Foreign Minister’s Criticism Of Obama’s Cuba Visit Betrays Nervousness

Foreign Minister's Criticism Of Obama's Cuba Visit Betrays Nervousness /
14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 19 April 2016 — Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez
harshly criticized Barack Obama's trip to Havana this Monday. It was "a
visit in which there was an all out attack on our conception, our
history, our culture and our symbols," the minister told the 7th
Congress of the Cuban Communist Party.

The Foreign Minister's comments had the tone of a reflection on the
concerns of some sectors of the regime before the new situation created
by the resumption of diplomatic relations with Washington. First, it was
Fidel Castro with his "Reflection" column at the end of March that
reproached the United States president for his "syrupy" words. Later, a
video was posted in which the number two man at Cuba's embassy in
Madrid, Miguel Moré Santana, expressed himself with great crudity before
the Spanish committees of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.

In that video, circulating on the social networks, the diplomat
describes the coverage of Obama's visit in Spanish media as "a display
of cultural, psychological and media war without parallel." In addition,
he criticizes that "mercenaries in service to the United States" are
used as the only sources of opinion, which he considers "a lack of
respect for Cuba."

The deputy ambassador says, for example, that the Spanish public
television channel collected the impressions of Cubans on the arrival of
President Obama only through the words of the regime opponent Guillermo
Fariñas.

Moré Santana lashes out against the image other foreign media gave of
the presence of Obama in the island. "It would seem it was a successful
visit," excoriates the diplomat, but calls the guest a "wolf in sheep's
clothing," and declares that now the Cuban government has to be "more
measured" in its "discourse" because it already has diplomatic relations
with the United States.

Moré Santana denounces "the constant slanders and campaigns of media
contamination" against Cuba, starting with the idea of the embargo "that
no longer exists or is on the path to extinction" or assertions that it
is not the cause of the country's economic problems. For the diplomat it
is a battle "of the lion against the chained monkey," because in his
opinion the major media are able to influence and manipulate public
opinion and also exercise control over social networks.

The diplomat argues that "the Cuban Revolution is experiencing the most
difficult moment in its history," because the mechanisms of
destabilization used by the White House are now more subtle and are
trying to "corrode" the process from the inside. He criticizes the
flexibility measures implemented by the US administration, to ensure
that "telecommunications is the number one target" in a new strategy
"against Cuba." They "come and tell us that they will facilitate – a
kindness – free access for young Cubans to the Twitter network," he adds.

Among Obama's strategies criticized by Moré Santana is having contacted
Panfilo "one day before arriving in Cuba… the most famous comedian" on
the island. Through this telephone call, he says, Obama "opens the door,
the easiest one of all, and that is of empathy," and with this he
"spread… the criticisms and thinking and many Cuban intellectuals who
were in public debates" and "all that was effectively smothered."

According to the diplomat, this policy is part of a plan of the
"imperial powers" to "end the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela and
create a domino effect that sweeps aside all the progressive and
integration processes on the continent."

Source: Foreign Minister's Criticism Of Obama's Cuba Visit Betrays
Nervousness / 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/foreign-ministers-criticism-of-obamas-cuba-visit-betrays-nervousness-14ymedio/