14ymedio, Madrid, 8 December 2022 — The Cuban chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, so quick to comment on everything on his Twitter account, has not yet pronounced on the events in Peru and the imprisonment of an ally of Havana after his failing in an attempt at a coup. This silence contrasts with the stridency of his reaction, the day before, to the condemnatory sentence for Argentina’s Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, when he wrote on Twitter: “We ratify our solidarity with @CFKArgentina in the face of judicial and media harassment, which has clear political purposes.”
Nor did Miguel Díaz-Canel spare any emotion: “We reiterate our rejection of politically motivated judicial processes and reaffirm all our support and solidarity to @CFKArgentina in the face of judicial and media harassment against her.” The president used the hashtags #CubaTeAbraza [Cuba Hugs You] and #TodosConCristina [Everyone With Cristina].
The two accounts remain in absolute silence so far about the fate of now former President Pedro Castillo in Peru, who this Wednesday tried to dissolve Parliament before a third motion for his impeachment, in a suicide move that didn’t even have the support of his own government.
Faced with the apparent bewilderment of Cuban leaders, who are traveling in several Caribbean countries, Granma, the Communist Party newspaper was ahead of the official position. On Thursday, Granma published a short article entitled “Another Parliamentary Coup” that contains some elements of what happened in the intense day experienced yesterday in Lima, mentioning very briefly the announcement of the dissolution of Congress by Castillo.
Granma’s peculiar interpretation consists of explaining that the Andean country is going through a “political crisis” caused by “the actions of the Peruvian opposition, the majority in Congress, that hasn’t let the president, elected by the people 16 months ago, govern.”
Unlike the chavista Diosdado Cabello, who accuses Washington of being behind the fall of Castillo, Granma doesn’t pronounce on this aspect, but everything indicates that the members of the Sao Paulo Forum, including Cuba, are going along with that line.
Last night, the same newspaper published a text delving into the matter of Cristina Fernández with the headline “Adjustment of right-wing accounts,” in which the author says: “This procedure is not new, and I would say that it is quite recurrent on the part of right-wing governments against sectors of the left in the Latin American region, in order to stigmatize them as ’corrupt’ by resorting to a toxic system of ’justice’, accompanied by media work aimed at creating states of opinion based on lies.”
In Cubadebate, the information about Castillo’s case is even more like shorthand. So much so that some readers even ask for explanations about what happened. “And could he finally legally do what he did? Because by right he talks about a ’dissolved’ Congress, while Telesur talks about Congress without an adjective. The truth is I don’t understand anything,” a user asks. Another comes in, with little detail, to shed light on the matter: “He shouldn’t have done it. He committed the crime of sedition. Namely, he can be put in prison for 5 to 10 years.”
The division is perceived between those who believe that the Peruvian Congress has aligned itself with the “imperialist powers” to make life impossible for Castillo and those who, even so, reproach his performance this Wednesday. “Something is true: even if they don’t let you govern, you can’t take the law into your own hands,” says a reader.
To learn more, the readers of the official press will have to wait for the Cuban authorities to clarify their position.
Castillo is not Kirchner. Although the Cuban authorities never hid their preference for the leftist schoolteacher over his opponent, the right-wing Keiko Fujimori, Castillo did not show the gratitude that the Havana regime usually demands of its allies. In January of this year, the former president gave an interview to CNN where he talked about international politics and was insistently asked about his relations with the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Uncomfortable, Castillo did not dare to go against them but was not in favor either.
“President, would you adopt the Cuban, Nicaraguan or Venezuelan model?” “Never,” he ended up responding. At the insistence of the interviewer on whether he considered Cuba a democracy, the Peruvian again showed doubt. “Cuba is a sister country,” he tried to escape before he ended up saying: “We will have to ask the Cubans. I would not like any other country or person to interfere in the lives of Peruvians.” He did the same when he spoke about Managua and Caracas.
His chancellor did not have the same delicacy and was clear when it came to condemning the elections in Nicaragua, whose development he said he had “followed with concern.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs categorically said that the elections did not meet “the minimum criteria of free, fair and transparent elections established by the Inter-American Democratic Charter, damaging their credibility, democracy and the rule of law, and they deserve the rejection of the international community.”
This hesitant attitude of the Peruvian did not go unnoticed by Venezeulan President Nicolas Maduro. He wanted Castillo fully in the group, along with Gustavo Petro and Gabriel Boric, who criticized the Bolivarian regime at the beginning of the year. “Every day there is a campaign against Venezuela. There has emerged a cowardly left that bases its discourse on attacking the successful, victorious Bolivarian model, on attacking the historical legacy, and on attacking me as president,” said Hugo Chávez’s successor.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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