No Quality of Mercy

It is possible that Cuban Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez will be spared from a firing squad by the his old friend and leader, Fidel Castro, but it would be out of character for the Cuban dictator. Castro has decided that his island’s future lies in the most rigid and unforgiving Stalinist Communism, including purges and show trials for those unfortunate apparatchiks who stray from the party line.

Straying from the line may well be what doomed Ochoa and three other Cuban army officers who were convicted in televised trials last week of smuggling drugs and other crimes. In publicly admitting that high-level government officials were involved in drug smuggling, the Castro regime contradicts a long-standing denial of drug shipments through Cuba.

Few ever believed that, and some of his fiercest critics, including officials in the U.S. government, are convinced not only that Cuban officials are involved in drug trade, but that Castro himself has a hand in it. There is no real evidence that Castro is directly involved, but it strains credulity that high-ranking Cuban military officers could engage in illegal activities without the jefe maximo of that tightly controlled island knowing something about it. So there must be more to this case than a sudden decision by Castro to punish drug traffickers.

The Ochoa trial may be as much political as criminal. Ochoa is not just any general. He is a veteran of the Cuban revolution and commanded troops for Castro in Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua. Ochoa may have been Cuba’s most popular man in uniform next to Castro. And that may have been why Castro and his heir-apparent, brother Raul Castro, saw Ochoa as a threat.

Ochoa was educated in the Soviet Union, and has close ties there. He was one of the few Cubans with enough prestige and power to disagree with Castro on the merits of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms and the need for similar experiments in Cuba. Castro has made it very clear he wants no perestroika and glasnost on his island, and putting a popular and respected leader like Ochoa up against the wall may be one way of reminding everybody in Cuba who’s in charge. That’s the way Josef Stalin did it during the darkest days of Soviet history.