TV Reviews : ‘Cuba and Cocaine’ a Devastating Portrait

Cuba, whose very island-ness and slender geographical shape mirrors its isolation from the current world historical changes, is in big trouble. Externally, its supply line from the Soviet Union is being choked off, not by the United States, but by the U.S.S.R.’s economic collapse. Internally, state security repression is, according to some reports, at an all-time high. As long-time Cuba anaylsts Wayne S. Smith and Tad Szulc reported in The Times last week, we may be seeing the opening stages of a Cuban civil war.

Most profoundly, the very soul of Fidel Castro’s communist ideal may be dying. No report has more devastatingly suggested this than “Frontline’s” investigation, “Cuba and Cocaine” (at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15, and 10 on Channel 50).

From the earliest days of Castro’s revolution, the state-approved value system promoted literacy, social welfare, self-sufficiency and clean living--all in stark contrast to the hedonism of the previous Fulgencio Batista dictatorship.

Though it fails to sufficiently provide this historical context, producer Stephanie Tepper’s and William Cran’s program powerfully claims that Castro’s clean Cuba became seriously smudged in the ‘80s, during the rise of Colombia-U.S. cocaine trafficking. Whereas other Caribbean enclaves provide at best risky haven for drug drop-offs, deliveries and transfers, Cuba could guarantee land, sea and air military protection. The payoffs provide the government with needed funds, and the drugs can only harm the hated United States.

“Cuba and Cocaine” is not the stuff of right-wing Castro-bashing. Tepper and Cran have meticulously drawn a web of connections reaching up to Cuba’s highest ranks, all with the help of former high officials now in exile. Though one might suspect the credibility of convicted drug smugglers’ tales of dealings with the Cuban government, their accounts are too detailed and too frequently corroborated to be dismissed.

The conviction for drug smuggling and execution meted out to Col. Tony de la Guardia, one of Castro’s closest friends and aides, is a chilling centerpiece to this story: Not only are there the parallels to the alleged drug aspects of our own Contragate scandal, but De la Guardia was apparently punished by men just as involved as he in the drug policy. Batista would have recognized this kind of corruption.