Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s past with a pro-Cuba communist group is raising eyebrows anew. Decades ago, Bass led the Venceremos Brigade (VB), a far-left outfit cozy with Cuba’s communist revolution. Now, it’s tangled in a web of Marxist groups tied to anti-American protests, as Just the News reports.
Bass, a key VB member in the 1970s, made eight trips to Cuba, starting with the group’s 1973 contingent. The VB, founded in 1969 by radicals including members of the Students for a Democratic Society, claimed to foster solidarity with Cuba’s revolution. Its real aim, per FBI reports, was to train Americans in guerrilla tactics while posing as sugar cane harvesters.
A 1973 FBI document pegged Bass as a brigade leader peddling Cuban propaganda. She called the VB an “educational project” for learning about Cuban society through construction work. That’s a tough sell when Cuban intelligence, the DGI, was pulling the strings, per a 1976 FBI report.
The VB wasn’t just a fan club for Fidel Castro. U.S. intelligence and Cuban defectors confirmed that the DGI had co-opted it to recruit Americans for sensitive U.S. government roles. A 1975 Senate report branded the VB a dangerous foreign infiltration operation.
David Atlee Phillips, a former CIA chief, wrote in 1982 that the VB was a covert political success for Cuba. Between 1969 and 1977, 2,500 Americans visited Cuba under VB’s banner, encouraged to undermine their society. Bass’s claim of no military training doesn’t square with reports of select VB members learning explosives.
Bass insisted to the Los Angeles Times in 1983 that “no one” met Cuban military or trained militarily. Yet, a 1976 FBI report noted some VB members received guerrilla warfare training if deemed safe from U.S. intelligence. The denial from Bass feels like a dodge when the FBI and CIA were sounding alarms.
The VB rubbed shoulders with the Weather Underground, a communist-inspired terrorist group behind bombings at the Capitol and Pentagon. The FBI linked the Weather Underground to planning VB trips with Cuban government backing. Bass’s involvement with such a network isn’t exactly a resume highlight.
By the 1970s, the VB’s goals included promoting anti-imperialist consciousness, per a 1971 internal document. A Louisiana deputy sheriff who infiltrated the group in 1972 testified that VB sought Marxist-Leninists to push communism in America. Bass’s leadership role, noted in a 1975 Daily World article, puts her at the heart of this push.
In 2016, Bass mourned Castro’s death, calling him “Comandante en Jefe” and offering condolences to Cuba. She later told NBC’s Chuck Todd in 2020 it was a “lesson learned” and wouldn’t happen again. That backtrack doesn’t erase her cozy words for a dictator.
Today, the VB is fiscally sponsored by The People’s Forum, a Manhattan-based communist group tied to Marxist businessman Neville Singham. The People’s Forum has promoted VB events, like a 2019 film screening to fund VB’s 50th trip to Cuba. This isn’t ancient history -- it’s an active network.
Singham’s network includes the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist group organizing anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. The PSL and VB rallied together in 2021 and 2022 against U.S. policies on Cuba. These groups aren’t just chanting—they’re disrupting, sometimes violently.
The VB’s website boasts that 10,000 Americans, including elected officials, have joined its Cuba trips over 50 years. It calls itself a “grassroots” effort needing “comrades” to keep up its anti-imperialist work. That’s code for pushing a radical agenda under a nonprofit veneer.
Recent Los Angeles protests, some turning violent, trace back to Singham-linked groups like the PSL. President Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to restore order, a move Bass called “unwarranted” to PBS, claiming it would provoke more unrest. Her sympathy for protesters aligns with her radical roots.
Bass’s past nearly cost her a spot as Biden’s 2020 running mate, with the New York Times citing her “Castro-era baggage.” She told NBC in 2020 that she doesn’t back Castro’s brutal regime now, admitting Cuba lacks freedoms. Too little, too late for someone who spent years championing his cause.
Elected mayor in 2022, Bass can’t escape her VB legacy. Her ties to a Cuban intelligence-linked, Marxist-funded network fueling protests demand scrutiny. Los Angeles deserves a leader unburdened by such a radical past.
