En defensa del neoliberalismo

THE SILVER BULLET Vs. TERRORISM

THE TRICONTINENTAL CONFERENCE OF AFRICAN, ASIAN, AND LATIN AMERICAN PEOPLES. A STAFF STUDY

PREPARED FOR THE SUBCOMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE INTERNAL SECURITY ACT AND OTHER INTERNAL SECURITY LAWS OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary    U.S. Government Printing Office     Washington: 1966

THE TRICONTINENTAL CONFERENCE OF AFRICAN, ASIAN, AND LATIN AMERICAN PEOPLES (A Staff Report)

INTRODUCTION (Excerpts)

An event of outstanding importance to the Free World took place in Havana on January 3 of this year. The Cuban capital was the site of what was probably the most powerful gathering of pro-Communist, anti-American forces in the history of the Western Hemisphere. The first Tricontinental Conference of African, Asian, and Latin American Peoples, as it was called, was convened in the Hall of the Ambassadors at the once-swank Habana Libre Hotel (formerly the Havana Hilton Hotel) in Havana, Cuba. In all, there were 83 groups from countries on three continents-reportedly represented by approximately 513 delegates, 64 observers and 77 invited guests. These groups included 27 Latin American delegations. The Soviet delegation was the largest at the Conference, consisting, of 40 delegates. Asian countries were represented by 197 delegates, while African countries had 150, and the 27 Latin American groups comprised 165 delegates. Also participating in the conference were 129 foreign journalists from 35 countries, including several from the United States, and more than 100 Cuban journalists. Salient aspects of the Conference are evidenced as follows: *At the Havana Conference, all pretense of nonintervention in the affairs of other nations was dropped. *The Conference established a Communist-dominated general headquarters to support, direct, intensify, and coordinate guerrilla operations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. *Gave communism a subversive leverage surpassing anything it has heretofore possessed. Bringing into the Conference fold militant leftist and nationalist movements from many countries (which, while themselves not Communist, share the antipathy of the Communists towards the West and towards the United States, and support the Communist-backed "wars of national liberation" . *Havana was selected as the headquarters for international subversion and guerrilla operations, thus making a de facto situation de jure in international Communist circles. *Immediately following the Conference, the Latin American delegations met and, after reviewing the problems of "revolutionary tactics and strategy," unanimously voted to establish a parallel regional organization, to be known as the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS), with its permanent headquarters in Havana. *The actions taken by the Conference point to the immediate and massive intensification of terrorism and guerrilla activity throughout the Americas, as well as in Asia and Africa. *The Communists were able to get the varied leftwing and radical-nationalist participants in the conference to designate United States "imperialism" as enemy number one in every continent. The gravity of the threat posed by the Tricontinental Conference was the subject of a recent study prepared by the Special Consultative Committee on Security of the Organization of American States at its sixth regular meeting. Its study concluded: That the so-called first Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples' Solidarity Conference constitutes a positive threat to the free peoples of the world, and, on the hemisphere level, represents the most dangerous and serious threat yet made against the inter-American system.

 2. POLITICAL BACKGROUND OF THE CONFERENCE (Excerpts)

Events leading up to the Havana Conference of 1966 bear the mark of years of planning and experimentation. In reviewing- these events, it is important to understand that the Tricontinental Conference was not called to start subversive operations. The meeting, was held, rather, to coordinate subversion and guerrilla activity on a worldwide basis, to exchange experiences, and to build further on what has already been constructed-meaning- especially Cuba and Vietnam. The Dominican delegate, Guido Gil, made this crystal clear in his address to the conference. He said: "The Dominican delegation believes it is very important-one might say almost vital-to the development of the revolutionary process of liberation of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to be able always to count on a consultative body such as the Tricontinental Conference through which experiences and ideas acquired in the process of the struggle of the various peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America could be shared." Similar statements were made by other delegates, like the delegate from the United Arab Republic, whose Havana Embassy, incidentally,gave a reception to members of the delegations. The Arab delegate said that '" solidarity means to step across continents. * * * We support the struggle of the peoples of Vietnam." He linked that support to the success of the "struggle in the Dominican Republic,Venezuela, Colombia, and other countries."

The psychological value alone of a Communist Cuba is enormous, an it is being exploited every day in every way. For example, Vilma Espin de Castro, wife of Cuban Armed Forces Minister Raul Castro, journeyed to Moscow last November. Thumping the drums for the upcoming conference, she broadcast from Moscow to the world: "If little Cuba located only 90 miles from North American imperialism, is able to carry out its revolution, then all peoples every-where can do so. Her comments were echoed by virtually every delegation to the Havana conference The tangible value of Cuba, however, is something else. Avowedly pro-Communist, it has served as a hemispheric operations center which has conducted unconventional warfare against its neighbors for the last 6 years. The governments of Panama, Colombia, Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Argentina have protested against proved Cuban complicity in student riots, guerrilla operations, and political assassinations. A plot to assassinate, simultaneously, the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela was uncovered, and the trail led to Havana. Cuba's role in subversion extends back to July of 1960 when Raul Castro and his wife hosted a Preparatory Conference of Latin American Youth." Groups of teenagers from 17 Latin American countries, Canada, the United States and Europe descended on Havana. This was perhaps the first mass effort to recruit youngsters for guerrilla training. Raul Castro addressed the assembly thus: "We must remove ourselves from the influence of the American eagle whose claws have been worn down from plundering its sister republics."

The training of guerrilla fighters and subversives in Cuba got underway in the middle of 1960 when Colonel Bayo received an initial batch of 19 young Latin American "becados"--so-called scholarship students. They were put through a rigorous program of drilling, marching, swimming, and mountain climbing; demolition work, infiltration tactics, and propaganda techniques. From these modest beginnings, Cuba's guerilla camps swelled in number to 10 in early 1963, following the missile crisis of the previous October. Painstaking interviews over the past several years with Castro officers, camp technicians, and other refugees who escaped following defection from the Government, indicate that by early 1966 Cuba had developed 43 such camps in which Latin Americans are trained in Viet Cong,-type terroristic wars. Colombian officials estimated that 1,500 of its youth, including young women, were in training in Cuba the end of 1965. Virtually all of the countries of this hemisphere have presented evidence that their citizens are being trained in guerrilla operations in Cuba.

Actual assaults on the United States and its institutions began as early as November 17, 1962. On that date several Cubans were arrested and charged with attempted sabotage of oil refineries in New-Jersey and retail stores in New York City. Roberto Santiesteban Casanova, the head conspirator, was found to be head of the Castro Communist spy and terrorist ring, operating in the United States. However, he and his accomplice, Jose Gomez Abad and his wife, were cloaked with diplomatic immunity by virtue of their assignment to the Cuban mission to the United Nations. Under this cloak, they recruited three others, including a pro-Castro American woman, and attempted the sabotage described by the Attorney General as "aimed at the heart of the internal security of the United States of America."

Then there is the startling case of February 16, 1965, in which three American Negroes and a Canadian women were seized in a plot to blow up cherished symbols American heritage-the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, and the Liberty Bell. All were Castroites. All had traveled to Cuba. Interrogation turned up the fact that ringleader , Robert S. Collier, not only had traveled to Cuba illegally with 84 so-called "students" in August of 1964, but while there had received instructions in terroristic tactics from a major in the North Vietnamese army. Walter A. Bowe, another plotter, was revealed to have been a member of the Castro-financed "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Both had been in contact with Robert Williams, an American renegade Negro. According to a Havana broadcast of January 5, 1966, Robert F. Williams attended the Tricontinental Conference. He is presently a fugitive from North Carolina justice as the result of a riot which occurred in Monroe, N.C., on August 27, 1961. He faced prosecution there on a kidnaping charge. During the past few years he has been conducting a series of broadcasts in English beamed to the United States from Havana. These broadcasts openly call upon American Negroes to engage in force and violence against the American Government. He is the publisher of a monthly newsletter called the Crusader. In its May-June 1964, issue, Mr. Williams describes in detail how to manufacture Molotov cocktails, organize riots, terrorize the population, and ruin cities. The Crusader of October 1964, shows a photograph of Robert F. Williams with Mao Tse-tung, Chinese Communist leader. Mr. Williams is also the author of a pamphlet entitled "Negroes With Guns," published by a Communist publishing house, Marzani and Munsell. Williams' berserk anti-Americanism should not be lightly dismissed as something uncharacteristic and irrelevant. For the fact is this: that Williams insane hatred of America and his categorical commitment to violence were reflected, with minor changes in wording and nuance, in the speeches of the most "responsible" Conference spokesmen and in the official resolutions of the Conference. New York Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy revealed that the terrorists had contacts in other cities with a view toward spreading terrorism throughout the country. Collier apparently received his instructions from Major Ernesto Guevara when the latter came to the United Nations to address the General Assembly in December of 1964.

Raymond Wood, the detective who penetrated Collier's "Black Liberation Front" and turned up the information which led to the arrest of Collier and his accomplices, testified that Collier told him he had met with Major Guevara and had received instructions from him. Said detective Wood: "Three-man demolition teams were to spearhead an uprising. The Capitol and the White House were scheduled to be destroyed by air." Detective Wood also stated that the plot called for inducing military pilots to sabotage planes, the creation of chaos within the armed forces by means of false communications, and the use of mortar and machine-gun fire on police and street crowds, and, finally, the boobytrapping of the homes of Government officials. The same February 16 that the plotters in New York were seized by police, another event took place in Miami which suggests, at the very least, some coordination. The Roney Plaza Hotel on Miami Beach canceled a meeting of a Cuban exile group. The management told the president of the group that it had received an anonymous telephone call threatening a bombing of the premises if the meeting were held. The previous October 7, a hall in the Everglades Hotel in Miami was bombed when the same exile group met there.

These are a few of the many items in the history of mounting hemispheric violence which preceded the Conference

6. U.S.A.-THE MAIN TARGET

Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos set the tone for the extreme anti-Americanism that characterized the Conference in his speech of January 4, 1966. Dorticos said: It is certain, however, that imperialism, especially North American imperialism, which has assumed the sad role of international gendarme, is sharpening the violence and is intensifying the taking advantage of all vile instruments of aggressions against peoples, from bribery and blackmail up to the most barefaced forms of violence and armed intervention.

* * * There is no better place than this conference to proclaim without vacillations the right of peoples to oppose imperialist violence with revolutionary violence.

On January 14, 1966, Virgilio Shuverer, a Panamanian diplomat, was interviewed in the Panamanian Legislative Palace as to his estimate of the Conference. He said: The Tricontinental Conference, in my opinion, will have an important effect on the lives of people who are today subjected to imperialism * * * I believe that it will be a stimulus, a joint effort among the revolutionaries of the world, for carrying forward the methods and tactics being employed at present against imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism. On January 4, 1966, Norman Pietri Castellon, chairman of the Puerto Rican delegation to the Tricontinental Conference broadcast his views. He called Puerto Rico "the most important military fortress of U.S. imperialism," and added that "The independence movement is continuously organizing the Puerto Rican people so that we may resolutely confront U.S. imperialism." He further declared that "The Puerto Rican Independence Movement expects effective solidarity from the Tricontinental Conference of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America."

 8. THE CASE OF PUERTO RICO (Excerpts) Cuban intrigue has converged on Puerto Rico through roughly three different means-drug trafficking, terrorism, and diplomacy and propaganda. Puerto Rican police and the FBI nipped one plot by Cuban trained Puerto Ricans to assassinate John Bishop, FBI chief in San Juan, and to kidnap high-ranking Puerto Rican officials. One of those captured testified that contact with Cuba was carried out through agents in the Dominican Republic. Interception of the terrorist group, the so-called Armed Movement of Puerto Rico, was made outside Ramey Air Force Base, one of the largest military installations on the island. Propaganda "which declares war against the United States" was found along with rifles, pistols, field telephones, and large amounts of ammunition. Chronic riots at the University of Puerto Rico are attributed to student agitators following instructions from Cuba's government controlled subversive student organization, the University Student Federation (FEU). Cuba has also become an important way-station for the transfer of drugs from Red China to Puerto Rico and thence to the mainland United States. A break in one drug ring came in December 1964 with the arrest of Castroite Cubans Carabeo Nerev and two accomplices. Eugene Marshall of the Federal Narcotics Bureau in Miami revealed that the three had been back to Cuba several times since they entered this country under the cover of "exiles." The conclusion drawn is that Castro agents have entered Puerto Rico and Miami in the guise of "political exiles." On September 24, 1964, the New York Times reported: "There are strong suspicions that Communist Cuba is making an attempt to flood Puerto Rico with drugs via Havana in an effort to undermine the economy of the island." On January 6, United Press International reported that marihuana was arriving in the United States from Cuba "in great quantities."

In an interview with New York police inspector Ira Bluth, UPI reported that "marihuana used to come to New York almost entirely from Mexico, but recently a large amount of drugs from Cuba have been discovered * * * they have .. been introduced into this country from Cuba through Florida. * * * in the past few months of 1964, 697 pounds of drugs from Cuba had been found, compared with 241 pounds in 1963. * * *" It is believed that the sale of drugs, particularly heroin, in the United States and other Free-World countries provides a considerable amount of foreign exchange by which Cuba finances guerrilla activities. Connection between Cuban terrorism and drug traffic was brought out in other evidence. When Carabeo Nerey was arrested in Miami, he was accompanied by two Puerto Rican females, sisters Nellie and Doris Antuna. Doris, said the report, had been living with a Wilfredo Jesus Risco, who earlier had been uncovered as an intermediary in supplying Puerto Rican terrorists with money. Sabotage, little reported and less understood in mainland United States, has taken and is taking its toll in Puerto Rico. In December1964, San Juan's newspaper, "El Madro" reported "a wave of incendiaries which swept the area. The targets were mainland U.S. companies-Levittown Construction Co., Barker's Department Store, Woolworth's, the Bata Shoe Factory, and Bargain Town. Eight attempts were made to burn Woolworth's, but vigilance cut down the damage considerably. However, Barker's loss was placed at $4 million; Bata Shoe Factory was completely destroyed at a loss of $3 million. Newspaper accounts drew the obvious of parallel between what happened in Puerto Rico and the tactics being carried out by National-Liberation Front terrorists in Venezuela and

Colombia.Incendiarism and other acts of terrorism have been accompanied, in the past, by bloody, Communist-led student riots. Puerto Rican Congressman Carlos Westerbrand has moved to establish laws to outlaw such infiltration in student organizations citing incidences of such infiltration even among the high school student bodies. Venezuelan Pedro Medina Silva is leader of the Latin American committee to carry on terroristic wars in Latin America. He is also chief of the Venezuelan Armed Forces of National Liberation. Speaking in Havana on February 8, of this year, he announced that Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Chile, and the Dominican Republic were on the Tri-continental General Secretariat charged with carrying out terroristic wars. He said of Puerto Rican participation: " This is very important. For the first time, Latin America achieves integration (in the world war of subversion). This is the first time that Puerto Rico -Participates in an organization as important as the General Secretariat." The climax of several years intervention in Puerto Rico by Cuba came on February 10, following the Tri-continental Conference. On that day, Puerto Rican terrorists actually established a "Free Puerto Rico Embassy" in Havana. At the same time, the Puerto Ricans claimed that they (the equivalent of a National Liberation Front) were "recognized as the only legitimate representative of the Puerto Rican people." Norman Pietri invited Puerto Rican newspapers to send their journalists to Havana, offering to pay then- fare of $1,400 round trip, San Juan-New Orleans-Mexico-Havana, and from Havana back to San Juan via Spain. He used the precedent, or alleged precedent, of the travel of U.S. "students" to Cuba in 1963 and 1964 and their defiance of State Department regulations as justification. Eschewing United States citizenship, which the Puerto Rican group is dedicated to sever, Pietri screamed that freedoms granted under that citizenship were being violated by not permitting travel between the United States and Cuba.

 9. WHY HAVANA? (Excerpts) Why was Havana chosen as headquarters for worldwide subversion? Why not Cairo, the site of the Afro-Asian organization, or Peking? First, Cuba under Castro has a proved record of success in penetrating Latin America, and Latin America is a major target of Communist expansion. And a headquarters for worldwide Communist subversion located in Havana, right on the doorstep of the United States, is a tremendous psychological achievement, with vast potential repercussions throughout Latin America. Second, iron-clad control of the populace must be assured if there is to be a tranquil political climate for a worldwide base of subversion. There must also be reasonable assurance against external attack, in effect, a "sanctuary." There is overwhelming evidence that the machinery of the Cuban Government has been progressively organized over the years, to carry out its number one task-the export of Communist subversion. To a large extent, the choice of Havana in January as headquarters for world subversion is but the culmination of years of such organization. In fact, Cuba moved rapidly along the road to the fulfillment of its role in the international Communist conspiracy from the moment Fidel Castro's hatred of the United States became manifest upon his taking power in 1959.

It is humilating enough to have the international Communist conspiracy seize control of a country only 60 miles from American shores, and maintain itself in power despite all the pressures we have thus far brought to bear. It becomes a thousand times as humiliating when that country is transformed into a headquarters for international revolutionary subversion while the OAS and the mighty United States of America look on, helpless and apparently incapable of any decisive action.