Category: Agustin Valentin Lopez Canino

Update on Arrest of Yoani Sanchez, Reinaldo Escobar, Agustin Lopez (and others?) in Bayamo

Police blockades outside the court. Source: EFE

Site manager’s note: The following excerpts are translated from an article in Cubaencuentro.  In addition, an official government blogger reported that Yoani traveled to Bayamo intending to disrupt and put on a “media show” at the trial of Angel Carromero, who was driving the car in which Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were killed.

For those who are unaware, Yoani is a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Pais, and was intending to cover the trial. Oswaldo Paya’s children also traveled to Bayamo, and according to tweets from Rosa Paya, his daughter, they have been prevented from attending the trial. Also note, Agustin Lopez has been reported in some tweets to be Agustin “Diaz.” Finally, the Paya and the Cepero families have specifically stated that they do not hold Angel Carromero responsible for the car crash.

From Cubaencuentro:

The well-known Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez and her husband, thejournalist Reinaldo Escobar, among other activitists, have been arrested this Thursday in Bayama, reported the official journalist Garcia Ginarte and it has been confirmed in Twitter by several sources on the Island.

…Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo on his account on the social network, who says he received the information from Teo, Sanchez and Escobar’s son. According to what Teo Escobar told the blogger, the activists were detained at 6:00 in the afternoon and were not permitted to make telephone calls until 3:00 in the morning, the time when his parents called him to report their arrest.

5 October 2012

 

Uniforms Against Illegality / Agustín Valentín López Canino

The procession starts again after a few minutes of resistance under the burning sun of the nation, Rodiles, Aleago, Guillermo and others already on their way to the jails. The line of vehicles follows the avenue in Cerro crossing a cordon of police and agents form the former G-2 that divide the crowd to let them pass, or stop them: who knows, the balcony of a house visible where Peñón Street intersects the Avenue is full of people.

One of those in the blue uniforms with white stars on his shoulder pushes someone who crouches like a frightened sheep. The hearse has disappeared and an anarchic automotive Formula One chase begins. Presumably the driver of the hearse has been given the order to minimize the travel time as much as possible, under threat of social exclusion with the accusation of being a mercenary in the pay of a foreign power, this when they haven’t swapped him out for gunman starved of dignity.

The caravan consists of various cars that gun their engines in hopes of not being the last of the Mohicans. On 23rd Avenue at the top of 14th Street, I think, a Soviet-made Moscovich car dares to interrupt the regular traffic to make way for the procession, thus assuming the negligent ethics and responsibility of the motorized blue uniforms. The entrance to the cemetery was protected or attacked by restless soldiers ordered to continue ahead, finally the hearse appears again having won the last stage of the Revolution: the fear of the dead.

A nun takes a large photo of the leader for democracy and human rights and carries it on the front of the hearse, while a chain of bodies holding hands extends to both sides of the nun. The torrid sun embraces the skulls devouring the shadows and the skin mourns its compassionate entelechy in the spoils of time, we go to the banks of a sacred river of crystalline waters.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he maketh me lie down in green pastures. 23rd Psalm

The funeral march begins at the cemetery chapel.

17 August 2012

Cardinals or Soldiers? / Agustín Valentín López Canino

Chief Hatuey being burnt at the stake. From historyofcuba.com

What ranks in the military hierarchy would correspond to the equivalent of Cardinal? Commander of the Revolution? General? Colonel of State Security? Minister of Defense? Deputy Chief of Army? Could he have won the last ascent for the sacrilegious statements about the 13 unhappy people, with their lives ruined because of the great Revolution; those who entered the Church in supplication for their rights, and who were locked behind bars, by the miserable and abominable behavior of the State.

Mercy, Lord, mercy, Lord … ?!

The Cardinal shameless already exceeds the Inquisition. There have been hundreds of years of evolution. The spit of a Cardinal on the poor and humble, in these times because of the human condition, is to commit the same outrage as judges of the Inquisition.

And many who conceived the Catholic God today prefer to be burned at the stake like the Indian Hatuey: “If you Spanish are going to heaven, I want to go to hell.” Today the sensitive Indian rebel would say: “If you Cardinals go to heaven, hell would be a paradise.”

May God forgive them and forgive me because I can not forgive them. My holiness is not so great, while my eye is on my Cubans within and at the bottom, forced by cardinals with military ranks and Communist ideologies to lose salvation.

“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

30 April 2012