The following statement is reprinted from the Cuban blog Comunistas (July 11). The editors are calling for solidarity for activists who were arrested by the Cuban government following the street protests in towns and cities throughout the island on the weekend of July 10-11. The blog notes that “not all members of the editorial collective of Comunistas Blog subscribe to this communication.” The text below is translated from the Spanish.
In the demonstrations this afternoon [July 11] in Havana, Frank García Hernández, among other members of the Cuban left, was arrested.
This afternoon the Cuban people took to the streets. A people that was not summoned by any organization other than the acute economic crisis facing Cuba and the government’s inability to handle the situation. Cuba took to the streets with the wrong slogan, “Homeland and life,” but it took to the streets beyond a slogan; it came out to demand true socialism from the government. Those who were in the streets were not only artists and intellectuals, this time it was the town in its broadest heterogeneity.
This note from the Comunistas blog does not seek to analyze the situation in Cuba. It seeks to denounce the violent detention of the protesters, to denounce the fact that this time the repressive forces of the State put themselves in the opposite place, that they repressed Cubans, that they used pepper spray and all available resources. This note is a claim for the freedom of all those detained and especially for the arbitrary detention of Frank García Hernández, a Cuban historian and Marxist. For the arrest of Leonardo Romero Negrín, a young socialist physics student at the University of Havana. For the arrest of Maykel González Vivero, director of Tremenda Nota, a fringe magazine. For the arrest of Marcos Antonio Pérez Fernández, a minor, a high school student. For all those violently detained on this black afternoon that Cuba will not forget.
Comunistas appeals to the solidarity of the international Marxist community and also to the conscience of the Cuban government. This time it is about a people that needs answers and dialogue.
It is about a civil society that does not want annexation, but rather to participate and decide the fate of its nation. Comunistas blog condemns the repression and says “that’s enough” to the bureaucracy.
Read the original article:
11, 2021https://www.comunistascuba.org/2021/07/reclamo-por-la-libertad-de-los.html
Top photo: July 11 protest in Havana. (Ismael Francisco / AP)