Cuba: 90-Year-Old Raúl Castro Resurfaces to Silence Protests
Frances Martel 13 Jul 2021
The Communist Party of Cuba trotted out 90-year-old Raúl Castro – the nation’s ultimate leader despite his official retirement – on Monday, claiming he participated in a Politburo meeting on the protests hitting the island on Sunday.
Cubans in at least 20 localities around the island organized peaceful manifestations on Sunday believed to have attracted thousands of people. Many marched chanting “freedom!” and slogans in opposition to communism. The immediate response from the Communist Party was violence; Cubans have uploaded multiple videos to social media appearing to show police officers opening fire on crowds of protesters, beating them with batons on the streets, and arresting and disappearing participants in the protests. Manifestations continued throughout Monday but the regime shut down access to the internet nearly across the country, preventing Cubans from sharing breaking news from the island outside of encrypted messages and some isolated images.
The official Communist Party newspaper, Granma, and state television claimed that Castro participated in the meeting alongside President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who Castro hand-picked to be the face of the Party. Cuba experts consider Castro and his extended family the ultimate bosses in Cuba, however, as many hold high-ranking military and Party positions and Raúl Castro himself still resurfaces for events the Party deems important enough.
Granma did not describe the meeting as an “emergency” gathering but gave the impression that it was an urgent attempt to organize a response to the protests. The meeting reportedly occurred on Sunday, but was the lead story on Granma‘s online homepage on Tuesday morning.
“During the meeting, the provocations orchestrated by counterrevolutionary elements, organized and financed from the United States with destabilizing purposes, were analyzed,” Granma reported.
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https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2021/07/13/cuba-90-year-old-raul-castro-resurfaces-to-silence-protests/
