The
Coming Race War Begins In Cuba, Not South Carolina
Optics
of USA’s Killers Returning Home Is Not A Good One
The
View From The U.S. Virgin Islands
By
JOHN McCARTHY
Virgin
Islands Free Press
Charles
Manson wanted to start a race war in America by directing his “family” to mass
murder people and then try to put the blame on black folks. Last week,
confessed mass murderer Dylann Storm Roof was accused of trying to put the
country at odds against itself over race.
But
someone who took substantive steps to do just that is former Cuban President
Fidel Castro who favored black fugitives over white ones when race relations
were touch and go in the early 1960s.
Cuba
has provided safe haven to American criminals since then. In 1961, a black
militant leader from North Carolina accused of kidnapping a white couple during
a racial disturbance evaded the FBI and arrived in Havana.
By
1968, United States fugitives were arriving like clockwork, often aboard
hijacked airplanes. Many were members of self-proclaimed revolutionary groups
who carried out their political agenda with bombings, bank robberies and murder
of police officers drawn by Cuba’s open embrace of anyone who claimed to be carrying
out “armed struggle” against non-communist governments.
“We
understood that if anything ever happened in the U.S. and we had to leave, the
best thing was to come to Cuba,” explained Charlie Hill, a member of a militant
group called the Republic of New Africa that wanted to form an independent
black nation in the American South.
Hill
and two other members hijacked a plane to Cuba after shooting and killing a New
Mexico police officer who wanted to search their car, which was loaded with
guns and dynamite. His comments were made to Teishan Latner, a research fellow
at NYU’s Center for the United States and the Cold War, whose 2013 book, “Irresistible Revolution: Cuba and American
Radicalism, 1968-1992,” offers a revealing look at the Cuban
government’s treatment of the fugitives it deemed to be genuine
revolutionaries.
The
Castro regime gave them ration cards and free housing. One large Havana home
became known as the “Hijack House” because so many of its occupants arrived on
pirated aircraft. Neighbors referred to another as Casa de las Panteras
for the all the fugitive Black Panthers living there.
These
revolutionary pilgrims got many privileges not available to ordinary Cubans,
including the loan of AK-47 rifles for hunting expeditions. To be fair, Castro
came to regret that one when his relations with exiled Black Panther chief
Eldridge Cleaver — who fled to Cuba after a shootout with Oakland police — went
south.
Cleaver
chillingly reminded the government he had guns. After a tense standoff of
several weeks, there was mutual agreement that Cleaver would move on to
Algeria.
For
more labile fugitives, the rewards were bounteous: college educations and cushy
jobs. Some worked at propaganda stations beaming revolutionary rhetoric at the
United States. Others taught English at elite Havana schools.
William
Lee Brent, a Black Panther who hijacked a plane after shooting three San
Francisco cops, was a Cuban emissary to the left-wing government of Grenada
during the 1980s before his death from pneumonia. Assata Shakur (Tupac’s
godmother), a member of the cop-killing Black Liberation Army convicted of
murder in the death of a policeman during a shootout on the New Jersey
Turnpike, became a hostess for delegations of international visitors.
As recently as the 1990s, the FBI had a list of 91
fugitives from terrorist-type charges living in Cuba. But age and
disillusionment have taken a toll, and researcher Latner believes there are no
more than two dozen left, perhaps only half that.
Still,
they include some big names: Ishmael LaBeet, one of five men convicted of the
infamous Fountain Valley Massacre, a racially-tinged 1972 armed robbery in St.
Croix, Virgin Islands that turned into mass murder, with eight dead. William
Morales, the master bomb-maker of the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN, which
set off 140 or so blasts around the United States during the 1970s and 1980s,
killing at least six people. Victor Gerena, an armed robber working for another
Puerto Rican separatist group, who is believed to have taken the proceeds of a
$7 million heist to Cuba with him.
The
biggest of all remains Shakur. Even the act of naming
her reveals the depth of the schism. Law enforcement calls her JoAnne
Chesimard. Her supporters know her by her chosen name, Assata Shakur. If the
name rings a bell to the apolitical, it is likely because she is the godmother
and aunt of slain rap star Tupac Shakur.
Thirty years ago, Shakur fled to Cuba, where she was granted
political asylum by Fidel Castro. There she has remained. U.S. law enforcement
has repeatedly sought her extradition, and the FBI has placed her on its “Top Ten Most Wanted Terrorists”
list. Information directly leading to her apprehension carries a $2 million
reward.
The question now: What becomes now of Shakur?
She
used to be a star attraction on the Cuban government’s cultural reception
circuit, but has virtually disappeared in recent times.
“I
think they are definitely worried about bounty hunters trying to grab her,”
says Latner. Maybe President Obama’s easing of travel restrictions to Cuba will
have a silver lining after all, at least for the FBI.
To law enforcement, Shakur is the killer convicted in the
execution-style slaying of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973.
She is the Black Liberation Army leader busted out of prison by her comrades
two years into a life sentence, a domestic terrorist implicated in a
string of crimes and a key part of organization that waged war on police.
To her supporters, Shakur has been persecuted by the same corrupt
and racist justice system that they say persecuted Michael Brown and Eric
Garner. During the protests in Ferguson, Mo., her name became a
rallying cry. She has long been a revolutionary symbol, a radical
black female often described as “the ultimate fugitive from injustice.”
Immediately after the president’s mid-January announcement, the
New Jersey State Police issued a statement saying the move to normalize
relations with Cuba presents an opportunity to bring Shakur back to finish her
sentence in Foerster’s murder.
“We stand by the reward money and hope that the total of two
million dollars will prompt fresh information in the light of this altered
international relationship,” said State Attorney General John J. Hoffman,
adding that his office would be working with federal authorities to find a way
to “return her to her rightful place in a New Jersey prison.”
Jeff
Rathke, a spokesman for the State Department, said the decision to drop Cuba
from the state sponsor of terrorism list it has occupied since 1982 “reflects
our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria.”
“While
the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range
of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the
rescission of a state-sponsor-of-terrorism designation,” Rathke said.
President Obama was forced to release a Cuban spy who was
also serving two life sentences for conspiracy to commit murder — in order to
reach the point diplomatically that we’re at now.
Maybe
Cuba doesn’t meet the strict standards of a state sponsor of terrorism, but if
a planeload of lionized black militants comes back from Havana to the United
States to face murder charges – it will be a public relations nightmare the
likes of which this country has never seen.
But
as President Obama is going late into the lame duck phase of his second term,
it is unlikely that the State Department would allow it to happen during this
administration.
If
I were Chris Christie, I’d ask Hillary Clinton what she would do as president
if this were the first crisis she faced. Pardoning mass murderers or even
garden-variety murderers is not an option.
When
this air sequel to the Mariel boatlift happens, it is likely that Fidel Castro
will ignore his health regimen for one day, look out on the beach his home is
situated on (it has a view of the Bay of Pigs) and smoke a cigar and have a few
jolts of Chivas Regal, thinking about this long-playing hand he has dealt us.
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