The use of drug proceeds to prop up the Cuban regime and to underwrite Communist movements in Latin America goes back to 1960, according to ‘Red Cocaine’, a 1990 book, based mainly on testimony given by Jan Šejna, a major general in Communist Czechoslovakia during the Cold War and the second-highest-ranking officer to ever defect from the Communist Bloc to the US, who became a key source for American intelligence.

As Schotgues explains in the film:

According to Šejna, in the 1950s, the Soviet Union adopted the strategy of using drug trafficking and crime and corruption networks against so-called enemy countries, a strategy that dictator, Mao Zedong had also used in China. The São Paulo forum and Brazilian political agents could also be linked to this strategy.

Historically, the revolutionary value of drugs is twofold: One, you wither away…you degrade the morality of a society; Two, you create people who are willing to break the laws of that society and if you have people who are willing to break the laws of that society you then have people who are willing to do things that are unethical for money. Those are the types of people who can be hired, who can be recruited to be part of a revolutionary network or system.

Soviets mostly used the drug culture and those people for its attempted revolutions in the United States. The Chinese Communist Party’s done the same thing. When you get into Latin America, again ‘Red Cocaine’ talks about how they work for Cuba and so on, like that and Cuba being kind of the heart of the drug trade managing, in the US. Most of its operations were using spies and so on.

According to Šejna, Czechoslovakia’s secret service would send agents to 17 countries, to infiltrate various criminal factions. This included Latin America and Brazil. Terrorism would be incorporated into the drug trade, to further destabilize the targeted nations.

This was part of what the Soviets called “Basic Updated Revolutionary Strategy”.

Cuba entered the Soviet Bloc’s operation in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution. In 1966 at the Tricontinental Conference, it was decided Cuba would infiltrate agents in all operations in Latin America.

The Soviet strategy, coming from China and executed mainly through Cuba in the region was divided into five stages:

First, select and train revolutionary leaders as civil and military/intelligence covers;

The second step of the strategy was to train terrorists. This happened in disguise. Using a supposed struggle for liberation from “colonial powers” as a pretext, this guise of “National Liberation” was used to make intelligence operations look like movements of patriots fighting for their countries…

Cuba was one of several countries with training centers to teach crime and drug trafficking to activists, according to Šejna. In official declassified documents, the Brazilian Army confirms that the Cuban Communist Party provided guerrilla training to at least 202 Brazilian left-wing activists between 1965 and the 1971…

The third stage of the plan was international drug trafficking. Drug trafficking worked as a weapon in the Revolutionary War against the so-called “Bourgeoisie societies” and also recruited agents of inference around the world through crime. Fidel and Raúl Castro were described as great enthusiasts of this strategy.

Šejna said he had direct knowledge that by the mid-1960s, operations had been established in Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Chile in the US, Canada, Brazil and others.

The fourth stage was infiltrating existing mafias and criminal organizations and establishing criminal unions controlled by the Soviet Bloc and the Communist movement.

Intelligence collection was a priority, with agents both inside the state and in organized crime, information would be gathered for blackmail operations against important targets in favor of the Communist movement.

Data was collected from both drug users and dealers. This made it possible to detect and recruit agents and offered a weapon to damage the reputation of people and organizations opposed to Soviet interests.

Šejna claims that by the end of the 1960s, the Soviets had information on corruption from more than 10,000 influential people in Latin America. This happened alongside the operations of the entire espionage apparatus of the Communist movement.

Former archivist in the Soviet Secret Service, Vasili Mitrokhin came from Russia to England in 1992. He copied and kept secret service documents.

The documents showed that former president of Argentina, Isabelita Perón was a Soviet confidential contact. Her finance minister was, as well.

In Brazil, at least one Diplomat was an agent. Soviet documents named Brazil as one of the five priority targets for operations in Latin America after 1974.

The fifth and final stage of the Soviet plan carried out through Cuba, as reported by Jan Šejna was to plan and prepare sabotage on a worldwide scale…

In 1987, three years before the São Paulo Forum came into being, a defector from the government of Nicaragua, a country run by members of The Forum said that the regime was still using drugs against the US. In his words, it is a form of warfare and it also brings profit.

Two Cuban military defectors confirmed that this was still occurring until at least the late 1980s, when they defected.

In 1989, Colombian drug traffickers pleaded guilty with video evidence of how the Cuban dictatorship aided drug trafficking.

They said Fidel Castro even got a fee. This is the man who soon after created the São Paulo Forum, alongside Lula.

If what Šejna has said is true – and there’s wide evidence to support it is – to this day, thousands or more have had their lives and families destroyed by drugs and violent crimes linked to terrorist groups, without even knowing that this was, itself the goal; part of the revolutionary methods of the hard left in Latin America and the international Communist movement.

Šejna said that the strategy began to operate effectively in 1960. The FARC began to act formally in 1964, guaranteeing sanctuaries for illicit activities and inserting Colombia into the drug trade on an industrial scale…

From the point Šejna claims this plan started, entire nations seem to have become hostage to systematic corruption networks, not that different from those conceived in the referred Communist strategy…

[Trevor Loudon speaking]: “It’s a perfect tool for revolution, because revolution is about destroying the existing social order, so that a new one may be imposed. So it’s no surprise the Communists would be heavily involved in the drug trade. It’s basically at the top levels, if your government is heavily corrupted and dependent on Narco money, they’re not going to be fighting Communism.

“You know, they’re getting their drugs from the Communists they are going to roll over to the Communists, they’re going to make as much money as they can, then hopefully get out of the country before the Revolution. That’s what they’ll try and do. So, it corrupts business, politicians, media figures – and those who are not corrupted are too scared to stand against it, so there’s no opposition. Nobody’s going to stand against these people, because they’ll kill you or they’ll kill your family, so these whole countries are taken over and they are basically now tools of the Communists.

“Mexico is now basically a tool of the Communist movement, which is why it’s allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to go through its country every day to flood the American Border, because they take drugs, they bring in terrorists and it’s part of the Revolution to destabilize America.

“So Lula and the São Paulo Forum were smart, you know? We will soften the image, we’ll not emphasize Communism, we’ll emphasize Social-Democracy an we will unite every party of the left that we can, from hardcore Communists to Social Democrat. We’ll run on a moderate, Social-Democratic program but we will bring our people into power, we all get money from the State, we will indoctrinate our children, we will control our media, we will make slow constitutional changes to basically make it harder and harder for conservatives to win and to embed our power in the main cities across Latin America and also into the agricultural areas through the ‘landless’ movements and and that kind of thing.

“So, it’s been a very slow process and it’s never been under the Communist flag, per se. It’s always been under the Social Democratic flag, the non-ideological left: ‘We’re opposed to the conservatives, we don’t like those authoritarian writers, we’re moderates, we just want to change our country to the better and we’ll work with the unions, we’ll work with elements of the churches and we will just gradually have progress in our countries.’

“But it’s always been a guise. It’s always been really under the Communist Banner. The São Paulo Forum doesn’t have a hammer and sickle in its symbol. It doesn’t fly the Communist flag overtly but it was put together by Fidel Castro and Lula da Silva and it has Communist parties in its ranks. But that’s never emphasized. It’s just the ‘social change’, the ‘equity’, the ‘fairness’ that is emphasized. Communism is being sold under a Socialist or a Social Democratic banner.

“And the goal is to work political power, then use the money of the State and the constitutional powers of the State to make things harder and harder for your enemy [conservatives] and easier and easier for you, to the point that they have enough power they can openly declare themselves Communists. By that time, it’s too late.

“And that’s the game for Brazil. That’s the game for Chile. Most people in Chile still do not understand they’ve elected Communist government there, even though there are Communist ministers, even though I can look at it and very clearly see a Communist government, you could look at it and see a Communist government but the average Chilean, they have no idea, because the media will not tell them.”