Cuban military is recruiting and training squadron leaders for repression of imminent popular uprising

From our Bureau of Shaky Dictatorships with some assistance from our Bureau of Instant Lieutenants

Roberto Álvarez Quiñones reports in Diario de Cuba that the island’s armed forces have begun a very unusual recruitment drive that promises to turn out “instant” lieutenants through a five-month training program.

Doubting that anyone could be trained to assume command of troops in such a short time — since most armies on earth take two to three years to do this — Álvarez Quiñones argues that this is really a program for training leaders of repression brigades.

It’s an aggressive campaign that reeks of panic, and nothing signals that panic more clearly than the fact that the recruits are being offered unusually high salaries, 30 percent higher than that of doctors, and the only educational prerequisite is a high school diploma.

The bottom line is that King Raul and his henchmen fear a popular rebellion is imminent, and they might all end up like Romania’s infamous Nicolae Ceausescu who was deposed by a popular uprising, tried for his crimes, and shot dead by a firing squad along with his wife on Christmas day, 1989 (see image above).

Wouldn’t that be a more fitting ending for the Castro dynasty than Fidel’s slow descent to a peaceful death, blessed by Papa Che?

Loosely translated from Diario de Cuba

Everything indicates that Raúl Castro and his main assistant, Miguel Díaz-Canel, are being stalked by the specter of Nicolae Ceausescu and are worried about the same fate as the executed Romanian communist dictator. This is what can be inferred from the order given to the Eastern Army to recruit high school graduates to turn them into lieutenants and captains in just five months.

The unusual military call has been broadcast in Las Tunas by the local radio station Radio Libertad and reported by the independent journalist Alberto Méndez. Young high school graduates up to 24 years of age are being recruited to train as commanding officers of infantry troops and armored forces, including tank squadrons. They are offered a monthly salary of 7,050 pesos ($293.75), or almost 2,000 pesos more than the salary of 5,060 pesos ($210) for a resident doctor.

To begin with, it is not possible to train a captain or lieutenant in the infantry or armored forces for professional military purposes in 140 days. The officers in command of troops and tanks in all parts of the world, and in Cuba itself, are graduates of military academies in courses lasting two to three years (never five months), or from universities that students already have access to. graduates as cadets in which they study Engineering degrees and other specialties applied to the military field.

One does not have to be very suspicious to conclude that the purpose of this lightning recruitment of young high school graduates is not to prepare them as regular lieutenants and captains, but rather as henchmen and cannon fodder in the streets to crush an eventual national rebellion.

But the most significant thing is that the unusual recruitment has begun in the eastern region of the Island, a historically “hot” land in social and political terms, where (in Palma Soriano) on July 11, 2021 they shouted “Assassin” in at Ramiro Valdés himself, the distinguished henchman of the dictatorship.

Continue reading HERE in Spanish