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On September
12, 16 years completed since the arrest of Gerardo Hernández,
Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René
González in Miami, Florida.
The "Cuban
Five" (also known as Cinco Heroes or Cuban Five) were sent by
the authorities of the country to gather information on terrorist
organizations based in the state of Florida, which mainly in the 90s,
had organized and executed numerous terrorist attacks on Cuban soil,
with more than 5,500 casualties, dead and maimed.
After the
collapse of the Socialist bloc in the early 90s, Cuba was forced to
rely on tourism to boost its national income. To undermine this
effort of the Caribbean island for economic survival, the right-wing
organizations based in Miami (Alpha 66, F4 Commandos, Cuban American
National Foundation, Brothers to the Rescue, etc.) organized dozens
of terrorist attacks at hotels, airports and other facilities with
hundreds of victims, including Cuban citizens and foreigners. The
most known, is the case of the Italian Fabio di Celmo, who was killed
outside the hotel Copacabana.
To counter
this threat, the Cuban government sent to Florida the team of five to
penetrate these organizations, consisting of Cuban dissidents and
common criminals of the local mafia, in order to gather data and to
prevent future attacks.
In 1998
Fidel Castro sent a personal letter to the (then) President Bill
Clinton, through the Nobel-awarded writer Gabriel García Márquez.
Castro requested for the US president intervention to arrest
terrorists and offered the cooperation of the Cuban authorities for
this purpose. Shortly, an FBI echelon arrived in Cuba and received 64
envelopes containing facts for 31 cases of terrorism. However,
instead of capturing terrorists, a few months later, the people who
risked their lives fighting against terrorism were trapped and
arrested: The Five Cuban patriots.
The case of
"Five" is not a common situation of political prisoners who
became victims of mistrial and imprisoned unjustly. Using Hernández,
Guerrero, Labañino, F. González, and R. González, the US empire
wanted to demonstrate its power and punish once again the Cuban
people for the "crime" of national sovereignty and
independent political beliefs, choosing to be defined through
Socialism.
The case of
the Five Cuban patriots is inextricably linked to both the criminal
and financial embargo of the island and the illegal occupation of
Guantánamo Bay by the United States, which are permanent positions
of their official diplomacy.
In
particular, the "Five" disturbed the "unofficial"
policy of the United States, namely, the untold but clear support to
illegal organizations based in Florida, that since the fall of the
dictator Batista are trying to overthrow the legitimate revolutionary
government of Cuba, and have caused enormous human and material
losses in the country.
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