The U.S. Embassy in Cuba Publishes on Social Networks a Poster Alluding to ‘Patria y Vida’

Poster by the Cuban artist Armando Tejuca published by the US Embassy.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 12 September 2022 — The Cuban artist Armando Tejuca has designed a poster entitled You five nine, Me double two, sixty years of deadlocked domino in reference to one of the phrases of the song Patria y Vida [Homeland and Life]. In it you can see the poster with the five-nine dark and cracked, while the double two has the colors of the Cuban flag and rises brightly over the other. The image, disseminated by the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the U.S. embassy on the Island, has generated a wide debate among detractors and defenders of the regime.

“Diplomats of the United States, I feel bad for you, you continue to highlight four cats that meow from exile, but without taking them… to come and fight here. On the other hand, your government bets on another group of losers, the dissidents. Here, Revolution takes a while. Homeland or Death, we will win,” writes one user. “It would be an excellent idea for every free Cuban to post and replicate this work so that it can be seen as the wonderful song that inspired it,” another responds.

Among those who have commented from the regime are Oni Acosta Llerena, a very popular music critic on national television, who has asked the embassy to “improve and elevate” its tastes “as soon as possible.” Eduardo Palomares, Granma’s correspondent in Santiago de Cuba, has urged the diplomatic headquarters to give its opinion on the deaths of children by firearms produced in the U.S., the secret documents that Donald Trump had at his Florida residence in Florida or “the imprisonment of Latino children in cages,” among other things.

Many comments accuse the U.S. of being guilty, however, of “boxing in” the Island, which has provoked many responses as well. “Everything comes from the U.S; do you ever see online stores with products from [Cuba] and other countries? Equipment and items of all kinds enter through the shipping agencies, shipments of dollars, the chicken that the people eat is American…. Don’t deceive us anymore. Marxist-Leninist demagoguery is over. Communism is a utopia,” says one reader.

And although some think it’s wrong for a diplomatic seat to position itself like this in front of the government of the country where it’s located, others have thanked the opposition for its support, as they leave messages like this: “That’s right, that song is an anthem for the vast majority of Cubans who fight for a Cuba free of dictatorship.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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