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By John J. Metzler
It's all about the timing. Ana Belen Montes, an American who served more than 20 years in federal prison for spying for the then-Castro regime while serving as a senior analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, has been released. But this case is hardly the ho-hum end to another Cold War espionage story.
Montes was arrested in 2001 for spying for the Cuban communists for 20 years; she agreed to work for Cuban intelligence after initially opposing the Reagan administration's policies in Latin America during the 1980s. Montes, an American citizen, became a highly placed mole working deep inside the U.S. intelligence system while sending information to Havana. That's a long time ago.
Back in 2012, the former head of U.S. counterintelligence for the George W. Bush administration informed Congress that Montes "compromised everything, virtually everything that we knew about Cuba and how we operated in Cuba." She seriously endangered scores if not hundreds of American agents and assets in Latin America during a particularly sensitive time in places like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cuba itself.
As Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) stated clearly, "Montes was no harmless informant. Her leaks broke the cover of 450 American agents working in Latin America… In 1996, her information also enabled the Castros to shoot down two U.S. planes carrying the heroes of Brothers to the Rescue… Montes also sabotaged a top-secret satellite program."
Senator Rubio added, "Her treason against the U.S. accomplished nothing for the Cuban people. On the contrary, by helping the criminal Castro regime, Montes strengthened the Cuban people's worst enemy."
Fast-forward to the present. Fidel Castro is fortunately gone, but the communist regime which lives up to his name is very much in control of Cuba with President Miguel Diaz-Canel who continues to run the island in the shadow of the Castro brothers and with the rhetoric of socialist solidarity. So why do we see this new surge of Cubans leaving the island?
According to the human rights monitor Freedom House, Cuba remains the most repressive regime in the entire Western Hemisphere, stifling political and civil rights and media freedom.
The regime holds more than 1,000 political prisoners.
We tend to recall the Cuban refugee exodus from the early 1960s. These are the people who first settled largely in Florida and through hard work, education and faith turned their lives as refugees into success and South Florida into a renovated place. Miami prospered from the Cubans who came here back in the day. We know their story and it's one of surmounting adversity, language barriers and hardship. Approximately 2 million Cuban Americans are living in the United States.
There have been many Cuban refugees in recent years too. It's not quite the same story but could be. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, the number of Cubans interdicted in South Florida surged from 49 in 2020, to 6,182 for fiscal year 2022. This number will soon be surpassed by more than 4,000 Cuban migrants who have already been intercepted in three months since last October.
Just in the past few weeks following Dec. 30, 2022, at least 500 Cubans and more than 200 Haitians have arrived by rickety boats in the Florida Keys.
This saga is set against the backdrop of President Joe Biden's long-overdue photo-op visit to the U.S. border with Mexico, where Cubans and a flood of others from Central America and Venezuela have swamped a porous U.S. southern border, violating the sovereignty of the U.S.
Why? Marco Rubio adds, "Together with the regime's incompetence and socialist policies, this tyranny has prompted a total economic collapse and a mass exodus from the island's shores."
Indeed the root cause of the problem remains the Cuban dictatorship who has turned a once reasonably prosperous island into an economic basket case and a reliable exporter of its own people.
Contrary to the long-running left-wing rationalizations concerning the Cuban Revolution and the Castro brothers enduring 64-year dictatorship, Cuba's socialist system has been built on envy, rigid control and enforced mediocracy. People want out.
John J. Metzler (jjmcolumn@earthlink.net) is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of "Divided Dynamism: The Diplomacy of Separated Nations; Germany, Korea, China."
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