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Gutierrez-Boronat: Is 'Shoot-Down' a Let Down? Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat Upon recently viewing a screening of the documentary "Shoot-down," I was glad to see that it has the potential to expose, before a wide audience, both the calculated murder of four Brothers to the Rescue volunteers 10 years ago by the Cuban government and the callous negligence of the Clinton administration, which may have allowed it to happen. However, I also found it appalling that the film lacks a moral center, and that it fails to grasp the sinister and far-reaching complexities of a totalitarian regime's desire to remain in power.
The film shows that four outstanding men were shot down over international waters by the Cuban government in a calculated act of political murder. But the film implies that this act took place within the context of strained relations between the United States and Cuba, in which the supposed lack of formal channels of communication between the two governments allowed exile firebrands to carry out missions that resulted in the Feb. 24, massacre.
This is the sort of post-modern relativism that the documentary subjects us to, making one wish that Christina Kuhly's quest to uncover the truth behind her uncle Armando Alejandre's death would have also led her to understand the overarching moral convictions which led him to be where he was on the day that he died.
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These are the main issues that I think "Shoot-down" leaves out, turning the film into an aesthetically pleasing, but rather shallow exercise in confusion: First, the documentary downplays a violent incident as a possible "accident." Professor William Leogrande, the main authority in the documentary, refers to the July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre of innocent men, women and children attempting to flee Cuba as an incident that could have been an accident. This flies in the face of well-documented testimonies of the survivors and of numerous independent investigations. All of them indicate that the Cuban government violently and purposefully carried out the heinous attack on the tugboat. The stage is set, in the movie, for the Cuban government to be portrayed as evil, but perhaps no less evil than its exile foes.
Then, there is no clear reference to the events of August 5, 1994, in Havana, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets demanding the end of the Castro regime. Widespread indignation over the July 13 massacre, as well as the use of deadly force by the Cuban government to put down similar street protests that took place in the coastal towns of Regla and Cojimar, fueled the uprising. Without the details of this event it becomes impossible to understand the three-pronged process of change that began to take place on both sides of the Florida Straits and how this change caused a great deal of worry for the Cuban government.
A Concerted Effort Is Born The disparate and often conflicting groups of the emerging dissident movement in Cuba merged to form Concilio Cubano. This unified coalition brought unprecedented media coverage and international support for the dissident movement, and extended a bridge to the exile community, which for the first time joined forces to support a united movement. This courageous unification gave great hope for change to many inside and outside Cuba, and helped accelerate the transformation of organizations like Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR) and others, such as Mothers Against Repression.
A reformist movement within the Cuban government became increasingly visible, with intellectuals inside or close to the Castro regime making frequent public calls for political and economic reform. The nucleus of this movement was the Centro de Estudios de América, or Center for the Study of the Americas, a government think tank that came to embrace a platform for profound change on the island.
As a result of the August 5 uprising, the ensuing dissident organization and leaders of the exile community embraced a philosophy of nonviolent struggle. Individuals like Jose Basulto, with a long record of courageous military confrontations with the Cuban government, stood up to defend a new approach of principled civic and nonviolent political defiance of the Castro regime. In those days, Basulto was unfairly and often viciously attacked by critics in the exile community who felt offended by BTTR's embrace of non-violence.
It was these factors that led BTTR and other exile organizations to pursue humanitarian aid missions centered on peacefully empowering the Cuban people to challenge the Castro regime. These events however, are not even mentioned in the documentary, making it seem that it was merely the flotilla exodus and the later immigration treaty between the United States and Cuba that was responsible for the nonviolent actions pursued by Brothers to the Rescue.
However, this was an innovative political development taking place on and off the island and inside and outside the Castro regime - long before the flotilla exodus.
Driving the transformation of the Cuban opposition was the emergence of a new generation of Cuban leaders and activists. Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales were all exemplary leaders of this effort.
In the documentary, professor Leogrande states what is a recurring theme in the film: "As long as the two halves of the same generation which both took power in Cuba and came to Miami continues to live and stay in power, no change will be possible in Cuba." This purports to demonstrate that Cuba's dilemma is somehow the result of a generational civil war, in which both sides have been equally at fault. The film then furthers that what has driven opposition to the Castro regime for over four decades has been its gross and constant violation of human rights. Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales and the incarcerated Concilio Cubano activists in the island, evidence this opposition, as well as the desire by a new generation of Cubans to transform their country.
Another insinuation made in the film is that the pilots of Brothers to the Rescue somehow were not aware of the organization's change and that they were somehow tricked into action by Basulto. Nothing could be further from the truth. I knew Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales. They were intelligent and principled men who were very determined to help the Cuban people achieve nonviolent change.
Infiltrators and Spies
The documentary includes information on the Cuban WASP spy network, but neglects to mention the existence of Ana Belen Montes. The exhaustive FBI investigation clearly demonstrated that Castro's spies in the Miami community not only supplied the Castro regime with constant information on the activities of the pro-democracy movement in exile, but also set up the ambush that resulted in the deaths of the four humanitarian volunteers over international waters.
A key to the Cuban intelligence network in the United States was Ana Belen Montes, a top Cuba analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency arrested shortly after 9/11 for passing secrets vital to America's national security to Castro regime. Castro then planned to then pass them on to Iran.
Part of Montes' duties within the American intelligence and defense community was to foster the impression that Cuba was not a threat to the United States, and that the Castro regime was at least partly to blame combative relationship with the United States. She also was responsible for showing that Castro's exiles were really no better than castro himself.
This propaganda is repeated throughout the film by Castro apologists such as Wayne Smith who claims that he saw BTTR aircraft over Havana on Jan. 9 and 13, 1996, when there were none. Could there be a link between the fifth column work carried out within the Department of Defense and the intelligence community by Ana Belen Montes and the the U.S. military's lack of response to the assault on U.S. citizens (BTTR) and aircraft miles away from Key West on Feb. 24, 1996?
Is it a question worth asking? The film ignores Montes and fails to make this vital query, although to its credit, it does dwell at length on the lack of response by the U.S. Air Force to the events taking place in the Florida Straits that day.
The documentary also fails to include the March 1996 historical speech by Raul Castro shortly after the shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue plane. This speech contains the essence of the events that took place on Feb. 24, 1996.
For the Castro brothers and the Castro regime, Concilio Cubano, Brothers to the Rescue and the Centro de Estudios de America were all part of a vast conspiracy to take apart the Cuban Revolution.
Nonviolence, according to what Raul Castro said in this speech, was another modality of war. It was within this typically totalitarian mental framework that the conspiracy to kill the Brothers to the Rescue took place.
Castro needed a show of force: In those months he had faced popular uprisings, an emerging dissident movement, an increasingly open reformist challenge, and an exile movement that suddenly become unpredictable and synchronized with events on the island. Castro's agents in Miami helped prepare the ambush.
Ana Belen Montes did her work in Washington so that it would not be stopped. Four heroes died as a result of this calculated political hit aimed at eliminating prominent leaders and activists of the exile civic defiance movement such as Basulto, Andres and Silvia Iriondo, and Arnaldo Iglesias, who miraculously survived, and the four young men, who didn't.
The documentary depicts Basulto as a radical firebrand. On the contrary, Jose Basulto is a hard-working father of five, a successful engineer educated in the United States. But, he is also a Cuban American who will not forget fellow Cubans who still yearn for freedom.
This led Jose Basulto to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion as well as in the U.S. sponsored guerrilla raids that took place throughout the 1960s. However, after the 1962 Kennedy-Kruschev Pact when the United States ceased efforts to bring down Castro, Basulto and other exiles found innovative and courageous ways to keep their struggle alive
In the film, people like Wayne Smith and Saul Landau speak of how the activities of BTTR and the tragic incident could have resulted in U.S. military action against Cuba, as was the will of the Cuban-American community.
They completely fail to mention how, during the Orange Bowl rally which took place a week after the massacre, Jose Basulto clearly stated that he did not want any American blood to be spilled for Cuba: that this was the struggle of the Cuban people.
"This struggle is ours," he said. Thousands of Cuban-Americans and most of the exile leadership applauded him. Although Basulto has consistently been engaged in extensive debates against violence in the exile community, the filmmakers do not mention this. The truth is that no one has worked harder than he to turn the exile strategy away from violence and toward civil disobedience and that these convictions were shared by the four young men who were murdered.
The movie fails to acknowledge the existence of one survivor, who in reality was a Castro spy. Juan Pablo Roque had penetrated BTTR, helped set up the ambush and then quickly returned to Havana before the shoot-down took place. If all three airplanes would have been shot down, Roque's role could have been to say that they were on a violent sabotage mission that the Cuban government had successfully terminated.
Ultimately, the documentary shifts at least part of the blame for the event on its victims.
Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat was born in Havana, Cuba. He is co-founder and national secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, "Directorio," one of the most distinguished organizations for attaining and international support and solidarity for the democratic movement on the island.
Editor's note:
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