The Cuban military runs the tourism industry in Cuba, and tourism literally assists the apparatus that represses not only Cubans, and Venezuelans, but seeks to subvert democracies across the hemisphere. This does not prevent large numbers of tourists from traveling to the island, and spending their money.
The Catholic Church in Cuba today is not a monolith, but an independent institution that like the Church in other countries under Communism has been subjected to infiltration by both informers and high level agents from these communist dictatorship's respective intelligence agencies.
Today, April 18, 2024, Sayli Navarro Álvarez marked two years of serving an unjust sentence in the La Bellotex prison in Matanzas, Cuba. There, she is enduring harsh living conditions, unhygienic conditions, cramped quarters, poorly prepared food, an abundance of cockroaches and mosquitoes, and a bed bug infestation.
Sixty three years ago Brigade 2506 members invaded Cuba seeking to end the communist dictatorship then being consolidated by Fidel Castro. Before the world knew what was going on in Cuba, these Cubans tried to prevent these 65 years and counting of horror under the communist dictatorship of the Castro brothers. Outnumbered and outgunned they fought between April 17-19, 1961 and one hundred and four Brigade 2506 members died fighting to liberate Cuba, and eight were executed by firing squad. Most Brigade members were captured and spent 22 months in prison before a ransom was paid for their release.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, a former career U.S. diplomat, admitted in a plea deal that he had conspired to operate as an agent of a foreign government for decades, and as a result, he was sentenced on Friday April 12th to 15 years in federal prison and fined $500,000. Prosecutors dropped over a dozen other offenses, including making false statements and wire fraud, in return.
Eight years later, a string of attacks that started in 2016 and targeted Canadian and U.S. diplomats stationed at their respective embassies in Havana remain unsolved officially. However, after a five-year investigation, CBS Newsmagazine 60 Minutes concluded that Russia was responsible for the attacks, despite official denials from the US government.
“60 Minutes producers Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados discuss the evolution of their 5-year investigation into ‘Havana Syndrome,’ which led them to what one source calls "a receipt" for acoustic weapon testing done by a Russian intelligence unit.”
Officials in the Cuban government have also been quick to dismiss the Havana Syndrome, but the record shows that if Russia was testing an acoustic weapon on American and Canadian diplomats stationed in Havana, the Cuban secret police would know about it, report it to their superiors, and approve it. Havana's role in supporting Putin's illegal war in Ukraine, including the deployment of Cuban soldiers in Russian uniforms fighting on the front lines, underscores their strategic relationship with Moscow.
Earlier today in a courageous speech where Rosa María Payá highlighted crimes of the Cuban dictatorship, called for the rights of the Cuban people to live in democracy, she also made the case for expelling Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council in a two minute statement. The dictatorship’s spokesman, Cuban Ambassador Juan Antonio Quintanilla, then maligned the Cuban human rights defender. The video with Spanish subtitles provided by CubaDecide contains her statement, and dictatorship’s response.
Take action and join Rosa María Payá’s call to expel the Cuban dictatorship from the UN Human Rights Council by signing the petition, Expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council. Below is her statement in both English and Spanish.
More mass protests broke out initially in Santiago de Cuba province on March 17, 2024, and despite mass mobilization of repressive forces, the existing new draconian penal code, and a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of disaffected Cubans, protests spread to four others ( Artemisa, Granma, Holguin, and Matanzas ).
There are good and courageous people in Cuba who are risking everything for a better tomorrow. Four of these people are Ramón Jesús Velázquez Toranzo, his wife Bárbara María González Cruz, his son René Ramón Velázquez González and his niece Lorena Velázquez Hechavarría who traveled to the Sanctuary of El Cobre, and on March 8th made public a video, and statement inviting Cubans to come together, and reflect on finding solutions to the problems they face as a people. This is a nonviolent action that is reminiscent of Kingian nonviolence, but profoundly Cuban. Ramón Jesús Velázquez Toranzo, his wife Bárbara María González Cruz until last week were U.S. residents. Ramón Jesus Velásquez Toranzo, a former prisoner of conscience, with his family are risking all for a better Cuba tomorrow.
Cuba marked 72 years without democracy on March 10, 2024. General Fulgencio Batista carried out a military coup against the legitimately elected democratic government. The last democratically elected president, Carlos Prío Socarrás, and his first lady went into exile, and over the next seven years, this authoritarian dictator ruled Cuba, becoming increasingly unpopular.
Joy Zavalick in her column published in the Washington Examiner on March 8, 2022 "Rescue International Women's Day from its Communist roots" exposes the Marxist influences on the holiday. She is right, the holiday has a problematic history linked to the Soviet Union. Existing communist regimes, and post-communist regimes also have a poor track record on women's rights.
Havana on March 4, 2024 confirmed it had sought help from the World Food Program to guarantee the supply of subsidized powdered milk for children. On February 24, 2024 Emerio Gonzalez Lorenzo, president of the "Grupo Empresarial de la Industria Alimentaria" (GEIA) [Food Industry Business Group] which is under the Cuban government's "Ministerio de la Industria Alimenticia" (MINAL) [ Ministry of the Food Industry ] announced that "there is little bread in Cuba due to a lack of flour," and that this situation would continue until the end of March 2024. Official press channels made no mention of the "25,000 tons of wheat donated by the Russian government that arrived in mid-January" which "exceeds the 20,000 tons that, authorities assured [on February 24th], are necessary to cover the rationed daily bread rolls for a month. If this is the case, the shipment of Russian wheat should have been enough to supply the stores for the remainder of this month and the next", reported 14ymedio.
Ofelia Acevedo, the widow of the late Cuban human rights defender Oswaldo Payá, filed a lawsuit in Dade County, Florida, against Victor Manuel Rocha, a former American diplomat. The U.S. Attorney General recently revealed Rocha's four-decade collaboration with the Cuban dictatorship as one of the most significant foreign agent breaches of the United States government. In 2012, the Castro regime killed Payá and Harold Cepero. At the same time, Rocha was working with Havana, giving advice to U.S. national security authorities, and gaining access to the most sensitive intelligence held by the United States. “I seek what I have sought all along: for the truth, for justice, and for the regime and its accomplices of to stop acting with impunity,” said Acevedo
Un representante de una organización terrorista en Gaza participo en el II Encuentro Internacional de Publicaciones Teóricas de Partidos y Movimientos de Izquierda en La Habana entre el 12 y 14 de febrero de 2024. Entramos en mas detalles sobre este caso en el programa “Hoy” de Tomás Regalado el 24 de febrero de 2024.
Earlier today on X, Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart explained in a post the significance of both the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down that murdered four U.S. residents in international airspace, and the expansion of hostilities against Ukraine by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 1996. The implications of abandoning democrats has global consequences.
On February 22, 2024 at 5:30pm at the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC activists gathered to hold a silent vigil in memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo killed by prison guards on February 23, 2010 and Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales the four murdered by Castro on February 24,1996 when two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down. This event was co-hosted by Center for a Free Cuba, Cuba Decide, and the Patmos Institute.
The past week has seen two news articles about Russia and Cuba that highlight the close alliance between Havana and Moscow. However, both articles imply that the two regimes' relationship is based on financial need for Cuba, and diplomatic relations for Russia; however, a closer look at the relationship between these two countries starting in 1959 reveals that the strength of their relations has been defined by an anti-American agenda.
This picture of Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo and Watam Jamil Alabed taken in May 2022 is evidence of the failure of U.S. policy, and its war against terrorism that Cuba's communist dictatorship has been waging for over six decades, and that too many in Washington, Europe, and Latin America have ignored at their own peril.
Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, was born 76 years ago on February 13, 1948, and today we remember her, how she became a dissident leader, and her continuing legacy.
“Never allow the government – or anyone else – to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do.” - Armando Valladares, former Cuban prisoner of conscience and Ambassador to the UNHRC.. Spent 22 years in Castro’s prisons.
