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bers; Castro-sympathizers admitted free. Violent attempt against ABDALA members, one of which requested open discussion with Venceremos Brigade. After four hours of debate, Venceremos Brigade's arguments were allegedly destroyed by ABDALA members.

1971-Rutgers', Newark.—Venceremos Brigade presented speaker. Debate with

ABDALA members ensued.

1971-University of Illinois.-Confrontation at the university with members of ABDALA, and the Cuban Student Association. The student government granted the Venceremos people $500 for one week of workshops, rallies, and pro-Castro movies. The Cuban students were ignored and had to finance their anti-Castro campaign with their own pocket money. The propaganda war was won by the Cubans as a Venceremos Brigade rally attracted less than 50 Peuple-most of them Cuban students out to confront the Brigade. And the week ended in a two and one-half hour radio debate between two Cuban students and a team of several Venceremos members.

1971-Kent State University.-Confrontation with a debate between one of ABDALA's member and an unidentified member of the Venceremos Brigade, believed to be Mr. Hutchins or Mr. Hutchinson.

1971-Radio Debate.-Debate in WIND radio (Chicago) between an ABDALA's member and a member of the Brigade who used the pseudonym "John Smith". Tapes of this two-hour debate are available.

1971-University of Illinois. Public debate between a representative of ABDALA and two members of the Brigade.

1971-La Gente.-There is a possibility that Venceremos Brigade members were involved with a small leftist group in Chicago known as La Gente. La Gente sponsored a pro-Castro support picnic on the 26 of July, 1971, in a vacant lot in Chicago. Propaganda from Cuba was distributed. The day ended with a violent confrontation between ABDALA and Brigade members.

1971—Champaign, Illinois.—ABDALA found out that the Venceremos Brigade was going to go to a local school to speak and distribute propaganda. Steps were taken to counter-act the Brigade, but when they found out about ABDALA preparing for a confrontation, the Brigade cancelled their scheduled appearance. Other Confrontations on Campus

1968-Columbia University.-ABDALA members attended lecture on Cuba by Prof. Edward Boorstein of Cornell University, American economist who worked in Cuba under Che Guevara and self-confessed Marxist-Leninist champion of Castro's regime. Debate ensued.

1969—Cornell University.-Prof. Boorstein expelled two Cuban students-one of them a member of ABDALA—from his class. Massive protest correspondence to Cornell followed an ABDALA-organized campaign. Boorstein was replaced shortly after.

1969-N.Y.U., Washington Square.-Confrontation between ABDALA and members of S.D.S. and American Communist Party during S.D.S.-sponsored lecture on Cuba.

1970-Manhattan College.-Guest lecturer, Prof. Boorstein revisited by ABDALA members. Confrontation with sponsoring Lucha and Castro sympathizers.

1970-Rutgers, Newark.-Several confrontations by ABDALA members studying a course on Latin American affairs conducted by a Dr. Spalding, who emphasized Che Guevara's guerrilla warfare tactics in the lectures. Dr. Spalding, who visited Cuba with Venceremos Brigade, suddenly moved to Peru in 1970. Shortly after her departure a pro-Che Guevara student group called Free People actively appeared on campus.

ABDALA Outside the Campus: Meetings, Demonstrations, Protest Marches

October 5, 1968.-Student meeting at N.Y.U. to recruit members and sympathizers. Attended by Cuban students mostly although also by people from other "spheres". Our first public meeting. Fidel Castro burned in effigy, Washington Square Park.

November 24, 1968.-First "Student March" to the U.N. through Avenue of the Americas.

March 9, 1969.-First march to protest against conditions of political prisoners in Castro's Cuba. Open demand to U.N. Commission of Human Rights. Triggered by newspaper stories and letters regarding Pedro Luis Boitel and inhumanities inflicted him in a prison. Shortly after protest march, he was transferred to a military hospital by Castro's government.

July 26, 1969.-Demonstration in condemnation of the Cuban Mission to the U.N. 26th of July Movement's degeneration into a reign of terror. Burning of the Russian flag resulting in the arrest of one of our members for the first time. September 21, 1969.-Second protest march regarding political prisoners. 5.000 Cubans attended from the Cuban Mission to the U.N. to José Martí's statue.

May, 1969.-Demonstration before a New York theatre which presented "Che", a movie about Guevara.

January 28, 1970.-ABDALA's anniversary, José Marti's birthday. Public meeting attended by several representatives of Cuban organizations in exile. All generations, all social levels, all occupations represented.

July, 1970.-U.N. World Youth Assembly. Sought to gain access through regular procedure but were denied expression inside U.N. Shortly after the Assembly closed we received a letter from Sweden from Lars Thalen, Secre tary General of the Assembly, explaining denial was caused by pressure from membership from communist bloc.1

October 12, 1970.-Visit of Fidel Castro. U.N. protest attempt to lower the Russian flag.

October 23, 1970.-Protest before Cuban Mission to U.N. Burning of Russian flag. Four of our members arrested.

November 27, 1970.-"Cuban Student Day". Public meeting.

January 28, 1970.-ABDALA's anniversary, José Martí's birthday. Public meeting.

March 13, 1971.-Disrupted U.N. Council Meeting. Sixteen of our members arrested. First page Daily News, New York Times, third page.

June 8, 1971.-Boston protest against pro Castro article published by The Pilot.

July, 1971.-First National Congress :

(a) Drawing of a series of conclusions pertaining to our position regarding the Cuban situation.

(b) Unanimous backing from exiled community.

(c) Official statement of our ideology:

No right, no left. Cuba and whatever is best for it regardless of all foreign powers and independent of all foreign influence.

Correspondence to U.S. publications, English and Spanish, speaking, college and otherwise.

Involvement of our members in their own campus publications.
Coverage of our activities by newspapers.

Appearances in Spanish speaking radio and television stations.

Mr. PEPPER. Now, Counsel, if you will invite Mr. Marin to make a summary statement, we would be pleased to have it.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Mr. Marin, would you state your full name and present address, please?

Mr. MARIN. Gustavo B. Marin, 3326 82d Street, Jackson Heights. Mr. SCHULTZ. Mr. Marin, would you proceed now, as the chairman recommended, to summarize your statement to the committee?

Mr. MARIN. I first would like to summarize my personal opinions on the Cuban-American affairs and the Cuban-American relations and a question that is often asked by many Americans to Cubans on our type of relations: Where did the U.S. go wrong, and where are we willing to go?

I would like to begin by saying, when our struggle began, those Cubans who left everything behind and came to the land they had perhaps idealized might have wanted to serve the United States as the Venceremos Brigade now serves Castro's Cuba.

However, after a Bay of Pigs; after a Cuban missile crisis, which brought memories of the Paris Treaty of 1898 behind doors closed on

1 The U.N. Latin American Caucus held evening sessions attended only by Marxist delegates from L.A. Members of the Cuban delegation to the U.N. were among those presiding. It is my belief that certain subversive groups now operating in L.A. were organized during such sessions.-G. M.

Cuban representation and resulted in a legally acknowledged Kennedy-Khrushchev pact which strengthened the security of the communist satellite in Latin America; after 12 years of an exile futile in terms of dealing honorably with a nation always cordially ready to purchase our national dignity; after 12 years of being generally ignored by the American news media, persecuted and stifled at every attempt to liberate our nation, silenced by indifference to our cause, and purposely dispersed and disunited; after 12 years of suffering a campaign to degrade us spiritually and intellectually, psychologically and politically cripple us as a people, those conditions that would have enabled us to be the U.S.'s Venceremos Brigade present themselves as rather unfavorable.

We come here not to seek sympathy, but to establish a relationship of mutual respect. The times call for stale tactics to undergo revisions, one of which should be elementarily the legal recognition by this great Nation of the struggle of the smaller one against a common enemy. That is all we ask.

On behalf of ABDALA, a Cuban students' movement organized on January 28. nationally organized and formed by Cuban university students actively participating in the struggle against Castroism, inside Cuba and within the United States, we are here to express our opinion also of certain positions taken by Castro groups in the United States.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Would you describe for us what ABDALA is first? Mr. MARIN. Yes. ABDALA is a group of Cuban students, as I said before, has a number of 500 active participants nowadays throughout the United States, in Spain, in Latin America also. ABDALA has been very active in confrontations with the Venceremos Brigade, with pro-Castro spokesmen in the United States, has been active also in the defense of Cuban political prisoners in front of world organizations.

ABDALA, last March 13 of this year, took over the United Nations Security Council-16 members of our organization took over the Security Council, protesting, as we did before for 12 years by peaceful means, by letters, by picket signs, by personal talks with foreign diplomats, protesting against the deplorable conditions that our political prisoners suffer in Cuba, and not only protesting for our political prisoners: that happened to some 40.000 of them: we were also and we also will protest always against the totalitarian regime of Fidel Castro. Sixteen members were arrested that day and later were sentenced and fined.

Our activities have been concentrated in American universities. They began as early as 1968. We have debated publicly with members of the Communist Party, members of the Venceremos Brigade, members of the SDS, and we have successfully, in the majority of occasions been able to get the Cuban points of view, a view that still has hope in the future of Cuba and the people of Cuba and in the regime that will come into Cuba in the future. We spoke against these people because of our position against them.

I would like to read right now:

ABDALA, having no affiliation with or connection to the United States Government or any of its agencies, deplores the mercenary tactics of the Venceremos Brigade as part of the subversive effort to distort the truth about Cuba.

As Cubans, we view the Venceremos Brigade as a mouthpiece not of the Cuban people but of the police state that oppresses it. Considering that one Venceremos Brigade has cost Cuba up to $80,540 while her people suffer scarcity and deprivation, we deem it too high a price to pay for the oppressor's mouthpiece.

Having experienced the dire results of communist practice, we believe the enslavement it entails to be the wrong answer to any nation's problems. Those who seek to establish inhumanity as a way of life-be it the Venceremos Brigade. or any communist or totalitarian-oriented group-have our heart-felt disgust and condemnation.

We represent, as Cubans, the new generation of Cubans, and it is because of that fact, the fact that a substantial number of the people of Cuba happen to be below the age of 35, because a substantial number of Cubans in the United States, young Cuban students and workers, have given up much of their time, have given up even their personal liberties, to engage in the struggle against the totalitarian dictatorship of Premier Castro.

Mr. SCHULTZ. You mention you fight Cuban propaganda on the college campuses. Could you name for us what some of these papers or pamphlets might be that come to the college campuses?

Mr. MARIN. At every encounter with the mercenary forces of the Castroites on campuses, we have encountered propaganda, we encounter a film produced in Cuba, and we encounter orators that come to the campuses after spending a month in Cuba, of which 2 weeks they become isolated from the rest of the nation and the other 2 weeks they are toured around the country by the communist cadres. Some are bringing a distorted outlook of the Cuban situation.

One of the things that now are distributed in the United States are records made in Cuba and sold by these organizations. Also I believe that the Cuban mission to the United Nations has given films to these groups for free, and they, in turn, charge a contribution to be used by their organizations. I have seen collections of students trying to get the sufficient monetary facilities to travel to Cuba. I have also known of a number of cases-for instance, at the State University of Rutgers at Livingston-an immense degree of propaganda is distributed, and at the same time there is a program in the workings in which 16 credits will be given to a student who spends a semester in Cuba.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Are you familiar with the Cuban paper Granma? Mr. MARIN. Yes.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Would you characterize that for us if you have had an opportunity to read it?

Mr. MARIN. The international edition? It is directed mainly toand very psychologically done so to the aspirations, hopes, of young people in the United States and Europe, people who never had the opportunity to consider the history and the traditions of the Cuban national past and the present.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Has ABDALA, the organization which you founded, taken steps or prepared materials to combat the propaganda? Mr. MARIN. Yes.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Do you publish a paper?

Mr. MARIN. We do; we publish a paper called ABDALA and we have a distribution of 10,000 issues sent to universities. Also our members write and participate in their university newspapers also. And throughout the number of Cuban committees and throughout the number of Cuban organizations, both in cities or at campuses, we have a chance to bring our side of the story.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Do you have occasion, either personally or your organization, to interview people who have recently left Cuba so that you can put out the current information and write the facts, as you determine them, in your paper ABDALA?

Mr. MARIN. Yes. At the city of Miami right now, our delegation is conducting interviews with people who were coming until the liberty flights were stopped. I myself have interviewed, when I was in Miami, a number of Cubans.

I also was present at interviews done at the House of Liberty, which is called-and these people, by the way, I would like to mention that the people who have been coming from Cuba for a long time, contrary to what the propaganda insists, happen to be poor people, happen to be peasants, happen to be workers, happen to be the people who perhaps originally supported the regime but, after seeing the realities of how the communist system works and how a universal dictatorship operates, they became disenchanted.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Do you have personal knowledge that Castro sends agents to this country for the purpose of joining with those who would advocate violence or revolution in this country?

Mr. MARIN. Are you referring to Cuban agents?

Mr. SCHULTZ. Yes.

Mr. MARIN. I cannot prove it. However, it has been rumored a number of times by a number of people that Castro has sent people. In one instance I heard about a man who came from Cuba 2 years ago, entered the United States on a waiver refugee visa from Spain, and trained some people in the city of New York in urban guerrilla warfare and later defected to Cuba, hijacking a plane.

Mr. SCHULTZ. What do you see as the purpose of the propaganda coming to the college campuses and universities? What does it encourage them to do? What is the threat of this propaganda?

Mr. MARIN. It has to be measured according to the individual students. In many cases, I feel, a great majority of American students happen to believe that the Castroite regime does not truly represent the Cuban people. And they have seen the trials of writers and intellectuals, the purges among the party members; they have witnessed the persecution; they have heard our side of the story, also; they have seen our confrontations with the pro-Marxist elements that exist on

campuses.

However, there is always a minority, a minority that some of them could be well inspired and others not so well inspired that contribute to the agitation on campuses, and eventually, if the thing continues, they could contribute to a more or a bigger type of subversive activity within campuses.

Mr. SCHULTZ. Mr. Marin, you have told us that you have membership of approximately 500, and ABDALA has, as one of its purposes, the combating of propaganda material coming to the United States. What is your ultimate goal in ABDALA?

Mr. MARIN. I think the ultimate goal of not only ABDALA but the ultimate hope and ideal of every Cuban is to return back to a free Cuba, and toward that goal we work among students, among young workers, among writers and intellectuals and university professors, and we are trying to create and establish the Cuban national consciousness strong enough so we can face whatever the future will give us.

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