CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Of Strikes and Strikers

CUBA, Mach 25, 2010. - The Bolivarian News Agency (ABN) brought up the issue last Monday: “A 65-year-old woman has been on a hunger strike for 25 days in Spain.” The newswire does not mention the woman’s name.

The reason: she a disabled old woman who wants the property of a house. I wasted no time and immediately ‘googled’ it, but the inquiry with the powerful search engine only yielded a few results. However, I did find a lot on the qualified “psychologist and journalist” Guillermo Fariñas, who is in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara on his 24th hunger strike in the last years.

 

While the Caribbean citizen proclaims himself as a continuer of the false martyrdom of late Orlando Zapata Tamayo – a common criminal who later presented himself as a political dissident, just like Fariñas did -, the Spanish woman is only trying to get the attention of the authorities from the City Council of Laguna in Tenerife, the Canary Islands.

 

However, the city of Santa Clara has received in the last month the visit of “illustrious” diplomats and foreign journalists accredited to Cuba trying to promote a huge political and media campaign on Fariñas, a curious psychoanalyst who has spent 11 years of his life in prison for public fights and other common crimes.

 

It seems that the so-called independent journalist – his professional work is still to be read – hopes to set a new Guinness record considering the long list of hunger strikes he has carried out.

 

In parallel with the show in Santa Clara, in Havana, the so-called Ladies in White have marched around neighborhoods in the capital as part of very well-planned dramatizations.

 

These events, apart from the logical rejection and indignation of the people, usually have the presence of diplomats from the US Interests Section in Havana and from other European embassies, who always have a “no comment” as an answer when asked by journalists about their presence there.

 

Pure chance? In fact, they try to turn insipid issues into political detonators, dragging with them others who, behind the scene, try to win their rewards with moving statements, pitiful prayers, ironies, lies and provocations.

 

Web sites, blogs, news agencies, newspapers, radio stations and television networks echo these events. Anything is valid, as long as it mentions these people that have been hoisted as propaganda standards in the flagpole of indignity.

 

Meanwhile, in the Canary Islands, the 65-year-old woman is still waiting for an answer and she probably will be for a long time as she does not enjoy the huge media attention that accompanies the pseudo Cuban “patriots”.

 

That’s the enormous difference between strikes and strikers: the money under the table. (Cubaminrex – acn)

 

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