A strange helicopter incident with the president’s grandchildren
YucaByte/14ymedio, Havana, September 23, 2024 — What Havana orders is fulfilled in Caracas. In all the rumors collected in August by 14ymedio and YucaByte, the suspicion is repeated that the Cuban regime designed the strategy to keep Nicolás Maduro in power, manipulate the election results and dismantle the opposition. It is a logical deduction from the fact that both governments have given numerous indications of what is at stake in Venezuela and its growing interdependence.
The approach has been, above all, several users speculate, in the military and counterintelligence sphere. The massive presence of agents from the Island in the electoral process, their advice to the Venezuelan police and the sending of detachments of Cuban special troops – the so-called “black berets” – appear in a large part of the complaints on social networks, although both regimes have denied any type of interference. The Cuban Foreign Ministry insisted that it “maintained the normal and planned flow of movements of the members of Cuban cooperation in Venezuela.”
Several social media profiles of aeronautics fans detected alleged irregular flights between both capitals in planes of the state-owned Conviasa and Cubana de Aviación. They contained soldiers and diplomats from the Island, alleged many users. The truth is that Havana had already planted, months before the elections, numerous agents, such as the journalist Pedro Jorge Velázquez, known as El Necio, who now lives in Caracas.
Several social media profiles of aeronautics fans detected alleged irregular flights between both capitals in planes of the state-owned Conviasa and Cubana de Aviación
In addition, a photo published by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla – and deleted shortly after – attested to the presence of agents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other entities of the Island in Caracas. Maduro himself was educated in Havana in 1987, as a student at Ñico López, the Communist Party School, a fact that many dusted off to show how long Venezuela has been in the sights of the Cuban regime.
Faced with the victory of the opposition – which Maduro did not recognize, unleashing a political crisis in the country – it was also a rumor that Havana considered Venezuela lost and that it had begun to withdraw its troops. Another hypothesis announced that Cuban troops were ready to act against the Venezuelan military if they decided to give their support to the opposition and turn their backs on Chavismo. Finally, the rumors reached the extreme of saying that Cuba had one last trick up its sleeve: to capture Maduro and hand him over to the U.S. Department of Justice, which offers a reward of 15 million dollars for him.
On the other side of the Caribbean Sea, rumors continue to circulate about the corruption of leaders and their rush to leave the island to live out their “retirement” in the United States or Europe. Those who stay – say the rumors – have found a new source of corruption in the private enterprises. Through deals under the table, the inspectors take a slice of the profits of these businesses.
The families of the upper elite have also offered something to talk about this month, after the report of a forced landing in Holguín of a helicopter from the State-owned Gaviota was reported. According to rumors, two of Raúl Castro’s grandchildren were on board.
On the other hand, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as El Cangrejo — The Crab — and also Castro’s grandson, is rumored to have assaulted Miguel Díaz-Canel and dislocated his right arm. At least this was the explanation that many gave to the sling that the president has been wearing for several weeks and which he did not explain.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as El Cangrejo — The Crab — and also Castro’s grandson, is rumored to have assaulted Miguel Díaz-Canel and dislocated his right arm
A fired former high-ranking official, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, appeared in a photo that circulated for several days. Dismissed in 2009 along with then Vice President Carlos Lage, and absent from public life, Pérez Roque continues to pull strings within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to the rumor, and has contacts with important private entrepreneurs. The photo, however, showed him on foot and in humble clothes in a corner of Havana.
The terrible state of Public Health continues to be the subject of multiple rumors. This month there was talk of the sale in pharmacies of expired medicines, which are also used in hospitals. Some users report that many of these drugs were available in the warehouses at least since 2021, judging by the expiration dates.
Rumors about the burning of garbage dumps – a new sign of protest against the inaction of the Communal Services – are also recurrent; the acts of violence, such as the discovery of the mutilated body of a 20-year-old; and the beatings, silenced by the regime, that its agents give to members of their relatives and acquaintances. It was the case of the Havana judge Josué Mayo, of whom photos circulated with the information that he had assaulted his secretary. For few users it was a surprise that his own court acquitted him.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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