she

Fidel Castro informed over 1 million Cubans in Havana that
was responsible for the bomb which claimed the lives of 73 passengers

aboard a Cubana Airliner.

By LOUISE MARTIN

HAVANA — Fidel Castro
charged the U.S. Central Intelle-
gence Agency, October 15, with
direct participation in the
sabotage of the Cubana Airlines
plane which crashed off the coast
of Barbados on October 6, killing
57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese and 5
North Koreans. He also re-
nounced the 1973 agreement on
air and maritime piracy signed be-
tween Cuba and .the United
States. -

The Cuban leader spoke in
Havana’s Revolution Square,
Friday morning to over a million
visibly grief stricken, indignant
and angry Cubans who gathered
to pay homage to the victims of
the plane crash. These included
the Cuban fencing team which
had just won all the gold medals at
the fencing competition in
Caracus, Venezuela and two
complete Cubana Airline crews.

Pointing out that Venezuelan
territory was used in the final ph-
ase of the sabotage plans, that two
Venezuelan citizens, F. Lugo and
Herman Ricardo, a known CIA

Its only the beginning

*

agent, are under arrest in
Trinidad-Tobago and suspected
of having placed the bomb, and 18
counter-revolutionaries of Cuban
origin are under arrest in Ven-
ezuela in connection with the
case.

Fidel Castro also referred to the
CIA use of front groups to cover
up its activities and mentioned the
meeting in Costa Rica last June at
which five Cuban counter-
revolutionaries formed a group,
so-called Commandos of Un-
ited Revolutionary Organiza-
tions. These groups not only op-
erate openly and freely in the
U.S. but their ring leaders are
closely linked with the CIA ac-
tivities against Cuba. :

He also referred to a photo-
graph in the Miami newspapers of
a meeting of these counter-
revolutionary groups chaired by
Julio Buran, Chilean ambassador
to the United Nations, Miami
mayor B. Serrer, Colonel
Eduardo Fetulbeda, the Chilean

Consul general in Miami, and

U.S. Congressman Tom Gal-
lager. CURO claimed responsibil-

the CIA

Castro charges CIA with sabotage
breaks air, maritime treaty with U.S.

ity for the Oct. 6 sabotage of the
Cuban airline plane.

“What is so strange about

. CURO taking credit for the hide-

ous deed of having blown up a
plane in flight with 73 people on
board?”” The Cuban premier
asked. ‘‘What would be so
strange about these same ele-
ments, having assassinated ex-
Chilean Foreign Minister, Or-
lando Letelier?’’ Fidel Castro
also pointed out that, ‘‘in recent
months the government of the
United States, resentful of the
Cuban contribution to the defeat
of imperialism and racism in Afn-
ca, unleashed a series of terrorist
activities against Cuba together
with further threats of aggres-
sion.”’

In April, pilot launches pro-
ceeding from Florida attacked
two Cuban fishing vessels killing a
Cuban fisherman, and a bomb
placed in the Cuban Embassy in
Portugal killed two embassy of-
ficials, in July Cuba’s UN mission
was bombed; a bomb went offin a
wagon carrying luggage aboard a
Cubana airliner bound for
Jamaica moments before being
placed on the. plane. A bomb
exploded in the British West In-
dies office in Barbados which rep-
resents Cubana Airline interests
in that country, and a technician
of the Cuban National Fishing In-
stitute was killed during an at-
tempted kidnapping of the Cuban
consul in Mexico.

In August a bomb went off in a
Cuban Airlines office in Panama.
The aggression culminated on
Oct. 6 with the destruction in
flight of the Cuban airliner with 73
people on board.

On Oct. 9, only three days after
the criminal sabatoge, we inter-
cepted a message straight from
CIA ‘headquarters in Langley,
Virginia to one of their agents in
Havana. It says, among other
things: ‘‘Please inform at first op-
portunity attendance of Fidel at
ceremonies, first anniversary of
independence of Angola, Nov.
11. If affirmative, try to find out

complete itinerary, Fidel’s visit
other countries same trip’’.

Earlier instructions to the same
agent, Fidel Castro continued,
said: ‘‘ What is the official and pri-
vate reaction to the bombing of
Cuban offices. abroad? What, will
they do to avoid and prevent
them? Who do they suspect as
being responsible? Will there be
reprisals?”’

Fidel continued: ‘‘We have de-
ciphered the codes and proven
their authenticity. In this concrete
case the supposed CIA agent has
been giving the Cuban Govern-
ment detailed accounts of all his
contacts with the CIA and the
equipment and instructions re-
ceived from them over the last 10
years’’. The CIA thought that its
agent had managed to place mod-
ern electronic microphones in the
offices of the Secretary of the
Executive Committee of the
Council of Ministers, Comrade
Cienfuegos and so they believed
they would receive well before
hand pertinent information as to
the itinerary abroad of the Cuban
prime minister. °

The Cuban leader recalled that
three years ago Cuba signed an
agreement on air and maritime pi-
racy and other crimes with the
U.S. because of the very serious
international problem of skyjack-
ing. However he said, “‘the U.S.
Government showed no intention
of abiding by the agreement. He

_ said that the attack on Cuban

fishing vessels and now the attack
on a civilian airliner while in flight
is even more serious. “‘The ag-
reement signed between the gov-
emments of the United States and

.Cuba on Feb. 15, 1973, can’t sur-

vive this brutal crime’, Fidel
Casto said. He announced that in
accordance with the strict letter of
the agreement, that agreement
will cease to be in affect as of Ap-
ril 15, 1977 and Cuba will not sign
any further agreements of this
type with the U.S. until the ter-
rorist campaign against, Cuba
ends, and effective guarantees
against these actions are provided
for the Cuban people.

‘Marxism-Leninism in Today’s World

‘and are fighting to eradicate fro™

the grief is multiplied, millions ©
Cubans weep today together wit!

By ALFRED DEWHURST

‘Cuba will never condone
skyjacking”, the Cuban leadet
said, ‘‘but it cannot engage 2

legal relations with a government

which bears fundamental respol
sibility for the terrorist offensiv®
against Cuba.”’

Similiar agreements signed be
tween Cuba with Canada, Mex
ico, Venezuela and Columbia will
remain in full efféct, he said,
and Cuba will collaborate with
other countries in the area 1
take appropriate measures 1
combat these crimes. /

‘‘What was it hoped they would
achieve with these crimes — thal
they could destroy the revolutio
or intimidate the people? Both, ht
said; were impossible, with the
revolution becoming firmer all
more conscious and the people
becoming more heroic in reaching
this goal. ‘“‘Our force’’, he said,

‘‘is the invincible force of milliom

of people, of all peoples who havé
freed themselves from slavery

this earth the exploitation of ma!
by man, injustice and crime.

Our force is the force of pat
riotism and internationalism. In
perialism, capitalism,
colonialism, racism are rapidly
drawing to an end,” he said.
‘‘Further actions on their part al@
increasingly more desperate
more hysterical, more horrend-
ous, only this explains the repus
nant and absurd crime that occur
red at Barbados’’.

Fidel Castro concluded by say”
ing that, ‘“‘An even more Tf”

volutionary country, mor
worthy, more socialist, more 1
ternationalist, will be the maga!
ficent monument by the Cubal
people to the memory of the vi
tims of that crime and of all thos
who have fallen or who will f

for the revolution. We can’t s4)

that the grief is shared,” he said:

the loved ones of the victims

|
|

neo’

that abominable crime, and whe! —

a strong and courageous peopl?

weep, injustice trembles.””  - .

The Globe and Mail, Canada’s
‘foremost purveyor of capitalist
‘logic’, solemnly declared in an edito-
rial on October 15 that the national day
of protest was: ‘‘a success because not
nearly as many people participated as
had been expected, not nearly as much
loss was incurred as had been feared.”

Strange logic? Yes, if looked at from
the point of view of a participant in the
historic one day general strike.

But not so strange, coming from a
staunch upholder of corporate wealth
and privilege — that views all
phenomena from the point of view of
the almighty dollar.

* * *

The CLC’s national day of protest —
a combination of a general work stop-
page and country-wide demonstration,
brought better than one million workers
from Newfoundland to Vancouver Is-
land off the job. It brought tens upon
tens of thousands of working people
onto the streets in supporting demonst-
rations in all the main centres of smaller
communities across the length and
breadth of the land.

All of this happened on one day. Such
a happening has never taken place in
Canada before. And while history is be-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 20, 1976—Page 8

ing made the Globe and Mail prattles
about ‘‘success through failure’’.
Would that organized labor has many
more such “‘failures’’.

* * *

What happened on October 14 was
history in the making. It was the day
that organized labor and its democratic
allies got their first real glimpse of the
meaning of workers’ power. That is, a
power exercised in common for the
common good of all working people.

Such power, used with absolute
firmness and with great skill, can defeat
Bill C-73 and banish the Anti-Inflation
Board into the ashcan of history. It can
win for the working people a say over all
questions of concern to them. It. can
change government policies from those
of unemployment to policies of full
employment. it can do much more than
this.

KG 3k

United workers’ power allied with all

democratic forces can elect govern-

‘ments based on this power. Such a

combination of power will one day
change the very structure of our society
—from one serving mainly the interests
of the multi-national corporations and

monopoly, to one serving the interests
of the working people — socialism.

It is fear of such a power that leads
the Globe and Mail and all monopoly-
controlled media to distort, through
outright lies and fabrications, the real
meaning of the Day of Protest. They
would like to hide the historic essence
of October 14 behind a facade of ‘‘lost”’
wages in ‘‘inflation dollars” in the er-
roneous belief that workers are as
greedy as the mercenaries of finance
capital.

* * *

One hundred and twenty-eight years
ago the founders of scientific socialism,
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,

pointed out in the Communist Manifesto .

that the collisions between individual
workers and individual capitalists, with
the growth of capitalism, assume more
and more the character of collisions be-
tween two classes. This being the case
the workers form trade unions in order
to act in concert against the capitalists
to keep. up the rate of wages.

The fathers of socialism noted that
the workers were not always im-
mediately victorious. That the real fruit
of their battles with capital lie, not in the

’ strike. This will be particularly s°

_ in the October 18 issue of the Cana’

immediate result, but in the ev th
expanding union of workers. These ” wh
tellectual giants of the 19th century 4% Ch
derlined that the organization of wo?” jg7
ers into aclass, and consequently int? va
political party, is continually being 4
set by the competition between © Pa
workers themselves. .

But, they state in the Manifesto, tht J
organization: ‘‘ever rises up Me
stronger, firmer, mightier. It comp®”

‘ legislative recognition of particular The

terests of the workers, by taking adv
tage of the divisions among th

bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hou®
bill in England was carried.”
** OX ajuthe
Itis this sense that the one-day gene" Chi
strike on October 14 must be view™
The working class in Canadais strong®) @t
firmer and mightier as a result of

basic industry. Nal
As the general secretary of the CO”, the
munist Party, William Kashtan, stalé ©

Tribune, October 14 is only the beg",

ning of a mighty united struggle to * |
Bill C-73 and to win for the work?”
people the right fora say on all questio®
of concern to them. ~