Official websites accuse the head of the US Embassy of “organizing subversive activity” in his meetings with the opposition and religious leaders.
14ymedio, Madrid, 12 March 2025 — When Mike Hammer, the US envoy in Cuba, replaced Benjamin Ziff in November 2024, the official press ignored the news. Career diplomat, with more than 35 years of experience in Africa and Latin America, his instructions were to be cautious. That arrangement blew up in December, when Washington’s top representative on the Island began a round of visits to opponents. That was the first collision, and the second one came this week.
On that occasion, an article in Razones de Cuba, taken up by Cubadebate, regretted Hammer’s meeting with opponents Berta Soler and Martha Beatriz Roque, described as “two worn out figures of the Cuban counterrevolution.” The report mentioned other previous meetings of US politicians with dissidents to plan the regime’s “overthrow.” “The new United States representative has gone down the wrong path, because nothing good can come from that threat,” it warned.
Far from stopping, Hammer’s agenda has continued, and the regime has played hardball again. This Tuesday, Cubadebate once again echoed another text from Razones de Cuba entitled “Weaving the Anti-Cuban network: Hammer’s Agenda.” It now says that Hammer’s hyperactive agenda is “a shameless step back to the time when counterrevolutionary groups were promoted from the United States.”
Hammer’s hyperactive agenda is “a shameless step back to the time when counterrevolutionary groups were promoted from the United States”
The text reviews the trajectory of the diplomat, saying he was very active in Africa, among other reasons for having facilitated the end of the conflict in Ethiopia and attempting to pacify Sudan. From the regime’s point of view, his interventions have served to destabilize the continent, and it accuses him of hiding crimes against humanity and promoting the start of the Sudanese civil war.
As for his presence in Cuba, the media criticizes Hammer for having his first meeting with the ambassador of the Czech Republic on the Island, a country they consider a promoter of actions against Cuba from the European Union (EU). Other meetings that have bothered the regime are Hammer’s meeting with the head of the US Southern Command, which “confirms the activation of a much more active and visible big-stick policy,” and the visit to the offices of Radio and TV Martí, financed by the Government it represents.
The three meetings, the article underlines, indicate the three axes of interest to Washington: “political parties,” including the religious element, support for “regime-change operatives from civil society movements” and “the alternative press media.”
In the field of the divine, the regime has another reproach: Hammer’s visit to the Basilica of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre “for the symbolism that she entails.” There is no reason, they insist, that Cuba should be on the US list of countries that violate religious freedom, and the proof is that the institutions themselves reject it. There is no lack of reason here in the argument: religion is free as long as it is subject to the Revolution.
The list of Hammer’s meetings that bother the regime is very extensive. The diplomat has engaged in an intense activity, promoted on social networks with the open intention of showing his support. Not a single one seems to save him from the criticisms. There is José Daniel Ferrer, whom he met at his home in Santiago de Cuba two weeks after his release from prison, and whose organization, the Patriotic Union of Cuba, is “discredited within Cuban society,” but surviving “thanks to those direct financings” to make believe that there is “organized and active opposition.”
Félix Navarro and Oscar Elías Biscet are others who are wronged by the official media and, by extension, the group of the 75 of the Black Spring, whom the text describes as “mercenaries who were denounced and prosecuted in 2003 for maintaining collaboration with the US secret services and terrorist groups based in Miami.”
The group of 75 of the Black Spring are described as “mercenaries who were denounced and prosecuted in 2003 for maintaining collaboration with the US secret services and terrorist groups based in Miami”
The same treatment is dispensed to the Ladies in White, who are labeled a movement that tries to emulate the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo [in Argentina] “when in Cuba they are neither tortured nor murdered.” It is particularly annoying – judging by the article – that they wear a color “associated with peace and purity,” as became clear when Sonia Álvarez, wife of Félix Navarro and mother of the political prisoner Sayli, was forbidden to visit her daughter in prison dressed in white. The article continues with particular cynicism about the group of women: “When they are prepared [to march], they say ’Cameras, action!’ and, coincidentally, CNN, EFE and other ’free media’ are there.”
Finally, the article dedicates a large section to the exiles installed in Madrid, “another of his favorites.” Hammer, who visited the Spanish capital in mid-February, had a meeting in which there were, among others, Yanelis Núñez, from the feminist platform Alas Tensas; Iliana Hernández and Luz Escobar, independent journalists; and Angélica Garrido, former political prisoner.
For all of them, another unfriendly definition is used: “new generation of ’change operatives’.” In addition, the text takes advantage of the recent cut in funds from the Agency for International Development (Usaid) and the National Foundation for Democracy (NED) that has put many of these projects in check, and it rejoices in calling them “’freely dependent’ on US government subsidies.”
Magdiel Jorge Castro, “expelled from Bolivia for violating the laws of the Andean country due to subversive activities” is also on the list, as are Amelia Calzadilla, “a media figure who intended to represent the alleged struggle of a Cuban mother and shortly after posting went to pieces,” and Anet Hernández, “activist of the intellectuals,” all of them supposedly led by Carolina Barrero, who has no qualifiers.
“Mike Hammer advances with his agenda under the spotlight of American diplomacy, as if the script of the Cold War had found a new protagonist,” the article continues, “but he will not manage to twist the course assumed by a people who, despite the pressures, continue to resist, immersed in the construction of a socialist project and a sovereign society.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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