In the last few days, several communication monopolies with chains around the world, echoed a protest by a few young Cubans at the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture of this country. What would never be international news if it happened anywhere else in the world, is when it comes to revolutionary Cuba, some claim against its government or some event that puts its sovereignty and legitimacy at risk. From all of Our America, the popular movements and processes know very well how to distinguish protests and discontent of the people, from hybrid war maneuvers, armed and planned from Washington.
This last chapter should be framed in an escalation of sabotage and intensification of the blockade of the Cuban economy, directed from the United States for decades, and continued even during the Covid-19 pandemic. The so-called “San Isidro Movement” (MSI), which appears as the protagonist of these demonstrations, cannot be separated from this general strategy of destabilization.
The facts
On November 27, in front of the Cuban Ministry of Culture, people with claims and demands related to art-related youths gathered, arriving there by invitation in networks of the supposed movement (San Isidro), together with a member accused of contempt and an alleged hunger strike. They were backed by a strong campaign in the foreign press, in the paid digital media and had the immediate support of Marco Rubio, Luis Almagro and other characters.
Through the social networks, a rarefied climate was created, with an intense emotional charge, to provoke expressions of support and moral backing in the face of a hypothetical injustice.
Those who congregated on November 27 before the doors of the Ministry of Culture were influenced by the atmosphere created in the networks. Few knew what actually happened in San Isidro or its protagonists. Others (a minority) used the social networks to amplify what was happening there and spread it in an adulterated way, with false news about a repression that never existed but that did have its impact and reached the concerned ears of high US officials, the same ears that close themselves off in the face of death and repression in their own country.
The actors
It is public knowledge that the San Isidro Movement ( MSI) was born in 2018 and that, under an artistic and civil society façade, it receives direct funding from imperialist organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The members of the MSI, which owes its name to the fact that they gathered in a house in the popular neighborhood of San Isidro, in Havana, consist of a few artists who, together with a dozen people who are not artists, joined a virtual hunger strike (but with food at hand) with the main demand for the liberation of the musician Dennys Solís, a member of the MSI, who is serving an eight-month sentence for contempt after being investigated for his relationship with José Luis Fernández Figueras, a member of a terrorist organization in Miami. He was sentenced to eight months in prison without appeal for refusing to attend the police summons.
Many of these artists have close relations with officials from the U.S. embassy, who have visited them on several occasions during the “hunger strike”. They also received immediate support from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Assistant Secretary Michael Kozak, and Tekas, the State Department’s coordinator for Cuban affairs and very close to one of the artists. And the support of the mercenary Luis Almagro, secretary of the discredited OAS, cannot be overlooked.
It is necessary to frame this hybrid war advance in the unprecedented support granted by Donald Trump to the counterrevolutionary extreme right in Miami, with the emergence of a new generation of mercenaries in Florida who have been paid millions of dollars, with which they have established a new system of counterrevolutionary media and cybernetic war platforms. This also meant an increase in the use of digital networks to create fake news and falsehoods, which had emerged since the time of Obama, but which with Trump were articulated in more pragmatic and classic ways.
For all these reasons, we at ALBA Movimientos do not doubt the true engine of these protests and we say it with certainty without hesitation:
– We denounce this phase of hybrid war against the Cuban revolution, developed by US imperialism and the worm reaction in Miami.
– We support the Cuban Revolution, its government and people in this obvious and shameless reactionary offensive.
– We stand in solidarity with the people of Cuba, who are resisting the criminal blockade and, moreover, in times of pandemic, are seeing the difficulties in their daily lives intensify.
– Likewise, we salute and value the popular organizations of Cuba that work for and from the people to guarantee Cuban food, services and dignity day by day, 24 hours a day without rest. They are the ones who know what solidarity work is; they are the ones who will never use the difficulties to put them at the service of the empire.
– We will always be grateful to the Cuban Revolution for its support and contribution to the artists of all Our America, for promoting the culture of every corner of the Great Homeland and giving it possibilities to thousands of comrades who would never have been able to make themselves heard in their countries.
Within the revolution everything, outside it nothing.
They shall not pass
Translation by Internationalist 360°
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 