A drop of rain won’t make the swimming pool overflow; nor will a difference be apparent to those who see the little circles that widen when it falls, but this drop, although it appears to disappear, to dissolve among the rest, continues fighting to survive.
Unjustly, the first reason that has caused the musician Gorki to be accused of “illegal drug abuse,” according to what some independent journalists have told me, is that he belongs to a gang of rockers, which is sufficient to validate the accusation, without considering that he has epilepsy, backed by a clinical history from a doctor in Mexico–from where he recently returned from a concert tour–who prescribed him the psychotropic Tradea, which is similar to carbamasepina, as it is known in Cuba.
It is naive not to believe that it’s about a long-awaited revenge by the political police, who have been waiting for the chance to imprison him for the lyrics of his songs where he “offends” the Castro brothers and the totalitarian regime.
The painful thing is that some of the “naive” cast doubt on the idea that State Security is on the hunt for the leader of a punk rock bank who previously has suffered two legal processes, one of which sent him to prison due to a trap set by the dictatorships henchmen, and the other one of which failed to imprison him because of the international solidarity that ended his arrest, and these same doubters question Gorki’s innocence. Too much innocence for a single soul!
I know very well the case against the artist, because in my case a similar infamy was constructed. I remember that shortly before entering prison, I participated in a free art exhibition at Gorki’s house, where I told him to be careful or he would be coming to keep me company in jail.
Hopefully I was wrong, and the evidence presented by the attorney Amelia Rodríguez Cala will be enough to invalidate the process, which didn’t happen in my case, although they weren’t able to present a single piece of evidence that showed I participated in the alleged acts.
Gorki Aguila, I’m with you with my solidarity and my prayers.
Ángel Santiesteban Prats
Lawton Prison Settlement, February 2014
We invite you to support Gorki by signing the petition:
In an effort to make a final inventory of the CELAC event in Havana, one would have to begin quantifying the accolades received by the Castro brothers’ dictatorship from the leftist presidents of the Caribbean and Latin America. Emulating the Organization of American States (OAS) Cuba’s love-hate frustration with the continental organization from which it was expelled and its revenge for that affront, plus the loss of political leadership in the region, are the driving force of the Cuban government.
The fact that the Presidents have avoided exchanging opinions and suggestions with the Castro brothers about Cuban Human Rights is another proof of the lack of transparency and honesty of the leaders who went to extremes to avoid mortifying their hosts, also proving that they know the nature of extreme totalitarianism, a topic that is not debatable even though hunger threatens the Cuban people with death.
The summit left without sorrow or glory.
Angel Santiesteban-Prats
Lawton prison settlement. February 2014.
For Amnesty International to declare Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience. To sign the petition click here.
Fernando Dámaso, center, with his wife Rebeca Monzo, and Gorki Aguila.
Editor’s note: One of the primary and most important purposes of this site is to try to encourage journalists who write about Cuba to contact Cubans living on the island as primary sources; that is, to report what CUBANS think about what is going on in CUBA (in preference, especially, to non-Cuban foreign “experts”).
Happily, with this article, in the New York Times, journalist Damien Cave did just that. Thank you Damien, and thank you New York Times.
List email from Cuba, from Martha Beatriz Roque, 2/13/2014, 2:15 PM (translated from Spanish): “Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez just called to tell me that his house was invaded for the third time, his wife was arrested, and he regained consciousness while laying on the street next to a patrol car. “Don’t allow them to kill us,” he told me in a groggy voice.”
Martha Beatriz then followed with a message to Cuba Archive: “He sounded like he was in a very bad state, exhausted from feeling un-supported. I am very worried that they will kill him and nothing will happen. He is now all alone and in hunger strike.”
“Antunez,” and his wife, Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, are leading members of Cuba’s peaceful opposition movement. They went on hunger strike the morning of February 10th to protest the violent repression to which Cuban authorities have most recently subjected them –-detentions, violent home invasions, and confiscation of their belongings. Their telephones have been cut off and since January 24th their home has been surrounded by security forces.
The couple lives in in Placetas, which is approximately 200 miles from the city of Havana in the province of Villa Clara.
Cuban doctors arriving in Brazil. The joy of the escape.
In the nineteenth century, slave crews were rented out after the harvest to other landlords, providing the slaves a few trifles.
HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 12 — The recent “defection” of Cuban doctor Ramona Matos Rodríguez, who provided services in Brazil under an agreement signed between that country and Cuba, part of the program “More Doctors for Brazil” once again brings to the forefront the controversial topic of the exploitation of health professionals by the Cuban regime in its desperate race to obtain hard currency.
Matos’s claims are based on the deception which she stated she was victim of, since she was not aware of the two countries’ agreement providing for a monthly royalty payment equivalent to about $4000 per physician, of which Cuban doctors would only be paid $1000 each month, that is, approximately 25% of the total of the original contract.
Medical Sciences graduates. Professionals to export
In addition, the Cuban government would have violated the contract signed by doctors in Cuba prior to their departure to Brazil, since, in practice, they get just over $300 per month, while the Cuban bank holds back $600 to be accessed by the doctors with the use of a debit card on their return to Cuba three years after completing their “mission”.
A Longstanding Trick
The subcontracting system of Cuban doctors to other countries has become one of the most important sources of hard foreign currency for the Cuban government, plus an instrument of political manipulation for electoral purposes by some populist governments. In this sense, the olive-green caste behaves like the old slave-holding landowners in the nineteenth century Cuban sugar industry aristocracy, whose crews were rented out after the harvest to other landlords for dissimilar tasks, providing the slaves with a few coins of some other trifles. continue reading
Cuban doctors in Bolivia, instruments of populist campaigns by Evo Morales
However, manipulation of these services by the regime is neither really new nor limited to physicians. Other Cuban slaves are equally contracted out with unconscionable benefits for the regime, although the movement of physicians has been the most conspicuous and substantial. It began in the early and distant decade of the 1960’s by sending the first doctors to Algeria, and it was kept up more or less regularly in other places of the Third World, especially in African countries as part of commitments by the regime with Moscow.
They were mainly programs that responded to the political interests of the Kremlin, which Cuba was a satellite of, though back then doctors were deployed in small numbers without detriment to the health care of the Cuban people.
Since the 1990’s, rental of doctors increased with the pressing need to find alternative sources of income that would allow the alleviation of the crisis sparked by the disappearance of the “socialist camp”. Since then, the practice has been maintained at an increasing pace, with health care in Cuba rapidly deteriorating. The revenue from these contracts is not used for technological equipment, improving the infrastructure or other essential items to offer Cubans efficient and high quality service.
After “solidarity”, the facts
Nicolás Maduro has used the Barrio Alto program to win followers in the hills and villages in the jungle.
According to an undisclosed unofficial source, it is true that few Cuban doctors know how much they will earn in the countries where they provide services. “One thing is the ‘contract’ we signed in Cuba, usually at a mass meeting where they read us the ideological-political act and they presented us with paperwork which we had to sign in a hurry, without having read it and without receiving a copy, and another thing is what we will find at our destination, because sometimes reality is harder than what we imagined, and we find ourselves in a position of having to use our own funds in order to survive, or at least to improve conditions”.
Extreme violence is another danger faced by doctors in many destination countries, and their contracts, in which indemnification payments are not addressed, do not protect them against that.
An undetermined number of doctors have been murdered, while still others have been victims of assaults, aggression and rape. The lack of knowledge on the part of physicians, both about the exact amount of payments received by the Cuban government and what they will get is another trick of the regime to exploit, on a large scale, the qualified workforce that enrolls in these missions only to improve their living conditions.
Dr. Ramona Matos asked the Brazilian opposition party for protection.
Thus, the motivation of physicians is not just humanitarian but practical: to get material and financial benefits or to cover essential needs – such as purchasing what is needed to repair their homes, for example — that their income in Cuba cannot meet. “Otherwise, there would not be thousands of us willing to sacrifice, being away from the family and running many risks” said the source. There are also those who view the missions as a way to emigrate.
Our source philosophizes: “No teacher in medical school in the 1980’s explained to us that the Hippocratic Oath included abandoning the priorities of Cuban patients, but it is still difficult to talk about ethics in the current conditions.
As for the money, not all missions pay the same. For example, in Haiti, it’s the equivalent to $200 per month, of which it is necessary to disburse $50 per month for a low-quality meal, plus $30 a year for connection to the internet. At the end of one full year of work, we would have accumulated $2000 in a Cuban bank, paid out in CUC. Living conditions depend on where the doctor is providing these services: in Port au Prince it’s usually in a group home, while elsewhere it is in a tent. There is a great risk of contracting contagious diseases, such as dengue fever and respiratory ailments, etc. At the same time, extreme personal hygienic and sanitary measures must be strictly adhered to in order to avoid cholera.
Five more Cuban doctors have abandoned the Brazilian program.
Payment varies in Angola, but it averages about $600 a month, while in South Africa it’s $900 to $1000. Venezuela has been the most permanent destination, and though years ago it was attractive to Cubans because it allowed importing home appliances for some time; restrictions on imports have increased because the regime in Havana finds it more profitable to optimize extraction of hard currency of these “slaves-missionaries” through its own sales networks, at exorbitant prices.
Not all slaves qualify to be rented out. When asked about the requirements a doctor must complete to be selected for a mission, the source consulted ensures us that there is a selection process, but nobody knows the exact criteria and procedures to be followed. “There is a preceding decanting”.
For example, one does not necessarily have to be a member of the party and stand out as ‘fire-eater’, but any suspicion that they might be a possible emigrant because they have close relatives living abroad can result in cancellation of the mission. I know of many cases like this, but you are never told the reasons for the cancellation clearly. These are things that leak out. They aren’t always thorough in their research, and every once in a while, one slips by them. I don’t know who is responsible for conducting the “investigations” exactly, because they are not carried out by medical authorities, but they are done, and the methodology appears to be that of (State) Security. ”
Indignation without the indignant
Brazilian Public Health Minister, Alexander Padilha
Another specialist, in this case an instructor, details other aspects that the press has barely addressed and that constitute a serious problem: the impact the missions have had on shortages of doctors in clinics for the care of the Cuban population. Thus, at this time a very complicated process is underway consisting in taking out the “non-essential” physicians to occupy permanent positions in hospitals and offering them one of two options: go on a foreign mission or work in an office as a family doctor.
This has sparked the widespread discontent on the part of many doctors who, while they trained as required in general practice, at present they practice in diverse specialties, including surgery, from training in courses for preparation of the fulfillment of massive collaboration programs, such as Operation Miracle and others, which allowed them to rise in rank through their qualifications.
To leave the specialties they have achieved in order to handle consults in primary care means a significant setback as professionals. Some doctors comment informally they would prefer to stay at home and devote their time to private care rather than to accept such conditions. On the other hand, a significant group of physicians who finished their services abroad don’t feel ready now to repeat the experience, arguing that the risks and the sacrifices are greater than the obtained benefits.
“It’s a process of outrage, but with no outraged” a female doctor friend of mine tells me, referring to all the doctors who complain among each other about the treatment they receive from the Cuban authorities, which treats them as slaves or as basic resources, but who are not motivated enough to get organized and demand their rights.
Meanwhile, many “democratic ” governments complicity lend themselves to violations of the most basic labor rights of these and other Cuban specialists, and some institutions and international officials are pleased with the cooperation programs of the Castros and with the health rates coldly reflected in the official statistics of the dictatorship. Certainly, if there is something as vast and deep as the foundling of the people of Cuba, it’s the impunity of her government.
As of ten days ago, according to the Chinese horoscope, we’re living in the year of the horse, more precisely, the wooden horse. Many are the prognostications perceived by specialists in different spheres of life and for distinct signs.
Like the good pig that I am I see everything more relaxedly and, although I am not attempting any kind of international contamination between the East and West, the first thing I think is of the most famous of the wooden horses: the Trojan!
In this 2014 that began with the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, when the European Union is preparing to lift the restrictions of the Common Position, now that millionaires of the exile feel inclined to invest in Cuba, one wonders if the wisdom of Odysseus will bear fruit in this Caribbean Troy, if the walls will have to be partly demolished to let the artifact through.
As a curiosity, I have to add that throughout this whole process initiated in 1959 it is the first time that we have had a Year of the Wooden Horse.
Taguayabon, Cuba – I could have written a simple informative note about one of the many arrests carried out by Cuban State Security agencies during the days leading up to the CELAC Summit in Havana. But in this case I was both eyewitness and victim, and had to deal with the fact that my daughters saw it all.
On Saturday January 25, my husband, the Baptist pastor Mario Felix Lleonart, and I, together with our daughters, Rocío, 13, and Rachel, 5, left our home in Taguayabón, intending to travel to the neighboring city of Remedios to spend a relaxing family afternoon. We were stopped by two State Security agents, dressed in civilian clothes, riding a small Suzuki motorcycle, who approached my husband and told him he was under arrest.
The situation became very tense a few minutes later when a National Revolutionary Police patrol car appeared, with a uniformed police officer and another civilian agent who joined the first two and pounced on Mario Félix as if he were a common criminal, handcuffing him and speeding him off toward Remedios, without telling me where they were going. continue reading
Our daughters were in shock and both began to cry. The younger one kept saying: “Save my daddy! Those bad men have taken him away!” It was a tremendous struggle for me to calm them and try to help them understand what was happening. The girls love their father dearly, and know that he is an honest and good-hearted man; his abduction was something they could not fathom, especially because they knew he had set the afternoon aside for them.
Swallowing this bitter pill, especially my indignation–because I don’t hide that in the face of all this arbitrariness and despotism I am deeply outraged–I took the little ones to Remedios, walking with them and highlighting the figure of their father. Somehow my little Rachel latched onto my words and then kept saying: “If those cops come here looking for my dad’s house, I’ll tell them to leave him alone because my father is a free man.” I do not know if my daughters have understood fully that message, but freedom is ours and we belong to it, and so I hope they both grow up knowing that no human system, nor repressive body, nor dictatorship, nor dictator, nor tyrant can prevent us from being free.
The State Security agents who abducted pastor Mario Félix. Photo courtesy of Yoaxis Marcheco.
We returned home to await Mario’s fate. We did not know for sure where they had taken him. Caibarién and Remedios are in the same direction and we only knew that the patrol car had headed to one of those two places. A legally authorized kidnapping, obvious state terrorism–citizens are taken away someplace, the family not even knowing where.
Arrests can occur anytime, anywhere, to anyone, without explanation, using brute force as well. They repress, they persecute, not the increasing numbers of common criminals, but political and ideological opponents.
At six that evening my husband showed up. My daughters ran to him and kissed him, relief evident on their faces. Since then, a police operation has encircled our home and our church, and the ban was extended to me. We could only go and pick up the girls at their respective schools, and always guarded by the political police. The Suzuki is parked on the corner near the schools, visible to our daughters; it was a reminder to the girls that they were still there, and a way of keeping them upset.
As before, our phones were blocked by Cubacel, the state-run monopoly that controls the lines. Perhaps divine providence intervened at some point, allowing the messages to leave my phone, like bottles thrown into the sea of liberty, carried along on the blessed twitter. So foreign friends had news of our fate. I could also call activists who found themselves in the same situation as we did, though not always with much luck because some of their phones were also disrupted. Every night we pray for those who have had worse fortune, because they have ended up in the cold cells.
The CELAC summit concluded and did not bring anything new to the Cuban context. No one defined it any better than my daughters: “CELAC is bad because it’s responsible for our dad being taken prisoner.” The CELAC meeting in Havana has has left a shameful stain on the Latin American political landscape; its complicit stance toward an anti-democratic regime is now marked forever and ever, amen.
Unusual in his generation, Santiago Feliú was, for years, the Nueva Trova singer I most listened to. His themes moved away from the commonplace poetry of his contemporaries and he went on to create a personal and inimitable style. There was a certain real life toughness in his lyrics, lacking affectation, but lyrical. He stood out among others who were once rebels and ended up as officials, among the former long-hairs now with military haircuts and so many non-conformists who turned into functionaries in guayaberas.
A beloved folksinger, the author of “Para Bárbara” frequented gatherings and let loose with guitar, rum and people captivated by his notes. He sang in our living room now and then, and it surprised us to see him stutter when he wasn’t singing a melody. Like Baudelaire’s albatross flying high, but finding it extremely awkward to walk on the deck of a ship… a ship aground in this case. He was approachable, close, human, without boasts or arrogance. He was just one of us among us.
Dying, he has left us with the image of his untouched mane, his many colored bracelets tied to his wrist, and his dark clothes that became a fashion. There was so much life left in him, so many chords in him, the shy, irreverent, forever young one. He has left us, gone, like “those shitty days that will also pass.” But this time he’s not right, because “you are not my love” but nor are the others… it has just been Santiaguito, who in the middle of the night played his last note, chugged the last drink, and left us with his music forever.
*Translator’s note: A line from one of Santiago’s songs.
12 February 2014
In Cuba, it’s not a secret to anybody, problems enjoy a long life. As there is no organised civil society able to insist on its rights, you always have to wait for the decisions of the authorities, and, like the problems, they also take their time.
And the official press isn’t bothered about them either, unless it is no longer possible to hide them or the government decides to address them. Then you see articles and reports considering what they are doing to resolve them, without mentioning what it was that caused them, what they failed to do to prevent to prevent their development, who was responsible and, most importantly, how the people have been affected by them.
In spite of the update and the briefing about which the press may feel critical, it seems that they go forward fearfully, afraid to go beyond what is authorised. There have been too many years of censorship. Here are some examples taken at random.
Banes has its new water pipeline, reports the newspaper Granma. The town of Banes, in Holguín province, had its aqueduct, which delivered water to its inhabitants. With the passing of the years and lack of maintenance, the steel pipes and the original concrete deteriorated to the point that out of the 150 litres a second of water to be delivered, only 32 came through, with delivery cycles of 32 days.
Now, after dozens of years, the pipework has been repaired with polyethylene tubes, reducing the delivery cycles to 9 days. A complete success. With not a word about the suffering and annoyance caused to the people by this situation, or saying why the restoration was delayed so long, much less who was responsible for doing nothing for so many years.
In Havana – the TV tells us — some apartment blocks are under construction, to be offered to families in temporary housing, and to others who were living under the La Lisa bridge. The buildings are low cost quick-build, poor quality and unfinished, ending up as a call on the resources (?) and the labour of the new tenants.
Some of the beneficiaries passed some 15, 20, 30, or nearly 40 years living in hostels, or under the La Lisa bridge, in precarious conditions. The journalist did not say one word about the effect this long-drawn-out situation had on the lives of the members of these families, and devoted his time to relating the gratitude of the beneficiaries to the Revolution. End of story.
The Casablanca cinema reopened its doors –Juventud Rebelde tells us. The cinema, located in the city of Camagüey, remained shut for over a decade. Not a word about how the situation came about nor about who was responsible. Nor did it indicate how much the locals were disadvantaged culturally by this prolonged closure.
This all sounds like the report of the story of the patient who, having died of hunger due to lack of provisions, enjoyed the expert and magnificent medical attention in his final hours.
Informers on guard at the corner of my home — Martha Beatriz Roque
HAVANA, Cuba — There is not a single time that the phone rings for good news; these days every conversation is based on arrests, beatings and demonstrations, an eloquent way to carry out the Summit of CELAC (Community of Latin-American and Caribbean States) which turned into a parody of the famous novel “Wuthering Heights” by Englishwoman Emily Bronte.
But although the meeting was held in Havana, the capital was not the only place where these situations were produced. In other sites as distant as the eastern provinces also there were moments of tension because of the repressive work of the political police.
In Manzanillo, Granma province, on January 28, some members of the Cuban Community Communicators Network could not leave their homes, as, for example, Xiomara Moncada Almaguer who wanted to visit her ill six-year old grandson; when she came out of her house, six women armed with parasols attacked her in front of State Security officer Camilo Mandiel (alias The Joker), who permitted them to hit the peaceful woman.
Leonardo Cancio Santana Ponce tried to leave his house — on the same day — on bicycle and was impeded by Captain Napoles, Sector Chief, whom he found in the company of four State Security officers, among them Alexis Guerra and the older Able Guevara. Cancio explained that they lifted him and threw him inside his house, together with the bicycle. A drunk neighbor, by the name of Pedro, defended him, yelling “abusers,” and they arrested him.
Also, the house of Tania de la Torre Montesinos, in Manzanillo, was under surveillance by political police, and they did not allow her daughter Ariuska Marquez to go out to the street, in spite of the fact that she is not a dissident activist.
In Holguin province, at two in the afternoon, a demonstration against Doctor Ramon Zamora Rodriguez began at his house on Avenue of the Americas 66 between Comandante Fajardo and Playa Giron in the Ramon Quintana Division; it lasted until 9 at night. The cheerleaders broke the fence of the house, the windows and the door by stoning and body slams; but what is most regretful is that they hit his 13-year-old son. When they withdrew, those in the dwelling tried to fix some of the damage, but they had to put furniture behind the door in order to be able to sleep with some security. The next day, several dissidents went to try to repair all the breakage done by the mob.
In the basement of my home
On the 29th — like one more Wednesday — no one was permitted to enter my home, and I was under house arrest. A mob of some 10 or 12 people on the stairs, some of them neighbors who were paid in the morning to dedicate themselves to those functions, did not let anyone up. Our collaborator Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique asked them to identify themselves in order to learn with what authority they were doing this, and one of the repressors, by the name of Juan Carlos, (a well-built man of about 35 years of age), who in April 2013 beat me inside my house, went up to Arnoldo, and the State Security officer there had to intervene so that he would not hit him, because he surely had orders to do so if something occurred. You have to remember that Arnoldo is a man of 73 years of age who suffered 8 years in prison.
From this unclean practice the following community communicators were arrested: Evelyn Pineda Concepción, Laudelina Alcalde, Maritza Concepción Sarmientos, Blanca Hernández Moya, Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, José Antonio Sieres Ramallo, Juliet Michelena Díaz, Billy Joe Landa Linares, Julia Estrella Aramburu Taboas (seized two times because they jumped on her when she returned), Juan Carlos Díaz Fonseca and Judit Muñiz Peraza.
The first three women in this regard were transferred in a patrol car — the same as everyone — but with the special feature that they left them in the township Melena del Sur in the Mayabeque Province. When they arrived at that place, a clearing, they told the police that they were not going to get out there, and they said they were complying with orders, that if they did not get out of the car, they would get them out by force.*
Also, Julia Estrella Aramburo Taboas, in her second effort to enter her home, was arrested and taken by patrol car past the town of Santiago de las Vegas. She resides in Central Havana township and found herself alone.
If the protagonist of Wuthering Heights saw the specter of a woman, in the Cuban parody we are in front of a ghost that has turned into a nightmare for the opposition, but unfortunately no president of the democratic countries of Latin America, who have just visited Havana, have seen it.
*Translator’s note: A popular tactic now is for State Security or the police to simply pick up dissidents and drive them to ’the middle of nowhere’ and abandon them, never recording any arrest or detention.
Cubanet, January 30, 2014, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello
Many events throughout our existence can be forgotten, but others leave a deep memory that does not go away. And these events may have had many demonstrations as they can be taken for granted, a dream, an omission, a sentence, and even a poster.
With the latter two, much relegated to memory, I was suddenly assaulted when I least expected it: while watching a video that a friend had sent me.
The video in question relates to an investigation and several arrests made by the Technical Investigation Department (DTI) of the National Revolutionary Police. The detainees are involved in fraudulent transactions whose amount is a whopping 33 million pesos.
The poster that comes to mind at the moment is one I saw I don’t know how many times over many years. It was a big fence on a broad avenue and on a white background highlighted in red:
The future belongs entirely to socialism.
It’s a sign that I no longer see, but it was present during the youth of Cubans of the generation of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, when it was assumed that the “moribund capitalism” was terminal and that, who could doubt it?, socialism would be victorious.
The other phrase, I also was reminded of by the sign is:
Crime is reminiscence of capitalist society and will disappear to the extent that socialism advances.
I read that phrase many times in textbooks of law and Marxist texts that college students had to study and examine mandatory.
Watching this film, which ends with the words of General President Raul Castro admits theft where in the country is huge, at all levels and at all levels, and as, moreover, I see it now flourishing and vigorous than ever before in the history of Cuba, I then subtracted one question:
Musician Gorki Águila announced today this his trial scheduled for this Tuesday was suspented “due to reasons of health” of his attorney.
The leader of the band Porno para Ricardo said that “at no time” did her receive “official notification.” Because of this, he said, he went to the “summary court of Marianao, at 100th and 33rd, to register my annoyance at this news,” and so that “they would have no possible argument to accuse me of not appearing.”
Also, the musician asked the people who are now raising a campaign for him on the social networks “not to abandon the denunciation” given that the authorities assert that “they will take full advantage of this pause to attack after impunity.”
Águila is the Cuban musician most critical of the regime living in Cuba with a major international presence.
The worst blind spot is the one you don’t want to see.
While the European Union was planning to change its Common Position, the totalitarian Cuban regime was imprisoning the opposition on the eve of receiving the presidents for the CELAC Summit.
In these moments of economic crisis, there is no greater urgency for the European countries than to address and to reverse their rates of inflation and unemployment. They’ve thrown aside ethics and scruples in order to decide to open up relations with the Cuban regime, never mind the fact that there are violations of human rights, imprisonment of the opposition, violent beatings of those who demonstrate peacefully and assassinations of the most outstanding leaders.
We know that the Castro brothers won’t permit any imposition that would give space to the dissidence. They won’t even sign the United Nations Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which in this 21st century, should be the minimal condition of any State to earn respect from the international community. That would be the small contribution that the European Community could give to the Cuban people, and it would be the only credible step for Raúl Castro if it’s really his intention to offer openings and improvements to Cuban society in general.
