After the Congress of Honduras, according to the validity of its statutes, decided to impeach former president Manuel Zelaya, the mafia of leftist Latin American presidents have attacked from all sides the new elected government of Porfirio Lobo, expressing their support for former president Zelaya, who took his dismissal as a coup.
The late Hugo Chavez was the one who led the crusade in his favor. Since that historic event, the “wound has not healed” and, once the new president has committed to give continuity to Democracy in his nation — Democracy which was reaffirmed during last presidential election when Hondurans did not gave their vote to Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the former president’s wife, and elected instead the agricultural entrepreneur Porfirio Lobo — these pro-Castro governments have joined efforts to plot and make it difficult the advancement of his plans for social, political and economic development.
They have done the same thing against Paraguay and, more subtly, against Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, Colombia and Chile. Even though some of these governments voice a leftist speech, they do not align with such extreme attitude as of the aforementioned mafia, who do share their strategies from an ideological model established by Cuba, the most trenchant one being the use of doctors, technicians and personnel from several professions who are sent to “international missions” to “irrigate” among the impoverished classes, “like seeds are irrigated on a fertile field,” the populist harangue, proposing to them a supposedly suitable mold for their specific needs, with no warning whatsoever that it is a failed formula, which has plunged into an absolute poverty and chaos both Cuba and Venezuela. Nor they are told that in these countries, when government has no choice but to face their own failures, they cling to an archaic historical excuse, but one that is still effective to deceive the unwary: blaming the government of the United States for the disaster.
This extreme leftist wing has used and keeps using their public platforms to attack previous and current US administrations, exposing a visceral hatred based on false populist speeches, but they do not use those same platforms as they should, to advocate for people’s freedom, especially to ensure people their right to dissent against governments, their right to criticize and express such criticism publicly, but also, above all, to create better economic opportunities to alleviate poverty, to ensure an effective fight against drug trafficking and crime in general.
Times today, fortunately, thanks to development in the fields like communications, do not allow the truth to be hidden anymore, as it happened in Cuba for decades. And even though those governments want to keep the wall up and strengthened, it is impossible to do so, and news transgresses the media silence of dictators.
I congratulate the Panamanian president, Juan Carlos Varela for the opportunity offered to Cuban dissidents to express and explain with dignity, especially to the rest of Latin America that still believes in justice, the abuses and outrages that the regime practices daily in the Cuban archipelago against those who defend the right to think differently. Thank you from my cell that has seen the light and the splendor of freedom.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
11 April 2015. Border Control Prison, Havana, Cuba
Translated by: Rafael
