This article appears in Reuters, but it may as well have been written by Granma or Juventud Rebelde. No author is credited and only an editor is named at the end, but it would not surprise me that the article was actually edited by the Cuban communist government before publication.
The story reports on a Cuban dissident group that has collected 10,738 signatures on a petition demanding that the Cuban government abolish the dual currency it currently uses which severely limits the general population’s buying power. This dissident group presented the petition to the National Assembly today.
“We demand for all the nation that the Cuban peso be an acceptable means of payment in every establishment without exception,” the petition said.
The author then informs the reader that Cuba’s socialist constitution obliges the National Assembly to consider any petition with at least 10,000 signatures. We know, these dissident women know, and the author of this article knows that the National Assembly will wipe their collective bottoms with this petition. But, Reuters just can’t allow the uninformed reader to come away with the realization that the government in Cuba is corrupt and undemocratic. So, they throw in this little tidbit:
The signatures were gathered by members of the Latin American Federation of Rural Women, a group that receives support from Cuban exile organizations in Miami.
With that said, they now inform the reader of the Cuban government’s definition of a dissident:
The Cuban government does not acknowledge the existence of dissidents and labels all opponents as “mercenaries” on the payroll of the United States, its ideological nemesis.
And just to be sure that they got the regime’s point across, they throw in this little zinger at the end.
Some telephone calls made by the organizers of Wednesday’s petition to the National Assembly came from the U.S.-funded Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami, which oversees anti-Castro radio and television broadcasts to Cuba.
It is obvious that Reuters made the numerous mentions of this dissident group’s ties with Miami exiles and US funded pro-democracy organizations with the intention of discrediting the petitioners. They made sure the reader would make the connection by first reminding them of the ties with outside organizations in the US, and then stating the Cuban government’s accusation that they are paid mercenaries of said groups in the US.
They left one glaring question unanswered, though. And I can only wonder if they did so knowingly, or in their fervor to come across as balanced while at the same time disseminating the regime’s talking points, they just plain missed it.
The question is: If Miami exile groups and US pro-democracy groups do not fund these dissidents, who will?