Cuban Government Radio Announcer Denounces Her Employers

“The Monster They Have Turned My Country Into”

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES — Radio announcer Amanda Toirac joins the ranks of government journalists who are leaving Cuba. The young woman published on social networks that she left the Island after discovering that she felt “complicit and dishonest.”

The young Radio Rebelde announcer pointed out that she was told to “repress” her countrymen and that, on refusing, she saw “the true face of the monster they have turned my country into.”

“I started to leave when I knew that I was a spokesperson for lies on a radio station,” wrote Toirac, who qualifies her words by pointing out that she discovered since the July 11 protests that she lived in a country “that only existed in my head.”

In her words, Toirac captures part of the Cuban reality, which she summarizes, speaking softly, when with the Government: purchases in MLC (with USD prices), the high prices of basic food such as oil and milk, and the dismissal of the director of Alma Mater magazine.

“There is no jungle, no river, no desert, no border, where I don’t ask myself if I did the right thing. There isn’t a day that doesn’t hurt,” she adds.

In response to Toirac’s words a river of comments flows wishing her luck on her new route and others questioning her for having waited until July 11 to “realize it.”

Commenter Jessica Genes wrote, “Since I was fifteen, I realized the reality of my country. I don’t know why it took you so long. Because even a child is capable of seeing reality, what a pity that you were complicit in many, so very many lies.”

Although she does not reveal what her destination is, in the photo she posts on her Facebook account, the young woman is seen about to board an Air Century plane bound for Santo Domingo.

Before Toirac, several journalists have left Cuba, such as Maray Suarez, who has rebuilt her life in Miami as an ’emotional coach’, in the country to which she dedicated so many attacks from Cuban television.

This was also the case of government television presenter Yunior Smith, who this March confirmed that he was on the southern border of the United States, requesting political asylum.

That same month, the stampede of spokesmen for the Cuban regime continued with the arrival in Florida of Alejandro Quintana Morales, Radio Rebelde announcer and television presenter, who congratulated himself on his Facebook profile for being in a country where one can “feel free.”

In January, the arrival in the US of another Cuban government broadcaster, Frank Abel Gómez Bernal, caused much controversy in the exile community in Miami. The communicator, popular on radio and television, requested political asylum and after entering the country he told the press that, although he had his job in Cuba, he “was starving.”

This February, the former director of the Information System of Cuban Television and of the news program Buenos Días, Yailén Insua Alarcon, ended up stranded at the Bogotá airport when she tried to reach Nicaragua fleeing the island. In her case, she asked the Colombian government for asylum, alleging her life would be in danger if she returned to Cuba.

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