The events that took place on 11 July in Cuba consisted in a large-scale media operation initiated mid-June using U.S. government funds, which, given the suffering of the Cuban people, only stifles them instead of helping them.
Cuba has criticised the United States government for its complicity in the unrest seen on 11 July, where technological tools were used to create a panorama of mass mobilisation that they attempt to uphold today.
The previous day, the Minister for External Relations Bruno Rodríguez accused the U.S. administration and in particular the state of Florida of providing funds to the company Proactivo Miami Foundation Inc, which was involved in creating the campaign to incite the population to carry out destabilising activities.
At a press conference, the Cuban chancellor denounced Washington for using the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to reinforce the economic blockade due to political motives, in a deliberate and cruel attempt to stifle the country and provoke social upheaval.
The proof lies in the fact that, of the 243 coercive measures implemented by the Trump administration (2017-2021) to intensify the U.S.’s hold over the central Caribbean nation, 50 were applied during the health crisis.
In addition to this, there are the millions of dollars that the White House publicly or covertly allocates each year to promoting subversion, creating instability and rupturing social consensus and citizen tranquillity, according to Rodríguez.
This time, however, the protagonist was technology, as social networks were used to manipulate and incite violence, irregular migration, public disorder and even assassination.
Proactivo Miami Foundation Inc appears at the centre of it all, given that the company was tied to media outlets designed to attack the Antillean island, including ADN Cuba, and managed to get users to spread the hashtag #SOSCuba, which was artificially converted into a world trend.
To do this, they used robots to post millions of messages in a short space of time, explained the head of Cuban diplomacy. As an example, he emphasised that a single account from Spain placed more than a thousand tweets at a rate of five per second.
He said that they also harassed influencers to promote the hashtag and pressured real people to change their location so that it looked like they were in Cuba, and in this way maintain that 60 percent of the messages originated in the Caribbean nation.
Rodríguez denounced Twitter for not activating its anti-spam policies or closing accounts, despite the warnings it received about the violations of its rules of use, an act that he considers to be outrageous and complicit.
The foreign minister also emphasised the irresponsible attitude of US politicians who promote sending naval forces from the United States to the island, while he alluded to the relationships between people who acted as foreign service agents and diplomats.
We hope that the US government will not continue the same policies as its predecessors and will act ethically, he said, though he was surprised by the impunity that serves to encourage immigration-related incidents.
“If he was really concerned for Cuba, the US president could make executive decisions and substantially modify aspects of the economic blockade, including those related to fighting the pandemic, as well as those that hinder the acquisition of medical ventilators,” stated Rodríguez. (PL)
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