprovoked attack in
Bahamian coastal waters. Subsequently,
four Bahamian seamen were machine-
gunned while trying to save themselves
after their vessel sank. Their bodies
were never recovered. U.S. Coast Guar
aircraft were harassed by Cuban MiGs
while searching for survivors at the re-
quest of the Bahamian Government.
Relations between Venezuela and
Cuba deteriorated badly in 1980, prin-
cipally over the asylum issue, to the
degree that Venezuela removed its am-
bassador from Havana. In November
1980, Jamaica expelled the Cuban Am-
bassador for interference in Jamaica's
internal affairs and in October 1981
broke diplomatic relations. Colombia
suspended relations in March 1981 over
Cuba's training of M-19 guerrillas.
Cuba's handling of an incident in which
a group of Cubans demanding asylum
forcibly occupied Ecuador's Embassy in
Havana prompted Ecuador to remove its
ambassador from Cuba in May 1981.
Also in May, Costa Rica severed its ex-
isting consular ties with Cuba, expelling
Cuban officials active in coordinating
support networks for Central American
insurgents.
Today, outside the English-speaking
Caribbean, only Argentina, Panama,
Mexico, and Nicaragua conduct relative-
ly normal relations through resident am-
bassadors in Havana. Use of Panama
a transit point for Colombian guerrilla
however, led Panama to reassess its
relations with Cuba and resulted in
sharp public criticism of Cuba's "mani-
fest disregard for international stand-
ards of political co-existence" by a high
Panamanian Government official. 111
Published by the United States Department
of State � Bureau of Public Affairs
Office of Public Communication � Editorial
Division � Washington, D.C. � December 1981
Editor: Norman Howard � This material is in
the public domain and may be reproduced
without permission; citation of this source is
appreciated.
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