Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, translation North America bureau
By Angel Guerra on December 3, 2020
Cuba has experienced an escalation of efforts to sabotage the economy, directed by the United States, between 2017 and 2020, and this has continued during the COVID-19 pandemic. The so-called San Isidro Movement, to which the “rotten media” has dedicated so much space in the last few weeks, cannot separate itself from these actions, which, together with others like the supposed artistic action deployed by this group of four persons who have are virtually unknown in Cuba, make up part of the plan for a “soft coup” to bring down the Cuban government.
To return to the terrorism that Washington has carried out systematically against the Cuban Revolution since 1960, except for brief periods, such as occurred during the Obama government. What explains this current upturn is the unprecedented influence given by Donald Trump to the extreme rightwing counter-revolutionaries of Miami, to whom he virtually turned over the direction of the policies of maximal economic strangulation, and the fact that he promoted the resurgence of a new generation of terrorist mercenaries in Florida, with his own brutal actions and rhetoric against Cuba and those of his government. These have been totally tolerated by the U.S. authorities and liberally greased with money in large quantities, which has also allowed them to create a new system of new-age counter-revolutionary means of spreading their word. This also means an increase in the use of digital networks to create fake-news and post-truths; these started during the Obama period but in more moderate and pragmatic forms.
The San Isidro Movement is thus a part of a collection of cells and activities within and outside Cuba, included in the U.S. plan for an overthrow of the Cuban government. In this plan, terrorism, aimed at sowing chaos and panic, is a prime ingredient, just as it was in the guarimbas (barricades imposed and maintained by violence) in Venezuela. The elimination of socialism in Cuba is not planned as a transition to “democracy” as Washington proclaims, but rather to Neoliberalism 3.0, the cruelest form in terms of the distribution of wealth and among the worst in terms of authoritarian and despotic governments. According to what we have seen in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, and the United States itself, right now the line separating the neoliberal government from its kissing cousin the fascist government is getting thinner all the time.
The members of the San Isidro Movement, concentrated in a house in the barrio of San Isidro, are four or five young artists, almost without work to their credit. Another 14 people who are not artists joined them in the totally false hunger and thirst strike that they carried out. One can see in all the videos they send out that all who are gathered are in good physical condition and that the refrigerator is full of food. It is true – we are dealing with a group whose members are, without exception, at the service of the United States against Cuba, including the terrorist aspect and collecting dollars in advance. The principal demand of these false hunger-strikers is the freedom of the musician Denis Solís, who is serving an eight-month sentence for contempt of court. The other demand is the elimination of stores selling only in hard currency, which is a vital measure taken to defend the economy during this worsening of the blockade.
Solís, who has had telephone conversations with José Luis Fernández Figueras, born in Cuba but now living in the United States, was cited by the police to clear up his relationship with this man, who is nothing less than a member of a Miami terrorist organization, The Lone Wolves, and who has been sought by Cuban authorities since 2017 for his direct link to acts of sabotage. Fernandez Figueras offered him $200 in exchange for obeying his instructions, Solís confessed in a video that has made the rounds of digital media. “What interested me was the money,” the artist said.
When he refused to attend the police hearing, he was issued a citation by a police agent, at whom he directed vulgar abuse and insults, also magnificently well documented in another video on the web. It is for this crime of contempt of court that he was sentenced to eight months in jail; he did not appeal this. Another artist, group leader Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, specializes in doing disgusting and offensive performances with the Cuban flag and his body.
This artistic work gained the recognition of Mara Tekach, formerly the Chargé d’affaires for the US Embassy in Cuba, whose successor, Timothy Zuñiga-Brown, has visited the hunger-strikers on three occasions; they have also received calls of approval from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, from sub-secretary Michael Kozak, and from Tekach, who is now Coordinator of Cuban Affairs at the State Department. And this would not be complete without the support from turncoat Luis Almagro, Secretary of the discredited OAS.
The hunger-strikers were removed from where they were found and taken to their homes by the Cuban health authorities since they were in serious violation of the quarantine safety regulations issued during the pandemic. Letting them get away with a violation like this would simply have been the last straw. We will speak about this and more in the next article
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, translation North America bureau
