Category: VIDEOS

Beating and Detaining Opponents at Oswaldo Payá’s Funeral / Hablemos Press

From YouTube notes:

The events occured around 9:30 in the morning this Tuesday in Peñón Street in the municipality of Cerro, near San Salvador Parish where the wake for Payá was being held.

“The police began to beat a group of opponents and forced them into a bus,” according to Calixto Ramón Martínez Áreas, a correspondent for our agency.

Among those detained was the holder of the Sakharov Prize,  Guillermo Fariñas Hernández.

Eliécer Ávila and Ricardo Alarcón Face Off / Eliécer Ávila


Video is 49 minutes long.
Note: If the video doesn’t work please put this link in your browser and it will appear:
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Notes: This video came to light in February 2008. It was filmed at Cuba’s University of Information Sciences (UCI), located in Boyeros, Havana, and is of a large meeting where students had an exchange with Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly. This version of the video omits portions of the event from both the beginning, as well as a few closing minutes at the end [only because we have been unable to find the entire video].

At the meeting, Eliecer Avila [see 1:18 in the video for the beginning of Eliecer’s comments/questions], a student, posed a series of questions to Mr. Alarcon, who then responded. Eliecer introduced himself as the leader of “The Technology and Politics Surveillance Project,” one of the specialties of “Operation Truth,” whose job it was to monitor the Internet and “combat whatever we find in this area,” that is to defend Cuba and its Revolution. He poses his questions from the perspective of needing to have more persuasive arguments:

I selected some issues – to say they are the only ones would perhaps be to lie to you – they form a part of the international debate. They are part of the debate of young Revolutionaries today, when we meet to discuss things in a group, to become more convinced, to commit ourselves more, and to develop more arguments. But they form a part of our own doubts, the doubts of our own conceptions.

As a result of this video coming to light Eliecer was ultimately expelled from the University, and began his own personal transformation from staunch defender of the Revolution to someone who appears as a blogger on this site. Eliecer’s recently launched blog is a series of videos, which will appear here as soon as they are subtitled.

Ricardo Alarcon (b. 1937, Havana), is still the President of the National Assembly, a post he has held since 1993. (Update — Alarcon no longer holds this post)

Video Testimonies of Repression During Pope Benedict’s Visit to Cuba

In this video people who were threatened, arrested, and imprisoned during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Cuba in April 2012, speak of their experiences. Father Jose Conrado says that he is going to ask the Nuncio to share these testimonies with the Pope, “Because we have the obligation to inform him and he has the obligation to know what goes on in Cuba.”

Father Conrado goes on to add: “But we won’t leave Cuba because this is our homeland. When so many people are so afraid, we are no longer afraid, it’s very important that in some way we have already started walking and we won’t stop.”

Here is a link to a letter from Father Conrado to Raul Castro.

Thanks to Chabeli Castillo for preparing the transcript for this video.

April 2012

Tracey Eaton’s Interview with Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antunez

Posted February 2012 — This video is 19 minutes long.

The blog posts of Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antunez, can be read here.

Tracey Eaton, a Florida-based journalist, has been traveling to Cuba for a long time, and more recently has been undertaking a series of interviews with Cubans ranging all across the ideological spectrum. He has now begun the work of subtitling these videos in English.

Here are links to Tracey’s blogs/sites: Along the Malecon; Cuba Money Project; Videos on Cuba Money Project; Video Transcripts; Along the Malecon News Updates.

Venezuela Now Has Imported Blackouts / Ciro Javier Diaz Penedo

This video is under two minutes long. The subtitles appear to have stopped working.  Here are the lyrics:

IMPORTED BLACKOUTS – An original song by Ciro Diaz

Ohhh…. Fucking up a little island is nothing
Anyone can fuck up a little island
With few natural resources it was easy, to drown it in misery
But Fidel Castro loves the hardest efforts
That’s why he made friends with Chavez
To see if he could fuck up Venezuela

It looked like it would be hard
Because every time they dug a hole
They found every imaginable mineral
And the oil never stopped gushing

Only a president truly idiotic
Would allow his plans to embrace
The foolish ideas of Fidel and Cuban counter-intelligence.
And just like that ten years later, the job seems to be completed

Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, our experience was useless to them
Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, if they don’t hurry they will be left with nothing.