Since July 2020, thousands of Cubans have been protesting against their regime, demanding change, freedom, and an end to communism in their country. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat is a spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, who has spent decades raising awareness about the brutal reality of living under the Cuban regime after he fled the communist island as a child.
“When you look at the collapse of infrastructure that collapsed the economy, they’re killing that nation-state. They’re killing the Cuban nation,” said Gutierrez-Boronat.
His recent book “CUBA: The Doctrine of The Lie” exposes propaganda about Cuba and dispels common myths and misconceptions.
“The regime is the platform for the expansion of Communist tyranny throughout Latin America—in Venezuela, in Nicaragua, in Bolivia, and now perhaps also in Chile and Colombia,” he says. “It’s very convenient to many powers that be – Russia, China, and others here in the United States—that the regime maintains the illusion of having been successful.”
Gutierrez-Boronat has been involved in peaceful protests against Cuba throughout the world, many of which were hijacked by violent, pro-Cuban mobs.
“In Panama, we were attacked by Cuban embassy thugs together with local pawns of the regime. And several of us were badly hurt. I had two ribs broken. My knee was torn. I needed reconstruction surgery on my knee,” said Gutierrez-Boronat.
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/orlando-gutierrez-boronat-cubas-pawns-informants-and-financiers-from-china-to-america_4994607.html
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat:
Thank you, likewise.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, tell me about what’s happening in Cuba right now.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
The big news in Cuba is that there is a sustained citizen uprising against the tyrannical regime, the totalitarian regime which Cuba is suffering from. Since July 11th, 2021, thousands of Cubans have gone out to publicly protest against the regime, especially young artists, women, youth, all demanding change, and demanding the end of communism.
They’re fighting for their life and they’re fighting for their freedom. And it’s there, the videos are there, the political prisoners are there. Hundreds of people have been arrested and imprisoned. Cuba has 122 women who are political prisoners. It’s the country in the world with the greatest number of political prisoners per capita, and there’s a deep desire to change the regime.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why so many women?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
You can look at Cuban birth rates after communism took over, when you look at the level of exodus, over 200,000 Cubans have arrived in the U.S. since January of 2022. When you look at the collapse of infrastructure, at that collapse of the economy, they’re killing that nation state and they’re killing the Cuban nation. Women perceive this in a very intuitive and profound way. They know that their children, their families, and their communities are being wiped out. They’ve taken the lead in trying to save the country by organizing communities for civic resistance against the regime.
Mr. Jekielek:
You don’t seem to hear a lot about this these days. There were these large protests over a year ago now. That did get some general coverage, but a lot of people today could be forgiven for not realizing that there’s even anything going on.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
There’s been large protests taking place even after last year against the regime. This summer was full of protests throughout Cuba. But there seems to be a literal blackout on what’s going on in Cuba with the citizen defiance of the regime.
Mr. Jekielek:
Any thoughts on why that is?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
One of the main reasons is that Cuba is iconic to the Left. Cuba is supposed to be the model of the successful socialist revolution, and it’s not that at all. It’s a highly-repressive regime that has downgraded the lives of Cubans, that has destroyed living standards in that country, and that has created a crisis for the Cuban population. But that regime has a very good propaganda machine in its favor, and it’s not just entirely Cuban, it’s also international.
And the regime is the platform for the expansion of communist tyranny throughout Latin America—in Venezuela, in Nicaragua, in Bolivia, and now perhaps also in Chile and Colombia. This regime is essential for the spread of these ideas and of the creation of totalitarian advocates throughout the hemisphere. It’s very convenient for the many powers that be, Russia, China, and others here in the United States, that that regime maintains the illusion of having been successful.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s go back into history here. You’re the author of a wonderful book that I’ve been reading about Cuba. What was it like before the Revolution?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
I can say this, in 1898, when the Cuban Spanish American War ended, Cuba was devastated. Cuba had been a very profitable colony for Spain because of sugar production and tobacco production. The wars of independence resulted in 200,000 Cubans dying and the country’s economic infrastructure being destroyed. The Cuban independence leadership, which took over Cuba in 1902 after an American occupation, a very good occupation which did a lot of good for the country, faced a country that was still in a dire state.
Between 1902 and 1922, the Cuban economy boomed. Cuban living standards experienced a spike in improvement, in growth, in literacy rates, hygiene, education, they all increased dramatically. Because to a great degree, Cubans put their best effort into rebuilding their country in freedom. There were political crises, there were conflicts between political parties, but the economy of the country and the social growth remained very steady and very even.
It was done within a model of trying to build a rule of law within respect for individual freedom, respect for religious spirituality and all its expressions, so Cuba grew very swiftly. What occurred was that there was an institutional and political crisis in the late 1950s with a military government taking over that led to an insurrection. Then, Castro and his acolytes took control of the country with great support from American liberals in every way you can imagine.
The myth began to be constructed that this country had risen from a medieval state to great progress through socialism and communism, which is completely the opposite of what really happened. What happened was that a country that was flourishing and was about to take off in the development stage collapsed under a communist regime.
Mr. Jekielek:
An excellent book that I read last year was called The Gray Lady Winked by Ashley Rindsberg. One of the things he talks about is how a New York Times journalist, whose name escapes my mind right now, essentially made Fidel Castro into a hero. The guy was so pro-Castro and so pro-communism that eventually he was fired. It was even too much for the New York Times. But apparently, on his first visit to America, Fidel spent a lot of time at the New York Times, and apparently thanked them for their support. I don’t even know what to make of that.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Herbert Matthews was essential in building the Castro myth. He went up into the mountains, the Sierra Maestra, when Castro barely had 20 people following him, and built that into he already had an army of hundreds, for the consumption of the U.S. public. Herbert Matthews was very important.
That tour of the U.S. that you mentioned in 1959 by Castro, a public relations firm in the U.S. set that up. Who paid for that firm? Who paid for that tour of the U.S. by Castro, which presented him as a democratic reformist who was anti-communist and pro-America? All that was false. They were already building a communist state in Cuba.
It’s very obvious, the steps that were taken, and what they did with that trip to the U.S. The work of Herbert Matthews was to somehow deflect attention from what they were really doing inside Cuba. The Left needed a successful socialist revolution that didn’t have any of the stains of the bad reputation that Stalinism had already gained in the world.
Remember, by 1959, Khrushchev had revealed the crimes of Stalin at the Congress of the Communist Party. The invasion of Hungary in 1956 had taken place, along with the crushing of the East German worker strikes, all of that was in the air. People saw how repressive communism was.
Then along comes this revolution in a tropical country with some charismatic leaders promising utopia and heaven for Cubans. They began to build that up from the very onset. Castro was surrounded by international advisors to help design that totalitarian state.
It’s very clear in Che Guevara’s writings, the purpose was to create a platform through which to create a socialist revolution in the U.S. and in Latin America, through a combination of planning and preparation by the Cuban Communist Party and the U.S. Communist Party and other Left wing forces. An opportunity emerged, and Cuba became a force for socialism in Latin America.
That’s why to this day there is still an attempt to protect that regime from any bad publicity it generates itself. Marcuse clearly states in his essay on liberation that the Cuban Revolution was essential for socialism in the U.S. When you see the role of that regime since it took power, it has been a place to train U.S. Left-wing activists, to indoctrinate, to create underground cells and espionage networks in the U.S. Throughout the region it facilitates any kind of activity aimed at opposing America’s plans and subverting democracies throughout the region, not dictatorships, but democracies.
From the very onset the Castro regime wanted to take over Venezuela, to the point that they even sent armed invasions throughout the 1960s. The same thing was repeated in key countries which they thought were essential to creating the united socialist republics of Latin America, and of course, to also cause social tension, class struggle and radical transformation of the United States. That has always been the plan. It’s always been part of what the regime, and they don’t hide it that much, of what the regime states it wants to pursue.
What got me started on my book was I found a long dialogue between Che Guevara and Left-wing journalists that took place in New York City in 1964 at the Cuban Mission. It was extremely revealing as to what Guevara was seeking, and also what these so-called journalists were seeking.
Mr. Jekielek:
What was revealed?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
It revealed to me the madness of Che Guevara, a man bent on his own vision of what the revolution should be and how to bring about socialist transformation, and also recognizing the great disasters they were causing. But at the same time, these journalists who are all born in the U.S. and citizens of a free republic, are urging him on. They’re creating the myth and putting that into Guevara’s mindset as they interview him.
It’s obvious they’re using Guevara to push the idea of a socialist revolution, and Guevara thinks he’s using them to consolidate that regime. To me, it was fascinating the relationship between so-called progress, the woke ideology, and hard-line, radical, dangerous people like Ernesto Guevara.
Mr. Jekielek:
I really want to explore that more. But before we do that, given everything you’ve just said, what do you make of the fact that it’s very common to see kids running around in Che Guevara T-shirts?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
I’ve been a teacher for a long time. I’ve taught at the university level and high school for 25 years. I think that 90 per cent of kids wearing Che Guevara shirts have no idea what they’re wearing, because they don’t know what Cuba was. It’s very sad, and it’s very frustrating. My country has gone through concentration camps where people were interned simply for their faith or their lifestyle, throughout the ’60s and ’70s.
Castro did acts of repudiation against people for wanting to leave the country, with massacres one after another against people trying to escape from that hellhole, a police state that was created with thousands of people incarcerated for their beliefs. What Cuba has gone through is a tragedy. It’s a collapse of a culture and civilization, an induced collapse with no other comparison in Latin American history. And yet, it’s ignored, and it’s brushed away on purpose.
Mr. Jekielek:
As you’re describing this, I can’t help but think of Venezuela.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Venezuela is part of that same blueprint. One of the most advanced and consolidated democracies in Latin America was finally subverted through electoral means by a radical, Left-wing, totalitarian movement, aided and abetted and instructed from Cuba to destroy Venezuela as a democracy. We have seven million Venezuelan refugees leaving a country that was prosperous, that was helping democracy in the region, and is now a basket case. That is part of what these people are pursuing.
Now, we have to be very careful about what’s going on in Chile, and what’s going on in Colombia. These revolutions don’t happen in poor countries, they happen in prosperous countries. They happen in countries that have a possibility of leadership, and that’s what attracts this totalitarian virus. And Cuba was certainly there in the 1950s.
Mr. Jekielek:
I want to learn more about you. You are so passionate about Cuba, and freedom in Cuba, and freedom in general. Where do you come from?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
My family has been in Cuba for many, many generations. Part of my bloodline was already there before the Spanish got there. My family comes from eastern Cuba, from a province that is very important in Cuban history. I’m part of that extended and unified family that was full of tradition and good values and principles. The other part of my family is from the other part of the island, from the Western part, and they were also very loving people. I grew up within that extended unified family, and I saw how communism had torn my family apart, and how it had separated them.
There were beloved family members we never saw again, because you could not return to Cuba once you left. My parents were professional and successful. They initially saw the revolution as a way to improve Cuba, but they quickly saw that a communist police state was being set up, and they decided they didn’t want me to grow up as a slave.
They wanted me to grow up as a free man. That makes me very emotional when I think about that. They and my grandparents made some very hard decisions. My grandparents made the decision not to see me again when they said, “No, take him out of here, have him grow up free.”
So, I know what freedom means. Freedom is not a theory, freedom is a reality. It’s a way of life. It’s a mystery that’s revealed to the human condition as it ascends spiritually, so it cannot be discarded. Although I’m very proud to be American and I deeply love the U.S., and I’ve grown up in a country of possibilities, part of my soul is Cuban, deeply Cuban.
I cannot let go of that while the Cuban people are still enduring what they’re enduring. It’s a regime that is willing to destroy the Cuban nation and destroy the Cuban people in order to preserve a platform for the expansion of an evil ideology, which has caused so much harm across the world.
Mr. Jekielek:
How old were you when they sent you to the U.S.?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
I left my parents when I was five years old, and I got to the US when I was seven. We had to go from one country to another until finally making it to the U.S. And then, I was raised mostly in Miami. My degrees are in journalism and political science. I have a PhD in philosophy and international relations. I’ve pursued activism for a free Cuba since I was very young, in my teenage years. My calling was there from the beginning, a spiritual calling to serve the Cuban nation as best as I could.
I had a great childhood. But I grew more and more aware and I saw what my family had gone through, the pain they had endured, and the family members who had been executed by this regime. We have one cousin who was 21 years old, and he was executed. He was tried and executed within 24 hours.
I have another beloved cousin who spent 18 years in prison for his opposition to the regime as part of the Catholic Labor Youth. I can give you more and more examples. I have a great-uncle, who when he arrived at the farm he had built up and he had turned into a successful enterprise, it had been confiscated by the communists. He had a heart attack and collapsed right there and died.
I began to see these stories and I began to read Cuban history and see what had occurred, and what had happened. There was an intentional decision by Fidel Castro and his followers to destroy Cuban tradition, to destroy Cuban culture and civilization and build something new, build a horrible thing, a police state.
And more than a police state, they kept on saying they want to destroy the Cuban individual. Guevara said, “The Cuban individual, as he has existed up till now will cease to exist. We’re going to turn this into a collectivist culture, a culture of the masses where there’s no individuality.” They’ve done everything possible to do that, and it’s just grotesque what’s occurred.
Mr. Jekielek:
Initially, at least, it seems like in these revolutions they always say, “The dictatorship part is just temporary. We use that to foster change.”
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
It’s a big lie. That’s another lie. An authoritarian regime is deeply different from a totalitarian. In an authoritarian regime, a branch of government takes over the functions of government for a limited period of time. Of course, there’s repression. I’m not justifying it, it’s wrong. But generally, authoritarian regimes don’t meddle with society, and society keeps on functioning.
A totalitarian regime is something very different. That’s where a leader or family takes over a party, the party controls the government, controls the military, and they seek to destroy society and any free agency within society. They seek to absorb society.
And they’re willing to do whatever it takes; murder, slaughter, massacres, and incarceration on a mass scale in order to destroy the free will society and create a lobotomized population that does whatever the state wants. It’s metaphysical—it’s an attempt to destroy free will within individuals. I’ve seen nothing more diabolical than that.
Mr. Jekielek:
That’s very interesting. The population is somehow involved in the actions of the repressed, and history almost supports it. And there’s a decided effort to create or foster that portion of the population by the system to help perpetuate it.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Once the masses emerge as a political unit, then the individual is in grave danger. By mid-1959, in the last free surveys that were carried out by the remaining independent press in Cuba, just a few months after Castro taking power, already a good portion of the Cuban people, up to 40 per cent, were saying, “Hey, when are the elections going to happen?” Castro had promised elections in 18 months, and that never occurred.
But at the same time, by mid-1959, Castro was saying, “We will always be the majority.” What he meant by that was that they knew there were scientific ways, there was a method to create a permanent mob of people who would do whatever the regime wanted, who would surrender their moral decision-making to the state, and were willing to do whatever was required of them, because they liked the comfort of totalitarianism.
Freedom is very difficult. Liberty demands a great deal of decision-making, responsibility, and being aware of consequences. It means taking hold of your life and ascending spiritually. It’s very, very difficult to live in freedom, and totalitarianism promises a release from all that.
“You don’t have to think anymore, Fidel Castro will do all the thinking for you.” This was something you could read in the Cuban press starting in the early ’60s, “Fidel will think for us.” No, that went against everything Cubans had ever fought for, the ability to decide on your own, like Jose Marti, our great national philosopher and hero. Everything he did was about, “Cubans must decide on their own.”
“There’s a moral structure to the universe, and if you join that moral structure to your free will, then you will be free, with a type of freedom which is unmatched in any material terms.” That’s the promise of the Cuban nation. This guy went against all that. Fidel Castro and Guevara wanted to destroy that, but they ran into something they didn’t expect—an unrelenting resistance from Cubans, 63 years of resistance. We haven’t given up because this is transcendent.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s astounding for me to hear that in the propaganda press in Cuba that they were saying, “Fidel will think for us.” I got shivers as you said this because another characteristic of these communist or neo-Marxist ideologies is they’re very out in the open about what their intentions are in a lot of ways. But some of us don’t want to look at that.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Exactly. Exactly.
Mr. Jekielek:
What do you think?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
No, it’s there. Once you really read what they were saying, they were clearly saying what they wanted to say. People perhaps want to listen to something else or they want to construe the words in a different fashion, but totalitarians say what they’re going to say, because it’s a huge enterprise they’re carrying out and they need to give clear instructions to their followers. There’s something totalitarianism offers, which a lot of people deeply enjoy. I won’t say a lot of people, but some people. It takes away all control you have over your own life, but it gives you incredible power over the life of your neighbor.
You can’t rule your own life. You’ve lost free will within your society, but you can destroy somebody else’s life or you can improve somebody else’s life. That ability to lord over somebody else or to have power over somebody else, for some people is a great substitute for freedom. That can be reinforced through diverse psychological means through mass media. Castro used television, which Cuba had a lot of. Cuba was one of the countries in Latin America that had the greatest access to TV in the late ’50s, and he used television very ably.
Once you used mass media, there was no private education, and all education was controlled by the regime. Once you control everything being printed, once you control leaving and entering the country, then people become enclosed within a very, very narrow tunnel where very little information gets in.
And unless you have very strong convictions and you’re very firm in your beliefs and your faith and you understand history, you can get trapped in that mindset. Many have broken with it. There is a way of breaking through it, but it’s not difficult. It’s a limiting of the spiritual ascension of you as an individual and of your society.
Mr. Jekielek:
Everything we’re discussing here is of profound significance, not just for Cubans, but for Americans, and for any society which is struggling to some extent with these questions of what does it mean to remain a free society or even what does freedom mean? There is a weird freedom to being able to influence someone else’s life so profoundly. And of course, we know exactly what we’re talking about. You can cancel someone by saying the right word in these societies. This is the term we use here, and it’s in many cases a softer version, but the principle seems to be the same.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
If you wrote an article against the regime, at the bottom they would put in a few lines saying that the author was a kind of revolutionary, and the workers who printed this newspaper did not share his views. It began like that. Castro would use the podium to morally assassinate anybody who stood in his way; the initial president, then the prime minister, or anyone who dared to oppose him. He would use the podium and the mass.
There’s a group of people who are being churned into a mass formation based on everything the communists and the Nazis knew about that, about how to turn a society into a mass formation. He was using that to destroy any individual who could stand in his way, and to morally assassinate them. When I see that and I see cancel culture, it’s the same script. It’s the same philosophy, and the same method underlying both.
Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned that these protests are continuing. We’re sitting here in Miami and there’s a huge Cuban contingent, all these people that have come over from Cuba and their descendants. I think you organized a 30,000-strong car rally.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s amazing. There is this moral support from a portion of the population here. But at the same time, I didn’t fully realize until we’re sitting here that these significant protests are still happening.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Yes, the protests continue. These regimes are imperfect, and initially they seek to destroy an economy to control the people. In the case of Cuba, they had to control and destroy Cuban agriculture in order to control food supply. It’s always about food. Totalitarian regimes are very big on food and agriculture.
They need to control food to control cities, and they need to control cities to control the middle class, because the middle class can oppose them successfully. It can happen. But once they unleash these forces of destruction, they lose control. Totalitarians are not perfect, they’re not gods. They are human beings with diabolical ambitions, but also limited in their understanding of things.
So, they unleash these terrible forces which they never can control. Part of that is the collapse of the Cuban economy, and they can’t fix it. In order to fix it, they would have to allow the freedoms they suppress. So, the fact is, this regime is collapsing economically. The economy will not flourish, because individual initiative is completely restrained.
The little experiments they’re doing with individual initiative are very conditioned and very regulated, so they won’t prosper. They are facing deep-seated problems in Cuban agriculture, which turn Cuba from a country that fed itself to a country that depends on U.S. food imports. 85 per cent of Cuban seed comes from the U.S. That fact is rarely known.
If it weren’t for the U.S., there would be starvation and famine in Cuba because the regime cannot feed its own people. That’s the number one failure of any regime. So, Cubans are rebelling against all this because they know that it’s not U.S. economic sanctions against a dictatorship which prevent food from the Cuban countryside to be available in markets where Cubans can freely purchase. They know about all the wrong decisions this regime has made economically and how they haven’t benefited the Cuban population.
They see that the country has 12, 13, 14-hour blackouts, and yet, the hotels for foreigners, the five-star hotels that the generals profit from are illuminated, plus have air conditioning, and people there have all the amenities they need. Cubans see all this. No one can fool them about their own reality.
And this is what drives the insurgency forward. The regime still has a strong security apparatus that can prevent the emergence of a unified national movement, but they can’t destroy the movement as it is now; organic, based in neighborhoods and towns, and flourishing.
In the past few months, we’ve seen very moving videos and photographs of families collaborating to set up barricades so that police can’t enter neighborhoods, as part of the protests. That was unheard of in Cuba five years ago or three years ago. It’s a new phase of resistance by the Cuban people.
Mr. Jekielek:
There are well-meaning Americans who wish the Cuban people all the best and hope they have freedom. They’re very wary of Americans or America or the government getting involved in foreign expeditions, so to speak, and they have some good reason to be wary. How do you square all this?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
The Cuban experience between 1902 and 1959 is an example of successful American nation-building. First of all, U.S. intervention helped to end a genocide of the Cuban people, 200,000 Cubans died in that process. The U.S. built infrastructure in Cuba with roads and sanitary systems, over 1,000. I think 2,000 Cuban teachers were brought to the U.S. for training in order to serve Cuban public schools. The Cuban public schools were very successful in raising literacy rates. The U.S. terms of commerce for Cuba were generally very positive. Cuba before 1959 always had a balanced budget, and it always had a positive trade balance with the U.S.
In other words, Cuba exported more to the U.S. than it imported from the U.S. All that was successful. The failures in emerging policy came from support for the Castro movement, which was there. There was covert support for Castro, U.S. diplomats have recognized this.
And then, there were a series of mistakes that were carried out in the beginning about not realizing what the movement was, and what Castro was trying to do. There was the betrayal of the liberation force that landed at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, which was horrible for Cuban history.
I can keep on listing several mistakes. With regards to Cuba, the U.S. mistake has been to not act decisively, to not take a position and address the problem. Instead, it has a zig-zagging policy that leads nowhere. There’s something called the Cuban Liberty Act, which in writing is very good. It’s a comprehensive plan to help Cubans achieve their own democracy without U.S. intervention.
But that has never been fully applied, and it should be. The sanctions on the regime are necessary, and they should continue. But it should be part of a comprehensive effort, especially in light of what this regime has done throughout the hemisphere, and what it has done in Latin America.
A big mistake we made is that in 1991, ’92, the powers that be proclaimed that the Cold War was over. No, the Cold War wasn’t over. Soviet communism had fallen, but you still had a communist totalitarian state in China. You still had it in Cuba, and you had a different kind of totalitarian state in Iran, and one in North Korea. They’re still there and they’ve continued to grow.
What’s happened is that we’ve erased from the academic memory what totalitarianism is and how it functions. It can adapt, it can mutate. Lenin himself experimented with capitalism, as he set up the communist system. The Chinese Communist Party has experimented with capitalism, but that doesn’t change the essence of the system, which is to control the human soul.
Mr. Jekielek:
To control the human soul.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
I’ve said those words myself, actually. You’ve been actively involved in numerous protests, both in the U.S. and outside. A very prominent example of a protest was in the UK in Birmingham in front of the Chinese embassy, where people came out of the Chinese embassy and attacked protestors with seemingly not too many repercussions. This actually reminded me of something that happened to you. Maybe you can tell me about that.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
We’ve had numerous incidents around the world where activities we were carrying out to denounce the situation in Cuba and advocate for freedom in Cuba were the subject of violent attacks directly by the Castro regime personnel, agents of that regime, ideological agents, or even paid agents.
In Panama, we were attacked by Cuban embassy thugs together with local pawns of the regime and several of us were badly hurt. I had two ribs broken, my knee was torn, and I needed reconstruction surgery on my knee.
A few weeks ago in Mexico City, we were attacked in front of the Cuban embassy by club-wielding thugs, paid and sponsored by that regime. And again, some of the Mexicans who were demonstrating and myself were hit by these individuals, and some members of our team were also attacked.
We’ve had many instances in Peru. We were also attacked at an event we were holding at a hotel. A mob of communists came in and attacked us. One guy was going to hit me in the head with an iron bar, but thanks to a Mexican friend who intervened, I was not hurt. That would have deeply injured me if I had been hit in the head with that kind of weapon.
So, we’ve had many instances. In Bolivia, we also had another attack at a university where we were going to have an event. Throughout the world, we have felt the persecution by this regime. They’re more careful in the U.S., but outside they do it constantly.
This is a dangerous regime. I’ve had death threats from Castro’s spokesman here in Miami because of my activities, repeated death threats, which the police to this day are still investigating and following up on. The regime has constantly attacked us. They’ve labeled me as a terrorist. In my lifetime, have I ever carried out a terrorist attack?
But this regime which came to power, by putting bombs in movie theaters and parks and intimidating the Cuban population, which is all part of their method, this terrorist regime labels us as terrorists. We’re advocates of freedom, and we’re advocates of democratic transformation. We are not the violent people. The violent people are the ones in power in Cuba.
Mr. Jekielek:
There is this term which is popular called projection. There seems to be a lot of projection, which is a favorite hard-Left tactic. What are you doing in all these countries, protesting in front of the Cuban embassies? Tell me about that.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Because there’s so little press coverage of what happens in Cuba, we have to break that blockade. That’s the real blockade, the blockade on information on what happens inside Cuba. Going on these missions, participating in international conferences, organizing protests, meeting with political leaders, and meeting with labor leaders and student leaders is how we get the word out.
And it has been successful. A network of solidarity for a free Cuba has emerged over the past few years, and we greatly contributed to that. We’re not exclusively responsible, others have also worked on this , but we’ve contributed to that.
And there’s a network of people now around the world who care about what really happens to Cuban people and support that movement inside Cuba. But it’s a very dangerous regime, it’s a deadly regime. It has a pattern, a method of massacres and assassinations.
Four American citizens were massacred in 1996 over international airspace by this regime. Among them, very close friends of mine, in an unarmed aircraft that was shot down. They’ve carried out massacres of entire families trying to leave Cuba, the most recent a month ago in western Cuba. They ran over a refugee boat, seven people died, including a two-year-old girl.
They’ve done this over and over again repeatedly. To me, it’s a tragedy that Canada and the European Union finance this regime. To me, it’s a tragedy that the European Union, which is slapping sanctions on Russia, is aiding and abetting Russia’s number one ally in the Western hemisphere and in the international community.
It’s morally incoherent, and it’s possible because of the lie about Cuba, the doctrine of the lie, and not enough people in the responsible Left have broken with this lie. There are some in the extreme Right who also sympathize with that kind of regime. Until we get a consensus that there needs to be change in Cuba and for this awful regime to end, the Cuban people will have to continue with their fight alone.
Mr. Jekielek:
You’re saying that a lot of these people in these communities, some of them are actually acting as actual agents or they were paid agents of the regime.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Certainly in the U.S.
Mr. Jekielek:
How did you-figure this out?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Because we are the object of their surveillance and their intelligence work in the U.S. I’ve been warned repeatedly by U.S. intelligence services that I’m a target. In the trial against the Cuban espionage network called the WASP Network, which functioned in the U.S. until the late ’90s, early 2000s, there was a list of people they were following, and my name was on that list.
In their attacks against me, they’ve revealed personal information. How did they know these things about me? All that is designed to intimidate me. They’re not going to intimidate me. I have fear, but my love for Cuba and my love for freedom is greater than my fear.
Besides, what the people are going through inside Cuba is much greater and much worse than anything I can face. The regime uses its control on the Cuban population to try and expand its intelligence outside of Cuba. It has never managed to control the exiled community as I’ve heard China has managed to do with its many exiled communities.
That’s something I’ve heard. They never managed to establish that control because of the unity of the community against the regime. But they keep on trying and they have an ample network of informants and of pawns that they use for violence.
For example, in Mexico. In Mexico, they bus people in from another city to attack us in front of the Cuban missing embassy. They themselves admitted that. Who paid for those buses? Who paid for their lunch? Who paid for their breakfast, their dinner, and that day-long trip in Mexico?
Where did all those Cuban flags and the bamboo staffs for their flags come from? Anyone who knows about martial arts will tell you there’s a reason for using bamboo, it’s to hit somebody. Bamboo doesn’t break easily, and it hurts a lot when they hit you with it.
Everything was very well organized. And besides that, there was a Cuban in the back who was guiding them, who was telling them what to do. I faced this over and over again, in Honduras. We went to Honduras to the OES conference, and they brought a mob of 300 Sandinistas with their red and black handkerchiefs.
They surrounded the hotel where we were at, asking for our execution. I clearly saw a guy in the back of the park in front of the hotel standing by a tree, and he was the Cuban guiding the whole thing. I went down and I confronted them and they surrounded me and I faced them with what they were doing. Again and again, we face this kind of international repressive machine. They don’t have money for food for the people of Cuba, but they do have money to finance this kind of repression internationally.
They’ve done much worse, they have killed people outside Cuba. They have gravely injured people outside Cuba, their opponents. They’ve carried out these massacres in international airspace. They’ve done a lot worse than just simply attack us. They’ve murdered leaders of the movement.
Oswaldo Paya was a Catholic engineer, a man who mobilized 35,000 Cubans for a pro-freedom plebiscite was murdered. He and Harold Cepero, a young Catholic leader, were murdered in a mysterious car crash in eastern Cuba, and everything indicates it was one of their operations.
Laura Pollan, the founder of the Ladies in White, women who to this day march for the release of political prisoners in Cuba, died of a mysterious illness that just wiped her out within days. I can go on and on with all these leaders who’ve been murdered by the regime.
They have a pattern of executions, and they have a pattern of massacres. Where did the Havana Syndrome start? Where did the directed energy attacks against U.S. and Canadian diplomats start? They started in Cuba. And that happened, I’m sure. I’ve written a paper on it.
There’s a direct connection, a close symbiosis, and a close alliance between the Russian and the Castro regime intelligence services and this attack on American and Canadian diplomats. But over and over again, all this gets brushed off to the side.
I went to school here, and I have four college degrees. I spent my life arguing with professors that were presenting incomplete information on Cuba. Sometimes they themselves were uninformed, other times they were ideological, they wanted to say it no matter what. But I’ve faced this throughout academia, how there is this desire to protect that regime from its own worst crimes, and not to have people know what they’ve done.
Mr. Jekielek:
The common thread for every communist regime is that it always has its apologists, and they’re very fervent in many cases.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
The apologists are part of the system, they’re not accidental. Something we’ve told pro-democracy leaders over and over again, the regime in Cuba is not a temporary adversary, it’s an existential enemy of democracy. Part of the totalitarian virus is its manifestation within the free world.
Without the fifth columnists, totalitarian regimes could not succeed. Look at the case of China with Harry Dexter White. What role did he play in subverting the ability of the national forces to finally defeat the communist guerrillas? He played a great role. And how many more are like him?
In Cuba, we have the same case. There’s a lady in prison who is the person in charge of Cuba intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency. She was working for the Cuban regime as a spy for the Castro regime, Ana Belen Montes. There have been many more arrests of people within the U.S. government that were working for the Castro regime. We’re facing a bankrupt, collapsing communist regime that has a top-level intelligence force.
Mr. Jekielek:
In Cuba, there is the Ministry of the Interior, which is sort of analogous to the Ministry of State Security in China, ultimately responsible for the repression and control of the people. I understand that actually the Chinese have been training the Cubans, so tell me a bit about this.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Yes, the story has been broken. There’s photos and there’s graphic evidence of instructors from something called the People’s Armed Police, which were apparently the leading force in crushing the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, who have trained specialized forces of the Castro regime to repress the Cuban people. I’m talking about the so-called Black Berets, the Maroon Berets, which are units which have put down protests and uprisings in different parts of Cuba. They’re being trained by the Chinese.
Mr. Jekielek:
Cuba has a seemingly very successful tourism industry.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
It’s a tourism industry controlled by a few corrupt generals, by the military, which finances mostly the repressive military sector. Cuba is an attractive nation, the Cuban people have a way of life, have a joy about living that nothing can crush. Cuba is a very culturally-powerful nation. Look at the amount of music we’ve given in the world, as well as art and literature.
Now, most of those tourists don’t see Cuba. They see very well-defined tourist areas where they remain, which is particularly the case with Canadians. They go in massive numbers to Cuba and they don’t leave their tourist enclaves.
You’re not seeing how Cubans live or what they’re doing. But the money from this, the money from this tourism industry funds repression. There’s a direct connection between one and the other. Until the pandemic, it had a successful tourist industry, and it also had it before Castro. But it’s important to know that there’s a moral cost to engaging in this kind of tourism.
You’re going to feed a dictatorship, and you’re going to feed a machine that crushes and imprisons children. There are minors in Cuba in prison for protesting, and also women. It is a regime which persecutes religion openly. It just got included in the list of countries where religious freedom is not respected by the U.S. State Department. When you go there and you take your money, you’re financing the worst, a beast that will devour you.
Mr. Jekielek:
And there’s no way to go and not finance the regime?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
It’s difficult right now. I would recommend that you don’t stay at a tourist hotel. Try and stay in somebody’s private home, a private house that is available. The regime supervises it and controls it, but it’s a little different from what a hotel constitutes. And try to speak directly with the Cuban people, and they’ll tell you what’s going on. They’ll tell you what they are suffering.
Mr. Jekielek:
You were mentioning there are a few generals who benefit from this industry and run it. There’s been some sort of purge of generals in the last year, hasn’t there? What is that all about?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Something very strange has happened in a regime as tightly closed and as militaristic as this one. Since July 11th, 2021, we’ve had 26 Cuban generals, many of them in key positions, who have mysteriously died. The regime often blames COVID. But this regime has been very bloody in its internal purges. It has been totally intolerant and destructive of anybody within their own ranks who tries to protest or disagrees with a decision. The deaths of so many generals in so little time indicates to me that some kind of purge has taken place, and that there are real deep divisions within the regime.
Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned that Canadians go to Cuba en masse, I think that’s correct. I certainly know many people that have, and hence my question about tourism. But what is this Canadian-Cuban connection?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
There’s an article we published in the Toronto Star, which is that the Canadians care for Cuba in a careless way. They care for Cuba in a superficial way—the beaches, the music, the culture. But do they really care about what Cubans are undergoing, about the kind of repression they’re suffering from?
It indicates to me that the level of Canadian economic investment in Cuba, both in tourism and in the mining sector and other areas, is completely negligent of what this regime represents for most Cubans, and the kind of repression most Cubans suffer. I wish Canada would reflect on this and come to a moral reckoning about what its policies have caused the Cuban people.
Mr. Jekielek:
Is this the success of the propaganda initiative saying this is a great place? One of the things you often hear is the medical system in Cuba is fantastic, right?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
Cuba has a long tradition of very good medicine. In 1955, Cuba had more neurosurgeons than the United Kingdom. There’s a long tradition there, from the colony, of good doctors and good medicine. You have to understand that the good medicine a foreigner can find when they go to Cuba isn’t available to most Cubans.
Cuban doctors are good, they’re dedicated, they’re committed. They don’t have the tools with which to attend their patients. And the embargo doesn’t cover medicine. The fact that the Cubans lack basic medicines and they have to ask their family members in Miami to send them or buy them medicine or food is the result of the failed policies of the communist system.
Mr. Jekielek:
Do you have a sense of what portion of the population is freedom seeking, and what portion of the population is indifferent, and then, what portion of the population is captured in this mass formation?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
That’s a very interesting question. The few independent surveys which have been carried out indicates a great majority of Cubans want change. I’d say no less than 80 per cent of Cubans want change. I would say there’s 10 per cent of apathy, people who don’t want to get involved, and 10 per cent hardcore mass-formation communist cadres.
Recently, when the regime carried out the so-called municipal elections, because there’s only one candidate with one political party, the regime admitted that 41 per cent of those who can vote, didn’t vote, they didn’t participate. If the regime recognizes 41 per cent, the number is far higher. It could be 61, 71 per cent. This shows you the level of discontent and also the level of people who are leaving the country. They don’t want to be there. Now, of those 80 per cent, many still have fear, but a substantial portion of that 80 per cent has been breaking with that fear. That’s why I think that change is coming.
Mr. Jekielek:
What is it that you hope Americans can know and do, or the American policy establishment should think and do?
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
There’s a blueprint for change in the Cuban Liberty Act, and far more importantly than the Cuban Liberty Act, there’s a blueprint for change in the soul of the Cubans. Cubans are a freedom-loving people, wherever Cubans have found freedom, they have prospered around the world. The only place Cubans aren’t prospering is in Cuba because of communism.
The problem will only get worse. Procrastinating about the problem of communism in Cuba will only increase the problem. And we’re seeing it now with all its effects. So, a proactive policy that takes as a platform the Cuban Liberty Act and the need to empower Cubans to conquer their freedom and to limit the ability to repress for that regime, I think that is paramount.
Mr. Jekielek:
What do you say to folks that will say, “Look, America’s engaged in all these places”? There’s all this support for Ukraine, there’s pretty serious activities across the Pacific, there’s the increasing China threat. And so, this would be yet another place for America to overextend itself and maybe cause more harm than good.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
There are deep cultural issues in countries that the U.S. can fix, and that they can begin to address. We’re a force for good in the world because the values upon which we were founded are solid values. They are solid representations of the reality of the human soul. America has also had a great deal of success in helping to foster democratic cultures. Certainly in Japan, in Taiwan, in Germany, the Baltics, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, you’ve had the emergence of democratic societies that take responsibility for their actions and grow both spiritually and materially.
Cuba could be one of those successes, because certainly the history of Cuba and the nature of the Cuban people are conducive to freedom. It’s taken a great deal of energy to repress that freedom, to repress the Cuban people, and that regime has had international support from the get-go. It’s been an international creation from the beginning, the repressing of Cubans. If that were to change, if Cubans could take control of their own destiny, then they could build a very successful democracy. I have faith in the Cuban people.
Mr. Jekielek:
Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat:
It’s been an honor to be here.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.
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