CASTRO'S CHALLENGE TO REAGAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201040019-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: January 9, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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9 January 1984
Castro's Challenge to Reagan
He says the U. S. `holy war' in Central America makes dialogue impossible.'
It has been a difficult yearforFidel Castro.
After Grenada was pried out of Cuba's orbit,
he admitted that he could not guarantee the
future of revolutionaries in Nicaragua, or
anywhere else. But he remains the most dura-
ble of political leaders. He has seen rivals
from DwightD. Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter
come and go. And on the eve of the 25th
anniversary of Cuba's revolution this
week, he offered NEWSWEEK'S Unit-
ed Nations Bureau Chief Patricia J.
Sethi an exclusive glimpse of his con-
test with the latest Yankee in the White
House. Excerpts:
SEIM: Will relations between
Cuba and the United States ever move
to a more normal plane?
CASTRO: Present relations be-
tween Cuba and the United States are
so irrational, so absurd, that I feel
obliged to have a certain "historical"
confidence that they have to move
toward a more normal plane. [But]
the time has come for U.S. rulers to
understand that the Latin America
they regarded for long decades as
their "natural backyard"-where
they imposed and overthrew govern-
ments, where they gave orders and
where U.S. ambassadors made deci-
sions that should have been made by
the presidents of the republics-no
longer exists.
In the coming years, and possibly
before the year 2000, Cuba will not be
the only Latin American country to
have chosen socialism as a system of
government, even [though others]
may not follow the erroneously
called "Cuban Model"-which in no
way do we intend to universalize.
There will also be nonsocialist
governments determined to pre-
vent the transnationals' economic
domination.
My rejection of the U.S. imperialist
structure-a rejection that is shared
today by dozens of millions in Latin
America-poses very little threat to
the capitalist system in the United
States. I would like that capitalist
system to disappear and be replaced
Q. Is any form of dialogue with the Rea-
gan administration out of the question?
A. An ideological or philosophical recon-
ciliation between the present U.S. adminis-
tration and ourselves-and even possible
alternatives to that administration in the
next few years-is out of the question. But
the Reagan administration. There were
talks between Secretary of State Alexander
Haig and Vice President Carlos Rafael
Rodriguez. Later on, Gen. Vernon Walters
visited Havana and I myself held long talks
with him. But we cannot say that a dialogue
was established; it was rather a confronta-
tion of viewpoints. There is no hope
for dialogue as long as Mr. Reagan
keeps on thinking that what is hap-
pening in Central America is the re-
sult of malevolent orchestrations by
-the Soviet Union and Cuba. He fails
to realize that these social upheavals
have been present in Central America
for 50 years-at a time when the Sovi-
et revolution was fighting to survive
and the Cuban revolution did not
even exist.
Larry Downing--NEWSWEEK
Cuba's durable leader.? A quarter century of revolution
`The U.S. is not interested in a
solution [in Central America]. It
is interested in a policy of inter-
vention and force.'
by a more rational and humane system, but
I can assure the U.S. people that I have no
intention of encouraging a socialist revolu-
tion-which I still consider very distant-
in the United States and which, when its
time comes, will have to be led by men and
women from the working class and people
of the United States.
the fact that we in Cuba keep on being
socialists, and that the United States will
keep on being the most important center of
world capitalism, should not mean that
there might not be major areas in which
both countries and governments could
work constructively.
We have never rejected a dialogue with
Q. President Reagan argues that it
is your goal to export revolution
throughout the hemisphere.
A. I do not believe that revolution
is an exportable item. I am not hid-
ing that revolutionary Cuba has of-
fered its active solidarity to other
Latin American revolutionaries in
countries where, as in the case of
Somoza's Nicaragua, all democratic
action and all possibility of protest
other than armed struggle was ruled
out by brutal terror. Nor am I hiding
the fact that when a large group of
Latin American countries, under the
inspiration and guidance of Wash-
ington, not only tried to isolate Cuba
politically, but economically block-
aded it and helped sponsor sabotage,
armed infiltrations, assassination at-,
tempts, we responded by helping all
those who wanted to fight such
governments.
We were not the ones to start sub-
version, it was they. Actually, we can
neither export revolution nor can the
United States prevent it. Reagan is
cunningly using this argument to
frighten the U.S. people, by fanning a
primitive anticommunism. These ar-
guments
enable Reagan to conduct a
policy of overt intervention such as
the one brutally carried out against
Grenada, a tiny island with a population of
100,000 people.
Q. What exactly was going on in Grena-
da? The Reagan administration released
what it called a "warm bag of evidence"
to suggest that Cuba was (a) training
and organizing armed forces in Grenada,
C^Il TINtJ?D'
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(b) building up ground-based communica-
tions networks linked with the Soviet Sput-
nik Satellite System, (c) constructing a large
airport capable of receiving Soviet-made
transport aircraft, (d) storing large quanti-
ties of Soviet-made arms and equipment for
Cuban use, (e) placing in position an air-
defense system designed to protect Grenada
againstprecisely the operation that the Unit-
ed States undertook last October.
A. The events in Grenada showed that
[Grenadian] forces were totally proportion-
ate to the size of a small island constantly
threatened with invasion from Miami by
counterrevolutionary elements protected
by the CIA. The United States ' had also
insinuated that it could use other countries
in the Caribbean for the invasion. Regarding
the airport, after the invasion it was proved
that the Grenadians had wanted to build it
long before the Bishop government. As for
the argument that Bishop was storing "Sovi-
et-made weapons for Cuban use," we have
our weapons here for the purpose of defend-
ing our country against a possible invasion.
It would be absurd to deposit 3,000 or 4,000
automatic weapons for us in Grenada. It is
true that we had set out to assist the Grena-
dians in establishing a communications
base, but everybody knows that there are
numerous similar communications bases in
the Caribbean and Latin America.
Before the Grenada invasion we had lost
a very dear and valuable friend with the
death of Bishop. With it the revolutionary
process was virtually liquidated. The Unit-
ed States, in invading the island, killed a
corpse and perpetrated a monstrous crime
against the sovereignty and the desires for
liberty and progress of the peoples of the
Caribbean and Latin America. In invading
Grenada, [President Reagan] showed Lat-
in America that he did not respect nonin-
tervention and that he was determined to
continue using .the "big stick" of old times.
Our position regarding the new govern-
ment [on Grenada] was well known. Rela-
tions between us and the [Bernard] Coard
group were very bad. Most likely, we would
have finished building the airport and with=
drawn from the country. Maybe we would
have kept doctors there as a humanitarian
gesture. But we would have reduced our
cooperation. Our assessment was that the
Coard group could not sustain itself after
they killed Bishop. The revolution had com-
mitted suicide.
But that did not justify the interven-
tion. American citizens ran no risk. The
extremist group visited them and gave them
guarantees, and we knew they were in no
danger. We even informed the U.S. govern-
ment to that effect 72 hours before the inva-
sion. The entire theory through which Rea-
gan tried to justify the invasion is false. It is a
total lie from head to toe. It was a cheap
political, opportunistic operation to take
advantage of the tragedy within the country.
There were other factors, too. Reagan
recalled the fate of the hostages in Iran. The
American people were humiliated by that
experience. There were the deaths of the 241
U.S. Marines in Lebanon the weekend be-
fore. There was the defeat in Vietnam. Rea-
gan exploited all these to present the inva-
sion of Grenada to the American people as a
great victory. That's dangerous. That's an
irresponsible policy that can lead to war and
to new adventurist activity in El Salvador
and Nicaragua and Cuba.
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