The Cuban regime gathered its citizens on Friday morning in what it is presenting to the public as an act of “revolutionary reaffirmation.” It is the government’s coordinated response to the formal indictment against Raúl Castro —94— on charges of murder, conspiracy to kill Americans, and destruction of aircraft 30 years ago, when he ordered the shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes.
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The rally, which the authorities put at more than 200,000 people, took place in front of the United States Embassy, and among the communist political figures on the island in attendance was Raúl’s daughter, Mariela Castro.
Defiant, the former ruler’s daughter said they are ready to “fight the enemy” at any moment: “They said they were coming today… come on, here we are waiting,” she said, while insisting that the accusations against Castro are a lie.
She said that “no one is going to kidnap him,” drawing a comparison to the military operation that extracted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro so he could be tried on drug-trafficking charges. And that is the regime’s fear, now that a criminal case against Castro is real.
Dressed for war
At the rally, attended by government supporters and people forced to go—as many do to avoid reprisals at their jobs and in their neighborhoods—were also Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero. They and other government officials wore military uniforms, as they do when declaring a state of emergency or war.
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Well-known Cuban spy Gerardo Hernández, one of the members of the Wasp Network, tried and imprisoned in the United States, addressed the crowd with what he said was a letter from Raúl Castro himself. And that was the most striking absence: Castro, the central figure of the event, was not there—something he did do during the last May Day mobilization, also in Havana.
Hernández lashed out directly at Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his May 20 message to Cubans. He called it a provocation and justified the shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes as an “act of self-defense.”
And in his mouth, “defense” was a repeated term—a recurring excuse used by the regime to go after anyone who opposes or dissents from the official line.
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