“Marco Rubio just trying to do the politics of South Florida”

On the mention of the Germany-Cuba Friendship Association in Rubio’s anti-Cuban “report”

By Thomas Tews

This Monday, the U.S. State Department, led by Marco Rubio, released a 100-page “report” titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” It is divided into nine chapters: “The Revolutionary State,” “Birth of a New Left,” “Exporting Revolution,” “An Espionage Empire,” “Revolutionary Tourism,” “Racial Revolution,” “Front Groups and Fellow Travelers,” “Anti-American Internationale,” and “Conclusion.”

In the fifth chapter, under the heading “Revolutionary Tourism,” the text discusses delegations to Cuba “led by leftists from outside the United States.” The list includes “trips organized by the ‘Germany-Cuba Friendship Association’,” to whose English-language website there is a link.

In the conclusion of the “report,” this international solidarity with Cuba is framed as part of “a revolution against Western civilization itself” supposedly orchestrated by Cuba. Cuba’s alleged attempt “of persuading the children of the West to turn against their own inheritance” is branded as a “novel and insidious method.” It is said to be a “campaign” launched by Fidel Castro in 1959 and continued by “his heirs” to this day.

This reflects the anti-Castroist worldview of U.S. Secretary of State Rubio, which permeates the entire “report.” Rubio’s Cuban parents and his older brother had emigrated to the United States two and a half years before the overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista by Castro’s resistance movement. That's where Rubio was born in 1971 in Miami in South Florida, whose metropolitan area is home to many “Cuban exiles.”

Against this backdrop, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan commented on Rubio’s “report” last Thursday in an interview with the U.S. news channel “MS NOW,” stating: “This is about Marco Rubio just trying to do the politics of South Florida.”

As a reminder: In April 1961, around 1,400 "Cuban exiles"—mostly living in South Florida and trained as soldiers in crash courses by the CIA under the command of Deputy Director Richard M. Bissell—launched an invasion attempt at the Bay of Pigs, a swampy area in southern Cuba. The operation failed disastrously against the superior force of 25,000 well-equipped soldiers of the "Revolutionary Armed Forces" and 200,000 lightly armed militiamen under Castro's supreme command. More than 100 of the "Cuban exiles" died, and around 1,000 were taken prisoner; the latter were released in December 1962 in exchange for food and medical supplies worth 53 million US dollars.

Thomas Tews is a socialist, cultural scientist and author based in Stuttgart (Germany).