MADRID, Spain.- The discredit of the Cuban official press, especially that dedicated to the internal consumption of Cubans (newspapers, radio and television), is increasing every day. There is much information that is hidden, and numerous approaches that do not agree with the objectivity of events.
Sometimes it gives the impression that the Castro rulers despise and underestimate ordinary Cubans, in the sense that they do not consider them fit to receive information without mediation by the authorities. In other words, according to this point of view, only the machinery of power knows what the population should know, and when they should find out about the news.
All this is accompanied by an appreciable level of opportunism; because, as it is logical to imagine, the Castroite hierarchy commits its misdeeds against the free flow of information taking into account, first of all, the circumstances present at each moment.
We saw an example of the above in the case of the five spies who were imprisoned in US prisons. The members of the Wasp Network were discovered and imprisoned in 1998. But Castro’s propaganda reported nothing about it until several years later, when the case of the child had already been solved. elian gonzalezand another event was needed to keep the dispute with the United States alive.
Another chapter of this plot jumps to the forefront these days with the case of Ana Belén Montes, that woman of Puerto Rican descent who for years spied in the United States in favor of the Castro regime; she was arrested in 2002, sentenced to 25 years in prison, and released in recent days.
During the two decades that the spy was in jail, not a single mention appeared in the Cuban written press, radio or television about that issue. And now, when the release of her occurs, she remains silent.
On January 7, the day the spy was released, the digital page of the newspaper Granma picked up the news. However, the printed edition of that newspaper, the one that the population in the interior of the Island consumes the most, did not report anything in this regard, neither in the edition of Saturday the 7th, nor in the one of Monday the 9th of January. Neither has anything related to the release of Ana Belén Montes been reported in any other official media in Cuba. Of course, if they did, they would first have to tell the Cubans who that lady is.
When unraveling the reasons for the official silence on this issue, it would be necessary to agree on the reluctance of Castroism to accept that they have a wide network of espionage in various countries. It must not be forgotten that they have never accepted the status of spies on US soil for the five members of the Wasp Network. According to official propaganda, Gerardo, Ramón, René, Antonio and Fernando were just people infiltrating counterrevolutionary groups to dismantle possible actions against Cuba.
Now, as it seems, they do not have such a justification to cover up the work of Ana Belén Montes, as they choose to ignore the issue. If one day, due to opportunism or another reason, they decided to invite her spy to Cuba to honor her, then they would have no choice but to present her to national public opinion.
But no one thinks that it would cost them a lot of work to do so. They are masters in manipulating the masses. In the blink of an eye they would transform her from perfect stranger to national heroine.
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