May 12, 2023
The protest of a few dozen people in Caimanera, Cuba, over power outages and lack of food, has restored hope to those who dream of the fall of the Cuban Revolution. But let’s review the media keys to the events.
Magnifying the protest
The first one is the magnification of a punctual event, of short duration and with few participants, but which certain media turned into a “multitudinous protest” in which “Cubans take to the streets again”. Curiously, days before, those media did not consider as “newsworthy” the marches -those indeed multitudinous, with millions of people- held all over Cuba for May Day.
The protest for economic reasons only took place in Caimanera, despite the fact that, in social networks, fictitious “uprisings” appeared in Holguin, Marianao and other places.
Financed NGOs and millionaire artists
All lies. But this hoax unleashed the machinery of hatred: calls for a military invasion of Cuba; calls for insurrection by millionaire anti-Castro singers….
And denunciations of the NGOs that the US Government pays for their “reports on human rights in Cuba” through NED and USAID grants: the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (8), the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts, Cubalex, etc., etc., etc.
Kindergarten repression
And the usual double standards. Take a simple test. Watch the images of the police beating up demonstrators in Paris or Lima, to mention two recent protest scenarios. Then watch the video of the events in Caimanera, in which a member of the security forces struggles with a person to arrest him.
In the recent protests in Peru after the coup there were about sixty deaths, in France hundreds of people were injured and numerous arrests. But the mainstream media only foisted the word “repression” on the actions of a Cuban policeman who, barely and with a minimal level of violence, arrested a person in resistance. CNN: “Cuban police repress protesters…” Telemundo: “Protests in Cuba unleash repression by the regime”. Infobae: “Repression in Cuba: the dictatorship arrested at least five demonstrators…” América TV: “Military officers carry out brutal repression to quell the multitudinous protest in Caimanera”.
On Colombia’s NTN 24 channel -that country where nearly 80 people died in the protests of 2021 and where, in 2022 alone, 189 human rights activists were killed (19)- the presenter lamented about the “harsh repression” in Cuba: “What has led Cubans to take to the streets again? We understand the circumstance but, after such harsh repression, are they again protesting?”
Hiding the economic war: The order is given.
The economic hardships suffered by the Cuban people and that generate protests like the one in Caimanera must be described with all the drama: “We are talking about an absolute crisis, a hunger crisis, because especially in the last days we have seen information regarding the rationing that is being established again”, assured the journalist of NTN 24. Meanwhile the economic war that generates such situation is intentionally hidden. The Government of Donald Trump applied the so-called “maximum pressure policy” against Cuba, imposed more than 200 sanctions, the total financial blockade to the country and the systematic persecution of income, fuel and investments to the Island. Measures that, for the most part, are still in place. This is, together with the effect of the pandemic on tourism, are the direct cause of the situation.
But not only is every mention of the U.S. blockade censored in the media, but, following Washington’s strategy, the blame for the crisis is placed on Havana: “This is the fruit: misery, a devastated economy precisely because the regime does not work, the system does not work”. The person who said this is one of the many “political analysts” that the US Government manages to embed in the international media. He is Felix Llerena, representative of “Cuba Decide”, a Miami-based group supported by NED subsidies and which openly defends the total economic blockade against the island.
Is it now clear to you that there is a lack of electricity and food in Cuba because the “Cuban system does not work”, even if this is said by a man who receives his salary from the government that blocks the economy of that country?
Source: Cubainformación