Havana/Mike Hammer, the United States chargé d’affaires in Havana, suffered an act of repudiation this Saturday in front of a private hostel in the city of Camagüey, 500 kilometers from the Cuban capital. The incident was revealed by a video posted on the Facebook profile of a Government sympathizer who only publishes official events and commemorations on his wall.
Those involved are men and women who shout “down with the blockade”, “Donald Trump puppets”, “murderer”, “genocidaires” or “bootlickers”. The slogans are identical to those used by the Cuban propaganda apparatus in acts of repudiation against opponents and dissidents, as well as in marches and events called by the Communist Party.
The street where the events occurred was dark. For more than a year, the country has been suffering from long scheduled blackouts of more than 10 hours. Those who staged the escrache shouted “they come to see the blackouts,” and blamed the Government that Hammer represents for this. The individuals looked at the entrance of the hostel, but did not try to cross the door of the tourist building.
Last Wednesday Yoani Sánchez, director of 14ymedioand Reinaldo Escobar, columnist for this newspaper, were arrested and forced to return home by a guard stationed on the ground floor of the building where they live in Havana. The agent who chased Sánchez, nervous, did not know how to give the address of the place where he had crossed her and she advanced several blocks before reinforcements arrived, including another agent who identified herself with a DSE (Department of State Security) card and two women dressed in civilian clothes.
“The illegitimate Cuban regime must immediately cease its repressive acts of sending individuals to interfere in the diplomatic work of the Chargé d’Affaires”
Sanchez and her husband were headed to a meeting at Hammer’s residence. They were invited to the beginning of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States. At the same time, other political activists and opponents such as Boris González, Berta Soler, Ángel Moya, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, Marthadela Tamayo, Camila Acosta, Ángel Santiesteban and Dagoberto Valdés, were forced to remain inside their homes, without any court order.
Between Havana and Washington there is an increase in hostile rhetoric after Nicolás Maduro and his wife Ciria Flores were extracted from their residence in Caracas, where they were sleeping surrounded by an escort of Cuban soldiers, of whom 32 were killed in the capture operation. The island’s authorities have been calling for military exercises for four consecutive Saturdays in the face of a possible similar action by the United States.
But such hostility contrasts with the tour that the head of the North American diplomatic mission makes through central Cuba, where he is generally received pleasantly by its inhabitants. On the social networks of the US Embassy, Hammer he declared smiling that “some insults have been shouted at him” and that he believes that these come from people who “belong to ‘a certain party’” and that “do not represent the Cuban people.”
In the statement, Hammer films himself with a cell phone from a rooftop and says that he is in the city of Trinidad, touring the Island, “getting to know more ordinary Cubans” with whom he has “been talking about his aspirations for a better Cuba.”
The North American Bureau for Western Hemisphere Affairs warned this Sunday in
