AREQUIPA, Peru – The Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca University in Pinar del Río awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to Abel Prieto, cultural spokesperson for the Castro regime and current president of Casa de las Américas.
A report from the state media Cubadebate reports that the ceremony was presided over by Yorki Mayor, rector of the Pinar del Río institution, who highlighted Prieto’s “extensive academic training and literary work.”
“For me it is an immense honor, which I particularly value for coming from this university called Hermanos Saíz. I knew Sergio Saíz when I was a child, he was very loved by my family and he taught classes at an academy that my father had,” said the former minister of the regime.
In his speech, the Castro regime’s cultural commissioner referred to the social and humanistic sciences as an exceptional field in “the defense of the country,” a rhetoric used by the leadership of the dictatorship to address the safeguarding of its privileges.
According to Prieto, it is “essential” to do what the dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel requested at the closing of the National Assembly: republish a vindication of Cuba on social networks.
In its review of the ceremony, the official press attributes the 74-year-old winner as “one of the most lucid expositors of revolutionary ideology, distinguished by his cognitive wealth and the depth of the concepts he defends.”
In recent years, Prieto has served as a champion of the regime in favor of its crusade against the so-called “cultural colonization.” In this regard, he has said that it goes against the correct training of youth. Cuban and accuses the “enemy” of promoting a message that urges young people to distance themselves from the Cuban Revolution.
However, the official considers this scenario worrying when products of Western culture are consumed, while ignoring Russian “colonization,” promoted by Castroism for decades.
Given the low effectiveness that the indoctrination of the Communist Party has demonstrated in recent times (especially in the face of Cubans’ access to information from independent media with the opening of the Internet on the Island), Abel Prieto has tried to transfer the propaganda of the dictatorship to popular platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, where he frequently posts controversial statements.
With this desire, the recent doctor Honoris Causa has pointed out the Cuban youth who leave the Island as victims of the vaunted “cultural colonization” that seduces and deceives them from the United States.
Likewise, in 2021, Prieto attacked the song Homeland and life and its authors, ensuring that it responded to “a strategy associated with the change of mandate in the United States and the fear of the most extreme groups in Florida of a transformation in bilateral policy.”
The Castro official then said that the issue contains “an open political message without nuances” that attacks the Revolution “with insults typical of the worst anti-Cuban propaganda.”
In contrast, “Patria y Vida” has become a motto for freedom until now and was the anthem of the historic July 11 protests.
