Catalan Caravan Supports the Cuban Five
Photo Feature by Ramon Andujar
HAVANA TIMES, May 31 – Freedom for the Cuban Five was the motive behind a car caravan conducted this past Sunday by members and supporters of the Spanish organization “Defensem Cuba” (Let’s defend Cuba).
Several vehicles carrying posters and Cuban flags drove through several of the main streets and avenues of Barcelona, Spain, to publicize the plight of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States.
The journey of the protestors ended in Plaza Europa in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a neighboring city of the Catalan capital, where cultural and informational activities took place.
Five youths wearing orange uniforms and white masks portrayed the five Cubans (Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez) in a performance staged in a metal cage.
Throughout the activity, artist Hugo Chirino drew the participant’s attention by drawing caricatures of US President Barack Obama and the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.
Cuban music and much-appreciated rum “mojitos” spiced up the activity.
The organizers of the caravan have announced their plans to take this kind of event to other cities in the Barcelona region.
The Cuban Five were incarcerated in the US in September 1998 and were sentenced to long prison terms on charges of espionage. The trail was held in Miami, where rightwing anti-Cuba groups are known to have substantial influence.
The Cuban government, as well as hundreds of political organizations around the world, maintains that these five men were not seeking any type of information sensitive to the national security of the United States; instead they were said to be monitoring the activities of extremist organizations responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Cuban citizens and for numerous acts of economic sabotage.
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As long as the U.S. oligarchy and its Worldwide gangster crime family can murder people by the trainload and enslave everyone else — and call it “Democracy” no less — there’s little hope that the fact these men were investigating U.S. terrorism, and were cynically betrayed in the process, will be the focal point of anything in the imperialist World and its media.
Only a quick advance of the Capitalist World crisis will provide an opening for freeing them — so let’s hope World capitalism collapses very, very quickly and very soon.