Marcel Hatch, an American resident in Cuba, tells us that he owns a tourism agency that brings visitors to the island. Marcel and his agency have a long history of more than 20 years of solidarity with Cuba. His agency helps US citizens travel to Cuba and overcome obstacles which have been raised by President Donald Trump and Republican Senator Marco Rubio (a fierce anti-Cuban who has never been to the island). These roadblocks rest on the fact that, in the imagination of an ordinary American, a reference to “military” is fundamentally chilling.

This is because, inevitably, a nexus of similarity is established with the terrifying role played in the world by the Pentagon as an instrument of the superpower to secure and expand its global hegemony; as a terrifying offensive organization of covert operations operating in hundreds of territories to suppress by any means the opposition to American expansionism. It’s also an administrative body that sucks up most of the taxes paid by American workers. The US military, in turn, has a budget greater than the sum of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the majority of the nations of the planet.

For the average American, the armed forces mean billions of dollars in devastating weapons with state-of-the-art technology and highly qualified personnel at the disposal of the nation’s President. He, in turn, has several generals and a military industry which decides which nations will survive, which will perish or be subject to invasions, blockades, and intimidation, and as a result, which will be condemned to suffer famine, impoverishment and epidemics.

It must be remembered that on January 17, 1961, in his farewell address, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower advised Americans to take care of the power acquired by what he called the “military-industrial complex.” He noted that the United States had gone “from lacking an army and a defense industry to having an Armed Forces with more than three and a half million people employed to protect its security at a cost greater than all business profits of their big corporations together.”

His warning had a profound impact, coming from a military-man turned president who had experienced -even during his exercise of the nation’s first office- the ability to exert pressure that the Pentagon and the war industry had acquired “with strong influence in each city hall, state legislature and federal office of the nation.”

“The Cold War imposed the need to dispose of those resources,” Eisenhower said, “but we cannot overlook the serious implications of granting so much power to the military.”

Thus, with such a background, for many Americans, the very idea of supporting the military is disgusting and frightening. Meanwhile, in stark contrast, it is evident that the Cuban army is seen by its people as its main defensive tool for protecting citizens from external threats, and to ensure that national sovereignty resides in the island’s people.

The directives emanating from President Trump have not completely reversed the modest advances made by former President Obama’s policies a few days before his term came to an end, but one of them forbids US citizens and companies from participating in direct financial transactions with entities or subsidiaries that “disproportionately benefit” the Cuban military.

It is a fact that, when the Cuban military is not involved in defense tasks, responsibly and conscious of its role in society, it is involved in civilian objectives and in protecting the infrastructure and development of the country. In the past, in response to calls for help from people struggling for independence, Cuban civilians and military have come to their support in solidarity.

“It is natural, therefore, that in times of relative peace, the uniformed people” – as Camilo Cienfuegos, one of their initial leaders called it – “put their organizational and administrative resources at the disposal of the national economy. This is, in my opinion, the case with their active participation in tourism and many other social and productive activities,” Hatch emphasizes.

Cuban society highly values the concepts of unity and equality. It is understandable that, with a capitalist perspective as exaggerated as that of the American establishment, it is embarrassing to explain the civic-military harmony that strengthens the Cuban nation in all areas, and that is why Cubans feel so proud of their military.

July 21, 2017

(Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.)