The Cuban community in Miami took to the streets today to show their “unconditional” support to the Cubans of the island called to participate tomorrow, Monday in a Civic March for Change and to express their rejection of the Government of Cuba and the repression that, they said, has already begun.
“Yes Cuba is on the streets, Miami is too ”, a slogan that emerged when the protests of 11 of last July, resounded in the organized events by exile groups, whose leaders warned the Government of Miguel Díaz Canel that the international community will be attentive to what happens tomorrow during the peaceful march.
In fact, this Monday a Miami exile information center will operate, which will collect and disseminate the news that reaches them from Cuba, in case the Government responds with an internet “blackout”.
With cries of “Freedom”, “Homeland and life” and “Down with the dictatorship”, dressed in their may dressed in white and with Cuban flags and white roses in their hands , the Cubans concentrated in a dock located near the Freedom Tower, an icon of exile, after more than a thousand of Vehicles would go through the streets of the city honking their horns.
In the dock, more than twenty boats also wore Cuban flags and sounded their horns for the freedom of Cuba and in solidarity with the 15 N, as the march called by the Archipelago group and declared illegal by the Cuban authorities is already known.
Rejection of repression and the news blackout
Leaders of exile, such as Ramón Saúl Sánchez, of the Democracy Movement, vowed that the 15 N serve to publicize that “the children of Cuba are united to achieve their freedom” and “to remove the tyranny from power once and for all” through civic and peaceful struggle.
Orlando Gutiérrez, from the Democratic Directorate and the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance , stressed that the exile has “the moral strength” required to tell the Armed Forces to join the people and not the tyrant the 15 N.
Condemning the repression that, they said, had already begun this Sunday on the island , Sánchez and Gutiérrez mentioned the withdrawal of credentials from the EFE Agency journalists in Havana, which has aroused rejection from governments, the European Union and journalists’ organizations.
“We send our support to the Efe brothers who with great courage defended press freedom in Cuba,” Gutiérrez said in a intervention before the Cuban Memorial, a monument to the victims of communism, from where the caravan started, in which more than a thousand vehicles participated, according to the Assembly.
Independent sources they told Efe that they were between 600 and about a thousand.
In the park that surrounds the dock, where about 1 were concentrated. 000 people, according to calculations of observers, Sánchez told Efe that it seems “incredible” that there is a government fearful of the voice of its people and that it also withdraws the credentials of journalists from the Efe agency in Cuba so that “the world does not find out what is happening inside the country.”
That decision, he said, “denotes the brutal nature of that beast” that is the Havana regime, because, in his opinion, “freedom of the press is one of the most fundamental that a people should have.”
Notice to complicit artists
Among those who came to the dock at To demonstrate there were Cuban exile artists such as the filmmaker Lilo Vilapana and the rapper Raudel Collazo, as well as the controversial “influencer” Alex Otaola, as well as Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exile leaders.
A delegation from the ultra-conservative Spanish party Vox also attended, with MEP Herman Terscht at the helm.
Raudel Collazo, one of the most internationally recognized rebellious Cuban rappers , who in 2003 launched his project “Escuadrón Patriota” in favor of of freedom and democracy, he told Efe that artists have “the moral responsibility of being on the side of the people who are being repressed and imprisoned.”
“To be an accomplice of the dictatorship is going to set a disastrous precedent for artists who continue to be silent, ”he stressed.
Former political prisoner José Luis Pérez, “Antunez”, said, for his part, to Efe, that today’s message is clear: “either we go out to the streets to fight for our freedom or we continue 15 years under a dictatorship. ”
“ Antunez ”said that those who ask to dialogue with the Cuban government in favor of a democratic transition tica are “wrong.”
“The dictatorship must be overthrown and that is what the Cuban people are going to do,” he asserted.
During the ceremony, a minute of silence was observed and two lay people, one Catholic and one evangelical, led prayers for Cuba, a country that “yearns for brotherhood based on freedom”, according to one of the presenters of the speakers.
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