The community of Cubans residing in South Florida, in the United States, mainly in Miami Dade County, is returning to the state of strong anxiety and fear traditionally imposed there by the Cuban-American extreme right and its sponsors of the American terrorist extreme right.

Numerous and widely publicized visits by special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the homes and workplaces of Cuban émigrés who have been, for many years, activists for the improvement of relations between the peoples and governments of the United States and Cuba, have generated this alarm.

The local press and even the U.S. national press speculate about the reasons for this intimidating campaign by the federal government's main counterintelligence agency. On September 12, the FBI published an article in The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, stating that the reason for such warning visits was "to send to the Cuban government the message that the FBI is looking for and watching Cuban spies who might be infiltrating the United States.”

Andrés Gómez, director of the Areitodigital site, which originates in Miami, has written that this FBI campaign is for political reasons. "In the first place, because a decisive by-election is about to be held on November 6, in which the control of both houses of Congress is at stake, as well as the future of the Trump Administration and the Cuban-American extreme right in Washington.”

In Gómez's opinion, "since the Cuban-American extreme right was unable to obtain from the Trump Administration the changes in U.S. policy towards Cuba that this group advocates, it could be granting them these FBI visits in order to partially satisfy them with the rarefied political environment. In this way, the fantasy of the Cuban spies under every pebble and on every grain of sand of our long and famous beaches is once again imposed on the social and political environment of our community.”

The director of Areitodigital believes that it could also be to warn against the electoral triumph in the by-elections of this November 6 of candidates more related to the new policy with Cuba enunciated in Miami by President Barack Obama in December 2014.

But, according to Gómez, "we are no longer in the Florida of back then, with a demonized Cuba as an evil and perverse enemy. To the horror of the Cuban-American extreme right in Miami and its political and ideological allies in the rest of the country, and to the resentment of some FBI special agents who are visiting innocent citizens who maintain irreproachable social behavior—even though they defend their right to travel to their native country, and condemn the blockade against Cuba and everything that impedes the development of the Island and the possibilities of the Cuban people to advance and live in peace.”

In the national political environment, and in Florida in particular, there is a close electoral contest for governor between the progressive African American Democrat Andrew Gillum and the racist and reactionary Republican Ron DeSantis. It is feared that African American voters and progressives who do not normally participate in elections will be motivated to go to the polls to give electoral triumph to the most liberal and progressive candidates. That's what might be motivating the FBI's current intimidation campaign, notes Andres Gomez.

The official statement issued by the FBI says that "in the course of performing our duties, the FBI – on a regular and open basis – interacts with members of our communities to enhance the mutual trust necessary to combat potential criminal activities and possible threats to our population.

With respect to such an announcement, Gómez considers that "the FBI leadership should appeal to the mutual trust necessary to combat criminal activities, such as the immediate arrest and judicial prosecution of all terrorists of Cuban origin who live freely and with impunity in Miami under the protection of the FBI itself. They have attempted and killed many innocent people over many years, in a campaign of state terrorism sponsored by successive U.S. governments against the Cuban people and against those of us who live in the United States and who have supported: a more reasonable policy between both of our peoples and governments, such as the one initiated by President Barack Obama.”

It would have been worthwhile for Gómez to point out that the objective of the fifteen presidents of the United States since the triumph of the Cuban revolution, including Obama, has been to liquidate the example of effective independence and socialism that is Cuba. Of all these, Trump's government is the one that contributes the least to those perverse imperialist ends, because it reveals it with too much audacity.

October 7, 2018