Is Fusion Doing The U.S. Government’s Bidding On Cuba?
January 05, 2015
The Groundwork for Future Intervention
Is Fusion Doing The U.S. Government’s Bidding On Cuba?
by MATT PEPPE
Journalist Jorge Ramos recently leveled some serious accusations against former Cuban President Fidel Castro, accusing him of amassing a fortune stolen from Cuban taxpayers and engaging in widespread drug trafficking. Ramos, a hugely popular news personality on the Spanish language network Univision and new sister cable network Fusion, eagerly parrots the hearsay of a former Castro bodyguard who is – coincidentally – promoting a new book. With the U.S. government still bent on regime change in Cuba despite the recent announcement of the normalization of relations between the two countries, they must be pleased. The narrative Ramos creates could help lay the groundwork for future U.S. intervention in Cuba, or at least help to discredit a revolutionary hero who remains staunchly opposed to U.S. foreign policy and imperialism.
The source for Ramos’s Dec. 23, 2014 column is Reinaldo Sánchez, who allegedly served for 17 years as Castro’s bodyguard from 1977-1994. According to Ramos, Sánchez arrived in the United States in 2008 but had not gone public with his accusations until he released his book “Fidel Castro’s Hidden Life.” One could speculate that without guaranteed housing, food allowance, and health care, as Sánchez enjoyed while he was in Cuba, he may have been under financial pressure once in the States. Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez (no relation) was under similar pressure while living abroad in Switzerland in 2004. Her inability to find work and earn a living forced her to return home in desperation, crying as she begged Cuban immigration officials to let her back into the country.
If Castro’s former bodyguard did indeed find himself in need of money in his new country with its large, rabid anti-Castro exile population, a tell-all story would be an easy way to raise cash. If you are going to write a book, you need some juicy details. No publisher would be very interested in a book about Castro immersed in reading at his desk or penning his Reflections columns. If Sánchez’s motivation was truly to expose the truth, why not speak with journalists and go public right away?
Whatever his motivations, one should be skeptical about the word of one person who may have political and financial motivations telling tales without any corroborating evidence or documentation. Ramos decides not to be. Instead takes everything Sánchez says at face value. He fails to even mention the possibility that one man’s unsubstantiated word might be exaggerated or outright false.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/05/is-fusion-doing-the-u-s-governments-bidding-on-cuba/
