A commenter made reference to this quote some time ago and I just came across the actual passage in the book:
“There came a time here when there were 300 counterrevolutionary organizations. Every time that five or six would meet, they would make an organization. They believed that with the United States behind them, animated by the United States, inspired by the United States, stimulated by the United States, supported by the United States against the Revolution, this [revolution] could not sustain itself. And there were also all kinds of opportunists in those organizations…I speak of 300 organizations, and we knew more than they did about what they were doing, because precisely because our organs of security did not torture, they developed as very efficient institutions, and they sought other ways to know what the enemy was doing, to know him, to penetrate him. There was a time, almost at the end, when our people, the revolutionaries, were heads of almost all these counterrevolutionary organizations, because they did a truly beautiful job, perfect, fighting to obtain information, that did not involve physical violence against people. And if a counterrevolutionary in January of 1961 had done a number of things, we knew what he had done every day of the month, and where and with whom he had met, we had all that information. And if they arrested him in 1962, when he had become a dangerous element, he probably did not remember precisely what he had done on that day in the month of January or with whom he had met. But all of that was in the files.”
– Fidel Castro interviewed by Frei Bretto in Fidel y la Religion, 1985
4 comments:
even president bush jr said the most effective way to stop terrorist attacks is through intelligence and infiltration. cuba has been doing it since the revolution, but when they do it in the USA the agents are arrested and the terrorists go free.
Dear Mr. Peters,
The Cuban Ministry of Interior is one of the most efficient repressive organizations in the world.
It is a vertical centralized highly disciplined and highly technologically savvy organization with qualified personnel.
It has at its disposal millions of Cubans organized in block committees that feed it information and has the ability to detect, monitor and infiltrate any opposition movement that exists or could be created inside the country.
Every opposition movement within the country is infiltrated and the MINT is aware of their plans from the moment they are discussed.
Indeed the MINT indirectly controls their personnel promotion by jailing the persons who block their agents promotions so that they eventually take command.
This is true not only of the input organs of the opposition organizations, the independent newsmen but of their directive centers the opposition organizations themselves and the output the independent libraries.
The MINT is thus in a position to control most of the information that leaves Cuba, the opposition organizations themselves and the places where opposition members or future opposition recruits go to get their information.
To be continued
This allows the MINT to know not only the list of all active opposition members in the island but also all potential recruits and allows it to keep them under observation with the aid of the block committees.
Of course all opposition members are at the mercy of the Mint. They can loose their jobs, be jailed whenever the MINT wishes and are not allowed to receive university education.
Opposition members in order to survive hav thus to accept foreign financing and thus open themselves to the charge of being mercenaries of a foreign power or to leave the country.
The MINT is the only institution in the country who is in a position to know how many of the supposed opposition members in the country are true members of the opposition and how many are its agents.
It is rumored that they keep quite adequate statistics of the former in every region of the island and of the country as a whole and when the numbers of genuine opposition members reach a certain threshold value, carry out massive imprisonment campaigns to reduce opposition activities to a non critical level.
Of course opposition organizations are never shut down totally. They are allowed to continue under the supervision of government informers so that they will continue to attract and recruit new opponents of the government so that the MINT can identify them, place them under observation and take reppressive measures against them.
To be continued
The government also has informational superiority over the opposition since it controls the mass media, telephones and the internet.
Thus when public protests take place in some part of the island, it is detected classified into different types of events in accordance with their importance and degree of dangerousness and contingency plans are put into effect throughout the island which will allow the MINT to arrest all the opposition figures throughout the island that they wish before the news reach them about what is going on.
All MINT centers in the island are part of an INTRANET network of computers that allow instant communications while the government is able to control and delay what is being communicated over the mass media and land telephones.
The recent introduction of cell phones has reduced this MINT advantage.
Given this situation, a great part of the financial aid that the US government sends to the opposition organizations in the island winds up in the hands of MINT agents and is transferred to their coffers.
In this way the US government agencies that are supposedly subverting the Cuban government wind up breaking the US embargo laws and financing the Cuban government reppressive organs.
Pantaleon Paticruzado
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