Cuban diet shows muscle in march led by Raúl Castro

Thousands of people gathered this Saturday in Havana in an act of support for the Revolution organized by the government of Cuba. With former President Raúl Castro at the helm, the regime tried to show muscle nearly a week after the unprecedented protests that rocked the island.

In front of a crowd summoned at dawn through universities and official entities, President Miguel Díaz-Canel reproached the “enemy” for “having gone out with everything to destroy the sacred citizen unit” although at the same time he called to “self-criticism and to fight” his own “mistakes”, in the midst of a massive event.

Government supporters were summoned to the area known as La Piragua, on the Malecón, across from the Vedado neighborhood and very close to the US Embassy headquarters.

With Cuban flags and the July 26 Movement, photographs of the late Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, the crowd chanted slogans in favor of the Revolution.

In this act of “revolutionary reaffirmation”, Díaz-Canel denounced that “the enemy has again launched into everything to destroy the sacred citizen unity”.

“What the world of Cuba is seeing is a lie,” he said of the dissemination of “false images” on social media, which “stimulate and glorify the contempt and destruction of real estate”, after the opposition demonstrations that surprised the regime in the midst of a deep economic and health crisis, with an upsurge in coronavirus cases.

There is “an overflowing hatred in social networks”, he insisted. Mobile internet access was cut on the island from Sunday noon to Wednesday morning, before being restored but unstable.

The Cuban “is not a government that represses its people,” said Díaz Canel, in response to the international condemnation of the severe police response to the spontaneous marches that emerged last weekend in different cities.

The protests left at least one dead, dozens injured and more than 100 arrests. Although the government does not want to give figures, some organizations speak of nearly 400 arrested, some of whom have already been released.

But “no lie has been raised by chance or mistake, everything is coldly calculated in an unconventional war manual,” added the president, who returned to to accuse in the United States for fomenting protests against the government.

“We were born to win and not to be defeated!” Shouted the crowd.

Along with Díaz-Canel, former President Raúl Castro, 90, was forced to temporarily leave his retirement due to the gravity of the situation.

The act was announced to demand “an end to foreign destabilization attempts against the nation”, according to local media.

The call explained that it would be exceptional, and as part of the measures to prevent the coronavirus, and that “it took into account the request of large sectors of Cuban society who wish to express in person their condemnation of the riots that have occurred July 11, “said a memo released by radio stations.

According to the official journal GrannyDemonstrations were also planned this Saturday in other cities of the country such as Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo, Camagüey and Santa Clara.

Source: EFE, AFP and ANSA

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