Interviews with Carlos Alberto Montaner

International support for the democrats who are struggling on behalf of freedom is a moral obligation on the part of democracies. In Cuba’s case, there’s even an ideological justification; the Cuban government for 52 years now has proclaimed the right to revolutionary internationalism. This means that they claim that the Cuban dictatorship has the right to help communist revolutionaries anywhere in the world by sending their armies, training them, giving them money and turning them into instruments for the fight. Now, if they believe in the legitimacy of revolutionary internationalism, they have to accept the legitimacy of democratic internationalism, that democratic nations help democratic movements in places where they suffer the hardships of dictatorships.

But there’s a difference. Democracies don’t provide violent assistance. Rather, what they want is to assist in broadcasting information, so that people are familiar with things, so that they can have clear ideas. And what they do is to assist on the intellectual and moral level, on the level of international legitimacy. But this right to democratic internationalism must of course be constantly exercised, and the U.S. does well in helping democratic opposition forces wherever they’re able to help. In the same way as when the U.S. received the help of those who wanted to fight against British Imperialism within the U.S., basically France and Spain.

Carlos Alberto Montaner is an exiled Cuban author and journalist. He was born in Havana in 1943. Soon after the revolution of 1959, he was imprisoned by the Castro regime on charges of participating in terrorist attacks and working with the CIA. Montaner, who was 16 years old at the time, emphatically denied the charges. He later escaped from prison and from Cuba.

In the 1960s, Montaner began writing a weekly column that was soon appearing in almost every Latin American country. In 1970, he moved to Madrid and began writing works of fiction and nonfiction. In 1972 he established a publishing house, Editorial Playor. His most widely acclaimed books include “Informe Secreto Sobre la Revolución Cubana,” published in 1975; “200 Años de Gringos,” published in 1976 on the occasion of the bicentennial of the United States and analyzing the reasons the United States has developed differently than Latin American countries; and “Fidel Castro y la Revolución Cubana” (1984).

It has been estimated that 6 million people now read his weekly columns, and he has lectured frequently throughout the hemisphere about the defense of liberty, economic development, and the important role of culture in the evolution of societies. He is also a regular commentator on CNN’s Spanish-language broadcasts.