by Michael Chamberlain
Was Cuba justified in shooting down the two civilian planes from the United States?
What is this "Brothers to the Rescue" group? What connections exist between this group and the CIA?
How does this incident fit into the 37-year campaign of economic, political and military attacks by the U.S. government against Cuba?
Unfortunately, many people are sure they have all the answers before they have seriously considered the questions. We reach a verdict before we've heard the defense present its case (much the same as the U.N. Security Council, which voted a response before hearing Cuba's side of the story).
Whatever its past, Brothers to the Rescue has become a part of the Florida's right-wing paramilitary militias. Composed primarily of Cuban-American migrs, they have dreams of overthrowing the Cuban government, and they carry out anti-government missions against that country.
Jose Basulto is the principal leader of the "Brothers" group and was the pilot of the lead plane on Feb. 24 (the one that got away). And Basulto is a fine representative of this group. For the past 35 years, he has worked to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. He took part in the U.S. government-organized 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. In 1962, he took a speedboat mounted with a heavy machine gun and shot up the hotels along Cuba's coast. He helped to supply arms to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s, and now he is a leader of his own "contra" group.
U.S. secret police organizations have long supplied and directed these Florida-based paramilitary groups. It has been admitted in the U.S. media that the FBI regularly met with Basulto's group.
Added evidence about Brothers to the Rescue was supplied by an ex-member of that group, Cuban pilot Pablo Roque. Roque testified that this group was carrying out military reconnaissance.
The group's repeated violation of Cuban air space over the last year-and-a-half has been aimed at locating possible sites for landing commando teams and for arms drops in their impending "war of liberation" against Cuba.
They were warned repeatedly by Cuban authorities to halt these violations of Cuban, international and U.S. laws. Cuba made repeated diplomatic protests to the U.S. government, to no avail.
The U.S. government, at the very least, failed in its responsibility to halt the provocative actions of this group.
The Cubans had a choice of doing nothing, until the actions of these anti-Cuban contras escalated to a point where Cubans were dying as a result. Or, they could defend their sovereign right to protect their national territory against intruders.
Which would you have done?
Chamberlain is a sophomore journalism major and president of the UH Cuba Friendship Committee.