Havana/At a time of maximum discredit for the Armed Forces, after the death of 13 soldiers –nine of them young recruits– In the explosion of an arsenal in Holguín on January 7, the regime has called this week for a “student bastion”. The exercise, which involves the manipulation of outdated weapons and maneuvers on university campuses, was chaired by Miguel Díaz-Canel from the Artemisa military region.
“There will be movements of troops and war material, aviation flights, and explosions may be felt throughout the country,” warned the Ministry of the Armed Forces, in a note published in Granmaa kind of manifesto that confirms that – despite the Melones incident – the Cuban military will continue to prioritize “the participation of young people in the defense of the Homeland.”
“Our doctrine continues to be the war of all the people,” they concluded. “The Bastion 2024 Strategic Exercise constitutes an essential element in the materialization of our doctrine.”
Díaz-Canel arrived escorted by the Minister of the Armed Forces, the now octogenarian General Álvaro López Miera, and by the Minister of the Interior, Lázaro Álvarez Casas. According to the call, made by the Minister of Higher Education, Walter Baluja, the bastion aims to “prepare and ratify university students as a ready reserve in the structures of the defense of the Revolution.”
The bastion aims to “prepare and ratify university students as a ready reserve in the structures of the defense of the Revolution.”
The official press has been lavish in its coverage of the event. Cubadebate shows Díaz-Canel, followed by a group of high-ranking military personnel, contemplating the dismantling of a Soviet Kalashnikov rifle – regulation in the Cuban Army – by a young university student. On the shooting range are, distributed in various practical movements, the third-year students of the University of Computer Sciences.
According to Granmathere were also “health exercises, rifle assembly and disassembly, grenade throwing and precision shooting with AKM.” One of the officials who joined the bastion as “one more” was Meyvis Estévez Echevarría, national secretary of the Union of Young Communists, whose image holding an AK-47 shotgun the official press turned into a symbol of the event.
The bastion, in fact, should have been built sooner, but due to the panorama left by cyclones Oscar and Rafael, in addition to the earthquakes in Granma and Santiago de Cuba, it had to be postponed, they argued. The event will culminate on January 25, declared National Defense Day, with “tactical exercises of different types, with the participation of units of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the Ministry of the Interior and other components of the territorial defensive system.”
In each province, senior officials of the Armed Forces – who yesterday were at the tribute to those who died in Melones, along with Díaz-Canel – attended the bastion with local authorities.
In Ciego de Ávila, Invasor assures that exercises were carried out against “weapons of mass extermination”
Militaristic rhetoric has flooded the provincial press. In Ciego de Ávila, Invader He assures that exercises against “weapons of mass extermination” were carried out, and that the university students trained in multiple shooting practices. The first-year students, for their part, had to sign a document “accrediting them as ready reserves of the Military Units” of the Army.
In Villa Clara, where the second largest university in the country is located, the “impetus” of the soldiers and students was special, he guarantees. Vanguard. At the Central University, “combined classes on rappelling rope ascent and descent, grenade throwing, material part of the weapons, rifle shooting, as well as conferences and military skills competitions, among other actions,” were held.
The vice president of the University Student Federation at that same center, Lázaro Cárdenas Moret, even challenged the recently inaugurated president of the United States, Donald Trump, to whom he sent a message: “We are capable of defending the principles of the Revolution, our ideals.”
At the University of Oriente, a student studying Law, Antonio Camué, said that “military preparation in the face of a conflict” is now more important than ever for Cubans, in light of the international situation.
Finally, Holguín, where the funeral services for the deceased soldiers were held yesterday, also had an active bastion. There the students met in a center of the Military Region of the province – the same section of the Army responsible for the Melones arsenal – where they received instructions on “the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, radio-electronic warfare and exploration means.” of artillery with communication support and executed infantry shooting training exercises.”
The newspaper Now!which reported in great detail on the bastion – although it remained completely silent regarding the Melones incident –, stated that the Armed Forces had highlighted an objective for the day: “the consolidation of the military invulnerability of the territory”, a difficult motto to apply for an Army that is not capable of protecting the lives of its own soldiers.
