CUBA: FOCUS ON PUERTO RICO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00865A002600210001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 8, 2002
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 5, 1975
• Content Type: IM

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Intelligence Memorandum
Cuba: Focus on Puerto Rico
Secret
September 5, 1975
No. 0760/75
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Summary
September 5, 1975
The Castro regime is currently engaged in a major propaganda campaign to
trumpet the cause of Puerto Rican independence. One of the drive's high points will
be the so-called International Conference of Solidarity with Puerto Rican Independ-
ence, to be held in Havana from September 5 to 7. The Moscow-backed World Peace
Council will be the ostensible host, but Cuba has provided the impetus behind the
scenes.
The campaign, a direct and open affront to the US, has been thrust forward at
the same time the Castro regime has been surfacing broad hints that it would view
favorably any gestures aimed at improving relations with the US. Unless the Cubans
are deliberately manufacturing a bargaining chip for eventual negotiations with the
US, the Puerto Rico drive would appear to run counter to Havana's pursuit of
detente with Washington. Moreover, the drive appears to conflict directly with
another facet of Cuban foreign policy; it is taking place at the very time Havana's
efforts to "export the revolution" in this hemisphere have reached their lowest point
in 16 years.
Upon closer scrutiny, however, the campaign complements rather than con-
flicts with current Cuban foreign policy. Aware of the impact a Cuban reconciliation
with the US would have on the Third World countries and also on Cuba's standing
among world revolutionary movements, Havana needed a device to offset the sense
of betrayal that movement toward a reconciliation with the "imperialist" US would
engender. The Puerto Rico issue lends itself particularly well to international forums
such as the UN, where Cuba can beat the drums before a receptive audience of Third
World representatives and thus certify its revolutionary and "anti-imperialist"
credentials.
The Puerto Rico issue is being pressed as vigorously at home as abroad. This
indicates that Havana's intentions extend beyond the creation of a bargaining point
for negotiations; Castro would hardly focus domestic attention on an issue on which
he eventually intended to compromise. It also suggests that Castro believes he has to
bolster his own image at home as he sheds his independent policies and hews ever
closer to the Soviet line. It is significant that the Puerto Rico campaign is being
pressed primarily by those Cubans-the "old," or pre-Castro, communists-who have
Comments and queries on the contents of this publication are welcome. They may be directed to
0
of the Office of Current Intelligence,
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the closest links to Moscow rather than by Castro's own ex-guerrilla comrades;
waging the campaign may have b -,en part of the price extracted from the "old"
communists in return for the guerrillas' support of detente.
In addition, the campaign is Castro's signal that detente is not synonymous
with amity. No matter how successful he may be in bringing about a reconciliation
with the US, he has no intention of exposing his people to the "corrupting"
influence of US culture introduced through movies, books, newspapers, magazines,
and tourists. He is convinced that not just Cuba, but all of Latin America, can gain
more from association with the US if that association is governed by confrontation
rather than cooperation. Puerto Rican independence is an issue that has significant
appeal in Latin America, enough. at least to earn Cuba kudos for flicking the eagle's
feathers, and yet it is a safe one 1:1hat will cost Havana little as long as it stops short
of paramilitary involvement. Furthermore, Castro may believe that within Puerto
Rico itself there is enough sentiment for independence to hope that in the long term
the island will indeed split off from the US, thereby justifying Cuba's support and
placing Havana in a privileged position to influence the new government.
Cuba's efforts on behalf of Puerto Rican independence, therefore, are likely to
continue in high gear for some time. To gain temporary advantage, Castro may
choose to soften the campaign from time to time as circumstances-such as negotia-
tions with Washington-warrant, but he is not likely to abandon one of the few
causes left that he apparently view a as shoring up his revolutionary facade without
seriously interfering with his pursuit of detente. It also serves as a brake on those at
home whose expectations of a return to normalcy in Cuban-US relations might be
aroused.
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The Declining Revolutionary Image
Havana is waging the Puerto Rican campaign primarily to offset the loss
of prestige the Castro regime has suffered among revolutionaries and leaders
of the Third World and to minimize the negative impact on these leaders of
Cuba's efforts to effect a reconciliation with the US. Leaders of the Non-
aligned Movement, meeting in Algiers in September 1973, witnessed a
performance by Fidel Castro himself that left many questioning Cuba's right
to membership in the movement. In his address to the conference on
September 7, Castro argued so strongly on Moscow's behalf that Libya's
Qadhafi walked out of the meeting hall and Cambodia's Sihanouk inter-
rupted so vehemently that the conference chairman, Algeria's Boumediene,
had to intervene to restore order. Although Castro hurriedly broke relations
with Israel in a belated effort to recoup lost prestige, and a public show of
reconciliation with Qadhafi was manufactured as a face-saving gesture at the
conference's end, Fidel had seriously compromised himself and his revolu-
tion before a host of chiefs of state of nonaligned countries.
Some ground has undoubtedly since been regained as a result of the
technical assistance Havana has given to various underdeveloped nations,
particularly those in Africa. Upwards of 2,000 Cubans are serving Third
World governments in fields ranging from medicine and education to con-
struction and military support. But friction again surfaced at the meeting of
the Nonaligned Movement's Coordinating Bureau in Havana in March 1975.
On delivering the opening address welcoming the delegates, Cuban Foreign
Minister Raul Roa criticized the oil-producing members for failing to use
their windfall profits to the advantage of their less fortunate neighbors. In
closing the conference, Fidel reiterated Roa's complaint, suggesting that
little had been done in the intervening three days to solve the problem.
Cuba's problems with the Nonaligned Movement were a repetition of
the problems Havana had been experiencing with revolutionary movements,
particularly those in Latin America, as the Castro regime gradually withdrew
from militant advocacy of violent revolution in the wake of Che Guevara's
dramatic adventure in Bolivia in 1967. Some guerrilla leaders such as Douglas
Bravo in Venezuela openly accused Havana of betrayal as Cuban material
support of guerrilla groups dwindled. Others, however, continued to look to
Havana for leadership and support, willing to base their faith on little more
than revolutionary rhetoric, and this permitted the Castro regime to main-
tain a modicum of revolutionary bona fides.
Havana's complete conversion to Moscow's via pacifica finally occurred
late last year-a Cuban Political Bureau member confirmed the shift in a
speech to Chilean exiles in Havana just after he returned from a visit to the
USSR.
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Cuba's adherence to the new line was publicly cast in concrete at the
meeting of Latin American arid Caribbean communist parties in Havana in
early June 1975. The Castro regime privately agreed to terminate its ties
with revolutionary groups that refused to subordinate themselves to the local
communists, and the Cuban Communist Party was one of the 24 signatories
to the published conference declaration that acknowledged the supremacy of
the local communist parties in the revolutionary struggles in their respective
countries. Revolutior~,aries wr.o formerly filled themselves at the Cuban
trough began looking, elsewhe-e for aid, and as the full impact of the June
meeting became apparent, t:I?.e Castro regime again came under fire for
betraying its revolutionary ideals.
The Age of Detente
The Soviet pressure that had caused Cuba to suffer a loss of respect
both in the Third World and among rebel leaders was also responsible for the
Castro regime's interest in an improvement in relations with the US. This
change dates from the time of Leonid Brezhnev's visit to Cuba in January
and February 1974, hut Havana's expectations regarding the possibility of a
reconciliation were not whetted significantly until midyear, when events in
Washington pointed to an imminent change in the presidency.
At about the same time, the tempo of Cuba's propaganda on Puerto
Rican independence --long an important feature of Havana's anti-US
diatribes-began to quicken. Publicity was given to Juan Mari Bras' proposal,
made at the meeting of the World Peace Council in Paris in May, for an
international conference of solidarity with Puerto Rican independence in the
first quarter of 1975. Mari Bras had co-founded the Puerto Rican Pro-
Independence Movement in 1959, and when that organization changed its
name to the Puerto Rican Socialist Party in 1971, he became its secretary
general. Although the party maintains a permanent office in Havana for
liaison with the Cuban government, Mari Bras visited Havana in June 1974
presumably to take a personal hand in discussing and coordinating plans for
the proposed meeting.
While in Havana, Mari Bras, accompanied by his deputy, Fermin
Arraiza, and by Carlos Rivera, the party's permanent representative in Cuba,
attended a meeting at the Cuban Institute for Friendship Among Peoples on
June 24 at which the Cuban Committee for Solidarity with Puerto Rican
Political Prisoners was constituted. The Puerto Rican trio also met with Fidel
Castro, Foreign Minister Raul Roa, top Latin America policy official Manuel
Pineiro, and Political Burea ii member Juan Almeida, for "an extensive
exchange of opinions on a tightening of the links of solidarity between the
Cuban Communist Party and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party."
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Later, Manuel Gonzalez, member of the Political Commission of the
Puerto Rican Socialist Party, visited Cuba While Cuban media focused
attention on the plight of five Puerto Ricans jailed in the US for an attempt
on the life of President Truman in 1950 and for an armed attack on Congress
in 1954. Close cooperation was established between Prensa Latina, the
Cuban government's press service, and C'laridad, official organ of the Puerto
Rican Socialist Party; on November 30, Claridad began publishing on a daily
basis with a circulation, according to the Cubans, of 20,000 copies on
weekdays and 40,000 on Sundays.
In early 1975, the Cuban campaign gained momentum as demands for
the prisoners' release were reiterated, and preparations got under way for the
solidarity conference. To place the issue formally before an international
audience, Cuba arranged for a delegation of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party
to participate as observer in the Third Coordination Conference of the
Nonaligned Coordinating Bureau held in Cuba last March. Then, after an
initial rebuff, the Cubans finally gained the grudging agreement of the
Soviet-backed World Peace Council to act as the ostensible sponsor of the
coming conference. By this time, there had been clear signs that Havana was
hoping for some gesture from Washington that would get the ball rolling
toward bilateral negotiations.
The Preparatory Meeting
On March 30 and 3 1, a preparatory meeting was held at Santa Maria del
Mar, just outside Havana, with "representatives of 28 countries and 12
international organizations" in attendance. Although the ostensible purpose
of the meeting was to set the stage for the September conference, it appears
that the "representatives" did little more than rubber stamp a program
drawn tip in advance by the Cubans. A conference preparatory committee
was established, and Dr. Juan Marinello, member of the Cuban Communist
Party Central Committee and for more than two decades president of the
pre-Castro communist party, was "unanimously" elected the committee's
president. As president of Cuba's Movement for Peace and Sovereignty of
Peoples, he had been in charge of organizing and promoting the preparatory
meeting.
Puerto Rico was represented at the preparatory meeting by a delegation
headed by Fermin Arraiza, deputy secretary general of the Puerto Rican
Socialist Party. Other members were party president Julio Vives Vasquez;
party foreign affairs secretary Pedro Baiges; Rafael Anglada and Alberto
Marques, both members of the party's Political Commission; and two of-
ficials of the Puerto Rican Peace Council including the council's president,
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Noel Colon Martinez. The council had been reorganized in June 1974 to
provide a broad front. for all organizations, including the Socialist Party and
the Independence Party, corrmitted to a complete break between Puerto
Rico and the tJS. Colon Martinez, who presides over the council's executive
committee, gives the front a measure of prominence; he was the Independ-
ence Party's candidate for governor in the Puerto Rican elections in 1972.
Cuba's ties to the Puerto Rican Socialist Party are so close as to cause
embarrassment on occasion., When representatives of 24 communist parties
of Latin America and the Caribbean met in Havana in June to issue a
declaration of principles for Ile "anti-imperialist struggle" in Latin America,
Puerto Rico was represented by the local communist. party, not the
socialists. Havana had reportedly made a strong bid to invite the Socialist
Party, first as the sole representative of Puerto Rico and later at least as an
observer, but Moscow and th-, US communists prevailed upon the Castro
regime to exclude the socialist; from any form of participation. The Cubans,
however, clearly still look upon the socialists as the true standard bearers of
the independence movement and the most plausible recipients of Cuban
support.
Spreading the Word
Once the preparatory committee had been formed and propaganda
commitments had been extracted from the various international organiza-
tions participating in the meetilg, Havana increased its own unilateral efforts
to manufacture support for the September conference. Pre-Castro commu-
nist Clementina Serra Robledo, Cuban Communist Party Central Committee
member and vice president of Marinello's Cuban Movement for Peace and
Sovereignty of Peoples, del:ivcred a special address promoting the Puerto
Rican conference to 51 leaders of youth and student organizations from
"over 16 Central American and Caribbean countries" attending a "seminar
on the Cuban Revolution" in Havana in the latter half of June.
On July 14, the Cuban Committee was formed at the Cuban Institute
for Friendship Among Peoples in Havana as the domestic sponsor of the
September conference- Dr. Jose Antonio Portuondo, director of the Institute
of Literature and Linguistics of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, was
appointed the Committee's president. Clementina Serra Robledo, second
secretary of the Cuban Central Labor Organization Agapito Figueroa, and
Alicia Alonso, Cuba's famed ballerina, were named vice presidents. Like
Serra Robledo, Portuondo and Figueroa were members of the pre-Castro
communist party, and Alicia Alonso had long and close contact with it. The
Committee also included representatives from Cuba's mass organizations,
who presumably were to coordinate propaganda activities on the domestic
scene.
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For visual support in Havana's campaign, the Cuban Institute of
Motion Picture Art and Industry concocted a special film entitled "Puerto
Rico." It purports to portray the role of the US in Puerto Rico and was so
well received by Fidel Castro that sound tracks in 20 languages were
commissioned so the film could achieve universal exposure. In addition, a
three-part series of programs entitled "Viva Puerto Rico Libre" was
presented in June on Cuba's main national television network.
To carry the word abroad in person, representatives spent much of July
and August touring Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. During these
trips, local groups were organized in several countries to carry out propa-
ganda activities on cue from Havana on behalf of Puerto Rican independ-
ence.
In Cuba, the period from August 28 to September 3 had been
designated the "week of solidarity with Puerto Rican independence." The
week was highlighted by meetings and demonstrations organized throughout
the island by the mass organizations, and displays and other propaganda
activities were conducted at work centers and peasant bases. As for the
conference itself, the Cubans are expecting representatives from 120 coun-
tries and many international organizations to be on hand for the opening
session on September 5.
"Old" Communists in the Forefront
"Old" communists, as members of the pre-Castro communist party are
commonly called, have filled virtually all the key positions of high visibility
in Havana's Puerto Rican campaign; the largest faction of the regime's top
level-the guerrilla elite-has had no identifiable role at all. Yet it is the "old"
communists who have also been the most active in pressing the Soviets'
policy of detente on Castro. It hardly seems logical that the leadership
faction that has worked so diligently for an improvement in Cuba's relations
with the US would at the same time be agitating vigorously on an issue that
promised to worsen those relations. Moreover, the reported reluctance of the
World Peace Council-reluctance that presumably was Moscow-inspired since
the council is a Moscow front-to serve as the sponsor for a major milestone
in the Puerto Rican campaign suggests that the "old" communists have been
contravening Moscow's will and endangering the detente process--actions
remarkably out of place for the faction that has long been Moscow's most
dutiful servant in Cuba.
This apparent paradox most likely stems from Castro's own ambival-
ence toward detente. He is doubtless wary of the impact that a reconciliation
with the US would have and has decided to use the Puerto Rican independ-
ence issue as a signal to both domestic and foreign audiences that despite
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detente he has nat "gone soft" on imperialism. He may have hoped that, by
assigning the burden of the Puerto Rican campaign to the very group that
urged him to improve ties with the US, he could defuse any such charges and
lay to rest any suspicions t:iat he had lost control over a minority faction of
his regime. In fact. lie may have extracted a commitment from the "old"
communists to press the Pr.erto Rico issue in return for his own acceptance
of detente--a policy to which some of the guerrilla elite have apparently
given only grudging support.
For their part, the "cld" communists have shouldered the burden in
such a fashion that their two most important figures, Deputy Prime Minister
Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and party Secretariat member Bias Roca, remain
uncompromised. The "old" communists, involved in the campaign all hold
important governriient positions, but the scope of their responsibilities is far
narrower than that of Rodriguez or Roca and their influence is thus cor-
respondingly less.
Except for continued activity at the UN, where Cuban ambassador
Alarcon can be expected to keep the issue alive and possibly to press for
observer status for pro-independence spokesmen, Havana's Puerto Rico
campaign may tapcr off temporarily following the September conference.
Promotional plans drafted at the meeting will probably take some time to
implement. and in the interim the volume of propaganda is likely to slacken.
Energies in Havant: will be redirected for at least two or three months as
preparations get under way in earnest for the Cuban Communist Party's first
party congress in December. It is doubtful, however, that Puerto Rico as a
"burning issue" will be neglected for long by the Castro regime. It is too
convenient a political tool to be cast aside just because the initial glamor has
begun to fade. especially when Havana is in need of a cause with which to
burnish its revolutionary, anti-imperialist image. As an editorial in the Cuban
Communist Party daily newspaper stated in April. "for special, deep-seated
reasons, the cause of Puerto Rican freedom is an inescapable revolutionary
obligation for Cuba."
Moreover, Cuba is too deeply committed to maintaining a confronta-
tion with the US--no matter what the outcome of reconciliation efforts--
to let the matter drop entirely. The campaign may be eased to accom-
modate negotiating strategy after talks get under way. but Cuba appears to
have embarked on a long-term effort to plead the cause of Puerto Rican
independence and most likely will. not be easily dissuaded from it. Cuban
propaganda. of course, can tie turned on or off at a word from Castro, but it
appears that lie has invested so much in the campaign and has pressed the
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issue so hard in both the international and domestic arenas that dropping it
would cause him serious embarrassment and would confirm in the eyes of
many observers abroad the Cuban "betrayal" of revolutionaries the world
over. It could also compromise Castro at home with those whose "interna-
tionalist" commitment will appear to have been undercut.
Furthermore, the concentration on Puerto Rico appears to be an
integral part of Cuba's revised Latin American policy. As a result of a Central
Committee decision last fall, Havana will direct its energies primarily toward
political entities in or bordering on the Caribbean basin, instead of diffusing
its efforts and political resources in an attempt to give equal priority to all of
Latin America. Havana seems to be convinced that conditions in Puerto Rico
are so promising as to justify strong support for the campaign. Unless the
socialists and "independentistas" are repudiated massively by the Puerto
Rican electorate at the polls, that support is likely to continue.
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