The Cuban Government Lashes Out Against Bolivia for Receiving Rosa Maria Paya

Jeanine Añez and Rosa María Payá meet in the Palacio Quemado together with other Cuban activists. (Jeanine Añez)

14ymedio biggerEFE, via 14ymedio, Havana, January 22, 2020 — (EFE). On Tuesday, the Cuban Government reproached the acting President of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, for receiving the Cuban dissident Rosa María Payá and described the provisional executive members of the Andean country as “rebels who massacred the people” and “militarized the country.”

“Employees of the U.S. Government are rushing to embrace and support the Bolivian coup plotters who massacred the people, militarized the country, violated the Constitution and are rapidly trying to reverse the social advances in order to favor the oligarchs,” the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, wrote on Twitter.

In responding to this same publication, the Director General for Latin America of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Eugenio Rodríguez, noted that “the de facto President of Bolivia enters the miniscule club of authorities from Latin America that receives, under pressure from the U.S., those included on the payroll of U.S.A.I.D. to overthrow the popular Government of Cuba.”

Rodríguez also said that U.S. Government “employees” born in Cuba or of Cuban origin “only manage to be received by the coup plotters”.

Áñez received on Monday in the Palacio Quemado de La Paz, the daughter of the deceased dissident, Oswaldo Payá, and the promoter of the project Cuba Decides, a platform for Cubans to decide in a plebiscite on the political system they want for the Island.

Other members of the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy also took part in the meeting, which was held according to the internal mandate to discuss “the situation of the Cuban people and the state of democracy in Latin America”.

“Thank you, Bolivia, for denouncing the criminal interference of Cuba in your country and for being the transition that inspires those of us who are still confronting dictatorships”, Payá wrote later on Twitter. She also met with Ex-President Jorge Quiroga.

Cuba and Bolivia were tightly allied when Evo Morales was President of Bolivia, but the foreign policy of the new President has been marked by distancing Bolivia from its former partner.

A short time after assuming power, when Morales resigned and left the country, the Interim Government broke off relations with Venezuela, and, although it presently maintains relations with Cuba, the ideological positions between La Paz and Havana are now antagonistic.

In November, Cuba withdrew for reasons of security more than 700 professionals who were providing services in Bolivia, mainly in the health sector.

The decision was the culmination of a discussion days earlier about the detention of several Cuban doctors by the Bolivian police. Initially they were accused of promoting protests in favor of Evo Morales, something that the Cuban Government vehemently denied.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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