Cuba’s Leadership Celebrates July 26 in Artemisa
HAVANA TIMES — Each July 26th the Cuban government holds a remembrance of the 1953 attack on the Moncada and Cespedes garrisons that sparked the 1959 Cuban revolution. Several of the surviving participants were present today including President Raul Castro.
This year’s event took place in Artemisa, southwest of the capital. For decades the date was the occasion of marathon speeches by Fidel Castro, but under his brother Raul, the commemorations are short and the president isn’t always the speaker as was the case today.
The main speaker was commander Ramiro Valdes, one of Cuba’s vice presidents. He emphasized the tremendous support the Communist Party has among the island’s young people, which he said guarantees the continuation of the revolution.
Seldom does Artemisa now capital of the province bearing the same name, have visits from one, let alone half a dozen of the leaders of the Communist Party of Cuba. During the last year a row of individual memorials to each of the numerous Artemisans who participated in the Moncado Barracks raid have been erected on the Carretera Central where it enters the town from the east. The cost must have been very considerable. There were previous smaller individual memorials, but obviously in anticipation of the group pictured, larger more grandious and impressive monolinths similar in size to those on Easter Island were erected. The first houses seen upon entering the town are brand new, erected for the military. not for the average Cuban citizen. A sense of reality eventually is restored by the statue of Don Quixote with Sancho Panza at the end of the boulevard of the Avenida where it meets the Carratera in town. The contrast between the new military houses and those of the people of Artemisa is ovbious and clearly reflects the wealth of the Cuban Military. President Raul Castro Ruz’ son-in-law Colonel Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas CEO of Gaviota SA, controls most of the Cuban economy.
Hahahaha! That’s sadly true.
There are also more democratically elected Cubans in the US Senate than there are in that photograph above.
This book and lecture is a great counterpoint to the Castro oligarchy propaganda!
VIDEO: “The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution” – by Antonio Rafael De LA Cova : De la Cova chronicles the assaults and their aftermath as they happened, with a special focus on countering false statements later made by Castro at his subsequent trial and in his published defense speech History Will Absolve Me–a required text for Cuban schoolchildren to this day. Through research and interviews, de la Cova brings to light the persistent falsehoods told of atrocities committed by Batista’s soldiers and Castro’s rebels. He proves that Castro invented a legend of prisoner torture, mutilation, and dismemberment and that likewise Batista falsified the historical record of the attack.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/200357-1
Come on, Valdes. Cut the bullsh*t! The island’s young people can get outta’ Cuba fast enough. When “the Castros” tell whoppers like this there is no one on the island to chin-check them. No media, no real “loyal opposition”, nobody. I asked my wife if she thinks Cmdr. Valdes really believes what he said. She thinks he does. She says these guys live in such bubbles of their own creation that as far as he is concerned, life is good in Cuba. By the way, I thought the US Senate was full of old white guys, but this photo says Cuba’s may be worse off.