Cuba “Will Stand with Venezuela until the End”

Said Culture Minister Abel Prieto at the tomb of Fidel Castro

By Cafe Fuerte

HAVANA TIMES — Culture Minister Abel Prieto Jimenez announced that Cuba will support the Venezuelan government “until the end” and praised the Venezuelan people for preventing their nation from becoming a land “where fascism rules”.

“Cuba will stand with Venezuela until the end,” Prieto said during an exchange this Monday with participants of the II International Colloquium on Hugo Chavez: The passion that unites us, which was held in Santiago de Cuba.

The Cuban minister’s conversation with Venezuelan visitors took place in front of the grave that holds Fidel Castro’s ashes in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery. His statement thereby became a kind of oath in the late Cuban leader’s memory, who passed away in November.

Standing up to the traitors

Prieto said that “the Cuban people are on the side of the Venezuelan people, who are facing aggression from those who are trying to make the Bolivarian country a land where fascism rules,” according to a report from Radio Rebelde.

“Venezuela is doing something admirable, everyday, by standing up to adversaries in its country and traitors too,” Prieto added, clearly referring to the Attorney General Luisa Ortega, who is now in Nicolas Maduro’s government’s line of fire for questioning the legitimacy of the his call for a Constitutional Assembly.

Prieto, one of Raul Castro’s closest collaborators, made it clear that Venezuela is today the front line against the fascism that wants to take over Latin America. “This is the real threat, because the opposition has complete disregard for the Venezuelan people’s lives and human rights.”

Between father and son

The conversation with visitors took place in front of Fidel Castro’s grave, near the mausoleum where Independence hero, Jose Marti’s remains lie.

Prieto spoke about the “dear relationship between Fidel and Chavez, which went beyond the relationship of two statesmen and became a father and son bond.”

A group of Cuban artists and intellectuals, who were attending the Caribbean Festival in Santiago de Cuba, also accompanied the minister to pay tribute before Castro’s grave.

Prieto has recently been seen spending time with Chavez’s relatives in Havana. In late June, he met Adan Chavez and Maria Gabriela Chavez, the brother and daughter of the late leader, in the rock music club El Submarino Amarillo. The vice-minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas, was also present on that occasion.