It’s not a coincidence that worst and most ruthless attacks on press freedoms in Latin America are being led by the three socialist dictatorships in the region. This is socialism in action.
Via the Center for a FREE Cuba:
Exploring three Hispanic press freedom predators identified by Reporters Without Borders and how they operate as a troika
Reporters Without Borders’s 2021 “Press freedom predators” gallery focused on “old tyrants, two women and a European” amongst the 37 listed, but missed highlighting a troika led by Havana included in the list.
In the 1990s when the Cuban economy was collapsing following the withdrawal of Soviet aid, the Clinton administration believed that the greatest threat posed by Cuba was regime change, or a collapse of the dictatorship that would lead to a mass exodus of millions of Cubans, and sought a soft landing. The Castro regime had a different idea. In 1990 following a request made by Fidel Castro to Lula Da Silva the Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) was established with the goal “to reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe.” Thirty years later with Venezuela and Nicaragua imploding under Marxist dictatorships, restricting speech copying the Cuba model, assisted by spies and troops of the Castro regime, the foolishness of the 1990s American assessment of the Castro regime should be evident. Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, joined together by Raul Castro’s hand picked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, represent a troika of press freedom predators identified by Reporters Without Borders. The expansion of this model from Cuba to both Venezuela and Nicaragua have other impacts in the region, and on the United States.
Consider the 2018 protests in Nicaragua where “hundreds of government opponents were killed by police and other Ortega enforcers”; they were “helped by Cuban agents,” reported Mary O’Grady in The Wall Street Journal on June 13, 2021. One of those killed was Nicaraguan journalist Ángel Gahona who was “live-streaming a protest against President Daniel Ortega when he was shot dead. His family believe the aim was to silence him,” reported The Guardian on May 29, 2018. The Nicaraguan newspaper “La Prensa” reported on June 3, 2019 that up 200 Cuban “intelligence officers” are operating in Nicaragua and in addition to other activities are carrying out “training programs for Ortega’s Police, Migration and Immigration authorities, Customs and prison system officials.” They are giving trainings in “repressive tactics, espionage and control of prisons and border posts.” Cuban spies have been openly operating in Nicaragua since 2007 with Daniel Ortega’s return to power in 2006.
Nicaragua has a population of 6.6 million, and rising repression has led to an increase in migration to neighboring Costa Rica creating strains in the Central American democracy while other refugees have made the long trek to the United States. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua is identified as a “press freedom predator”, but the role of the Castro regime in training the Nicaraguan despot and his security forces is left out.
The Cuban government since 1959 has had a vision that can be fairly described as imperialist. The Castro regime repeatedly attempted (and continues to attempt) to subvert and destroy democratic governments, such as Romulo Betancourt’s social democracy in Venezuela with armed guerillas throughout the 1960s, that failed and later succeeded with Hugo Chavez through the ballot box in 1998 and continued since 2013 with Nicolas Maduro. It has been imperialist in the sense that these governments have been managed by Havana’s military and intelligence apparatus, and provides the Castro dictatorship with raw materials, and national wealth in exchange.
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Three shmos trying to look like important men.
It ain’t going to work. You look like small men.