HAVANA, Cuba. – Last Thursday, July 25, the Sovereign Grand Commander (SGC), José Ramón Viñas Alonso, spoke about the conflict between Cuban Freemasonry and the Government, following the imposition of the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Cuba, Mario Alberto Urquía Carreño. At the meeting between Masons, Viñas Alonso also said that “the situation was not political,” as Urquía Carreño (Mayito) and State Security wanted to make it seem, but rather “a Masonic situation.”
“Mayito has wanted to show with his actions that our attitude towards him also entails a political attitude, something against the Government (…). This is not a political situation, this is not a situation in which we are against the Government, this is a Masonic situation that the Ministry of Justice (MINJUS) wants to impose on us, something that our own law, the one they approved, determined. They have disrespected it and imposed it on us,” said Viñas Alonso.
The Sovereign also stressed that the only thing the Masons are demanding is that the Masonic laws (Decree 009/2024) be complied with, by which Urquía Carreño was expelled from the Rite, in a sanction approved by unanimous vote of the Upper Chamber of the Scottish Rite.
Picota Agreement
At the beginning of the year, Urquía Carreño himself denounced the theft of 19,000 dollars (money that was intended to ensure the needs of the elderly of the National Masonic Asylum “Llansó”) in the office of the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Cuba, in January.
At the Picota police station in Old Havana, on April 1, 2024, Mario Urquía promised to return the $19,000 within three months. That deadline expired on July 1.
“The parties have reached an agreement that citizen Mario Alberto Urquía Carreño must compensate Raúl Acosta, through the recovery in cash of the sums of 12,340 euros and 5,660 dollars, within a period of three months,” states the document read at the meeting by the Sovereign.
According to the document, which was signed by Captain Leidys Villaurrutia Díaz, Urquía Carreño agrees to “pay the aforementioned sum within the agreed period.”
“This is the proof! On the 1st, he was not exonerated of anything (…), the only legal document that exists is that one, and our lawyer has not been notified of any other,” said Viñas Alonso regarding the “Conciliation Agreement Act” drawn up at the Picota police station.
Although Urquía Carreño did not comply with the commitment to pay the sum of money stipulated in the requested period, the Prosecutor’s Office has not yet issued a statement on the matter.
The MINJUS and the expulsion of Urquía
The Supreme Council (one of the two powers that govern Freemasonry on the Island) decreed the expulsion of Urquía in…
“The Ministry of Justice, like now the State Security, tells me that we have to retry him, because Mayito cannot be tried, first because we have no evidence, and without evidence he is not guilty of anything; second, because he has to defend himself,” said Viñas Alonso.
“The Grand Lodge of Cuba applies justice in the way that everyone knows. The Supreme Council, which is vertical, a holy empire, is like a military, it applies the law in two ways: either through a judicial process or by decree. That article was approved by the Ministry of Justice itself and it is our Constitution,” he added.
For the Sovereign Grand Commander, “the serious problem” is that the Government wants to give “another path” to the claims of the Masons regarding the imposition of Urquía Carreño as Grand Master.
Day of interrogations by the political police
On the morning of Thursday, July 25, the same day that the aforementioned conference was held, Viñas Alonso was detained by police agents State Security at the José Martí International Airport in Havana. The Sovereign Grand Commander was returning from a trip to Honduras, where he participated in the Central American and Caribbean Conference of Supreme Councils.
“When I arrived, they were waiting for me. It was very intense. They say they weren’t threatening me but warning me; it’s quite uncomfortable to be in a place like that with several of them,” he said.
“Nobody has messed with the Government, so they don’t want to give it the fall that it doesn’t have,” he also said. He also assured his fellow Masons that the impression he was left with is that “Mario Urquía will be around for a while.”
Also on that day, around 2:00 pm, hours before the start of the meeting, the Cuban writer and mason Ángel Santiesteban Prats was arrested by agents of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) and interrogated by State Security officers at the La Lisa unit.
“I told them that what they did with Gerardo [Cepero, citado días antes por la teniente coronel conocida como “Kenia”] the other day and what they did with the Sovereign today was to measure the oil to see what temperament they have. That is my impression,” said Santiesteban Prats to CubaNet.
“They stopped me because they thought the press was going to go [a la conferencia]but it was [un encuentro] for the Masons, so that they could ask questions and exchange ideas,” he said.
The concern of State Security is related to the protest of around 200 Masons that took place in the Grand Lodge of Cuba last Tuesday, July 23. There, those present demanded that the Grand Master step down from his post, as well as the cessation of government interference through the MINJUS.
The fact, unprecedented in the history of the country, was made visible by CubaNet and two foreign news agencies (AFP and NBC).
The Masons ratified their rejection of Urquía
The Masons gathered at the Supreme Council, a building located on Jovellar, between Espada and San Francisco, in Centro Habana, lamented the support of the MINJUS to the imposed Grand Master. Likewise, some said that Urquía Carreño is no longer useful to them because his “demoralization is very great.”
Finally, José Ramón Viñas Alonso confirmed that both he, in his capacity as SGC, and the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree for the Republic of Cuba will continue to refuse to recognize “any decree, signature, attitude, or anything that this so-called Grand Master does, says, or decrees.”
He also insisted that “the Treaty of Friendship (and Mutual Recognition) is maintained and ratified,” an agreement that exists between the Grand Lodge and the Supreme Council, the two powers that govern Cuban Freemasonry, which stipulates that if a Mason is sanctioned in one of these instances, the other must adopt the same penalty.
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