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Counter-revolutionary terrorist Luís Posada Carriles dead

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the death of Luís Posada Carriles, a US-sponsored terrorist responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, represents not the closure of a criminal case but the exposure of a deeper political truth: that the United States government systematically protects and rewards those who carry out violence against revolutionary movements, so long as that violence serves imperialist ends. Posada Carriles died free, in Florida, never having faced justice — and that impunity, the article insists, is not a failure of the system but its intended function.

The central claim is that counter-revolutionary terrorism is not an aberration within US foreign policy but a consistent instrument of it. Posada Carriles was not a rogue actor; he was a trained CIA operative, a key figure in the Iran-Contra network, and a beneficiary of decades of official protection. His death without prosecution is therefore not a legal anomaly but a political verdict.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in the Marxist theory of the state — specifically, the understanding that the bourgeois state, in its imperialist form, does not merely tolerate violence against revolutionary movements but actively organises and shelters it. The article draws on the Leninist tradition of analysing imperialism as a system that requires counter-revolutionary violence to maintain the global division of labour and the extraction of surplus value from the periphery.

There is also an implicit reliance on the concept of the permanent counter-revolution — the idea that the capitalist class, having defeated the possibility of socialist transformation in the core, devotes enormous resources to preventing its emergence anywhere else. Posada Carriles is presented as a concrete embodiment of this logic: a man whose crimes were not incidental to US policy but integral to it.

The article sits within the Trotskyist tradition's insistence on the centrality of anti-imperialist struggle and the exposure of the "democratic" facade of imperialist states. It rejects any notion that the US legal system could deliver justice in such cases, because the state itself is the guarantor of the property relations that counter-revolutionary violence defends.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in May 2018, at a moment when the Trump administration was escalating its hostility toward Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The death of Posada Carriles coincided with a broader offensive by the US against left-wing governments in Latin America, including the reimposition of the Helms-Burton Act's Title III and the intensification of sanctions.

The article implicitly connects Posada Carriles' impunity to the wider pattern of US support for right-wing violence in the region: the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, the destabilisation of Bolivia under Evo Morales, and the ongoing economic war against Cuba. It argues that the same state that protected Posada Carriles is the same state that funds opposition groups, imposes blockades, and threatens military intervention.

The piece also speaks to the broader conjuncture of the "war on terror" — a framework the US used to justify invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq while simultaneously harbouring a man who bombed a civilian airliner. This hypocrisy is not incidental, the article suggests, but structural: the US defines terrorism not by the act but by the political orientation of the target.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is itself a short notice linking to a longer 2007 piece by Alan Woods, which provides a more detailed account of Posada Carriles' career and the political context of his release. That earlier article is the primary continuation of the argument.

The broader corpus of In Defence of Marxism contains extensive analysis of US imperialism in Latin America, including articles on the Cuban Revolution, the Bolivarian process in Venezuela, and the role of the Organisation of American States. Against the Stream episodes have covered the history of CIA operations in Latin America, the School of the Americas, and the ongoing blockade of Cuba.

The argument also connects to Marxist analyses of the "democratic" imperialist state — a theme developed in Leon Trotsky's writings on the betrayal of the Spanish Revolution and in more recent IDOM pieces on the extradition of Assange and the prosecution of Julian Assange.

Connections

  • Alan Woods, "Posada Carriles: The terrorist and his masters" (2007) — the primary companion piece, providing the full historical account.
  • Leon Trotsky, "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" — for the theoretical framework on the relationship between imperialism and counter-revolution.
  • Vladimir Lenin, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" — for the analysis of the export of capital and the necessity of political control over the periphery.
  • IDOM articles on the Cuban Revolution and the blockade — for the ongoing context of US aggression against Cuba.
  • IDOM articles on the 2002 Venezuelan coup — for a parallel case of US-sponsored counter-revolutionary violence.

Key Quotes

  1. "Posada Carriles was a counter-revolutionary terrorist, a CIA agent, and a murderer. He died in Florida, a free man, protected by the US government."

  2. "The US government has always used terrorism as a weapon against revolutionary movements that threaten its interests. Posada Carriles was one of its most faithful servants."

  3. "The fact that he died without facing justice is not a failure of the US legal system. It is a demonstration of the class nature of that system."

  4. "The same government that wages a 'war on terror' around the world gave shelter to a man who bombed a civilian airliner, killing 73 people."

  5. "Posada Carriles was not an isolated individual. He was part of a network of counter-revolutionary terrorists that the CIA has cultivated for decades."

  6. "The Cuban people have not forgotten the 73 victims of the bombing of Cubana Flight 455. They know that the real terrorist is not the individual who planted the bomb, but the system that trained, funded, and protected him."