Agustín López Canino, promoter of a call to commemorate this Friday on the Malecón in Havana the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Cuba, which occurred on May 20, 1902, has been arrested early this Friday.
The activist was intercepted by a police patrol that was waiting on the outskirts of the town of El Globo, south of the capital, where he was intercepted and arrested, according to what was reported to 14ymedio family sources.
The event has once again put the opponents under the spotlight of the Cuban authorities, who have cut the telephone lines of several of them. Part of the Editorial Office 14ymedio is incommunicado due to the selective interruption of its telephone lines.
The artist Julio Llópiz-Casal and the activist Kirenia Yalit Núñez also report the web browsing service being cut off on their phones.
The application of repressive measures, already habitual on this date, is in line with the declarations of the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who has indicated today that only “the annexationists” celebrate May 20, when Cuba was “kidnapped by the imperial until 1959”.
Meanwhile, 90 miles across the Straits of Florida, Cubans in Miami celebrate this Friday, May 20, with a series of political and cultural events
The president has used the social network Twitter, where he has considered that raising the Cuban flag “without another next to it, in 1902, was an act of symbolic independence.” “May 20 reminds us that we were once a neo-colony. Then Cuba consulted every step of the powerful neighbor. That is the past. The Monroe Doctrine. Never again,” he added.
Meanwhile, 90 miles across the Strait of Florida, Cubans in Miami celebrate this Friday, May 20, with a series of political and cultural events.
One of them will be the concert for two pianos “Music of the Independence of Cuba”, which will take place at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, by the Dranoff 2 Piano Foundation and which will review the Cuban classic songbook, from Ernesto Lecuona to Pablo Milanés, going through Leo Brouwer.
In charge of the event will be the Grammy-winning and nominated pianists Martin Bejerano and Tal Cohen, the bassist José Armando Gola and the percussionist and historian of Cuban music Ignacio Berroa.
In Madrid, also this Friday, opponents and activists “for freedom” pointed out the relevance of the date of May 20 and asked that the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela not be invited to the next Summit of the Americas, which will be held from June 6 to 10 in Los Angeles (USA).
“Today, May 20, a significant date for Cuban democrats, on which we celebrate Republic Day, I dedicate the aspirations for freedom of this Declaration to all those who suffer imprisonment and persecution in defense of democracy,” wrote Carolina Barrero, who attended a ceremony held at the Athenaeum in the Spanish capital with Yunior García Aguilera, the Venezuelan Leopoldo López and the Nicaraguan Santiago Urbina, all of whom reside in Spain. The manifesto they presented will also be made public this same day in Miami. It is, according to them, “a call for coherence and the defense of the values of freedom and democracy to all the States of the American continent.”
The opponents, who attack all the autocracies in the world, argue that the European Union, the United States and the Latin American leaders committed to democracy recognize that the three Latin American countries mentioned are “dictatorships that systematically violate human rights.”
Recalling Article 1 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter – “the peoples of the Americas have the right to democracy and their governments have the obligation to promote and defend it” with “the holding of periodic, free, fair elections based on universal and secret suffrage” – The activists exhorted the governments that “have insisted and have even threatened with their absence if the dictators do not participate, that they are neither facilitators nor accomplices of criminal dictatorships.”
The declaration concludes with a call “to all Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who aspire to democracy for our countries to join forces to together overcome dictatorships and open the path of freedom and democracy for the entire continent.”
________________________
Collaborate with our work:
The team of 14ymedio is committed to doing serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time becoming a member of our journal. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
