Singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez saw “something positive” in the massive demonstration last Friday on 31st Avenue in the Havana municipality of Playa: that “it was guarded by the forces of order but not repressed.”
In a post published on saturday on your blog Second date, The troubadour confesses that the protest, which took place when those streets had been without electricity for almost 100 hours due to a widespread blackout on the island after the passage of Hurricane Ian, also made him “sad.” The reason he cites is that “those who rebuked a government heir to a Revolution that was carried out in blood and fire in favor of the humble did not seem to belong to the privileged classes.”
“How is it possible that such a distortion has come about? Is it a mirage due to the intensification of a six-decade blockade, or because of how difficult it has become to get food after the pandemic, or because of the havoc it has caused us? made a hurricane?” asks Rodríguez, suggesting, again and your waya slight criticism of the system that he has not just renounced.
exposing, as on other occasionsone of lime and the other of sand, the musician concedes, on the one hand, that “one wonders how much responsibility falls to those of us who have bet, more than our lives, our history, on an emancipatory project”, but on the other, affirms that “essentially, I am sure that we are not mistaken –and I am not listing the virtues, the resounding benefits for the Cuban people that the revolutionary process meant-“.
Rodríguez’s text was published precisely on the same day that, for the first time since the demonstrations began after the cyclone, the regime unleashed the usual repression
Rodríguez’s text was published precisely on the same day that, for the first time since the demonstrations after the cyclonethe regimen unleashed the usual repression.
Police officers, but above all State Security agents and military service recruits dressed in civilian clothes and armed with sticks responded that Saturday night to a spontaneous protest that took place in the middle of Havana’s Vedado, on Línea and F. There, the Neighbors had barricaded the street with overturned dumpsters, fallen tree branches and other objects.
In addition, as evidenced by videos broadcast by the Spanish agency EFE, the demonstrators clashed with the authorities and with the ruling battalion –which shouted revolutionary slogans such as “Fidel, Fidel” or “Viva Díaz-Canel”–, claiming not only “we want the light”, but rather “freedom”, “down with the dictatorship” and “Díaz-Canel singao”.
Although the regime has wanted to sell that in no case was there repression and that rather the agents responded to “provocations” by violent demonstrators, images broadcast by international mediasuch as the Reuters or The Associated Press agencies, show that those who were armed were government agents.
This Tuesday, the Justice 11J platform updated the number of detainees since September 30, which now amounts to 26. The last prisoners registered by the organization are Rafael Zamora Mederos, José Adalberto Fernández Cañizares (38 years old), Alejandro Guilleuma Ibáñez (29 years old), Hillary Gutiérrez (26 years old) and Frank Artola (18 years old).
Frank “is an exemplary adolescent who attends the Linea parish in El Vedado. He suffered a broken septum, split lips and one of his eyes swollen due to the blows received”
Zamora Mederos, indicates Justice 11J, a member of the Opposition Movement for a New Republic, was arrested on Saturday and is in the Vivac de La Habana accused of public disorder “just for walking the street on a day of protest.” The platform reports that his relatives have tried to add 16,000 pesos for his bail but it has been impossible, and the man is “on a hunger and thirst strike.”
About Fernández Cañizares, nicknamed pepitin, acquaintances of his family confirmed to this newspaper that he was hit in the head and that he was transferred to the Calixto García hospital to get 37 stitches, according to what the doctor who treated him told his own mother. Also, they fractured his nasal septum. The young man is accused of public disorder and resistance.
Alejandro Guilleuma Ibáñez, Hillary Gutiérrez and Frank Artola are being held for the same crimes in the DTI 100 and Aldabó detention center, also in the capital.
Of these last young people, some testimonies also they say they were mistreated. Frank “is an exemplary adolescent who attends the Linea parish in El Vedado. He suffered a broken septum, split lips and one of his eyes swollen due to the blows received,” wrote Adrián Martínez Cádiz, who added: “His sister Hillary Gutiérrez is a good girl. She has a little girl who cries because of her mother’s absence.”
Justice 11J emphasizes that “reports of people injured and brutally beaten in protest, and currently in detention, are alarming.”
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