This past weekend, the talk of the independent news media and Cubans linked to social networks was the arrest of former Economy Minister Alejandro Gil Fernández.
Due to the customary secrecy of the official media, which can only investigate when they receive guidance from the ideological department of the Central Committee of the PCC, it has been these alternative media that have been in charge of offering the Cuban people different analyses of this new scandal of the Castro leadership. They have also been the ones who have been in charge of rummaging behind each sentence of “the official note of the first secretary of the PCC” and in the preceding events, so that we can form an opinion about what happened, even if there is no lack of the most daring speculations in them.
Concomitantly with what is happening before our eyes and with what must be happening behind the scenes of silence and manipulations that the dictatorship always interposes in the face of events like the one indicated, it seems that another scandal is coming – at least it is already brewing on the networks – and will have to be denied or announced by the regime immediately.
The first sign of the event was found on José Godoy’s website “Amor por Cuba” (Love for Cuba), where this note published on Facebook appears: “Army Corps General and former FAR Minister Leopoldo Cintra Frías, Lieutenant Colonel Emilio Martínez, Lieutenant Colonel Guerrero, the son of Army Corps General Joaquín Quinta Solá are arrested. the current president of Gaviota, Carlos Latuff Carmenate and other high-ranking officers of the FAR, the MININT, etc., not only in several provinces of Cuba but also abroad.”
Faced with this shocking information, I felt curious and immediately went to the Cubadebate site – the cave of the Castro’s Taliban – but there I did not see any note about it.
After making several fruitless searches on the Internet, I received a communication from a friend living in Cuba, whom I questioned about the veracity of the so far alleged new scandal, and he sent me a video of Juan Juan Almeida. Although the video does not show the face of the well-known commentator on Cuban issues and son of one of the main supporters of the dictatorship, his alleged voice is heard, through which not only the rumor is confirmed, but also offers more detailed information than that which appeared in the note published on Facebook by Godoy.
According to the alleged Juan Juan Almeida, it all began at the beginning of this month when Lieutenant Colonel Emilio Martinez and a Major named Guzman, both from the MININT, were arrested by the ministry’s prevention unit. Both were handcuffed inside their workplace, building number 23408 on 53rd Street, between 234th and 14th, Havana. According to the information, one of them was seized from a satellite phone for the exclusive use of the FAR.
According to Juan Juan Almeida, all the detainees carried satellite phones for the exclusive use of the FAR and that seem to have the ability to evade the tracking of calls that could be carried out by military counterintelligence.
Whether this news is true or not, which is already beginning to gain strength on social networks, the worsening of the multifunctional crisis that is being noticed in Cuba, the growing rebellion of citizens and the repeated failure of the continuity administration presided over by Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez, together with the speed with which events that were unthinkable just two years ago are occurring, They remind me of what happened in the old socialist camp.
The pro-government media, which boast so much of their objectivity and alacrity in addressing national events, are once again put on the ropes by the alternative media of social networks.
These media have laid bare the hypocrisy of the top leaders of the dictatorship, who try to make us believe that they were unaware of the shady dealings of the former economy minister. To do so would be as foolish as believing what his sister says about the origin of the money used for his business in Cuba and Spain. But above all – and this can be deduced from the reading of the official note by Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez when reporting on the investigation against the former minister – the dictatorship tries to make us believe that it also ignores the way of life of the children and grandchildren of the Castros, whose excesses and luxuries have been incorporated into the public treasury as expenses of the annual budgets of the republic. outside of any attempt at control by the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic, which also cannot investigate GAESA.
Whether this news is true or not, the symptoms of decomposition are quite evident, so much so that its bad smell should set off alarm bells in the White House, although it seems to be lethargic and oblivious to the events that such an uncertain panorama projects.
Let’s not forget that it was precisely on social networks where it was first mentioned that Gil Fernández was the real owner of a small business in the interior of the country.
We are no longer at the end of the 1980s when the trial of General Arnaldo Ochoa and other officers of the FAR and the MININT was manipulated at will by Fidel and Raúl Castro, who behind a mirror communicated with the prosecutor and the president of the court, controlling everything. While the people waited for accurate and timely information, they edited the videos of those trials, which were later broadcast on national television.
We are now at the height of information and communication technologies. In 2007, Ramiro Valdés called the Internet “a wild colt that had to be tamed.” Undoubtedly, as in so many other things, the shot backfired on the ninety-year-old commander and the leadership of the dictatorship.
Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces