Let's Remember Why the OAS Excluded Cuban Regime

Let's Remember Why the OAS Excluded Cuban Regime

Mary Anastasia O'Grady is right in asserting that the revocation of the
exclusion of the Castro communist regime from the Organization of
American States and its readmission to the regional organization would
undermine the inter-American system and demoralize the surging dissident
movement in Cuba ("Cuba Doesn't Belong in a Democratic Club" Americas,
May 11).

I attended the 1962 Punta del Este Conference that adopted the
exclusionary resolution as the Special Representative of the Cuban
Revolutionary Council (in exile) to the OAS, and met with most of the
foreign ministers and ambassadors who were present. Based on the
official documents, and on my notes and recollections, I can affirm the
following:

A few weeks prior to the Conference, Fidel Castro precluded an
invitation to renew Cuba's ties to the OAS with his defying statement
that he was, and always will be, a Marxist-Leninist.

The foreign ministers unanimously declared that Marxism-Leninism was
incompatible with the inter-American system because it negates its core
principles of representative democracy, human rights, nonintervention
and self-determination.

The foreign ministers rejected an outlandish attempt by Brazil Foreign
Minister Francisco Dantas to create a special statute for the Cuban
Marxist-Leninist regime so that it could remain in the OAS, but outside
its charter (a proposal now under consideration). By two-thirds vote,
the Cuban regime was excluded from the OAS, not only because of its
alignment with the Soviet bloc, but also because of its brutal
totalitarianism.

José Miguel Insulza, the current Secretary-General of the OAS, supports
the revocation of Cuba's exclusion because he claims that it is a
remnant of the Cold War and, therefore, "obsolete." No, what is
obsolete, and disgraceful, is the permanence in the Americas, with
hemispheric subservience, of a half-century dynastic tyranny that has
suppressed all human rights and continues to despise the OAS and reject
its Democracy Charter.

Mr. Insulza and all those who are courting the Castro brothers should
know that the empty chair of the OAS belongs to the legitimate
representatives of a free Cuba, not to its oppressors.

Nestor Carbonell-Cortina
Greenwich, Conn.

Let's Remember Why the OAS Excluded Cuban Regime - WSJ.com (14 May 2009)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124226698807818097.html