"We have a people organized and armed with weapons of every type, including antitank and antipersonnel mines, a people that desires and fights for peace, but that knows how to defend its national soil, come what may," said Raú l Castro, the Minister of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), April 15 in the wake of military provocations by U.S. imperialism against China.
Castro spoke to reporters after seeing off Chinese president Jiang Zemin at Varadero International Airport. Jiang was in Cuba as part of a four-day state visit, one of six countries he visited in Latin America and the Caribbean.
His visit came just as Beijing was releasing the crew of the U.S. spy plane damaged after colliding with a Chinese jet. The collision, which took place just off China's coast, sharpened tensions between U.S. imperialism and the Chinese workers state and highlighted Washington's military encirlement of, and continual provocations against, that country.
The Granma daily newspaper, published in Havana, said Castro reminded reporters that the United States has never renounced aggression against Cuba. "Sure they can invade," he said of Washington. "Sure they can occupy part of the country, and then what?" War "was the most terrible thing imaginable," he emphasized. As in Vietnam, he said, Washington would begin to understand this when its soldiers began returning home in body bags.
Granma reporters Ventura de Jesú s and Arnaldo Musa wrote Castro said "that the Cuban defense budget is today 11 times smaller than at the end of the '80s, and that the army had been reduced by tens of thousands of men." However, "Today we are stronger," he said.
While the government has been forced to carefully husband its military and other resources, the country's defense preparedness has been increased through the training, equipping, and organizing hundreds of thousands of working people into the Territorial Troop Militias and through other popular organizations.
Land mines are the arms of the poor
In the event of an invasion, he continued, "They are going to bomb us from above, and we are going to mine them from below. Land mines are the arms of the poor, and we have made every kind there is."
The Granma article stated that Castro "indicated that it is immoral to demand of Cuba that it not use mines to defend itself from a U.S. invasion," referring to a campaign spearheaded by the government of Canada and various members of the European Union calling for the banning of these weapons.
The Cuban government's position on this campaign was explained by Nestor López Cuba, a division general in the FAR, in a 1997 interview published in Pathfinder's "Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces." While noting that "unfortunately this campaign...has broad backing among persons who are very progressive, very humanitarian," López Cuba said that "mines...are the weapon of those who don't have the resources to buy a B-52 bomber or an F-16 jet"
He continued, Cuba "cannot afford... expensive and sophisticated weaponry, nor are they particularly necessary if we take into account the popular character and strictly defensive purpose of our weapons, including the antipersonnel mines we have, which are not for use in another country.
"What can we use to resist?" asked the FAR officer. "Weapons that are the least expensive--rifles, mines, Molotov cocktails, antitank grenades."
Castro's other remarks also spotlighted the popular character of the country's defense preparations. The CNN news service reported Castro saying that "entire cities and army divisions would fight from tunnels and shelters dug across the country over the last 20 years."
"Santiago, our second city, everything is ready so it can fit underground," Castro stated. The same was true, he said, for the city of Matanzas, which lies on the north coast of the country.
Castro also used the occasion to respond to media figures and others in the United States who--according to the Granma reporters' summary--"frequently ask what will happen after Fidel [is gone], speculating about whether there will be an uprising, who will assume the leadership and whether they will be able to maintain the revolution. He answered immediately that, of course, we will maintain it."
CNN reported that Castro also affirmed "a January statement that the United States would be well advised to settle its differences with Cuba before Fidel Castro dies." The armed forces minister said, "The authority Fidel has, no one else will have. That's why it will be easier to work things out with him."