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Cristina Canales, a member of the board of the CANF, told 14ymedio that they have been collecting aid for a week.

“From the images that have come out of the affected areas and multiple comments from Cubans interested in collaborating, we decided to offer the chance for the community to also send aid through our organization,” said Canales.

“UNPACU has been posting videos of how to deliver this help. We want to be very clear as to where the money goes, and for that we will be posting regular updates on our website. We urge people to help through our website or to call the foundation’s offices,” she said.

From Spain, the news aggregator CiberCuba on behalf of one of its founding members, Luis Manuel Mazorra Fernandez, has posted a petition on the platform Change.org to ask Cuban Customs to eliminate the payment of fees for sending humanitarian aid to the island.

The action, called “Eliminate tariffs at Customs Cuba for sending Hurricane Matthew Relief” already has more than 4,100 signatures of the 5,000 needed, explained Mazorra by telephone from Valencia, following a precedent from 2008.

Cuban Customs levies a fee of about 20 CUC (roughly $20 US) for every kilogram entering the country.

“We want to use our media power to help the victims. There are many people who are suspicious about the use of the money. So we want to promote this petition for Cubans wishing to send food and clothing without tariffs, and in this way to help their fellow countrymen, “he said.

The platform has also made a collection of money to be sent to Caritas, which has begun a campaign to help the most impoverished areas of Guantanamo, along with other non-governmental organizations. But according to Mazorra, “It is much better, if instead of sending money, we can send products, because we already know that not much is resolved in Cuba with money.”

“The most important thing is to raise awareness, create noise for the Cuban government to wake up and react,” he said.

The founder of the digital site also referenced the censorship they have been subjected to in recent weeks by the Cuban government.

“It’s unfortunate because we have become one of the 10 most visited pages of Cuba. It has affected us a lot. In Cuba we had a brutal audience and maintained a neutral editorial line.”

According to Mazorra, what is happening is a brutal campaign against bloggers and official journalists. “We were accused of being financed by USAID (US Agency for International Development), a complete lie, because we have no relationship with any government or foreign agencies. We are funded with advertising on the site. This is a project of only 20 people in Spain, Miami and Cuba,” he argued.

“What did you do there. What did they say to you? What did they want you to do when you returned to Cuba? Who paid for your trip?” These are some of the questions that the Department of Technical Investigations (DTI) from the National Police have repeated to many of them in recent months.

The young people went for the joy of knowing another country and interacting with teenagers from other parts of the world, only to be cited by the police on their return to Cuba. In these meetings they were also warned that they should not talk to the press nor with anyone else about this matter.

According to the teens, the worst was not the interrogations, but being compelled to participate in political events to repudiate the US organization. In their own schools and amid the shouts of revolutionary reaffirmation, they constantly have their hearts in their mouths for fear of being singled out and repudiated.

The work of the DTI was not the end of it, also involved are the Secondary Students Federation (FEEM) and the Young Communists Union (UJC). In morning assemblies and meetings, the leadership of both organizations explained to the young people “the true intentions” of the summer courses and warned them they should reject World Learning if they don’t want to be considered counterrevolutionaries, and in the worst case, lose their chances for higher education and a career.

The president of the FEEM, Suzanne Santiesteban, went a step further and cataloged the rallies against World Learning as “acts of repudiation” in the style of those traditionally made against activists and opposition on the island. The young woman called for extending these actions to schools in Havana, and the “rest of the country.”

However, after the hubbub of public events they have also been subject to pressures in the classroom. “I tried to read what was written to show that there was nothing subversive in those classes, but they gave me a paper with things that I didn’t even know what they meant and forced me to read it out loud in front of everyone,” says one of the young people who traveled to the United States between 2015 and 2016.

“In this program we never talked politics and we were never forced to do anything we didn’t want to do,” he told 14ymedio .

World Learning organized English classes for the Cuban students, along with training in leadership skills such as public speaking, network building and skills a leader can use to connect with others and identify with the aspirations of their collective.

In a statement from the president of the organization, Carol Jenkins, sent to Martí Noticias, she stated that “The program was designed to help students form personal ties between high school students in the United States and Cuba. During the two years, fewer than 100 Cuban teenagers participated in the program in the United States, for one month. They were divided into groups and traveled to communities in Virginia, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, and Missouri.”

Jenkins added, “While they were in the communities that hosted them, they volunteered with young Americans in activities such as local food banks, cleaning parks in collaboration with recycling centers, and reading books to young children in youth centers.”

“What they taught us was how to use the internet and things we could do with the technology. But it was never anything violent or anything having to do with politics,” emphasizes the uneasy student.

Another teenager who traveled to the US spoke about the four weeks spent there. “The only thing I regret is not having had the opportunity to stay. Now I realize it was a mistake to come back here,” he says.

In addition to language classes they were told about the history of the United States and taken to historical sites in Washington and other states. They cooperated in the work and lived in the home of a family that welcomed them as a member.

“What’s subversive about that? I still don’t understand,” he says.

Another of his peers is more radical in his statements:

“Me? A traitor? Why? For going to some summer classes with other people from all over the world? Betrayal is making the whole country a prison. Betrayal is everyone who has collaborated on the absurd current system of my country.”

Another of the students involved in the projects recalls, with an almost childlike tone, that when he was in the United States they took him to eat in a restaurant with Cuban food and always considered his opinion.

“They were educated (the teachers). They treated us with a lot of respect, we engaged in participation games to get to know each other, and we became like siblings. They did anonymous surveys to find out what we thought about the program and took our opinions into account in adapting the program so we were more at ease. They hosted us in places and hotels comfortable for young people, they didn’t overwhelm us, and they were concerned about our wellbeing the whole time,” the young man said.

The Cuban government has undertaken a campaign almost like the one that demanded the “liberation” of the child rafter Elian Gonzalez, or the release of the five spies serving prison sentences in the United States. Classroom by classroom and school by school the young people have been called to participate in acts of repudiation and of “revolutionary reaffirmation.”

As a part of the government’s campaign, a special edition of the Roundtable TV show was held with Alejandro Sánchez as a guest, one of the youths who participated in the courses.

The young man explained on camera how the summer school was developed. According to Sánchez, the objective of the program is to foment civil society on the island (during the first session, in 2015, 34 young people participated). “Even many of us participating in the program expressed our concern about the growing politicization,” he said.

Sánchez detailed the “subversive” topics they were taught in the United States, including how democracy works, what life is like in that country and what human rights are.

During the first days of the program, which passed in a villa in Virginia, Sánchez considered it suspicious that, “We could not post pictures or videos of any of the activities we were doing in the program, under the pretext of safeguarding our security and avoiding repression once we returned to our country.”

For the Cuban Government the curriculum seeks to “capture” young people to fabricate “false leadership” and implement change on the island. The main accusation is that World Learning receives funding from USAID.

This newspaper tried to contact one of the US teachers who is a part of the course and who deals, in particular, with the graduates, but the teacher said he was not authorized to give statements to the press.

The trial was scheduled for last week, but for reasons that were not clarified by the Court of Ethics it was postponed. After the hearing, which will pass “a moral judgment on the performance of the journalist,” according to a source who spoke with this newspaper, the commission will have 10 days to issue a ruling.

According to UPEC’s on-line site, cubaperiodistas.cu, Luis Sexto, president of UPEC’s National Ethics Commission, traveled to the eastern province on 7 September to conduct an “in person” interview with Ramírez Pantoja. On that occasion, Sexto stated that despite the Provincial Ethical Commission’s having prepared a “substantial record” on the fired journalist, “the National Commission receives, analyzes, supervises, authorizes and modifies the measure taken at the provincial level.”

The president of the national commission said he was “encouraged by the spirit of justice inspired by UPEC and its Code of Ethics.” He also said he was traveling to Holguin “in a constructive spirit” and not as a “destroyer.”

Speaking to 14ymedio, Ramírez Pantoja said he did not want to make a political show of his case. However, his dismissal opened a Pandora’s Box and hardened the positions between those who defend swashbuckling journalism mentored by the Communist Party and information professionals seeking more freedoms.

Since the ruling, Aixa Hevia, UPEC’s vice president, accused Ramirez Pantoja of trying to position himself to move to the Miami media, and hinted at the possibility of expelling from the country Uruguayan journalist Fernando Ravsberg, a known sympathizer of the Cuban Revolution, who runs the alternative blog Letters from Cuba and who came to the defense of the fired professional.

The official press also lashed out in recent weeks against those media “who want to present themselves as alternatives,” in reference to the multitude of alternative sites to the official press that have arisen, especially on the initiative of young journalists who cannot find a place in the old areas controlled by the government, or who seek to augment their meager incomes. Iroel Sanchez, one of the journalists who staunchly defends communist orthodoxy, challenged professionals who in a “Cuban medium” paid homage to Che and shortly afterwards disrespected him “where they pay better.”

According to Ramirez Pantoja, the injustice committed against him led him to consider the need for a journalism that is more serious and committed to the needs of the people.

The journalist expressed his appreciation through social networks to people who have supported him in the process. His presence on social networks, however, has waned since he lost the privilege of connectivity that is granted to some official Cuban journalists.

During the two months of the impasse, waiting, the reporter has had to make a living through self-employment. He works “loading the Weekly Packet onto flash drives,” as confirmed by source close to him, and “he has also been working with a the company Codanza, on the production of the third North Atlantic Vladimer Malakhov Grand Prix Dance Contest.”

Ramirez Pantoja’s hearing takes place within a few hours of that of a complaint against another former official journalist, Maykel Gonzalez Vivero, who was expelled from Radio Sagua in Villa Clara “for collaborating with private media.”

If he loses in front of the National Ethics Commission, Ramirez Pantoja can appeal to the UPEC Congress or request an appeal to the Supreme Court.

*Translator’s note: Arguably the largest protest of all kinds by Cubans against their government is that of the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have left the country.