Maria C. Werlau is the Executive Director of Cuba Archive – a non-profit organization incorporated in 2001 in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to promote human rights through research and information about the Communist Party takeover of Cuba and its subsequent oppression of political opposition. In her book Cuba’s Intervention in Venezuela: A Strategic Occupation with Global Implications Werlau provides a theoretical framework and extensive documentation with which to justify her claim that that “revolutionary” Cuba essentially occupied Venezuela. This occupation occurred through asymmetric measures rather than a conquering military force, i.e. the strategic placement of assets which could be used to monitor, command and control Venezuela’s security forces, economy, information, communications, and society in general. It also explores the evolution of a longstanding ambition of Fidel Castro’s – to unite Central America, South America and the Caribbean into a confederation under his leadership and how the political alliance with Hugo Chavez and their regional integration project, ALBA, operating in conjunction with an international criminal network organized to support their political goals supports this end goal. Cuba’s Intervention in Venezuela, along with other books such as Why Cuba Matters: New Threats in America’s Backyard, La Franquicua Cubana: Una Dictradura Cientifica and others, shows how Cuba, with its smaller population and economy, was able to take over Venezuela thanks to a highly trained intelligence community and a unique methodological tool kit first transferred by the Soviets and refined through decades of operations in Cuba and abroad. As the book implies by the title, Werlau also shows how implications of this occupation is not just regional, but global.
The book’s first chapter covers Fidel Castro’s dream of a united Latin American and details plans enacted by the Cuban Communist Party to establish armed political fronts, training of foreign political operatives in support roles for the Cubans, as well as developing collaborative relationships with the leaders of Socialist and Communist parties in Venezuela as well as other parts of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Citing an interview with former Captain of Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence, Enrique Garcia, Cuba efforts financed by the Soviet Union included espionage, penetration of organizations, and buying influence via substantial cash payments to presidential candidates all throughout these regions.
Chapters two through six cover an incredibly large number of diverse and detailed examples of the legal, economic, military and political cooperative agreements, accords, treaties and charters between Venezuela and Cuba as well as their social impact. Coverage of this judicial, economic, political, technological, national security and social intertwining takes a hundred pages. It shows how Cuban advisors in the military, economy, and social fields has come to play huge roles in both monitoring and managing the country. Reading these chapters makes the calls by the Venezuelan opposition for the expulsion of all Cuban contractors from Venezuela more than understandable – several thousand people in key roles are able to function as an occupying force when they are able to collude with a domestic party, the PSUV, that wishes to have their country turned into Cuba. Citing Lt. Col Juan Reinaldo, who for 17 years was a member of Fidel Castro’s personal security detail, she shows how there is no doubt that Cuba’s expertise in totalitarian social control was transferred to the PSUC via training and placement of advisors throughout Venezuela’s armed forced and key social and economy sectors.
Chapter 7, A Post-Cold War Continental Project, opens with warnings by General Guaicapuro Lameda, the former president of PDVSA, published shortly after a trip to Venezuela intended to indoctrinate him into the Fidel Castro’s plans for ensuring Hugo Chavez and the PSUV would stay in power and radically transform the content over a period to last no less than 30 years. Fidel’s recipe for Venezuela included:
- Let those who dislike the revolution leave
- Keep people busy covering their basic needs and repressed
- Burn non-essential oil money to buy loyalties and disable opponents
- Find or create a credible and powerful enemy
- Keep the poor impoverished but hopeful
- Corner the opposition
- Establish a parallel/dual economy: one for the government’s purposes (for the poor), the other one, unattainable and unbearable, for the opposition
- Implant terror: among supporters, the fear of losing what the government gives; among opponents, the fear of losing what they have, including their life and freedom
- Make it difficult to do things legally in order to keep people tied up, compromised, dominated, and disabled
- Galvanize hope through elections
This blueprint for the creation of a new historical block appears inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the political philosopher and founder of the Italian Communist Party, who Chavez stated that he had “an excellent knowledge of” and is frequently cited within PSUV materials such as their Red Book. Venezuela’s transformation into the barrack-style Communism of Cuba with ‘more frills’ was the first big step towards their post-Cold War Continental Transformation Project called Nuestra America.
In addition to these policies which increased political polarization, marginalized parties organized around traditional democratic values, attitudes and beliefs, Venezuela’s educational model transformed to align with based on Cuba’s indoctrination/education system. More than 20 million books for all levels of the Venezuelan education system were published in Cuba that taught a Marxist worldview and highlighted how Simon Bolivar, the greatest Venezuelan, had a Cuban nursemaid.
Chapter 8, A Criminal Network with Extra Regional Ties, continues where the last pages of Chapter Seven began to address – the numerous political and criminal groups that have come to partner with the Chavez/Maduro/Castro governments. One of the admirable qualities of this book is its citation of sources – from personal interviews to judicial proceedings, memoirs published by Cuban and Venezuelan regime insiders, etc. In this section highlighting how Cuba helped make Venezuela into a mafia state through support of narco-trafficking, the rich source list here is worth the cost of the book.
In this section, Werlau links the interests of transnational criminal organizations with the political policies promoted by the Foro de Sao Paulo. Embezzlement of public funds, drug proceeds and disruptive targeting by media and criminal actors enables high public officials, prosecutors, judges, journalists to be bribed or threatened. Targets are, basically, given the choice of plata (money) or plomo (bullets). Some of the highlighted acts include state-sanctioned bribery rings, money laundering rings, schemes to sell passports, overbidding, underperforming, direct and indirect kickbacks, and providing safe haven for designated terrorist organizations.
Links with non-national organizations, such as Hezbollah, IRA, ETA, and others are covered along with Iran, China, and Russia – which provide loans that somehow never make it to the national accounts. She describes complex networks that use a diverse criminal portfolios to undermine the rule of law, democratic governance, and US alliances throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Chapter 9, Cuba’s Core Competency: Soft Power on Steroids, links together the activities described in the preceding chapters and explains how they all demonstrate a comprehensive effort at organizational and political technology transfer. What’s been ongoing since the first election of Hugo Chavez – just as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez admit in their published statements – is an effort from the outside in to transform Venezuelan society.
Werlau summarizes this as follows:
“Cuba’s core competency, or comparative advantage, is rooted in the centralized command-and-control totalitarian nature of the system, unconstrained by judicial, ethical, and moral boundaries or by term limits, balance of powers, transparency, accountability, and bureaucratic-institutional rules and restraints that characterize even the weakest democracy. The Cuban Politburo and Communist Party leadership has absolute power to strategize with great consistency as well as ample flexibility to use even the most unsavory tactics. It can act very quickly without a need for consultation and it can plan for the long term as well as wait patiently, as its power is enduring, it does not have to face electoral challenges or term limits.
Werlau notes that Cuba is an innovator in this field, as this all predates Russia’s Gerasimov Doctrine of 2013 – which states that the rules of war have changed and the military should embrace hybrid and asymmetrical actions and nonmilitary means to achieve military and strategic goals, combining the use of special forces with information warfare to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state. I would, however, disagree with this assessment as this is a variation of the same sort of tactics that the Soviets/Russians first developed following the professionalization of the CCCP and they were the ones that transferred their knowledge to Cuba.
Citing interviews from a Cuban Intelligence Officer that defected, Werlau describes how Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence systematically penetrates governments, international organizations, media, academia, and all of society in select countries – particularly the United States. She highlights a number of these organizations – such as the ICAP, Prensa Latina, and organizations targeted for influence such as LSA and CLACSO. Highlighting the role of U.N. in facilitating these activities, she highlights how Cuba has the second highest per capita number of people given diplomatic credential, credentials which enable ambassadors and their staff to engage in espionage and recruitment in other countries with a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Following further details on similar events, Werlau highlights how Venezuela has come to enact policies that function as asymmetrical warfare, such as forced migration as state policy, creation of export-based criminal networks, and a state-supported human trafficking business.
Chapter Ten, The International Response, highlights how as a result of such an extensive intelligence apparatus that the international response to Cuba’s occupation of Venezuela at the invitation of Hugo Chavez and then Nicolas Maduro has largely been muted. It’s all the more understandable given the large number of individuals, networks, groups, companies, and countries involved. Werlau’s book, however, does a great job in organizing this material to present a holistic picture of just what asymmetric warfare can accomplish – the takeover of a state government without military battle and only military-supported intelligence agents.