CubaDebate 174

Internet: freedom or self-censorship?

4 months ago CubaDebate, Translations

From the Internet for freedom to the Internet of self-censorship?

By: Iroel Sánchez
July 14, 2022
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

“Contemporary geopolitics is becoming determined by agents that interact outside of physical space and operate intangibly.”

If physical geography, the availability of domesticatable plants and animals, and belonging to the temperate climate band in which these were able to expand on both sides of the Fertile Crescent (Diamond, 2020) determined the superiority of European societies in colonizing much of the world, contemporary geopolitics is becoming determined by agents interacting outside of physical space and operating intangibly.

The classic capitalist contradiction between the character of work (increasingly social, i.e., increasingly needing to be performed by a greater number of people and/or organized groups) and that of capital (increasingly concentrated) is manifested in times of the Internet as a handful of U.S. companies known as GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft), Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) or GAFAT (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Twitter), which increasingly concentrate the metadata resulting from the increasingly intense and encompassing activity that human beings carry out through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

The commercialization of such metadata (Wilson, 2019) enables a level of efficiency in advertising – be it for travel, consumer goods or political projects – that has only multiplied the effectiveness with which those who already previously concentrated the lion’s share of resources of all kinds. They benefit from the increasingly unfair distribution of wealth and their control over communication processes.

Social networks are not new: from a sociological point of view, they have always existed among humans (Wasserman; Faust, 1994). Each person already belonged to overlapping networks of family, friends, community, work, student or union networks, long before TikTok, Linkedin or Instagram burst into our lives. But the growing use of these platforms has made these previously invisible relationship systems tangible and capitalizable. Every search, every exchange, every text, video or photo post, and those who interact with them, as well as the accompanying metadata (date, time, gender, topic and geographic location of the participants, among others), are employed to find, connect and intentionally use affinities and phobias at a speed previously unthinkable. That process is possible thanks to technological developments such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (Bello-Orgaz; Jung; Camacho, 2016).

In February 2021, large technology companies accounted for 13 out of every 100 dollars valued on the Wall Street Stock Exchange (Carbajal, 2021), surpassing the marketing of armaments. Speaking of armaments, one might wonder if the investment for psychological warfare, understood –according to the US Army Manual– as the action of “influencing foreign populations by subjectively expressing information to influence attitudes and behavior, and to obtain compliance, non-interference or other desired behavioral changes” (Headquarters, 2005), is not part of those economic values, in a scenario of new hybrid wars led by the US political-military apparatus and intelligence community.

Hybrid warfare is a term whose use has been increasing among several theorists (Bartolomé, 2019; Gavrov, 2017; Piella, 2019) to refer to the combination of economic aggression, irregular warfare, financing of internal opposition, psychological warfare, terrorism, regular warfare, economic blockade and sabotage, and cyberwarfare. In Latin America, the two countries in which the United States has employed this mix of methods to change the regime are Cuba and Venezuela (Sanchez, 2020). Its culminating point has come during the Trump administration, and it involved, in the Cuban case, the approval of 243 economic restriction measures (MINREX, 2021), with the millionaire financing to internet media and opposition groups, which in November 2020 articulated an attempted soft coup with the support of the US embassy in Havana (Robinson, 2021); this had its aggravated version last July 11. This time it was a concerted operation in the digital public space.

In a scenario of an increase in the main indicators of the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a result of the entry and circulation of more aggressive variants in some areas of the country, a coordinated campaign was developed from abroad, replicating mechanisms and protagonists already used during the coup d’état in Bolivia and in interventions against Venezuela, among others. According to Spanish analyst Julián Macías Tovar, the operation was structured in three phases: the first one made use of the SOS Cuba label, “requesting help through false and automated accounts that massively mentioned artists from all over the world”.

The second phase installed in the media the call for a “humanitarian corridor” and invoked the support of artists. The third phase consisted of demonstrations that were accompanied by maximum diffusion in networks and the use of tags that became a global trend. “The method is repeated, the synergic strategy in networks, media and mobilizations” (Macías Tovar, 2021); the intensive use of robots, algorithms and accounts created for the occasion or with automated patterns, fake news and manipulated images, in addition to the invisibilization of different demonstrations in support of the government and the Cuban Revolution.

The analysis of some of the key profiles in this network operation shows a relationship with the Atlas Network organization, linked, on the one hand, to conservative think tanks and supporters of the free market in Latin America and, on the other hand, to the U.S. government itself through the National Endowment for Democracy (Indymedia Argentina, 2021).

How the Internet has changed
If in the past the computer was for many only synonymous with IBM, and automobile with General Motors, today, for most earthlings, the internet is synonymous with Facebook and Google, and operating system means Android or Windows.

The involution of the Internet – from an ideal element for free expression, knowledge, communication and equity, to a space for political polarization and hatred – has generated multiple alarms. Barack Obama himself has expressed his concern in this regard. The former president of the United States has been one of the main promoters of the Internet, which he considered during the most important speech during his visit to Havana, without any nuance, “one of the strongest engines of growth in the history of mankind” (Obama, 2016). However, during a more recent interview with British Prince Harry, he drew attention to how social networks can divide societies (Yeginsu, 2017).

“Today, for most earthlings, the internet is synonymous with Facebook and Google.”

Alerts were not lacking: on May 18, 2012, a joint statement by a group of civil society organizations ahead of the United Nations meeting in Geneva for “Enhanced Cooperation on Internet-related Public Policy Issues” noted that “what was once a public network of millions of digital spaces is now largely a conglomeration of spaces owned by a few” (Joint Civil Society Statement, 2012).

The revelations (Hu, 2015) of former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden about how adversary governments, and also allies, critical infrastructures and citizens of any country can be spied on even in their most intimate relationships by the US intelligence apparatus, with total impunity, were not known at the time.

The Covid-19 pandemic increased the permanence of people on the networks, and therefore, the profitability with which U.S. Internet companies operate. On average, users spend in 2021 about 6 hours and 42 minutes on the internet each day, about the same amount of time spent sleeping; and of the seven most visited sites only one is not hosted on U.S. servers (Social, 2021).

“The Covid-19 pandemic increased people’s time spent on networks, and thus the profitability with which U.S.

Any company or political party can now micro-localize the recipients of a message, on a network such as Facebook, or in the results of a search engine such as Google, based on age, sex, geographic location and professional profile. This is how a product or a news item is positioned. Cambridge Analytica went a step further (Wilson, 2019) by systematizing into political types the user profiles on Facebook to adapt to each one the message for which advertisers paid them: “Hillary is corrupt,” and perhaps she is, but no less so than this procedure employed to win her the election. The election of Donald Trump owes something to it (Berghel, 2018), as does Brexit (Heawood, 2018) and other processes where money has managed to transform itself into the action of technological tools to intervene in reality and push it in the direction in which the powerful consider.

The logic of a system that turns everything it touches into merchandise has been found in the trade with data derived from the use of the internet a way of expansion towards what has been called “platform capitalism” (Srnicek, 2017).

To blame the internet, and not the economic and political asymmetry of the pre-existing physical world, with the economic, political and military hegemony that has achieved control over it, would be a mistake. It would also be a mistake to ignore the fact that it is part and consequence of the dynamics of a system that tends to concentrate financial and material resources in fewer and fewer hands.

In the name of freedom of expression on the Internet, the United States disqualifies Moscow and Beijing, but as Evgueny Morozov points out, one does not have to agree with the way Russia and China regulate freedom of expression to notice a difference, at least in the discourses, of the three powers: Russians and Chinese defend access to data generated by their citizens on their own soil, while the United States pretends to access, and in fact accesses, data generated by anyone anywhere (Morozov, 2015). And when countries that Washington considers democracies (such as Brazil during Dilma Rousseff’s government) tried to establish sovereignty over their citizens’ data and force them to be stored on servers located in their territory, they were immediately dissuaded.

Latin America, digital backyard of the United States?
The main exchange point for Latin American traffic is not in the region, but in Miami: the Network Access Point (NAP) of the Americas. Even in countries blockaded by the United States, such as Cuba and Venezuela (Social, 2021), the use of U.S. social networking platforms predominates, and it is through them that Washington has stimulated and articulated regime change agendas in those countries (Elizalde, 2019).

In particular, any analysis of Internet use and access in Cuba must start from the more than 60 years of aggressions of all kinds by the U.S. government against the island. A report approved by the United Nations General Assembly by 187 votes in favor, 3 against and 2 abstentions (Nations, 2019) documents in 922 630 million dollars the damage caused to the Cuban economy by that policy since its inception, taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against gold. The same report sets at $55 million the damage of U.S. restrictions on Cuban telecommunications in 2018, including the denial of access (censorship) to “top technology sites, making it difficult to self-prepare or train remotely. Such are the cases of Cisco, VMWARE, Google Code, Google Web Designer and Google Page Speed Insights” (Cuba, 2019: 26).

Information from May 2021 from the Union of Computer Scientists of Cuba states that there are more than 50 technological information and e-commerce sites whose access is blocked on the island by the U.S. government, including platforms such as Zoom, and most software repositories (Guevara, 2021).

Since the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, Washington allocated significant financial resources to propaganda against Cuba, starting in 1960 with Radio Cuba Libre (Radio Swan) until the creation in 2018 by the Donald Trump administration of the Internet Task Force for Cuba; passing through Radio Martí (1986) and Television Martí (1990) during the Reagan administration. With the advent of the internet those financings, averaging $50 million annually, were transferred to the network. Radio Television Martí alone has received 36.1 million dollars in one year (Cuba Encuentro, 2006). Other projects, always associated with Internet communication, received in the first three years of the Trump administration, through the Agency for International Development, close to 50 million dollars; in turn, the aforementioned National Endowment for Democracy received 23 million dollars for what they call “projects to promote democracy” in Cuba (Project, 2021).

The Cuban government’s policy with Radio and Television Martí, and some other media that directly receive this financing, has been to block access to their contents, while others may even have more aggressive positions, but are not exclusively dedicated to propaganda against Cuba (El Nuevo Herald, El Diario de las Américas, ABC) are accessible from the island. It is therefore a defense of national sovereignty in the face of external aggression and not an act of censorship.

The growing access to social networks in Cuba is illustrated by the fact that in January 2021, 7.7 million Internet users were reported, of which 6.28 million are users of social networks, out of a total population of 11 million inhabitants (Social, 2021). In this context, the platforms have become the main stage of action to disseminate the content produced by Washington-paid media. A report by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) had made known in its 2019 projections that “working with independent Cuban journalists and encouraging citizens to create user-generated content on the Island for OCB (Office of Broadcasting to Cuba, which operates Radio and Television Martí) platforms remains a top priority.”

“The growing access to social networks in Cuba is illustrated by the fact that 7.7 million internet users were reported in January 2021.”

OCB’s digital strategy has become social networking consistent with metrics that place YouTube, Google and Facebook among the most visited sites in Cuba. With the use of AVRA technology, Radio Martí’s programs evolved to visual radio and were broadcast via Facebook Live along with TV Martí’s programming. This provides OCB with an additional efficient and cost-effective distribution outlet for both its radio (visual radio) and television content. In fiscal 2018, OCB will establish digital teams on the Island to create unbranded local Facebook accounts to disseminate information. Native pages increase the chances of appearing in the news feeds of Cuban Facebook users. The same strategy will be replicated on other preferred social networks (Governors, 2019:31).

As Internet users relate to Internet content through intermediaries (social networks and search engines), the companies that manage these intermediaries become the eyes and ears of those who think they are surfing the net (Pariser, 2011). The fact that the intermediaries used by Latin Americans are all American is not exactly the way to the often mentioned second independence of the region.

Is there an alternative?
The integrationist processes in Latin America have seen their heyday with the realization of a few projects in the ICT area. One of these is the ALBA 1 submarine cable, which allowed Cuba to access the Internet from Venezuela, extending from Camurí, near the port of La Guaira, in the State of Vargas (Venezuela), to Siboney beach, in Santiago de Cuba. While the U.S. blockade made it impossible to connect the country to the dense network of cables close to the Cuban coasts (for example, the one that runs from Cancun to Miami, only 32 km from Havana’s Malecon), it was necessary to lay 1,062 km at a cost of 70 million dollars (Cubadebate, 2010).

The multinational information multiplatform TeleSur is another such project. But at the continental level, extra-regional companies have prevailed over alliances between Latin Americans in search of technological sovereignty and taking advantage of the cultural and linguistic unity that characterizes the region.

The Internet model assumed as “free” search service (Google) or social networks (Facebook) is based on these companies selling audiences to others who pay to reach the selected segment of their billions of users (Pimienta; Leal, 2018); and whoever pays the most will always arrive first, although not necessarily with more truth or with products of higher cultural or educational quality.

The practically infinite availability of content, and the fact that any user from any location can become a supplier of images, sounds, videos or texts, have not meant a diversification of the consumption of cultural products by audiences. On the contrary, a good part of these users, due to the phenomena of induction and social control, which far from diminishing have deepened with the extension of the Internet, are imitators of the cultural models that radiate from the United States to Latin America and that even before the arrival of the Internet dominated the screens of Latin American television sets and movie theaters, as Fabio Nigra points out.

The interaction between loyalty – for having managed to define the viewer’s taste – and economic power is unbeatable: through concentration, large capitals do not compete with each other and manage to penetrate markets by the easy way, offering good quality products at prices that are more than accessible due to their production at scale; Or by the hard way, starting with commercial and economic pressures, intertwining their own needs with the pushing capacity that the US government can exert, through economic support, direct or indirect subsidies, restrictions on the production of other countries, threats of blockades or sanctions, interstate agreements where, with the appearance of mutual convenience, a reduction in costs is achieved for the producer, whose capitals are transnational, but based in the United States, and so on. At the same time, with the establishment of easily understandable narrative formulas, together with the appeal to an aesthetics that, although it was built over the years (classic editing, naturalism in the performances and scenarios, linearity in the evolution of the plot), after much trial and error admitted to delimit what is going to have a result in the viewer and what would not achieve the intended effect; both elements allowed obtaining a high percentage of guaranteed commercial success (with the necessary ups and downs) (2020).

“The interaction between loyalty – for having succeeded in defining the viewer’s taste – and economic power is unbeatable”.

As a regional group, Latin America still produced only 46.5% of its total free-to-air television programming in the 1990s and imported the remaining 53.5%, half of which – 25.5% – came from the United States. In cinema, in the country with the highest production (Argentina) at its best, national production was a substantial minority on the screens compared to U.S. production (15% vs. 77%) (DEISICA, Department of Study and Research of the Argentine Film Industry Union).

The “alternative” to this situation, which emerged with the rise of the Internet, has not been a Latin American chain of audiovisual content in cinema, series, music or shows, but the presence of Netflix in the homes of the region. Less than 30% of internet access in Latin America is to locally sourced sites, and that access is mostly associated with commerce and financial services, not cultural products (Sharma; Arese Lucini, 2016).

“While the digital divide has decreased, the cultural divide has increased.”

World Stats reported that, in May 2020, in Africa only 39.3% of people accessed the internet, compared to 87.2% of Europeans and 94.6% of North Americans; while in Latin America the level of connectivity reached 68.9%. But while the digital divide has decreased, the cultural divide has increased and the influence of sectors historically aligned with U.S. policies towards the region cannot be said to be minor, something visible in the neoliberal ebb that followed the fall of the Zelaya government in Honduras and the subsequent processes with which figures such as Jair Bolsonaro and Juan Orlando Hernández came to power. More internet, under Latin American conditions, has not always been synonymous with more democracy.

Thanks to the internet, diversity can be better disseminated, but homogeneity has been imposed more effectively and in a more accelerated manner. All voices, all languages, can have their space in the network of networks, but the hegemonic loudspeakers of the physical world have multiplied their influence in it.

As we have already mentioned, the intensive use of ICTs and the dissemination of false information in the political campaigns of Jair Bolsonaro, in the post-electoral coup process in Bolivia in 2019 or in the recent events in Cuba, are not an example of service to Latin American democracy (Elizalde; Molina, 2020).

“Universal socialization tools have become the enabler of U.S. global surveillance.”

Since June 2019, people applying for a U.S. visa have to hand over their profiles in social networks, their email addresses and the telephone numbers they have used in the last five years (Garcia, 2019). We know that mass surveillance, understood as the monitoring of people’s behavior, has always been the great temptation of authoritarian powers, however, at present, we are witnessing democracies that have developed sophisticated clandestine surveillance networks putting at stake the very tradition of which they are supposed to be part (Ramonet; Assange, Chomsky and Sacristán, 2016). This is how universal socialization tools have become the facilitator of global surveillance by the United States, which is not going to stop using that information even if, as will happen in most cases, it decides to deny visas to applicants.

A byproduct of that decision is self-censorship: How many people will limit their expression on the Internet because they ever plan to apply for a U.S. visa?

If the hegemonic actors of the cultural industry, whose influence has multiplied with the Internet and social networks, exert a great seduction on the populations of the planet, selling the American dream; the realization of the journey towards that dream needs the self-censorship of those aspiring to put their heads on Uncle Sam’s not always fluffy pillow.

It has not been enough for the United States to gain access to the servers of major internet companies, nor the ability to, using global networks, attack critical infrastructures of its adversaries – as it has done with Venezuela (TeleSur, 2019) or Iran (Chen; Abu-Nimeh, 2011) -; violate the rules of free trade – as it has just done with the Chinese company Huawei (Ciucan, 2020); induce behaviors in social networks to overthrow governments that are hostile to it; in addition to building false leaders; turning the most obvious lies into truths, based on almost infinite repetitions; and viciously persecuting those who use them to disseminate information that is uncomfortable for them – let us remember Assange – or harassing to the point of suicide those who advocate – like Aaron Swartz – for a truly democratic internet at the service of all (KNAPPENBERGER, 2017).

The alliances between US tech companies and the State Department were very convincingly exposed (Assange, 2014). Of its bipartisan character can attest to one of the most important executives of the king of internet search: Jared Cohen, whom Assange calls “Google’s director of regime change”, and who worked with both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton and then went on to lead Google Ideas.

The attempt to lead digital activism in Latin America also began early for the State Department when in November 2010 the Personal Democracy Forum Latin America (PDF) convened “the region’s top digital leaders to discuss, along with other digital leaders from around the world, how technology is breaking into politics. There, the Department’s Director of Innovation, Alec Rossles, assured bloggers and tweeters in the region that the Internet is the “Che Guevara of the 21st century” (Ross, 2010; Ross; Scott, 2011). Imagine, for a moment, Che Guevara handing over to Washington all the metadata of Latin Americans, along with their email addresses, social media profiles and phone numbers.

While the U.S. government has taken care of cyberactivists in Latin America and especially trained and financed them for the changes it wants to see in the region (Falcón, 2020), the lefts that have been or are in government have lacked popular education strategies for digital sovereignty.

There is a lack of teaching programs at all levels of education to train not only critical receivers, but active participants capable of creatively harnessing the potential of the Internet.

Studies point to the absence of relevant local content and the lack of skills in the population as the main constraints to digital inclusion (Sharma; Arese Lucini, 2016). Can there be a break with geopolitical control external to the region without solving these aspects, if regional alliances both at governmental level and social subjects with institutional support for the development of infrastructures and platforms for content production are conspicuous by their absence?

The answer is the same for other challenges: regional integration. Only with it, informatization from below, with ventures that meet the needs of communities in the digital environment, accompanied by an education that enhances and stimulates the cultural and sovereign use of ICTs, would contribute to the social change that the region demands.

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WASSERMAN, S.; FAUST, K.: Social network analysis: Methods and applications, 1994.

WILSON, R.: “Cambridge analytica, Facebook, and Influence Operations: A case study and anticipatory ethical analysis”, Academic Conferences International Limited, 587-XX.

YEGINSU, C.: “When Harry met Barry: The BBC Obama interview”, The New York Times, 2017.

La cronología completa puede verse en Granma, 2018.

Revista Electrónica Internacional de Economía Política de la Información, la Comunicación y la Cultura. Disponible en: https://seer.ufs.br/index.php/eptic/issue/view/1128?fbclid=IwAR1ZLrGj_EDe9omhKO06tchsYOpFW4d73w09ji1m0oVMJkMWeM8Efv3gP8I

ETIQUETAS: GUERRA CULTURAL, POLÍTICA, AGENCIAS NORTEAMERICANAS, CUBA, DATOS INFORMÁTICOS, EMPRESAS, ESTADOS UNIDOS, GOOGLE, INTERNET, REDES SOCIALES

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Returning to a tragic mistake

5 months ago CubaDebate, Translationsabortion, black people, Women

Returning to a tragic mistake

The overturning of Roe v. Wade opens a Pandora’s box with no small number of ills afflicting women in the northern nation

Posted: Sunday 10 July 2022 | 12:11:13 am.
Author:

Juana Carrasco Martin | juana@juventudrebelde.cu

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The maternal mortality rate among Black women remains three times higher than that of white women. Photo: CNN Author: CNN Published: 09/07/2022 | 11:11 pm.

The United Nations has turned on the red light bulb for the United States after the Supreme Court reversed the right to abortion, thus taking away from the women of the northern nation a constitutional right that had been recognized for 49 years.

The decision by six of the nine justices of the highest court to uphold the ban on abortion in the southern state of Mississippi and five to four to overturn Roe v. Wade, removes American women and girls from the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which was adopted in December 1979 by Resolution 34/180 of the United Nations General Assembly.

That UN standard protects females broadly and even recognizes their right to reproductive health, and, in opposing the effects of discrimination, includes violence, poverty and lack of legal protection, along with denial of inheritance, property rights and access to credit, among others.

Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Missouri, Kentucky, Idaho, the Dakotas, Utah, Wyoming and Oklahoma are among nearly half of the states that have indicated or explicitly stated they will ban the pregnancy termination procedure. The UN has expressed solidarity with the women and urged the U.S. to accede to the Convention, which it originally signed but did not ratify, as 189 of the 193 UN member states have done. The other three countries that have also failed to ratify the Convention are Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

The international body makes an essential argument: that legal access to abortion procedures helps reduce maternal mortality and ensures women’s right to bodily autonomy. It turns out that the United States exhibits a maternal mortality rate that is incongruent with the technical-scientific development and wealth of that country. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2020, 861 women died from pregnancy-related complications, 14 percent more than in 2019, when 754 died, the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income nation in the world.

Last February, the CDC, in a new report, showed a slight but steady increase in the number of women dying annually due to pregnancy or childbirth in the United States, and we highlight another piece of information given by the official record of statistics: the maternal mortality rate among black women is still three times higher than that of white women.

This brings another painful point in the figures of inequalities in a country that is going backwards daily in a journey to the seed of the most extreme puritanism and conservatism, and in this case not only is this backward march undeniable, but it is inhumane that from now on abortion is not authorized as a legal procedure in cases of rape, incest, threats to the life or health of the pregnant woman or girl or in the face of serious fetal deterioration.

We mentioned the situation of Black women, but it is aggravated in all cases of low-income or poor women. The Hill, in its analysis of the situation, cited a 2014 report, by which the Guttmacher Institute. Guttmacher found that 75 percent of abortion patients were considered low-income or poor, and commented that the costs of having an abortion are now rising when the expense of the medical procedure will be joined by travel to another state and even care for the pregnant woman’s other potential children. Three out of four women who have abortions are considered poor or low-income, The Hill stressed.

“Among the 75 percent of abortion patients who are poor or low-income, 49 percent live below the federal poverty level and 26 percent live between 100 percent and 199 percent of the poverty level, according to 2014 research,” said the article in that Washington political publication.

This situation will worsen if we take into account the affectations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, when 20 million jobs were lost, as data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company highlight that hundreds of women are being left out of the economic recovery process in the United States and are staying at home taking care of their families, among other causes because of the difficulty of finding reliable and affordable child care, and those figures in an AP report show that September 2021 counted about 2.5 million fewer women in the workforce compared to the same period in 2019.

Coupled with this is another element of inequality affecting women: the wage gap, which increases if you are Black or Latina. Before the pandemic, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, that gap averaged about 19.5 percent, with a woman earning only 80.5 percent of what a man earns.

These are just some of the weaknesses of U.S. democracy, which, for more than a few, is deteriorating or at least faltering.

We will see fateful results that will have no name, but only cold numbers in the statistics.

The United States is becoming increasingly polarized. Dire times are sure to come.

Manuel Yepe 1936-2022

6 months ago CubaDebate, Manuel E. Yepe, TranslationsJuly 26th Movement, Yepe

Cuban journalist and diplomat Manuel Yepe passes away

May 16, 2022
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Prominent journalist and diplomat Manuel Yepe Menéndez. Photo: Taken from Cubaperiodistas.

Prominent journalist and diplomat Manuel Yepe Menéndez passed away this Monday in Havana, after several days of fighting for his life.

Yepe, a renowned columnist for many Cuban and foreign media outlets, was born in 1936 and since 1954 he was an insurrectionary fighter in Havana as a member of the Youth Brigades of the 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) at the University of Havana.

He worked in the reproduction and distribution of the defense plea of Fidel Castro as the main accused for the assaults to the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in Bayamo. Between April and July 1958 he edited the clandestine magazine of the M-26-7 called ACCIÓN, which was published weekly in Havana and identified itself as the Organ of the Cuban Youth. When the Revolution triumphed, he was vice provincial coordinator and responsible for the propaganda of the M-26-7 in the province of Matanzas.

With a degree in Law, Economics and Social Sciences, he served as Protocol Director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cuban Ambassador to Romania, General Director of the Prensa Latina news agency, Vice President of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, Director of the Guerrillero de Pinar del Río newspaper, National Director of the UNDP TIPS project and member of the Secretariat of the Cuban Movement for Peace.

He defined himself as “a Cuban revolutionary in the ranks” and “one of the many Fidelistas who participated in the Revolution in the second line and gave his life to that beautiful political project”.

Yepe was a member of the Union of Cuban Journalists. The condolences of the national presidency of UPEC go out to his family and friends.

(With information from Cubaperiodistas.)

AMLO speech in Cuba – transcript

7 months ago CubaDebate, TranslationsAMLO, Diaz-Canel, Mexico

Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “I have never bet, nor will I bet on the failure of the Cuban Revolution”.

By Andrés Manuel López Obrador
May 8, 2022
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez, president of Cuba, awards the José Martí Order to his counterpart of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo: Abel Padrón Padilla/ Cubadebate.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: My friends:

Before reading the text I wrote for this important occasion, I would like to convey my condolences to the families of the victims of the accident that occurred in a hotel under repair here in Havana. A heartfelt embrace.

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of the Republic of Cuba: Thank you, President.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: I would also like to send my congratulations to all the mothers of Cuba; those who are here on the island and those who are abroad. Our affection.

President, my friend Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Friends, friends all:

Without wanting to exalt the chauvinism that almost all Latin Americans carry inside, it is safe to say that Cuba was, for almost four centuries, the capital of America. No one coming from Europe to our continent could fail to pass by the largest island of the Antilles and, for many decades, Cuba was the jewel of the Spanish Crown.

Since ancient times, Cuba and Mexico, due to their geographic proximity, migration, language, music, sports, culture, idiosyncrasy and sugarcane cultivation, have maintained relations of true brotherhood.

It is even possible that in pre-Hispanic times there were Mayan inhabitants on the island from the Yucatan peninsula who, in addition to possessing a splendid culture, were like the Phoenicians, great navigators who maintained commercial relations, not only with the peoples of the Gulf of Mexico, but also with those of the Caribbean as far as the Darien.

But, leaving this very interesting subject to anthropologists and archaeologists, what is certain is that the first expeditions departed from Cuba towards the current Mexican territory and that from there, from here, the soldiers of Hernán Cortés sailed their ships to undertake the conquest of Mexico.

It is also known that, even with the differences that this intrepid and ambitious soldier had with the governor Diego de Velázquez, all the support to face the indigenous resistance in Mexico departed from Cuba by orders of the Spanish monarchy.

During the colonial period, in Cuba, as in Mexico, there were epidemics and overexploitation of the native population, which was practically exterminated. This explains the outrageous and painful boom -since the 16th century- in the African slave trade in Cuba and the Caribbean in general.

On one occasion, I visited the ancient city of Trinidad and went to the Museum of Slavery, and observed whips, shackles and stocks, of whose existence I was aware from mentions of the punishments provided for by the espionage laws that ruled in Mexico several decades after our political Independence from Spain, because it should be known that, in our country, slavery was not actually abolished until 1914. Furthermore, it should be noted that just three years earlier, in 1911, the great peasant leader Emiliano Zapata took up arms because the sugar haciendas were invading the lands of the towns of the state of Morelos with impunity.

However, sugar cane, royal palm and migration from Cuba to Mexico is most noticeable in the Papaloapan basin, in the state of Veracruz. Havana is like the port of Veracruz, and the most similar to the Cuban is the jarocho, the inhabitant of that region of the Gulf of Mexico. By the way, my paternal family is from there.

Our peoples are united, as in few cases, by political history. At the beginning of Mexico’s Independence, when there were still constant military uprisings and federalists against centralists and liberals against conservatives, there were two governors of Cuban origin in my state, in Tabasco, the infantry colonel Francisco de Sentmanat and the general Pedro de Ampudia.

Coincidentally, the confrontation of these military men would serve in these times to write an exciting, tremendous and realistic historical novel, whose short story is that one of these characters defeats his countryman governor militarily, and he goes abroad and recruits in New York a group of Spanish, French and English mercenaries, and they organize an expedition to invade Tabasco. But when the foreigners disembarked, they were defeated and put to the sword, while ex-governor Sentmanat’s head was cut off and on the recommendation of a doctor – at that time they were called facultative – they put it in a pot of boiling water, supposedly to delay its decomposition due to the heat and to be able to exhibit it for a few days as an example in the public square.

This inhumane procedure was not unknown in Mexico, nor was it strange in other parts of the world. The father of our country, Miguel Hidalgo, who proclaimed the abolition of slavery, when he was apprehended by orders of Creole and Spanish oligarchs, was not only shot, but also beheaded, and his head was exposed for 10 years in the main square of Guanajuato. Militarism is barbaric and belligerent conservatism breeds hatred and savagery.
=====================

But history is not flat or Manichean, it is not of good and bad, but of circumstance. The General de Ampudia who ordered the execution of Sentmanat, because, according to his words, ‘a terrible and exemplary punishment’ was needed, then stood out in 1846 as defender of the city of Monterrey in times of the American invasion of Mexico; and later, in 1860, he served as Minister of War and Navy in the liberal government of Benito Juarez.

The list of Cubans who fought in the Mexican cause during the American and French invasions is extensive and fruitful. Likewise, there were Mexicans who fought here for the liberation of Cuba. In the times of Juarez, Mexico was the first nation in America to support Cuba’s independence and to recognize Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the president in arms and father of the Cuban homeland. And what can we say about the great services rendered to our country by the Cuban Pedro Santacilia, son-in-law of President Juarez and his main confidant.

Juarez, during his exile was here and in New Orleans, where he met the woman who would later marry his daughter Manuela. Juarez’s confidence in his son-in-law was so great that, during the most difficult moments of the French invasion, it was Santacilia who took care of the family of the defender of our Republic in the United States; Juarez called her ‘my Saint’. No one received as many letters from Juarez as Santacilia, no one like him shared in the moments of greatest sadness and happiness of the “Benemérito de las Américas”.

In the midst of so many gestures of political brotherhood, it is unthinkable that José Martí would not have been so closely linked to our country. The Cuban writer and politician lived in Mexico City from 1875 to 1877. There he wrote essays, poetry and, among many other works, the famous theater script Amor con amor se paga.

He was a columnist for the newspaper El Federalista, linked to the liberal president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and when the latter was overthrown by a military movement led by Porfirio Díaz, Martí left Mexico and, with the vision that only the great possess, wrote to his friend Manuel Mercado that he was leaving, I quote, ‘because a man declared himself by his exclusive will to be lord of men and, with a little light on his forehead, one cannot live where tyrants rule’.

Even though Porfirio Díaz’s assault on power caused Martí’s anger, it should also be taken into account that by that time he had already set his sights on participating in the struggle for Cuban independence, in addition to maintaining a constant epistolary relationship with his friends in Mexico and returning to our country for the last time in 1894.

There is a parallel story to Martí, the Cuban independence fighter, in the figure of a Mexican revolutionary, Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodríguez, who, despite being little known at that time, had the audacity to lead a guerrilla movement from Texas and call on the people of Mexico to take up arms to overthrow Porfirio Díaz, 18 years before Francisco I. Madero did it in 1910.

Catarino Garza was from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and lived in Laredo and other towns along the U.S.-Mexico border. On September 12, 1891 he crossed the Rio Bravo in command of 40 guerrillas and on September 15, 1891 he gave the Cry of Independence in Camargo, Tamaulipas.

In one of his proclamations to raise the people against Porfirio Diaz, Catarino denounced, before others, the grave injustice of the dispossession of the lands of the indigenous communities, declared by the regime as wastelands to benefit large national and foreign landowners.

Catarino was a journalist and his manifestos were constant, profound and well written. However, in the military field he achieved little with his movement: he only gathered about 100 combatants and of his four incursions into Mexican territory he only won one victory at Rancho de las Tortillas, near the town of Guerrero, Tamaulipas.

But, even without winning many battles, the challenge of this guerrilla caused a deep uneasiness in the Mexican military elite that, in collaboration with the U.S. Army and the famous Texas Rangers, mobilized thousands of soldiers to practically seal the border and carry out a tenacious pursuit, village by village, ranch by ranch, in search of the rebel chief, his small troop and his sympathizers.

In these circumstances, Catarino disappeared and in the midst of conjecture the legend and the inseparable corrido arose, which in one verse said: ‘Where did Catarino go with his plans pronounced with his insurgent struggle for the Mexican-American?’

The mystery was cleared up when, some time later, it was known that Catarino appeared in Matina, a town on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica; before that he had been hiding here, in Havana, protected by his independence Masonic brothers.

In those times, Costa Rica was the country of encounters and the ideal territory to prepare guerrillas and landings of the most important revolutionaries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The president of Costa Rica, Rafael Iglesias Castro, was a tolerant liberal and respectful of the right of asylum; hence, leaders and military leaders prepared in the Costa Rican capital the independence of Cuba, the integration of the Central American countries and the reconstitution of the great Colombia, projects celebrated under word of honor in which there was also the commitment to support Catarino in the overthrow of the dictator of Mexico.

In this atmosphere of fraternity, Catarino established close relations with Cubans, Colombians and Central Americans. In Costa Rica there were around 500 Cuban refugees, the most prominent of whom was Antonio Maceo, the general who, together with Máximo Gómez, fought for the independence of Cuba and was considered a threat by the Spanish colonial government.

The figure of Maceo did not go unnoticed in Costa Rica. Rubén Darío himself, the great Nicaraguan poet, relates that one day, I quote, he saw ‘coming out of a hotel accompanied by a very white woman with a fine Spanish body, a large and elegant man; it was Antonio Maceo. His manner was cultured, his intelligence lively and quick. He was a man of ebony’.

Maceo was indispensable for the triumph of the Cuban liberation movement. The duo he formed with Máximo Gómez was the main concern of the peninsular monarchy; it depended on them that Spain would lose its last important bastion in the continent. Hence the reckless phrase, I quote: ‘The war in Cuba is only a matter of two happy bullets against Maceo and Gomez’.

But, just as his enemies sought to eliminate Maceo, ‘the Bronze Titan’, there were others who considered him indispensable. This was the opinion of José Martí, the most intelligent and self-sacrificing character in the struggle for Cuban independence.

Despite the differences, Martí showed a patriotic humility in his relationship with Generals Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo. This explains why Martí went twice to Costa Rica to see Maceo.

Later, in November 1894, after the attempt on Maceo’s life in Costa Rica, Martí wrote from New York, with his incomparable prose, an article in which he said: ‘Let the Spanish government use as many assassins as it pleases, General Maceo and his comrades will be, in due time, in any case, in the position of honor and sacrifice that the homeland designates for them. Assassins can do nothing against the defenders of freedom. The infamous stab that wounds the revolution wounds the hero of those who pretend to suffocate with iniquitous crime the aspiration of a people’. Strictly speaking, to wound Maceo was to wound the heart of Cuba.

Although Catarino knew Maceo, he finally chose to link up with the radical Colombian general Avelino Rosas and his confidant, the journalist and writer Francisco Pereida Castro.

At that time, among other Colombians, the famous General Rafael Uribe Uribe, also a friend of Maceo’s and who inspired Gabriel García Márquez to create the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendía in his famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, was conspiring in Costa Rica.

Facing all kinds of adversities, betrayals and hardships, as it usually happens in those struggles, Rosas was able to define and undertake a revolutionary plan to rescue Colombia from the conservatives; that is how he ordered Catarino to take action to take the barracks and the port of Bocas del Toro, now Panama.

Catarino’s announced expedition began in early February 1895, almost at the same time as Maceo’s expedition to Cuba. The best information about Catarino’s incursion and its tragic end, we owe to Donaldo Velasco, the commander of the ports of Boca del Toro and Colon, who, the year after the events, that is, in 1896, published a booklet in which he narrated, with good prose, everything that happened. Thanks to this cultured conservative agent, we know the details of the last odyssey of the revolutionary Catarino Erasmo Garza.

The mission was not an easy one, but the idealism of the revolutionaries is an extraordinary source of inspiration and constitutes a very powerful force. Once the landing was made in Boca del Toro, after 4:00 a.m. on March 8, 1895, the guerrilla chiefs positioned the 30 combatants to simultaneously attack the police headquarters and the military barracks. Velasco recognized that ‘they had managed to surprise us when we least expected it, in spite of so many warnings’.

The combat was intense and there was hand-to-hand fighting. In the first minutes, the casualties were of the soldiers. Catarino led the action with passion and courage; however, two almost simultaneous shots wounded him to death. The agony was short; shortly after, at 5:00 a.m., the soldiers’ bugle sounded a powerful bugle playing a Diana as a sign of triumph.

In the war report, sent to General Gaytán, who was in David, Panama, it was reported that five guerrillas had died and nine soldiers with eight wounded. Of the latter, from both sides, some died later. At 4:00 in the afternoon, Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodriguez, Francisco Pereira and two other companions were buried in a deep grave in the Boca del Toro cemetery, located on the seashore.

Where the man who was, I would say seven decades later ‘Che’ Guevara’ falls, we are now doing an investigation to recover the remains of Catarino Garza and take them to Mexico.

The information of what happened in Boca del Toro spread and reached all the islands and ports of the Atlantic coast. Porfirio Diaz found out on March 11, through a cable sent by his ambassador in Washington, Matias Romero.

As to whether Catarino was a revolutionary -or, as it was said at that time, a bandit, apart from one’s own opinion-, there is a very valuable verdict to support it: a loyal and proud conservative, by the Colombian Donaldo Velasco. In his text, this important protagonist and witness of the last events, cannot hide his deep admiration for Catarino; I quote: ‘In my opinion, he was not the vulgar bandit portrayed by the Americans; even after his death, he inspired respect’.

This story could not end without clarifying that, even after taking the Boca del Toro barracks, Catarino was summoned to defeat an even more powerful enemy. At dawn, at the entrance of the bay, waiting for him with its cannons was the ‘Atlanta’, an imposing U.S. warship, a steel hull of 96 meters (inaudible) and 284 sailors of the U.S. Navy. All this power to pursue and annihilate, paradoxically, the quote-unquote Catarino, ‘the Filibuster’.

Those were the times when the Americans had decided to become masters of the continent and were defining what they considered their vital physical space, in order to then undertake the conquest of the world. Annexations, independence, the creation of new countries, free associated states, protectorates, military bases, landings and invasions to put and remove rulers at will were at their peak.

We do not know if it was due to the commander’s falsehood or by decision of the supreme command in Washington – since the crew of the Atlanta had no need to intervene -, the U.S. Navy certified that it had made, I quote, ‘a landing at Boca del Toro, Colombia, on March 8, 1895 to protect American lives and property threatened by a Liberal Party revolt and filibustering activity’. The sailors were even decorated.

In a brief account and in homage to the men of revolutionary ideals, the same year that Catarino and Pereira fell, Martí died. Maceo was assassinated in 1896; Rosas, in 1901. Such has also been the fate of many anonymous heroes, forgotten but blessed, and others who will continue to emerge, because the struggle for the dignity and freedom of the peoples is a never-ending story.

Even though my text is already very long -true, Beatriz?- I apologize, I could not fail to mention in our close relationship, President, the outstanding and worthy role of Manuel Márquez Sterling, Cuban ambassador in Mexico during the coup d’état, imprisonment and assassination of President Francisco I. Madero and Vice President José María Pino Suárez.

In those times of the coup d’etat, when the U.S. ambassador organized the coup against our Apostle of Democracy, Francisco I. Madero, the Cuban ambassador, in stark contrast, tried to save his life, offered asylum to prisoners and spent a night with them in the National Palace, where they were held for five days before the terrible felony of killing them in a rampage.

Márquez Sterling tells in his book that my fellow countryman, Vice President José María Pino Suárez, during that solidarity visit, prophetically confessed to him the following:

‘Our imposed resignation provokes the revolution. To assassinate us is equivalent to decreeing anarchy. I do not believe, like Mr. Madero, that the people will overthrow the traitors to rescue their legitimate leader; what the people will not consent is that they shoot us. They lack the civic education necessary for the former, they have plenty of courage and strength for the latter.’

And so it was. On February 22, 1913, at midnight, the president and vice-president legally and legitimately elected by the people of Mexico were cowardly assassinated. From that moment on, José María Pino Suárez’s prediction began to come true: as soon as he was killed, the Revolution was unleashed with fury. On March 26, 1913, Venustiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila, signed with other revolutionaries the Plan of Guadalupe to restore legality and depose the coup general Victoriano Huerta, who had appointed himself president.

Huerta remained in power for a year and a half. Carrancistas, Zapatistas and Villistas fought him with relative independence among them, and achieved the fall of the usurper, who was unable to obtain, at that time, the support of the United States government.

During the entire period of the revolution, both Porfiristas and Huertistas and Maderista revolutionaries lived in exile in Cuba; it is said that in the streets of Havana, here, they insulted each other. Here was, for example, the revolutionary from Veracruz Heriberto Jara, one of the inspirers of the oil expropriation carried out in 1938 by General Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio.

Nor can I omit to mention the solidarity role of the Mexican people and governments with the Cuban revolutionaries who fought against the Batista dictatorship.

It is well known, as you recalled, my friend President Miguel Diaz-Canel, when you visited us last year on the occasion of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s Independence: the passage of Fidel and his companions through Mexico left a deep impression on the future expeditionaries of the ‘Granma’ and an accumulation of legends everywhere, which are still spoken of with admiration and respect.

We will never forget,” you said, “that thanks to the support of many Mexican friends, the yacht ‘Granma’ set sail from Tuxpan, Veracruz, on November 25, 1956. Seven days later, on December 2, the newborn rebel army that was coming to liberate Cuba disembarked from that historic vessel.

You went on to say:

‘Nor do we forget that, just a few months after the historic triumph of the Revolution, in 1959, General Lazaro Cardenas visited us. His willingness to stand by our people, following the mercenary invasion of Playa Giron in 1961, significantly marks the character of our relations.’

President Díaz-Canel, also expressed that ‘faithful to its best traditions, Mexico was the only country in Latin America that did not break relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by imperial mandate’.

As for my convictions about Commander Fidel Castro, and about Cuba’s independence, I reiterate what I wrote recently in a book: Throughout our time as opponents in Mexico, Fidel was the only leftist leader who knew what we represented and distinguished us with his support in his reflections, writings and political acts of solidarity. We never met, but I always considered him a great man for his pro-independence ideals.

We can be for or against his person and his leadership, but, knowing the long history of invasions and colonial rule that Cuba suffered within the framework of U.S. policy, of manifest destiny and under the slogan of America for the Americans, in quotation marks, we can appreciate the feat that represents the persistence, less than 100 kilometers from the superpower, the existence of an independent island inhabited by a simple and humble people, but cheerful, creative and, above all, worthy, very worthy.

That is why, when I was touring Colima and learned of the death of Commander Castro, I declared something I felt and still hold: I said that a giant had died.

My position on the U.S. government’s blockade of Cuba is also well known. I have said quite frankly that it looks bad for the U.S. government to use the blockade to impede the welfare of the people of Cuba so that they, the people of Cuba, forced by necessity, will have to confront their own government.

If this perverse strategy were to succeed, something that does not seem likely due to the dignity of the Cuban people to which I have referred, it would, in any case, turn this great wrong into a pyrrhic, vile and despicable triumph, into one of those stains that cannot be erased even with all the water in the oceans.

But I also maintain that it is time for brotherhood and not confrontation; as José Martí pointed out, the clash can be avoided, I quote, ‘with the exquisite political tact that comes from majesty, disinterest and the sovereignty of love’.

It is time for a new coexistence among all the countries of America, because the model imposed more than two centuries ago is exhausted, has no future or way out, and no longer benefits anyone. We must put aside the dilemma of integrating with the United States or opposing it defensively.

It is time to express and explore another option, that of dialogue with the rulers of the United States, and to convince and persuade them that a new relationship between the countries of the Americas, of all America, is possible. Our proposal may seem utopian and even naïve, but, instead of closing ourselves off, we must open ourselves to committed, frank dialogue and seek unity throughout the American continent. Besides, I see no other alternative in the face of the exponential growth of the economy in other regions of the world and the productive decadence of all America.

Here I repeat what I have expressed to President Biden on more than one occasion: if the economic and commercial trend of the last three decades continues and there is nothing that legally and legitimately can prevent it, in another 30 years, by 2051, China would have the dominance of 64. 8 percent in the world market and the United States only four and even 10 percent, which, I insist, would be an economic and commercial disproportion that would be unacceptable for Washington, and that would keep alive the temptation to bet on resolving that disparity with the use of force, which would be a danger for the whole world.

I am aware that this is a complex issue that requires a new political and economic vision. The proposal is, no more and no less, to build something similar to the European Union, but attached to our history, our reality and our identities.

In this spirit, we should not rule out replacing the OAS with a truly autonomous organization, not a lackey of anyone, but a mediator at the request and acceptance of the parties in conflict, in matters of human rights and democracy. Although what is proposed here may seem like a dream, it should be considered that, without a horizon of ideals, one gets nowhere and that, consequently, it is worth trying. It is a great task for good diplomats and politicians such as those that fortunately exist in all the countries of our continent.

For our part, we believe that integration with respect for sovereignty and forms of government and the proper application of a treaty for economic and trade development is in the interest of all of us, and that no one loses in this; on the contrary, it would be the most effective and responsible way out in the face of the strong competition that exists, which will increase over time and which, if we do nothing to unite, strengthen ourselves and emerge victorious in a good fight, will inevitably lead to the decline of all the Americas.

Cuban friends.

Dear President Díaz-Canel.

I will end now with two brief reflections:

With all due respect for the sovereignty and independence of Cuba, I would like to state that I will continue to insist that the United States lift the blockade of this sister nation as a first step, in order to begin the reestablishment of relations of cooperation and friendship between the peoples of the two nations.

Therefore, I will insist with President Biden that no country of the Americas be excluded from next month’s summit to be held in Los Angeles, California. And that the authorities of each country should be free to decide whether or not to attend the meeting, but that no one should be excluded.

Finally, thank you very much for the distinction of awarding me the ‘José Martí’ Order, whom, as has been made clear, I respect and admire, as I admire and respect Simón Bolívar and our great President Benito Juárez.

Thanks to the generous, supportive and exemplary people of Cuba.

On a personal note, I maintain that I have never bet, do not and will never bet on the failure of the Cuban Revolution, its legacy of justice and its lessons of independence and dignity. I will never participate with coup plotters who conspire against the ideals of equality and universal fraternity.

Regression is decadence and desolation, it is a matter of power and not of humanity. I prefer to continue to maintain the hope that the Revolution will be reborn in the Revolution. That the Revolution will be able to renew itself to follow the example of the martyrs who fought for freedom, equality, justice, sovereignty. And I have the conviction and the faith that in Cuba things are being done with that purpose, that the new Revolution is being made in the Revolution, that is the second great lesson, the second great lesson of Cuba for the world.

This people will once again demonstrate that reason is more powerful than force.

Hugs and thank you very much.

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of the Republic: Well, it is my turn to close this meeting, which will be memorable for all of us.

First of all, good afternoon.

And I would like to express our deepest appreciation to the Cuban mothers, even when we are living a moment of pain and mourning in our country.

I would like to thank President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for this visit to Cuba in these turbulent times we are living through.

Our people, my friend President, receive you with great affection, respect and the admiration you have earned for your generous expressions and gestures towards Cuba. And we also thank you for your condolences to our people for the events we have experienced in recent days.

The relations between Mexico and Cuba are, as you have expressed it, historic and endearing. And you had given a lesson on how the very history between Mexico and Cuba provides the reasons to justify, to nurture, to continue to enhance those relations, and it is precisely for those purposes that this visit has been taking place, which confirms the nature of these ties and opens a path for their progress and deepening.

During this visit we have signed a declaration that consolidates a new stage in the bilateral relationship between Mexico and Cuba. Our Health Ministers published a cooperation agreement that facilitates taking advantage of all the health and scientific potentialities, joint efforts and wills that our two countries can develop in the field of health for the benefit of our peoples in this noble area.

We have also dealt with important issues of the bilateral agenda, of our bilateral relations, but we have also addressed regional and international issues.

I have thanked President López Obrador for his firm position, as he has expressed in his words, of rejecting the genocidal blockade imposed by the government of the United States on our country in the commercial, economic and financial spheres, and also the intensification of this blockade at the present time.

The declaration we adopted recognizes the commitment of both nations to the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, which was created at a Celac summit here in Havana, and the respect that both nations profess for international law.

I also expressed to our friend President López Obrador our appreciation and recognition for his role in favor of the integration of our America, as demonstrated by Mexico’s commendable work at the helm of the pro tempore presidency of Celac last year and its defense of full respect for the sovereignty and integrity of the States, as Benito Juárez always proclaimed.

In this sense, we agree on the inappropriateness of the unjustified incursions of countries of our region in hemispheric events, as it seems that it will happen in what could already be called the so-called Summit of the Americas, in quotation marks.

As President López Obrador has expressed, hemispheric relations must change profoundly. The Cuban Revolution assures him that it will continue its triumphant march of hope and future, and that Mexico can always count on Cuba.

President:

We believe that we have expressed on both sides will, efforts and integration and have made decisions for the benefit of Mexico and Cuba, and of course our peoples.

Viva Mexico!

Viva Cuba!

Urgent Alert from Puentes de Amor

7 months ago CubaDebate, TranslationsAlianza Martiana, blockade, CIA, Maria Elvira Salazar, Max Lesnik, Miami, Puentes de Amor/Bridges of Love

Alert! Urgent! Actions are being prepared to sabotage the Miami anti-blockade caravan and the Bridges of Love movement.

April 25, 2022

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Brothers and sisters: For months the extreme right has fiercely attacked the Miami caravan against the blockade and the Puentes de Amor/Bridges of Love movement. They have branded us as “communists”, “agents of the Cuban government”; lately they have also accused us of being “counterrevolutionaries”. Yes, just like that. The traditional anti-Cuban right-wing has achieved a strange communion with some characters who call themselves “revolutionaries” and attack our movement equally.

They have tried many offenses aimed at getting us out of the way. But without success. Every day more and more people raise their voices to demand the end of the blockade against Cuba and the construction of Bridges of Love between the peoples of Cuba and the United States.

Now the Miami right-wing, articulated by Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart, Channel 41 and the hating YouTubers, are trying to use a new tactic.

They resort to ill-intentioned people and try to create confusion and chaos in the Miami Caravan. The latest thing they have come up with is to hold a “revolutionary” counter caravan. Yes, as you read it: “revolutionary”. It is difficult to understand this puzzle, but opportunism plays unusual cards.

Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind: the creation of this contra caravan is carried out by the same hands that pull the strings of confrontation and rage against the Cuban family. [They are] the same hands that have no scruples in engendering in Washington all the plans and proposals aimed at adding more fire to the pressure cooker in an attempt to make it explode at once, to make Cuba burst.

Now they are using extremists and sectarians who call themselves “leftists”.

In this war against the people of Cuba, and against the caravans, it seems that anything goes. From Miami, with photos of leaders of the Cuban Revolution as a backdrop, they try to legitimize their divisive discourse. While they brand us as “counterrevolutionaries”, they shamelessly appropriate the messages of Puentes de Amor/Bridges of Love. The tactic of confusion of symbols and false flags is not new. They attack, denigrate, defame and intimidate anyone who supports #PuentesDeAmor.

Our caravans are part of a diverse and inclusive movement, centered on the love of family, made up of people of diverse faiths and ideologies. It is not a political movement but a citizen and humanitarian movement. The saboteurs want to make this a reason for “suspicion” because they do not tolerate diversity.

They go as far as xenophobia and rant against someone like Peter Seidman, an experienced fighter for civil rights in the U.S., and one of the organizers of the Miami Caravan. They slander him because he is “American” and “Jewish”. They have even accused Max Lesnik, founder of the Alianza Martiana and an old revolutionary, of being a “CIA agent”. What could they not have said against me? My status as a veteran, a combat medic in the Iraq war two decades ago, is used as proof that the leader of Puentes de Amor/Bridges of Love is a “war criminal”. The goal is to “defame him so that something remains”.

To confuse even more, they claim that the caravan movement and Bridges of Love have a secret agenda to carry out a “soft coup” in Cuba and overthrow the government. Things are true Sancho!

In the face of this barrage of attacks we declare:

Puentes de Amor/Bridges of Love is a movement and organization created in the United States, which seeks to educate the American people and the elected politicians in this country, about the need to lift the sanctions that weigh on the Cuban people. Our goal is to end the blockade of Cuba.

Puentes de Amor welcomes all those who, beyond ideologies, want the blockade to be lifted and Cuba’s national sovereignty to be respected. Neither Puentes de Amor, nor the Miami Caravan, had, has, nor will have any intention of interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs.

We alert our followers and friends, Cubans in the United States and around the world, journalists and social communicators: the counter caravan that they want to orchestrate for May 22, 2022, in Miami pursues only one goal: to undermine the Miami Caravan, disarticulate its members and weaken the #PuentesDeAmor movement.

We invite Cubans and non-Cubans to join the caravan against the blockade that will take place on Sunday, May 29, 2022. People from all over the United States will travel to Miami to give their support to those who raise their voices there to end the criminal blockade that weighs on the people of Cuba.

They will not divide us! They will not confuse us! We will not stop until the blockade on Cuba is lifted! Our priority is love! The family is sacred!

Cuba yes, blockade no! Puentes de Amor/Bridges of Love!

Carlos Lazo
Organizer of Puentes de Amor/Bridges of Love!
April 25, 2022

(Taken from Carlos Lazo’s Facebook account)
===================================================
UNEDITED TRANSLATION OF COMMENTS ON CUBADEBATE:

ERNESTO said:
All our support to the professor and the good Cubans in Miami!!!! We know that this “revolutionary leader” is a friend of Maria Elvira, he doesn’t mess with Otaola and company, besides he has a lousy moral conduct. And as my grandmother used to say, a lazy person is a thief’s apprentice. In this case, since he has not wanted to work, he has sold himself to the highest bidder using the false image of a revolutionary inquisitor. We will not be fooled by this puppet. Long live the bridges of love! Thank you Professor Carlos Lazo for so much effort.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 17:18/ REPLY
Ernesto said:
You are clear brother. Edmundo’s behavior is out of the question. Every time I see him in a direct throwing dirt on bridges of love and Lazo and our president Diaz Canel and and Soberon, I remember how he came out with an immoral video, a guy alienated and does all that under cover of a photo of our commander. Lazo is right, that is paid for and inspired by the Miami right wing.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 18:27/ REPLY
Carmen Glez said:
all movements and caravans to be done with a good purpose. End the blockade. Lifting of the sanctions. Remove Cuba from the expury list of countries welcome the revolutionary caravans And let’s stop defaming Edmundo Garcia. He has always been exposed to the greatest defamations. He has been fighting against this mafia for years and years. Without giving up his Revolutionary principles. Loving and following the Legacy of our Undefeated Commander. They have no evidence to the contrary. . Let’s be serious.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 5:41
Abelino said:
You are correct brother. Edmundo “revolutionary leader” is a person with unparalleled moral rot. He attacks Lazo, Israel el de Buena fe, Soberon, our president Dias Canel, and he does it with a photo of the commander in chief in the background, he is pitiful and disgusting. Here we are alerted to this character. Here they already know him.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 18:33/ REPLY.
The whip said:
EXCELLENT COMMENT,MR. USUAL BUM,AND NOW OPPONENT TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT TO WORK AND THE BEST WAY TO LIVE WITHOUT WORKING HERE IN MIAMI,IS CASHING CHECKS FOR DISUNITING AND ATTACKING EVERYTHING THAT IS GOOD FOR CUBA.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 18:36/ REPLY
Alfredo said:
Much clarity in his words. It is very unfortunate that a gentleman who chooses to call himself a revolutionary before as is edmundo Garcia is the bearer of so much rottenness of the ultra-right in Miami against the Cuban people and bridges of love. How is it possible that this gentleman does not attack the people who call for strong sanctions against Cuba and only attacks bridges of love.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 23:20/ REPLY
Alexei said:
My previous comment was not published I am going to tone down my comment haber si me publican.
I live in Holguin Cuba I am daily on social networks and YouTube directs, defended the revolution, I have many direct cuts in which channels that drive today Carlos Lazo, the host of the channel, denigrate the revolution and Fidel.
I really don’t understand anything

26 APRIL 2022 AT 9:37/ REPLY.
Mercedes said:
Alexei, false very false what you say. The channels that denigrate the revolution are those of Reinaldo Tinima Tv where you participate, those of Edmundo Garcia, where you participate, those of Otaola, Eliecer, Felipe, eñ Protestón, Lazo does not participate in those channels. I also live in Holguín. If you really support our process and the Cuban people, stop following those channels that denigrate the revolution and join those who fight for the Cuban family, the Guajiro, Doctors Cordoví, Pellizcando. And yes, it seems that you do not understand anything. Edmundo denigrates the revolution, right now he is attacking Cubadebate, Soberón, Cuba and threatening to go to the Miami media. Take off your blindfold brother, so you understand what is at stake here.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 12:28
EL LÁTIGO said:
Alexei,is it serious what you are saying?on what channel are you always on?Reynaldo Escobar ring a bell?here don’t come here to lie and try to defend the person who you have also attacked him,or do you have a bad memory?LONG LIVE THE BRIDGES OF LOVE.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 16:45
Otto Anibal said:
If you do not understand anything you call yourself revolutionary and do not get out of CONTRAREVOLUTIONARY channels, eye, and even with key in them, then what do you think how are we ??. Right now Edmundo and since yesterday, he is trying to denigrate Cubadebate, he blatantly lies about this media, he offends….well, you better than anyone know how he gets, then ??, you will go and tell him why he attacks, you don’t understand him at all ????

26 APRIL 2022 AT 19:26
Elvira said:
The truth that us haters no longer have nothing to invent, a “revolutionary” caravan. You have to have a lot of cynicism, chutzpah and lack of ethics. I support our brothers of Puentes de Amor who beyond the borders fight against the genocidal blockade that suffocates their people and for the union of good Cubans wherever they are. Bravo to them!

25 APRIL 2022 AT 17:23/ REPLY
Susana de la Flor said:
… “Bridges of love”…, yes, true, we need many bridges made with love, that unite and save us….

25 APRIL 2022 AT 17:28/ REPLY
Worry and occupy 70 said:
The truth will prevail. When the feeling for Cuba is genuine, lies and hate, fall to the deepest. Long live the sons and daughters who love their homeland. Down with the blockade!

25 APRIL 2022 AT 17:33/ REPLY
Paloma said:
It is worrying, I have always felt fear for the integrity of the Bridges of Love movement, the haters in their perverse actions are capable of anything, they do not have an ounce of dignity or shame
#CubaVive
Thank you for your love

25 APRIL 2022 AT 17:57/ REPLY
siboneyes said:
The movement of solidarity and friendship with Cuba, including the caravans, marches, rallies against the criminal US blockade, IS ON MAXIMUM ALERT. Solidarity and Friendship all over the world… Unite! May they not steal our speech, our terms, our words, our verb and strategies of defense and denunciation, our revolutionary language. May they not rob us of our sure, firm and well-defined steps, our certainty of victory and confidence in a beautiful future. Solidarity, cooperation and disinterested help, friendship, altruism, generosity, kindness, detachment, selflessness, fraternity, comradeship, brotherhood, communion, are words that opportunists, profiteers, lackeys, traitors and bootlickers in the service of the empire do NOT know how to pronounce or use. They combine it all with money, with mercenarism. Let us NOT be fooled and let us NOT take the initiative, brothers in solidarity! let us unite in a single bridge of love and tenderness, a bridge that unites the peoples of the United States and Cuba, the Cuban families separated by visceral hatred, lies and rancor designed from that monstrous, perfidious and horrendous place that is Miami, a single bridge of love, affection and affection that extends through valleys and mountains, rivers, seas and oceans, forests and prairies, between rainbows and clouds and unites all the peoples of the world. Greetings.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 18:09/ REPLY
Ernesto Martinez said:
You could see that coming. The one leading these attacks is Edmundo Garcia. From counter-revolutionary to revolutionary and now he has even become an opponent of the Cuban government. The sad thing about this is that he launches all this venom against Lazo and against bridges of love and has confused good people. The confusion occurs because Edmundo does this work under the cover of photos of the commander in chief. Fidel, from his grave, must be very upset with this character. Don’t be discouraged professor, the people of Cuba love and respect him.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 18:14/ REPLY
Gloria Hardwig said:
100%agree with you!!!

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:41/ REPLY
Eliades said:
Prof. Lazo did not say the name, but we know that the quitacolumnista, the traitor is Edmundo Garcia. Sad and demoralized character that one. It is common knowledge that Edmundo gives his tongue to Maria Elvira Salazar. This guy is poisonous and betrays even his mother. Don’t worry Lazo, Edmundo is not fooling anyone anymore. Here we are alert.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 18:20/ REPLY.
Gloria Hardwig said:
THESE REFLECTIONS CONTAINED IN THIS ARTICLE, ARE WORTHY OF DEEP ANALYSIS! LONG LIVE THE BRIDGES AND CARAVANASSS FOR OUR PEOPLE!!!!!

25 APRIL 2022 AT 18:34/ REPLY
Pepe said:
We support you Carlos for your courage, honesty without limits and intelligence. The values that you stand for are pure and have to triumph. Take care of yourselves from evil and hatred. We support you with all our strength from Cuba

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:01/ REPLY
Aida said:
Vivan los Puentes de Amor viva la familia cubana abajo lis odiadores como el Inmundo Garcia.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:02/ REPLY
Diana Rosa Hernandez Aguilar said:
It is incredible to see how the enemies of the people of use all kinds of unscrupulous actions to eliminate those who try to support us, to help us.
The Blockade is Real.
So is the anti-Cuban mafia.
Bridges of Love, regardless of the circumstances, the attacks, the discrediting against them, seek to unite the Cuban family, seek what every Cuban with love for his homeland should do, fight against this criminal blockade until it is destroyed.
On the 29th with Bridges of Love in caravan and against the sanctions that weigh on my country.
On the 29th I go with Bridges of Love.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:05/ REPLY
Mas said:
Thank you, love will always unite us, no.matter distance.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 20:39/ REPLY
Miguel Fernandez Sierra said:
It is shameful that Cubans who were akin to the REVOLUTION in recent times have twisted the path. I have been participating in these caravans the last three times in Miami and I can affirm that we are all against the BLOCKADE and in favor of good relations between Cuba and the USA! Down with the BLOCKADE and long live the bridges of LOVE! Greetings!

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:05/ REPLY
Aida said:
Vivan los Puentes de Amor viva cuba Viva la familia cubana El tal inmundo es un odiador y opositor del pueblo de cuba y su gobierno.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:05/ REPLY
ArielN said:
I would like to know the sense that those who try to sabotage a gesture of kindness do not tell him a revolutionary taste valla, pq.many are not but humanism will never be well seen who condemns or attacks it, as it will not be well seen who uses it as a facade.
Rivers have always had clear waters and murky waters but in the end both end up in the same sea.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:14/ REPLY
Daniel Andres said:
My respect for them , the way is love , not building walls but building bridges of love , the Cuban family needs it , why can’t relations be normal , despite the differences between the two countries , by their fruits you will know them , those who love and build , those who hate and destroy

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:29/ REPLY
Miguel said:
Those who truly love Cuba are not going to be misled by that crude maneuver. All my support for Puentes de Amor.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:44/ REPLY
Macondiana said:
Professor all the love in the world is not enough to thank you. On behalf of the Cuban family, thank you and a thousand times thank you! Fuerza Puentes de Amor!!!

25 APRIL 2022 AT 19:55/ REPLY
Quindo said:
“the homeland rises on the united shoulders of all its children. One does not have the right to isolation: one has the right to be useful” José Martí.

Bridges of love is a good project that seeks to influence to lift the criminal blockade that makes the homeland suffer, which is laudable, but if we look at the media supports of this project as was the Protestón, creator of the Miami caravan, and the youtube channel “Pellizcando” leave much to be desired by the positions assumed and the sometimes grotesque way of treating those who think differently from them.

There is a marked protagonism of the leader of this movement, which many do not like given the positions he assumes, at times, with important people of this movement who brand the revolution, our government as a “dictatorship”. This does not please the revolutionaries in spite of the laudable objective.
If it is said that it is not a political movement, without ideology, inclusive, these manifestations should be on the margin of the movement because they undermine, create doubts.

This proclamation, this declaration, although it intends to alert about the contenders who intend to boycott this project and take a parallel path: the important thing would be not to give reasons to question this noble purpose and to analyze the causes of why it is questioned and to eliminate everything that casts doubt on the good and legitimate intentions.

Any action that contributes to the lifting of the blockade is praiseworthy, wherever it comes from, but it is necessary to follow clear paths to prevent censorship and disqualification: everyone has the right to defend what they believe to be just.

“There are no two ways to go if you want to succeed” and “whoever asks for love must inspire respect” José Martí.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 20:21/ REPLY
Maria Cristina said:
What kind of thing bro. Pellizcando en Vivo collects refills for people in Cuba, helps the Caravanas, and you dare to defend and not mention a denigrating and denigrated man who attacks our president Diaz Canel and you say that Pellizcando says rude things. How sad brother, you may be good people but you are very confused and do not see that one of the biggest traitors in the Cuban emigration is Edmundo Garcia. I am glad Cubadebate exposed this. Here in our country people are clear. Don’t try to confuse us.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:28/ REPLY.
Luciano said:
Recharges? How many recharges according to the money they receive? Here families recharge their families. Those recharges you talk about 99% are “earned” by the same person. Have you seen a financial report of what is collected? What did these riffraff do when they were fighting against the blockade, not embargo as they call it. According to them “blockade” is the internal blockade of Cuba. Dale, bring out your evidence.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 9:02
Abigail said:
Luciano, you are the Herald journalist, counter-revolutionary who has not visited Cuba for 30 years. Luciano, Herald journalist liar, advisor to Edmundo now campaigning to create a dissidence of “revolutionaries” in Miami. Look how the “unknown” contributions rained down on Edmundo yesterday, he collected almost a thousand dollars, there is a lot of money in Miami to attack Cuba. We here know who you are and who Edmundo Garcia is, wolves of the same anti-Cuban pack. long live Cuba! long live the revolution! long live the bridges of love!

26 APRIL 2022 AT 10:33
Kindo said:
Dear Maria Cristina, I state my opinion from what I see, what I hear. Nobody is absolutely right. Neither you nor me. I opine by evidence: ask Victoria a Cuban living in Havana if she was not offended. Whatever the reasons, there is no reason to denigrate anyone.
How does recharging help: only to connect to the internet or to sell the balance, no more.
It is not admissible that they brand the government as a tyranny, they do it; that Fidel has already passed, that he is in a stone, that now there are other circumstances: they marginalize his legacy. Do we have to accept that? Besides, it is inadmissible to use milk donations in tones of bachata, laughter, double meaning. Can you imagine what Fidel would have done if he had seen these demonstrations? Can you imagine? He would have dispensed with them: “The manner of giving is worth more than what is given” (Pierre Corneille). Solidarity is based on the purity of intentions, of acts, and does not admit this type of manifestations. Imagine if the solidarity aid that our country gives to others were acted in this way: Do you think we would be credible? Cuba is credible because of the seriousness of its actions; because of the principles it upholds; because of an exemplary and respectful practice of solidarity since 1959 until today. Nothing justifies, not even the tons of milk given, to use them in a tone of laughter, of amusement: to say things like: “milk on top, milk underneath; milk everywhere” and I say no more. I don’t find that funny, and I don’t think anyone can find that funny. He who serves with love, respects and even more so in the circumstances we live in. I do not criticize, I point out. You cannot cover the sun with a finger and as Martí said: “what is, is”.
Solidarity is not only an act of love, but also an act of respect.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 14:11
Watching the bulls from the sidelines said:
Dear, if we remember well so much detail about Marti’s platforms and phrases, well we should equally remember that Fidel, clarified that in Cuba there was a dictatorship, it is the dictatorship of the proletariat. As for the intensity of offense meter, clearly, to send to hell the president of any country, ranting about the youth of that country, in reference to prostitution, among other things said by Ed. G., will agree that it is much more outrageous and denigrating, for those offended revolutionaries, than the use of the word dictatorship. The Pellizcando en Vivo platform lent the channel to promote the caravan at a time when there was no platform for it, but its primary objective is not to promote the caravan. Watching the bulls from the sidelines, since no disqualifications have ever been said about the Cubans and the leaders of the island, from the mouth of the leader or leaders of the bridges of love. Grotesque, however, is what is done from platforms such as those that you Quindo, subtly and unintentionally legitimizes (intentionally or not) the right to rant (right to free speech), using as an instrument to do so the disqualification of the Pellizcando en Vivo channel, establishing a manipulative parallelism with the Protestón platform. The Pellizcando Platform has thousands of things to improve, as any work, however it is obvious that it is completely and diametrically different from the Protestón platform. Please, before issuing criteria, it would be good to try to be truly impartial, investigate the causes and evolution of why we have reached this situation and only then delegitimize, criticize or praise, but always with substantial arguments. Let us always use the power of well and honestly crafted argument and not the argument of power or our preference.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 2:03/ REPLY.
Mario said:
Mr. cute. Or Kindongo. I don’t give 3 shits how you think. Pinching live of which fills me with pride and pleasure to be a member. It brings more to our project of bridges of love and to the Cuban people. Than many revolutionary debtors like Edmundo Garcia and many of his confused followers. He is not only a revolutionary and patriot who hides behind a picture of the Comandante on his back and attacks the current president and many of the leading apparatus in Cuba and serious and honest people who believe that love is what unites. Which side are you on? The one that wants to live off history and cover up the present and the future? History is respected and kept in the soul. But the present and the future are carried in the mind every day to seek a better welfare for our people. You do not know the reality of certain YouTube that when hoisting an image their thinking is in the limelight and the interests of feeling indispensable that is EDMUNDO GARCIA. Pellizcando is an entity of respect and love. Where a group of friends and Cubans without selfishness and taboos, neither political nor religious. We share as a family what little we have with our people and you have never heard in this group that the Cuban government should make changes, that is a problem of the Cuban government to make reforms and take the people forward as it has always done. Join real projects and limit yourself to judge. A hug we wait for you in bridges of love and united to the topic pinching. To fight side by side to lift the sanctions.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 10:33/ REPLY
Kindo said:
Dear Mario, the first thing you should do is to treat others with respect. Do you think it is civic to treat others this way: “Mr. Cute. Or Kindongo. I don’t give 3 shits how you think”. You can think, have an opinion different from mine: give your arguments that is what counts, not this aggressive language that does not give you more reason: it makes you ugly. Arguments are what is valid, the rest is superfluous. I excuse you.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 14:07
Carmen García Gutierrez said:
All our support , dear friend Carlos Lazo Thanks to all those who demand love Cuba and are in solidarity with our people .Down with the Genocidal Blockade. And Criminal imposed by the U.S. government to Cuba.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 20:40/ REPLY
Yipsydiazcgmaul.com said:
How can we help them from Cuba?

25 APRIL 2022 AT 20:44/ REPLY
Juan Carlos Subiaut Suarez said:
Dear Carlos Lazo:
Many times, when there are no more elements to discern on which side is the truth and choose a criterion, one relies on seeing the opposite side, who attacks him, who is against what is being raised, who in one way or another, is allied with the enemy, even if he uses false flag criteria, even if he uses phrases and positions of our patriotic referents. The fact that they have done it and are doing it against him and against the movement he represents is, no doubt, evidence of his growing success and the fear of our enemies that he will continue to reap them.
A few days ago, in response to what was said by several forum members, I commented on the matter:
¨I respect the opposing positions, but, like any struggle, this one is heterogeneous, as heterogeneous is the composition and interests of the groups that participate in it. I am a Cuban from here and I have more grounds to fight against the blockade, because I suffer its consequences daily, so I try to see, above the differences of criteria, a position, which is the fight against the blockade, and based on it, to achieve a united front. The effectiveness of all these initiatives, without forgetting the value, more in the spiritual than in the material sense, of sending donations, is to achieve an increase in the awareness of the issue in the American society. The blockade is part of a set of legislations, regulations and other measures, so its deactivation will occur when the elimination of these measures begins to be debated and approved by the U.S. government. Then, I applaud any initiative, which may have nuances, even internal struggles for positions, leaderships, etc., but whose direction coincides with the struggle against the blockade. This is the main task.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 20:56/ REPLY.
Miguel said:
For me it is clear that whoever attacks Puentes de amor, under whatever banner, is serving the interests of Cuba’s enemies.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:06/ REPLY
Reynier said:
Thank God at last !!!, thank you CubaDebate for echoing these words of Professor Carlos Lazo, it is good enough that these pariahs hiding behind the images of the Commander in Chief, and wearing a false uniform of Revolutionary attack with impunity the leaders of the Revolution, branding them as ignorant, influence peddling, corrupt, clumsy, bunglers and I do not know how many more adjectives, denigrating both the current leaders of the country and the movement of Bridges of Love….

25 APRIL 2022 AT 21:07/ REPLY.
Agustin said:
The world upside down. If we follow the guideline raised among the good Cubans in Miami must be the youtuber “Protestón Cubano”, the unmentionable Erick Concepcion, other youtuber like the famous “Captain etc” who says that “Pozada Carriles” is innocent, who disrespects our Sara González and her song “A los héroes” by the way that we are still in the April of Girón, or the no less ineffable Liber who refers that our FIDEL is in a stone and that he is part of the past. All close collaborators of Mr. Lazo and his “bridges”. All of them accusing those who reject them for being what they are, GUSANOS and that they find a space in a site like this one to continue doing their work with the support of those who should take the trouble to look for public and abundant information on these subjects. I hope you publish this comment. I am Cuban and revolutionary. It would be a disappointment for me not to see this opinion while others may say things to the contrary. Greetings

25 APRIL 2022 AT 21:07/ REPLY
Eliades said:
No amigo. Proteston decanted from the movement and betrayed, as did Edmundo Garcia who attacks our president, not only Lazo and Soberon and Israel Rojas and Johama Tablada. A demoralized drug addict, a sexual aberrate, who when he saw that the cause was bigger than him, he sided with Otaola and Maria Elvira. Why is he attacking our president and not attacking Otaola? Why is he attacking ICAP and not attacking Maria Elvira? Why is he trying to destroy the caravans and not trying to destroy the blockade? Edmundo Garcia is a traitor to the people of Cuba and if you follow him you are well screwed.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:17/ REPLY
Luciano said:
Bring out the proof that he is paid or supported by Maria Elvira or OtaOla, but bring them out and bring out the proof that everything that has been said about Carlos Lazo’s gusanera is false because it’s all in videos. Dale get your proofs out.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 9:07
Tomas said:
False very false what you imply. Edmundo Garcia attacks our president Dias Canel, Fernandez Cosio, Soberon Johana Tablada and you still defend Edmundo. This article is not about the protester who killed himself, it is about Edmundo Garcia and his attack against the caravans and against the people of Cuba. And if you are on Edmundo’s side, you are not a revolutionary,

APRIL 25, 2022 AT 22:33/ REPLY
Abraham said:
You can be a revolutionary but at no time lose perspective. It is true that all those you mention in your writing at times have had those pronouncements, however that does not prevent them from agreeing with the idea that unites us all and makes us equal. All of them, beyond their ideologies or different ways of thinking, support the Cuban family of which you and I are a part, just as they all demand the lifting of the U.S. blockade. And that is the achievement of Bridges of Love, it brings together Cubans of different ideologies and thoughts with the one and only objective of demanding the lifting of the blockade imposed for more than 60 years.

APRIL 26, 2022 AT 6:51/ REPLY
Miguel said:
That is the idea, all those who love Cuba and the Cuban family should be united in this objective. Creating division among us is the goal of the enemy to continue crushing the Cuban people.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 11:03
Mario said:
Puentes de amor should be respected by all good Cubans inside and outside. You don’t have to be a communist to respect the laws of a country. They say we are children of the Lord. Lord that none of us know and respect. Bridges of love is a light where at least we can have political or religious differences but it is for the common good of our people. Our people our elders and children. From town to town. Governments come and go. The Commander was a worthy and humane son. Raul was a continuity and a great leader is DÍAS CANEL whom his people and all follow him except for a few behaviors. Each people is the one who chooses. Let us respect our people. Who is Edmundo Garcia? Who is Ota Ola ? Who is Eliezer and comparsas ? I am puentee de amor soy tim PELLISCANDO I am neither communist nor catholic or religious. I am an atheist but with a heart in the center of my chest to love and respect my people and my country whoever runs it. My duty is to support what my people decide. Long live bridges of love viva cuba viva your government who will know how to get your people ahead.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 7:53/ REPLY
red315 said:
Everything you express I have been able to see in the channels that support Carlos Lazo, in which he himself participates with some frequency. I am also Cuban (in Cuba) and like everyone else I live in spite of the blockade. One thing is clear to me, those who have arguments to defend their positions can challenge any person, just as the latter can demonstrate their truth. We all want the blockade to end and to have relations with the whole world but the first and fundamental thing is to preserve the ethics and morals that have allowed this small country to be the future longed for by many in the world. Without them the revolution would be mortally wounded, and they can remove the blockade at any time.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 14:24/ REPLY
tania said:
And to think that many believe that they really say they want the best for Cubans. Yes the best ….. hypocrisy and chutzpah. How they do everything possible and impossible to axficiarnos. Their democracy is completely confused, they act in a contrary and illogical way.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 21:21/ REPLY
Alejandro Martinez said:
Well said, bridges of love! Edmundo is a dissident.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:09/ REPLY
Sigo la Lógica said:
reality is the only criterion of truth, if the caravan and bridges of love is in favor of Cuba and the improvement of relations with the elimination of the blockade, who is served by an attack on that movement, things are almost always simpler than they seem.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:30/ REPLY.
Cubaneo said:
Brother lazo they will never be able to divide us as in 63xyears they have not been able to with the Cuban revolution we believe more love bridge know why they do that because they are failed and they are always like that some low and miserable free homeland or motir by sovereign Cuba and independent of yankee ingeremcia.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:33/ REPLY
simple said:
the truth is defended with actions, and whoever puts his chest to danger as does bridges of love deserves all our respect and support, the column removers will always be to destroy the work of the revolution, no need to say the name of those who have lost honor and dignity, they do not deserve a minute, just look at the coven even with photos of the commander, what little shame has that sr.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:45/ REPLY.
Agustin said:
To die of laughter. It is true that this gentleman of the “bridges” has them saying nonsense to the four winds. None of them has ever been in danger. Except in Faluja Iraq where he went to commit genocide as part of the yankee army and from which he was decorated. It is a pity that so many people follow the saint of bridges without doing a minimum exercise to verify all the sources. It is their right and they are respected, respect then the right to our heresy.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 9:38/ REPLY
Carmen Martinez said:
Edmundo has lost his way and is trying to do harm. He uses the same methods of Otaola giving directions and sending mobs to attack whoever contradicts him. I believe that you are the ones who live manipulated by this gentleman. Just last night he published a photo of Carlos Lazo’s house. In these turbulent times where hatred is imposed to encourage attacks against a person is an act the least undignified.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 13:36
Otto Anibal said:
You are in all of them, I imagine already where you are coming from. Haber follower of edmundo garcia (all lower case letters intended) when was your leader in danger ?, how many attacks did he escape from ?, how many scars does his body exhibit (surgery for appendicitis doesn’t count) after so many years in “danger” ??. I will only repeat one thing said by him, he was a good friend of Más Canosa, he is currently a good friend of María Elvira and that friendship is already long, with only these two and there are many more, do you think that Edmundo has ever been in danger in Miami, as you say, don’t make me laugh.

26 APRIL 2022 AT 14:55
Otto Anibal said:
To be more exact I would say that NEW maneuvers are being prepared against the caravans and the Bridges of Love project because for quite some time now, all kinds of actions are being generated to totally destroy such initiatives created by emigrants who love their Homeland. Edmundo Garcia’s Youtube program is very similar in image to Radio and TV Marti, these two monsters use the figure of the Apostle, this other one the Commander in Chief, with an unparalleled and incredible sound they attack the Cuban people and its Revolution. The height of brazenness is that this filthy character, lacking all morals, shame, modesty, dignity, honesty, principles and other attributes present in a normal citizen, takes as a reference precisely that quality of the dignity of the human being to name his already defeated caravan. Just as we did not accept the “aid” that came from the open right wing in Miami, we will not support this “caravan” that comes from the hidden right wing. VIVAN puentes de Amor, Somos de Patria o Muerte.

25 APRIL 2022 AT 22:48/ REPLY
Agustin said:
Otto the ones I have seen in very good vibes with the unpresentable Eric Concepcion have been you and the cortege of the saint of bridges. In the public eye are the videos where he sang patria y vida in Panama minutes before sharing the stage with the bona fide. I don’t know what you mean when you say that you are from “Patria o Muerte” and you have such a close friendship with that individual. If that is the case now, I will only tell you that in my case I am guided by the imprint of FIDEL and CHE: Not even a little bit like that to the worms.

APRIL 26, 2022 AT 9:29/ REPLY
Oscar said:
Agustin, that same discourse you use is that of the dissidence that wants to divide our process. Do not use the name of our undefeated comandante to legitimize your words. You are doing the same thing that Edmundo Garcia does, putting Fidel in the background to confuse. Fidel wanted unity among all good patriots and he must be turning over in his grave knowing that people like Edmundo and you are using him to sow a sisaña among the ranks of the revolution. That is the plan of the Miamense right but here we are no fools. Viva Cuba! Fatherland or death!

26 APRIL 2022 AT 10:40

The Cuban Project

10 months ago CubaDebate, TranslationsCuban constitution, José Martí

The Cuban Project

By Agustín Lage Dávila
25 January 2022

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

We are approaching January 28 and we have to talk about José Martí. He lived and died for a project of a country that did not yet exist in his time. But millions followed him, and fell in love with that project, because great historical projects, even if they are formulated by exceptional leaders, are viable only when they synthesize the aspirations of many human beings.

This is what he himself said in an article published in the newspaper Patria in April 1892: “What a group covets, falls. What a people wants, endures”.

And in that shared project, Cuban national consciousness was formed: it emerged from decades of war in the 19th century, in a population of just over a million inhabitants, occupied by tens of thousands of enemy soldiers. It made annexation to the United States impossible. It forced the repeal of the Platt Amendment. It resisted, in the first half of the 20th century, 60 years of American ideological and cultural pressure, and thereafter, another 60 years of economic warfare, military hostility and ideological subversion. And it faced the challenge derived from the disappearance of the European socialist camp. So what are we Cubans who have been the protagonists of all this?

Let’s start by saying what we “are not”. We are not a nationality united by common ethnic roots, nor by religious confessions: Here there is “an ajiaco” of everything, as Don Fernando Ortiz said. Nor are we defined by an exclusive language: we have the language used by the largest number of countries in the world. We are not a closed economic space: we have always had an open economy. We do have our own culture that makes us proud, but it is not a closed culture either, it shares roots with many other cultures from several continents.

So what is it that identifies and unites us? We are essentially a nationality with ethical roots, united around a special sensitivity for social justice. We are Cubans because we share a set of moral values and a project of human coexistence.

This is what Martí also wrote when he called for the necessary war in the Manifesto of Montecristi: “…when a warrior of independence falls on Cuban soil…he falls for the greater good of man (and) the confirmation of the moral republic in America…”

The 1959 revolution reinforced in Cubans that fusion between nationality and social justice, now synthesized in Fidel’s thought and in the concrete achievements of these last 60 years, which showed us in deeds what the people always knew: that social justice is possible.

Total literacy and schooling, free education and health for all, full-coverage social security, full employment, elimination of racial discrimination, equality and development of women, universalization of culture and university education, home ownership, scientific development; these are truths that must be said and repeated, because we are so accustomed to these achievements that sometimes we forget how advanced they are and how much they contradict the dominant ideology of today’s savage capitalism.

The permanent defense of national sovereignty has allowed us to build our own political, social and economic alternative. Revolutions do not crystallize and become irreversible immediately when they denounce the social preconditions that need to be changed, not even when they formulate noble ideas and strategic projections. Revolutions become lasting and creative when they succeed in building the alternative. In Cuba we did it.

National sovereignty is the safeguard of our project of society, of our own concepts of justice and human coexistence, as they have emerged from our own history.

Photo: Alejandro Azcuy Domínguez

Martí’s project of the nation was born in opposition to the one that was simultaneously emerging in the United States, based on ambition and competition among people.

This is what he wrote in his “Notebook No. 1”: “Our life does not resemble theirs, nor should it in many points. American laws have given the North a high degree of prosperity and have also raised it to the highest degree of corruption. They have monetized it to make it prosperous. Prosperity at such a cost be damned!”

169 years have passed since Martí’s birth, but the essential battlefields of ideas are still there.

The ideas about how we want our lives to be are now synthesized in the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba. It was approved with 86.85% of the votes. There it is “what a people wants”, what Martí predicted is what endures.

Does it have enemies? Of course, it does. The “Cuba Project” always had them, here and abroad. In his time, Martí himself had to fight battles of ideas against autonomists and annexationists. But today those enemies are few, and they lack legitimacy before the people.

Cubans have all the right in the world to fight for “what a people wants” and to defend it from its enemies, both here and abroad.

Are there different opinions in Cuba on the concrete ways to conduct the “Cuba Project”? That is another matter. Of course, there are such opinions, and it is good that they exist. Discussing them will allow us to perfect the project, adjust it to the new times, and make its building more solid, but without ever damaging the foundations.

Human beings are moral entities, not only biological or economic, and we embrace collective projects, beyond individual projects. For those who stop thinking and acting (there are some) based on an idea of the future, the present collapses and empties of content. The truth is, although the usual cynics and skeptics do not understand it, that people fall in love with projects, even in the midst of the harsh realities of the present.

Martí’s project was the project of thousands of young mambises. Fidel’s project was the project of thousands of young rebels, before and after the triumph of 1959. The project of the nation that our Constitution enunciates is and will be the collective project of millions of young Cubans today.

This is described in Article 1: “Cuba is a socialist state of law and social justice, democratic, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all as a unitary and indivisible republic, founded on the work, dignity, humanism and ethics of its citizens, for the enjoyment of freedom, equity, equality and individual and collective prosperity”.

On January 28, in a few days, it is time to evoke the founding ideas of our nationality and our project of society, and to reinforce the broad consensus we have on the need to defend them and make them endure.

We will return the following day to the discussions on what needs to be changed to achieve this.

Voter Suppression in the United States

10 months ago CubaDebate, TranslationsJr, Martin Luther King, US politics

Voter suppression in the United States and whom does it affect?

By Dalia González Delgado, professor at the Center for Hemispheric Studes and about the United States (CEHSEU) at the University of Havana.

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Photo: Kristopher RadderAP

“One person, one vote” has been an aspiration and a rallying cry for many Americans. The claim makes sense, if we think of the tangled Electoral College system that dilutes the will of the majority, and as a consequence of which, for example, in 2016 Donald Trump won the presidency despite having obtained fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton.

It happens that not all votes have the same weight in the final result. And that in the case of those who manage to get to the polls. The problem is more serious for those who are disenfranchised, a phenomenon known as voter suppression that is as old in the United States as the very existence of the country.

Martin Luther King’s birthday commemorations this week were marked by calls against voter suppression. The family of the civil rights fighter, assassinated in 1968, led the annual march in Washington DC on Monday that pays tribute to his legacy. On this occasion, the participants demanded that Congress approve legislation that would protect the right to vote against the maneuvers of certain sectors that seek to limit electoral participation.

Democrats on Capitol Hill, backed by a Joe Biden eager to make good on any of his campaign promises, are pushing two pieces of legislation: the “Free to Vote Act” and the “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” which seek to eliminate some of the current restrictions. They would expand early and mail-in voting, make Election Day a national holiday, and curb gerrymandering, which manipulates electoral districts.

But in a context of growing polarization and partisanship within Congress, those bills have met with rejection from Republicans. On Wednesday night those proposals were blocked in the Senate. And it is not a question here of good or bad, but of cost or benefit for both parties. Voter suppression mechanisms affect more some minorities, blacks, Latinos, women, poor people, who usually support Democratic candidates in the majority.

This phenomenon has a long history, which we can trace, as I said, to the very emergence of the United States as an independent country . We the people , the phrase with which the Constitution begins, never included all people.

Initially, only white men with property could vote, in an electoral system designed to perpetuate certain sectors in power, at that time the southern elites. The property requirement was gradually phased out, but it was many years before blacks and women could cast a vote. Not to mention the Indians, stripped of their land, who were only considered US citizens in 1924.

The first stumbling block is that the United States does not have a federal electoral law. Therefore, the way in which the entire process is carried out depends on the regulations in each of the states . As historian Eric Foner makes clear, the Constitution does not explicitly grant anyone the right to vote; States determine eligibility, and their rules and procedures vary greatly. Over time, some constitutional amendments have tried to prevent states from limiting the franchise.

After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying the right to vote on racial grounds. Years later, in 1920, the 19th Amendment made it possible for women to vote. But in a scenario where elections and their regulations are local, multiple ways have been developed to limit participation.

The 15th Amendment was flouted with the so-called Jim Crow laws, which institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy with the term “separate but equal.” Many states, especially southern ones, began to demand from literacy tests to the payment of a tax so that people could vote; a veiled way to prevent African-Americans or the poor from exercising their constitutional right. There were also less subtle mechanisms, such as members of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups that prevented, with intimidation or armed violence, potential African-American voters from reaching the polls.

After a long struggle and almost a hundred years of history, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. Since then, the mechanisms of vote suppression have been transformed but persist, with the same objective they have had since their emergence: to keep certain groups in power by preventing the participation of others.

A Supreme Court ruling in 2013 struck down a key part of the landmark Law of ’65, freeing southern states from federal oversight of their election laws. Such oversight had been put in place to prevent states that had previously had Jim Crow laws from using other mechanisms to suppress the black vote. But the Court decided that regulation was unnecessary.

To give you an idea of what that means in practice, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shared a list of some of the methods currently used to prevent certain people from voting.

One of the most common ways is to restrict the terms and requirements of voter registration; require documents to prove citizenship or identification, or limit the time period in which voters can register. For example, according to the ACLU, in 2011 Kansas championed a law requiring residents to show “proof of citizenship” documents in order to register to vote, such as a passport or birth certificate. As a result, the law blocked the records of more than 30,000 people.

Other states go further, imposing absurd requirements and harsh penalties to intimidate voters. In Georgia, it is a crime to offer food and water to voters lining up at the polls, lines that are typically long in that state for African-American communities where there are fewer polling places.

In some states, people convicted of a crime cannot vote, which also affects more blacks or Latinos, who make up the majority of the prison population in that country. The elections are on a weekday and have reduced the possibilities for early voting and by mail. We must also mention the effect of the redistricting of electoral districts and gerrymandering, to which we have already dedicated a comment in this space.

According to ACLU data, some groups are more affected. For example, counties with larger minority populations have fewer polling places and poll workers per voter; 25% of black Americans of voting age do not have a photo ID as some places require; 18% of voters with physical disabilities reported difficulty voting in person in 2020.

These are just a few examples to briefly illustrate an extremely complex phenomenon in the United States, a country that questions foreign electoral systems and even sanctions them, while preventing millions of its citizens from exercising their right to vote.

Attorney General’s report on July 11 trials

10 months ago CubaDebateAttorney General, July 11, Trials

cuba-debate

Office of the Attorney General of the Republic reports on the status of criminal proceedings arising from the riots of July 11, 2021

By Attorney General of the Republic
January 25, 2022

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

For the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, it is a duty to continue informing the people and international public opinion about the legal response given to the serious events that occurred on July 11, 2021, which attempted against the constitutional order and the stability of our socialist State.

As has been explained, these events occurred in a particularly complex context of world economic crisis, aggravated by an unprecedented pandemic that took the lives of many Cubans, and the intensification of the economic, commercial and financial blockade by the United States government against our country, which continues to try, without being able to achieve it, to destroy the Revolution.

In a tendentious manner, the manipulations and opinion matrixes continue, which seek to accuse Cuba of human rights violations, trying to delegitimize the criminal proceedings initiated to investigate conduct constituting a crime, in accordance with the laws in force.

The Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, as part of its mission, verified compliance with the constitutional rights and guarantees of due process, and monitored the development of the investigations carried out by the bodies of the Ministry of the Interior, the right to defense was guaranteed, the lawyers provided evidence and had access to the proceedings.

The Prosecutor’s Office received, once the investigation was concluded, 117 preparatory phase files corresponding to the most significant events, with 790 persons charged with acts of vandalism, attacks against the authorities, persons and property, as well as serious disturbances of order. Twenty-one percent of these persons had a criminal record.

Of these, 110 files have been submitted to the courts, with 710 defendants for trial, 69% of them secured with the precautionary measure of pre-trial detention.

Of the total number of defendants in these files, 115 are between 16 and 20 years of age, against whom it was decided to bring criminal action before the courts, due to the seriousness of the acts committed and their proven participation:

– 55 are between 16 and 18 years of age, of whom 28 secured with the precautionary measure of pre-trial detention. Based on the possibilities offered by the law and as a result of the practice of the evidence in the oral proceedings, the acknowledgment of the facts, repentance shown and the condition of students, the Prosecutor’s Office modified the sanction request for 18 of these defendants, for others of lesser severity.

– Likewise, 60 are between 19 and 20 years of age, of which 41 are secured with provisional imprisonment.

The decision of the Prosecutor’s Office to bring the accusation before the courts, in all cases, was based on the evidence provided, among them the declarations of witnesses and victims, expert analysis of videos published in different media and others taken, which allowed the identification of the accused in facts that typify crimes of public disorder, instigation to commit crimes, damages, robbery with force and violence, attack, sabotage and sedition.

The decision to indict for the crime of sedition, although it has severe penalties, corresponds to the level of violence demonstrated in the vandalism that in a tumultuous manner caused injuries and endangered the lives of citizens, officials and members of the forces of order, by attacking them with the use of cutting, blunt and incendiary objects, with the serious disturbance of public order and the deliberate purpose of subverting the constitutional order.

In different localities, official institutions, hospitals, exchange houses (CADECA), commercial establishments and fuel outlets were stoned; many of them, as a consequence of the violence generated, were looted and goods were stolen, causing considerable damage; means of transportation were also besieged, overturned and damaged.

Cuban police cars that were overturned by demonstrators on a Havana street. Photo: AFP / Archive.

The sanctions requested by the Prosecutor’s Office are in correspondence with the seriousness of the facts, the level of participation and the damage caused to society.

As a result of the 84 trials carried out, the Prosecutor’s Office has been notified of 44 sentences issued by the courts, in which 172 defendants who were sanctioned [convicted], had the right to file the corresponding appeals.

In Cuba, minors under 16 years of age are not subject to criminal law. In the investigations, the participation of 27 was accredited, to whom the established legal procedure was applied: 10 were interned in integral and behavioral training schools, for participating, together with adults, in the commission of these acts; 17 were given individualized attention in the school of the National Education System where they are studying.

The Prosecutor’s Office, in accordance with its constitutional function, met with 508 citizens who requested information on these criminal proceedings and processed 238 complaints or petitions. The prosecutors interviewed the persons and verified the exposed elements that were contributed to the criminal investigation. The results were personally explained by the prosecutor to the complainants, offering the legal arguments in each case.

The Attorney General’s Office of the Republic reiterates that it will act in accordance with its constitutional mandate, within the framework of legality, in compliance with due process, the protection of the interests of the State and respect for the rights of all citizens.

OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE REPUBLIC

Hegemony is at stake every day

10 months ago CubaDebate, Translationsideological, media war

Hegemony is at stake every day

Javier Gomez Sanchez
19 January 2022
Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Ernesto Estévez Rams (Havana, 1967) is a full professor at the University of Havana, a member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences and a writer on scientific, political, philosophical and social issues. This is part of the interview conducted for the documentary La Dictadura del Algoritmo, which has been included in the digital book La Dictadura del Algoritmo: Entrevistas y artículos sobre redes sociales y guerra mediática en Cuba (Ocean Sur, 2021) available for free download.

Given the massive arrival of the Cuban population to digital social networks, how is the conquest of the subjectivity of this new mass of politically significant users being structured?

Cuba is immersed in a war of ideological type, and when I say ideological I mean a war of ideas, not from now, nor from the use of digital social networks, but for 60 years. Even before that, when our country, then a neo-colony, turned out to be a field of ideological experimentation of U.S. imperialism. We were one of the first Latin American countries where radio, television and comics penetrated. We were one of the first countries in the region where television advertising was used and experiments were made to measure its effectiveness.

This made it possible to test the ways of introducing certain ideas in the population, to influence a significant mass of it with certain messages and that these became, in a “natural” way, part of the common sense of that population, becoming part of its referents.

Therefore, this is not a new phenomenon, it has been around for many years. What has been changing are the scenarios and the means, to the extent that technology has been advancing, and when I say technology I am not only referring to equipment, but to techniques of psychology, sociology, anthropology. To the extent that these have been developing, to the same extent the way of making that discourse with the same objective of producing a desired state of affairs has been changing.

But it is a phenomenon that is exacerbated when the Revolution triumphs, and also changes its nature. What was a general mechanism of ideological influence, becomes a very concrete objective, which is the overthrow of a social movement and a structural revolution in a Latin American country. This completely changed the way in which the issue was being approached and the US began to see the Cuban state as its enemy for the first time since the first US intervention.

US imperialism had been an enemy of the people as a social factor, but the Cuban State had been its accomplice, and from then on it was its enemy. Therefore, it implements all its tools against them, both physical and symbolic violence.

At a moment within this historical scenario, another very important change occurred, when Soviet socialism and its environment -the socialism that really existed, as Eric Hobsbawm called it- was defeated. That implied an important change because many of the references that had existed up to that moment collapsed. Globally, all the heterogeneous ideas that had been grouped together for years under a generic name: postmodernism, began to expand much more in the cultural and social science framework.

Because we are in an era to which many names are given and one of them is the postmodern era. Here many ideas are instrumentalized by capitalism that were being worked on mostly in academic spaces. They come out of those spaces and instrumentalize them as ideological weapons in a context of euphoria, where they had won, and in which, therefore, they considered that the superiority of capitalism over socialism had been made clear.

Then, what they proposed was a final offensive against what was left, the remnants of what those ideologues of capitalism saw as the last strongholds of resistance of that enemy they had had for many years.

Shortly afterwards came the Internet revolution, which produced a tool that had not existed until then and which allowed a socialization of information unparalleled in the history of mankind. Then the whole postmodernist ideological discourse is adapted to the nascent reality of the Internet, and then to the apparently global dynamics of social networks.

Digital social networks – I like to point out that social networks have always existed – give the illusion of being global, but in reality they are not, although they bring together millions of people who otherwise would not have had communication between them, nor would they have known each other, and make them find points of convergence in common aspects that make these people identify themselves in certain areas, such as fashion, music, literature, as well as politics.

As it is a difficult tool to prevent it from reaching people, because censoring the Internet is something that obviously does not make any sense, that old ideological war then puts its fundamental weight on the networks.

***

Nor can one forget the fact that behind this there is a machinery, which in the case of Cuba is financed, with very specific objectives. Sometimes we say: “The United States in its budget has put a certain amount of money for subversion in Cuba and has created a task force for the issue of the networks”, but we leave it in the abstract. Well, where does this money go? What is done with it? They don’t tell us that. But what is clear is that this money is not to buy water bottles. That money is to create particular products, to reach particular people.

The use of algorithms -although on more than one occasion their political use has been revealed-, in the case of other countries could be aimed at a commercial advertising use, to sell a soccer jersey or a trip on a cruise, what would they sell us Cubans?

What are they selling us? They sell us the defeat of our social system. What they want to sell us is that our social system is inoperative, that our State is inoperative, and that the objectives of the Revolution are meaningless. Therefore, what they want to defeat is the illusion.

The collapse of a national project that Cuba has been building for 60 years. That is what they want to sell us. And look, you were talking about the fact that in other places what they sell is a certain commercial product. Part of that ideological message also goes through there.

They sell us commercially certain symbols, such as success, prosperity. They sell us that the goal in life is reduced to those things on the basis of the exacerbation of individualism, of personal success as the summun of human aspirations. The message that any social illusion is dangerous, any illusion that is not an individual illusion.

The idea that all human narratives and aspirations that have been on the basis of grand aspirations, on the basis of universal social values are dangerous and are also failures, they lead nowhere. There is one element on which I always insist and that is that capitalism as a system stopped selling itself a long time ago.

Since the 18th Brumaire, Marx said it: Capitalism stopped selling us that a better world is possible. Now it is selling us the idea that there is no better world than the one we have: the capitalist one. Therefore, it is insisting on showing us that any alternative is worse than what we have today.

Capitalism has managed to perfect its working tools a lot, they are always hijacking the things that are happening in their environment to take away the transforming edge and to turn it into an instrument of the reproductive system. They did it with the famous Arab Spring, which is something they are desperately trying to reproduce in Cuba, taking the successful example of what happened in other countries, a kind of spring that will destroy the State and the Revolution.

They want to send us the message that a society is possible, which is not ours, a society which, of course, they do not call capitalist, because capitalism does not like to be mentioned. That a society is possible in Cuba that has the social benefits that our society has, but in a context that is not socialist. This idea is constantly sold to us. It is an illusion. It is false.

That has not been achieved in any country in Latin America, in any country in Africa. If it were possible to maintain the education indexes, if it were possible to maintain the health indexes, our social services, and we could make a longer list. If that is possible, why haven’t they done it in other places, why haven’t they done it in… Honduras? But they sell us the idea that it would be possible in Cuba.

That brings us to one of the most common things today in this war against Cuba: the creation of extremes. They want to create the idea that there are two extremes: One, the recalcitrant right-wing extreme that would like to collapse this in a crude way and take us back to a semi-feudal reality or something like that, and therefore frightens people; and the other, a radical left-wing extreme, which is also an enemy and touches the other extreme.

And that therefore the truth is in the center, the way is in the center. It is precisely that center who says: “We could take the good of Cuban socialism, combine it with the elements of bourgeois liberal democracy and create an ideal society that has all that”.

I already told you the first lie to that: Why have they not done it? No country has done it, every time a country has proposed something like that it has had no result. The developed capitalist countries that have achieved high standards of living have done so in contexts that no longer exist and on the basis of inserting themselves in world systems of inequality. No developed capitalist country is alien as a product of global capitalist exploitation of the underdeveloped world.

Check the financial flows, to which banks the financial flows go; check where the global arms export companies are from; check who are -apart from the US banks- the creditors of Third World debts; check where some of the most predatory companies acting in Africa or Latin America are from; check the NATO members and US allies in their adventures since the fall of the Soviet Union. There are many surprises to be found there, among them several countries that like to present themselves as free from exploitation and as havens of social fulfillment.

The role of the “opinion leaders”, of the “independent journalists”, who present themselves as a supposed alternative, would then be to act as transmitters and spokespersons of these ideological messages?

There is a media construction in Cuba of things that were tried in other places, for example, the opinion leaders in the color revolutions, virtual leaders, who called for certain social and political action in the networks, but many of them were not real actors. Many times they are only virtual leaders, because that leader of the networks, in real life and in the daily context of what is happening, that person is not a leader. It is a false leadership constructed in the networks.

How do I build that alternativity? One of the curious things about alternativity is that it is constructed in terms of opposites, that’s why you need the two extremes. They need to build their alternativity based on the construction of enemies, firstly, to victimize themselves: “I am the victim of the extremes”, secondly, because they need those extremes to be able to place their discourse, if the extremes do not exist, that discourse is completely empty.

Today there is a phenomenon that had never happened before in this way, which is unprecedented, and that is to naturalize what until a few years ago in this country had a tremendous stigma: counterrevolutionary. When someone received financing from abroad to influence Cuba, to influence public opinion, to carry out counterrevolutionary activities, that carries a tremendous stigma in this country.

They are trying to erase that stigma, to present that it is no longer important to receive money from private and public entities from the United States, or from other countries – because they have also diversified the sources, the money no longer comes directly from the US, it comes from NGOs from European or Latin American countries, and so now we want to naturalize it: “That is not important, that has not taken away my independence” and one hears it and asks oneself: “From when did he who pays not rule? But you see how they make the discourse that this does not take away their independence: “They never tell me what I have to say”. Of course not, because they don’t need to be told, nor do they need to force them, they simply know that if they don’t follow that editorial line they won’t have the financing.

Nowadays it is often said that “Cuban society is very diverse”. What situations inherent to that diversity have helped the expansion of this type of war?

We have to be very clear and honest about these things, that is why I have to say that many of these phenomena occur and have developed on the basis of our own mistakes. On the basis of not realizing that there is a different context, that many times we have not worked in the right way to win over and to keep people, certain groups, on the side of the Revolution and what we have done is to scare them away because of the attitudes of people who have been incorrect, who have been sectarian, this has happened and one cannot turn one’s back on that.

But also, within all this sea of ideas, there is an intentionality to make contentious speeches that can be very revolutionary, very correct at a given moment, end up being speeches that are passed on to the enemy and in those battles we have lost a few of them.

We have not lost them because the enemy has been more effective than us -which it has been-, we have lost them because we have not known how to face those battles. So, gradually they pass it to the enemy and something that emerged as a possible alternative not channeled through the mass organizations or political organizations of the country, which is a valid alternative independent from them -if we are going to see independence in that sense-, ends up being something that falls into the nets of another officialdom, of the officialdom that finances you, which is not Cuban, it comes from somewhere else.

Thus there are blogs and digital media, in which the discourse is transformed little by little, sometimes in a very calculated way, their transformation process has been designed, they are transformed until they reach a certain editorial line, because the people who run these media already have a clear purpose of going over to the enemy.

And the fourth generation war sometimes we see it as the enemy, the enemy, the enemy. Look, that enemy can’t get its head in if we don’t let it, but it succeeds because we have vulnerabilities and we make mistakes. We will continue to make them because making mistakes is something inherent to the fact of acting. The biggest mistake is to do nothing.

We make mistakes in the functioning of society, facing very complex social dynamics. This occurs in the midst of the tension in which we all live on a daily basis, including the people who have to make decisions. The vast majority of our civil servants, those who are so vilified, are subjected to the same levels of daily stress that we are subjected to.

They are people who, when they leave work, have to stand in the same queues, face the same problems, their electricity goes out as it does for anyone else, therefore, many of these errors are part of the fact that there is no ideal social dynamic and that people are individual beings who arrive at a certain moment in their lives with a whole cultural backpack behind them.

We have worked badly on what is called – I do not like the word, but for lack of a better one I repeat it – political-ideological work. In the first place, because we mix the political and the ideological, to begin with, in the same sentence we are mixing them as if they were the same thing and they are not. Secondly, because we codify it, we think, for example, at the level of formal education, that the political-ideological work has to be transferred and translated into the number of hours we teach in universities, in other levels of teaching of certain subjects, such as History, Social Sciences, etc. We think that this is a mechanism to reach us with political-ideological messages.

But I am often amazed to see students who have passed a degree course and have received dozens of hours of Marxism, History of Cuba, etc., and then you see them on the networks repeating amazing ingenuities and one wonders: “But did they really pass the courses? Yes, they passed the courses and passed them, and one wonders, “And where did that leave them?”, “What is the result of this that we have given them?”. Look, the result seems to be minimal. We must realize that there are dynamics that it is necessary to adopt in this political-ideological work, that we have to convey our message in new ways without simplifying it, without making it superficial. We do not have to give in to the enemy, we have to create our own discourse, sometimes you hear: “Nowadays you have to give short messages to the youth”, but that is a sacrifice according to what the hegemonic discourse is imposing.

Would this hegemony of simplification be the greatest intellectual and political challenge in the face of social networks?

The problem we have had is that the importance of the networks was not sufficiently appreciated. We thought that the traditional means we had to reach the population were enough and that we were not going to lose that hegemony. But hegemony is at stake every day.

The good thing about these battles is that they make us become active, hegemonies are built every day, because let us begin with a concrete fact: the greatest hegemony that exists today is the world hegemony of capitalism, let us not deceive ourselves, and to think that Cuba can escape from that hegemony is an illusion.

What we have to build is a counter-hegemony, because despite the fact that this counter-revolutionary discourse wants to present us that the hegemony of ideas in Cuba is the one managed by the State, as a dictatorial and totalitarian element, that is not the reality. The totalitarian hegemony is the global capitalist hegemony. We are paying in some way the consequences of being a rock of resistance in a global capitalist hegemony and the consequences that the socialism that really existed collapsed, and that suddenly the balance of the hegemony of ideas at world level was no longer that of socialist ideas. That is our context. In which the offensive in favor of capitalism is assaulting our socialist rock with everything.

So we cannot reproduce the discourse of “The message has to be brief” or “The youth is only interested in the brief”, we want the youth to read and to go deeper. We do not make our ideas superficial as much as the contrary ideas are superficial.

We must always remember Fidel’s phrase: “We do not tell people to believe, we tell them to read”. Let us translate “read” to mean that we tell people to think, to go deeper, that their conception of the world is based on having thought.

Violence, repression and summary trials…

10 months ago CubaDebate, TranslationsIroel Sánchez

Violence, repression and summary trials… depending on where they occur

By Iroel Sanchez, Cuban engineer and journalist. He works at the Office for the Informatization of Cuban Society. Former President of the Cuban Book Institute. On twitter @iroelsanchez

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

“Since Monday, more than 1,100 people arrested for the riots have been on trial…”
(…)
“At the rate of about 10 detainees per hour, the judges cannot cope. According to one of the lawyers, between 11:30 a.m. Monday and noon today, a hundred youths had already filed through the courts. The influx is such that several police vans full of defendants are queuing up in front of the courts, which do not have enough space in the building’s dungeons.”

Contrary to what the believing reader of the international mainstream press might think, the above are not reports on the trials, intensely and very critically covered by Western media, of people involved in the riots that occurred in Cuba on July 11 and 12 last year. I have taken them from the coverage by the same press of the events in London and other British cities in August 2011.

The events of 2011 in Great Britain occurred on a Sunday and already on Monday the trials were taking place, but the media I have quoted (El País) did not call them “summary”, despite deciding on the accused at the rate of “ten detainees per hour”. Using as evidence the recordings of TV cameras installed in the streets and expressions on social networks, only six minutes were enough on average to convict.

The Western media then did not question the procedure and never used the word repression, but rather applauded the repressive action against those who receive nothing from a democracy and a justice system that excludes them.

None of the voices that, from the U.S. government and some international agencies, are now raised against Cuba for trying people accused of acting violently, protested when ten years ago the young people of London, hit by unemployment and exclusion, were prosecuted and sentenced at the pace of a sausage factory.

Speaking of young people, not 18 years old, as the British press now cites a case in Cuba, but 11, 15, 16, half of those 1100 prosecuted at conga pace, according to a headline in El Pais, were minors. Unlike in Cuba, in Great Britain children over 10 years old can be prosecuted with criminal responsibility in case they have committed crimes such as theft, arson and violence, but the good guys of the Madrid newspaper wrote about it in positive terms by introducing the word SOLO “In the UK minors between 10 and 17 years old can only be prosecuted with criminal responsibility in case they have committed crimes such as theft, arson and violence”.

For its part, El Mundo. has collected some examples of young people involved in the protests taken from the British press, not to condemn that they were repressed, but to recommend “parental control over young people”, passing over the repression against those who called for the protest from networks such as Facebook and the use by the repressors of “rubber balls” (really rubber bullets), while qualifying as “alleged” the culpability of the police in the death that unleashed the riots, police that preempting the recommendations by Covid-19 only called bonhomously to “be at home”, nothing like a curfew. They call for parental control, but not a single parent of the defendants is interviewed, something the press can do when the trials take place across the ocean.

It is worth reading the whole dispatch because it is a real gem: how to describe repression without seeing it anywhere (the bold letters are from elmundo.es):

“The Metropolitan Police recommends not to leave home to the youngest and, through a local newspaper, has made “an appeal to parents and those responsible for young people to work together with the Police to ensure that the latter are not immersed in the kind of disorder that we have seen.”

“Riots sparked by the death of Mark Duggan, allegedly caused by local police, has landed an 11-year-old boy in jail, as Skynews reports, over the altercations in the capital.

“Strathclyde Police in Glasgow, Scotland, have arrested a 16-year-old boy for sending a Facebook message allegedly inciting disorderly conduct, reports the BBC. Police have said they will be keeping a close eye on social networking sites and will take what they call “decisive action” to prevent violence in the Strathclyde area by copycats.

“The person responsible for the link to ‘Let’s start a riot in Glasgow’, which is no longer available on the aforementioned social network, is due to appear in court tomorrow.

“In Folkestone, within the county of Kent where the prestigious University of Canterbury is located, two 18-year-olds have been arrested for spreading inflammatory messages via Facebook. In addition, a 16-year-old girl is being questioned in Glasgow for the same reason, reports the English newspaper BBC.

“Finally, police in Essex have arrested a 17-year-old boy after encouraging others via Facebook to gather in the county and take part in riots.

“Robbery, fire and police charges have also been seen in Manchester, where 70 to 80 youths have clashed with Police. In West Bromwich they are smashing windows. Meanwhile, in London, the 16,000 officers that Cameron has highlighted for the fourth day are getting ready. In the Islington neighborhood, the Islington gazette newspaper picks up a Police warning: “Be at home”.

“The reason, the rubber balls that will be taken out tonight against the youth mob. For this reason, in the same writing they recommend a parental control over young people, to keep them away from the street so that they are not immersed in the riots.”

But let’s talk about Cuba. Cuban press reports after July 11 listed one by one 44 stores assaulted and looted, which were not the only ones, information that none of those media objected to because it was useful for them to talk about the extent of the protests.

Images of several overturned police and civilian cars and Molotov cocktail throwing have also circulated profusely in the networks. Calculating in a very conservative way the number of people involved in some of these events, which undoubtedly can be described as violent anywhere in the world, there would be several hundred participants in them, but for the Western press all those tried in Cuba for these events are peaceful demonstrators (!).

A little context, memory and logical thinking, please, gentlemen who enlighten us in this so-called free journalism and this so-called rule of law.

(Taken from La Pupila insomne)

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Violence, repression and summary trials…

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