In its desperate fight to win the yes in the Family Code referendum this Sunday, the Cuban government has mobilized not only workplaces but also schools.
Barely thirty boys from nearby schools arrived this Friday at the corner of G and Malecón, in El Vedado, Havana, where a march was scheduled for 3 pm that would be enlivened, as they pompously announced, by “comparsas and With gas”.
Dragging their feet, accompanied by teachers who had the same listless step, they received a cap and some fans, all made of cardboard, with the colors of the rainbow and the motto “Code Yes” from the hands of officials stationed in front of a Union car of Young Communists (UJC).
Some of them, after receiving these utensils, did not hesitate to flee the place. “We’re going to go through there, there’s a camera, so they know we were there,” said a teacher to a group of teenagers while deserted of the exercise before it even started.
Another group followed in the footsteps of a UJC official who harangued them with a whistle, to move on foot to the next point of the call, La Piragua. This esplanade, located on the Malecón at the height of the National Hotel, has recently displaced the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, in front of the United States Embassy and a few meters from there, as the center of propaganda events organized by the Communist Party of Cuba.
There will take place, at night, a concert in which they will participate, detailed the official pressLos Van Van, Haila María Mompié, Arnaldo y su Talismán, La Colmenita Children’s Theater Company and actors from the TV series Calendar.
Around 3:30, La Piragua could be seen guarded by a huge police operation, with patrol cars parked and agents stationed at every corner. Soon several buses arrived with more students, all dressed in their uniform.
As part of the event, the authorities set up stalls selling handicrafts and food. The prices were high: for example, bread with suckling pig, at 250 pesos, and bread with ham, at 200. To drink, they offered Coca-Cola and Mahou brand beer, something striking if one takes into account one of the propaganda posters that ” decorated” the stalls: “against Spanish colonialism.
“This is not a march or the head of a guanajo, it is a concentration of forced students where they are taking advantage to sell food, drinks and handicrafts at unaffordable prices,” lamented a passerby who stopped for a moment hoping to buy something to eat.
Around 4:30, many of the concentrated young people began to slip away little by little, under a blazing sun and given the impossibility of spending so much on a drink.
The schools in the capital have been plastered with posters containing the slogan “Code Yes”, and the students have already been warned of the obligation to “take care of the ballot boxes” on Sunday, “at least four hours”, according to a student from junior high school in Nuevo Vedado.
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