Cuba unveils subversive plot engineered in Miami
By staff of Progreso Weekly/Radio Progreso
HAVANA – A political organization in Miami “paid, trained and instructed” a group of eight Mexican youths to carry out various activities that would spark street protests, seize churches and create street disturbances in the days prior to Pope Benedict XVI’s visit last March.
In addition to the account published today in an editorial in the newspaper Granma, titled “The Truth and the Reason,” Cuban television, in its prime-time newscast, showed a 15-minute video in which the young Mexicans admitted they were paid by Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat of the Cuban Democratic Directory, an organization of Cuban exiles based in Miami.
In the same manner, the Mexican side of the operation was led by René Bolio Hollarán, a former substitute Senator from the National Action Party (PAN), closely linked to sectors of the Cuban-American far right in Florida, according to Granma.
The video shows the four young men detained by State Security. Their names are César Pérez Zúñiga, Francisco Rojas, Luis Alcocer and Moisés Torres. According to the video, the other four managed to flee Cuba before being arrested.
The “special news program” hears several testimonies about the instructions given to the men about contacting various oppositionists. Moisés Torres was to contact Jorge L. García Pérez, better known as “Antúnez,” the singer Gorki, the blogger Yoani Sánchez, and Bertha Soler, spokeswoman for the Ladies in White.
“Let the Pope know that there is oppression in the country” was the message aimed at fomenting the occupation of churches. At the press conference, a recording was played of a telephone conversation between Ibrahim Bosh, president of the Republican Party in Miami, with Vladimir Calderón, one of the occupiers of the Lady of Charity temple in midtown Havana, in the days prior to the papal visit.
“Five hundred dollars to each of those who were there, including you. I’ll explain to you later,” Bosh told Calderón on the phone.
In another instance, one of the Mexican men explains that they were told to sleep in a different bed-and-breakfast every night, so as to not raise any suspicions. “The idea was to be unnoticed,” the man said.
Each man was to bring a flag, wrapped around his waist, saying: “Orlando Zapata Front of National Civic Resistance.”
“I come from the Directory” was a password. “You get a USB.”
Although the men had never before been to Havana, they were taught the routes they should take through the city’s main boulevards to distribute leaflets summoning street demonstrations.
Just before the end of the video, the viewers could hear a telephone call from Radio Martí to Bertha Soler, where the Miami caller asks Soler for her opinion of a letter signed by the Ladies in White and sent to Pope Benedict XVI. “I know nothing about that letter,” Soler answers.
Finally, the men admitted before the cameras that the situation that was pictured to them in Mexico did not match what they saw during their bold adventure. Their sponsors paid for their passports because none of the men had enough money to travel to Cuba.
This is the second video y two days shown by Cuban TV about activities abroad that are intended to disturb the public order in Cuba. Earlier, TV showed an abridged video of the meeting between some foreign journalists, several Cubans and Jens Aron Modig, the Swedish Christian Democratic leader who traveled in the car that crashed on Sunday 22 July, killing oppositionists Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero.
Modig, a witness to the accident, is already back in Sweden and, according to Swedish media, will hold a press briefing on Friday 3 August.
For his part, Spaniard Angel Carromero, deputy secretary general of New Generations of the Popular Party of Spain, who drove the car, remains under detention in Havana. Charges against him have been made.
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