By IWU-FI 12 July 2021
A call for international solidarity for the immediate release of detainees of the Cuban left who attended the genuine protests that took place on 11 July in Havana and other cities. Among them, Frank Garcia Hernandez, a Cuban historian and a Marxist, was arrested in Havana.
The editorial collective Comunistas Blog calls for solidarity and clarifies that the protests are genuine and have nothing to do with any manoeuvre of US imperialism: “This afternoon the Cuban people took to the streets. No organisations are behind this other than the acute economic crisis facing Cuba and the government’s inability to handle the situation. Cuba took to the streets with the misguided slogan “Homeland and life”, but they took to the streets to demand real socialism from the government. Those on the streets were not only artists and intellectuals but people in their widest heterogeneity”. They denounced the regime suppressed using pepper spray and all available resources.
We, the revolutionary socialists of the IWU-FI, add our voices to the demand for the immediate release of Frank Garcia Hernandez and the other detainees of the Cuban left. Besides Garcia Hernandez, the government detained Leonardo Romero Negrin, a young socialist student of Physics at the University of Havana, Maykel Gonzalez Vivero, director of Tremenda Nota, a marginal magazine, and Marcos Antonio Perez Fernandez, a minor, student of Pre-University.
As ever imperialism and the Miami “gusanos” want to exploit these protests for their reactionary policy of attacking Cuban sovereignty. But the people took to the streets protesting against austerity, energy outages and the lack of potable water, and the repression of their government. A government that betrayed, decades ago, its socialist revolution in favour of those at the top and negotiate with the multinationals.
From the IWU-FI we call on anti-imperialist fighters and organisations that declare themselves democratic and of the left to speak out and join in the demand for the freedom of Frank Garcia Hernandez and other detainees of the Cuban left.
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
12 July 2021
