"My people need Europe, my people need Europe to point to the abuser," Yotuel proclaim.Days later, Yotuel maintained a zoom call with state department officials to talk about "homeland and life", the anti -communist rapper hymn of which he was author.

While the dust of a day of protests is cleared in Cuban cities, the Wall Street Journal has described "homeland and life" as the "common war cry" of opponents to the government of Cuba, while Rolling Stone has described itas "the anthem of protests in Cuba".

In addition to Yotuel, the two rappers who collaborated in the song are part of a set of artists, musicians and writers called San Isidro Movement.The American media have attributed to this group the merit of "being the catalyst for the current disturbances".

Throughout the last three years, as economic conditions worsened under the escalation of the United States Economic War, while Internet access was extended as a result of the Obama administration efforts to normalize relations with Cuba,The San Isidro movement has invited an open conflict with the State.

With provocative actions in which their most prominent figures have paraded through Havana Old waves American flags, and with flagrant signs of contempt for Cuban national symbols, San Isidro has eneated with the authorities, causing frequent arrests of its members and international campaignsTo free them.

When establishing in a mostly Afro-Cuban area of Old Havana and working through media such as Hip-Hop, San Isidro has also maneuvered to call into question the racially progressive image that the Cuban Government of the LeftSouth Africa of Apartheid and asylum that offered American black dissidents.In this case, the San Isidro movement seems to follow a model articulated by the American pressure group for regime change.

During the last decade, the United States government has spent millions of dollars to cultivate rappers, rock musicians, artists and anti -government journalists in an explicit attempt to turn the "unocialized and marginalized youth into a weapon".The strategy implemented by the United States in Cuba is a real-life version of the fantasies that Anti-Trump democrats entertained when they worried that Russia would be sponsoring Black Lives Matter and Antifa to sow chaos in American society.

As this investigation will reveal, the main members of the San Isidro Movement have received financing from organizations for regime change such as the National Foundation for Democracy and the United States Agency for International Development, while meeting with officialsof the State Department, with personnel from the United States Embassy in Havana, with European right -wing parliamentarians and with Latin American coupists, from the Venezuelan Guaidó to the OAS secretary general, Luis Almagro.

San Isidro has also received the support of a fundaks fundamentalist tanks of the free market that do not hide their plan to transform Cuba into a colony for multinational corporations.Days after the protests broke out in Cuba, the Directorate of San Isidro accepted a prize of the Memorial Foundation of the Victims of Communism, a Republican Think Tank of Washington's right -wing that includes the Nazi German soldiers in their recount of historical deaths tohands of communism.

Behind his brand as cosmopolitan intellectuals, renegade rappers and avant -garde artists, San Isidro has openly embraced the extremist policy of the Cuban lobby of Miami.In fact, its most prominent members have expressed an effusive support for Donald Trump, have supported US sanctions and have cried out for a military invasion of Cuba.

However, the cultural group has made incursions into the progressive circles of the American intellectuality, working to weaken the traditional ties of solidarity between the Cuban revolution and the US left.As we will see, the rise of the San Isidro Movement is the last chapter of the emerging plays book of intersectional imperialism.

A "group of forgotten people": the participation of Afro -Cubans in the protests captive to the US media

The scenes of a police car overturned in the neighborhood of October 10 of Havana, the mobs launching Molotov cocktails to the police officers and the looting of the shopping centers this July 11 started the resentment of a class of citizens that havefallen in the cracks of the besieged special economy of Cuba.

After years of deepening economic deprivations, Cubans have suffered blackouts and rationing food caused by the intensification of the US 60 -year economic blockade to Cuba by former president Donald Trump.A sudden collapse of tourism due to the Covid-19 pandemic together with the elimination by the Government of the double currency system of Cuba exacerbated economic chaos.

Cristina Escobar, a journalist based in Havana and one of the most followed information personalities in the Cuban state channel, described The Grayzone the ranks of the protest as the byproduct of a sustained marginalization.

"There are a group of people in urban places such as Havana who have the following characteristics," said Escobar.“They usually come from poor rural areas and have moved to the city in search of better opportunities;In general, they are not white with all the gradients, and live on the margins, receiving any state benefit that is available.They usually work in the submerged economy, feel disaffected and are not involved in patriotic companies because they are victims of the special poverty period ".

Although the Social Security Network of Cuba has prevented this demographic group from falling into the misery that the neighborhoods of states managed by the IMF know, such as Haiti or Honduras, Escobar states that “they are a group of forgotten, disintegrated people, without roots in roots in the society.They are expressing the inequality they experience and, unfortunately, they no longer do it peacefully ".

The US corporate media have taken advantage of the images of Afro -Cuban protesters to paint manifestations as an explicitly racialized expression of discontent.In an article entitled “Afro -Cuban at the head of the Disturbances [in Cuba]", the Washington Post quoted anti -government NGOs and activists associated with the San Isidro movement denouncing Black Lives Matter for his declaration of solidarity with the Cuban revolution.

The Washington Post did not mention the role of the US government.UU.In supporting many of these same NGOs and activists in an attempt to assemble the lower class of Cuba.At the head of the Washington strategy are two traditional fronts of the CIA: the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Foundation for Democracy (NED).

Throughout the Cold War, the USAID worked alongside the CIA to liquidate socialist movements throughout the global south.More recently, he helped start a false Vaccination program of the CIA in Pakistan to locate Osama Bin Laden, and instead ended up generating a massive polio outbreak.Throughout Latin America, the USAID has financed and formed to the figures of the right -wing opposition, including the pseudo of Venezuela appointed by the United States, Juan Guaidó.

For its part, the NED was created under the supervision of former CIA director William Casey to provide support to opposition activists and the media in all places where the United States has sought a regime change."Much of what we do today was done covert 25 years ago by the CIA," said NED co -founder, Allen Weinstein, journalist David Ignatius, who celebrated the organization as "the father of the sugar of covert operations".

Throughout its history, the USAID and NED have worked to exploit the grievances of minority ethnic groups against socialist and non -aligned governments.His financial and logistics support for the Uigures against China, the Tartars against Russia and the indigenous miss against Nicaragua are some of the many examples.

In recent years in Cuba, specialists instead of Washington have focused on Afro -Cubans and marginalized young people, taking advantage of culture to convert social resentment into a counterrevolutionary action.

Becoming a weapon to the "unocialized and marginalized youth" against Cuban socialism

An article published in 2009 at the Journal of Democracy, the official body of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), outlined an ambitious plan to cultivate the Cuban lower class of the cold postwar period as an antigubernamental avant -garde.

"Using the principles of democracy and human rights to unite and mobilize this vast dispossessed majority against a highly repressive regime is the key to peaceful change," wrote Carl Gershman and Orlando Gutiérrez.

Gershman and Gutiérrez are influential figures in the world of regime change operators.Founding director of NED, Gershman presided over four decades the efforts of the United States to destabilize governments from Managua to Moscow.Gutiérrez, meanwhile, is a frank defender of an American military invasion of Cuba who exercises as National Secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directory funded by USAID and NED.

Gershman and Gutiérrez advised a strategy that foster “non -cooperation" with the revolutionary institutions of Cuba among those who described as “unocialized and marginal young people: those who abandon the studies, young people without work that constitute almost three quarters of the unemployedof Cuba and those who are attracted to drugs, crime and prostitution ".

The two specialists instead of regime pointed out music and online media as ideal vehicles to take advantage of the frustrations of Cuban youth: “The alienation of young people reaches the mainstream and is expressed in the angry lyrics of the musicians of the musicians ofrock;the representations of the bloggers of the frustrations and the chabacanería of everyday life;the frequent evasion of agricultural work, voluntary service and meetings of the neighborhood committees;and the general decoupling of the policy that is the fruit of half a century of coercive participation and political propaganda fueled by force, "they wrote.

The year in which the influential document of Gershman and Gutiérrez was published, Washington launched a bold covert operation based on the strategy they had outlined.

"Rap is war": Usaid coverts Cuban hip-hop artists as propagandists of regime change

In 2009, the USAID launched a program to trigger a youth movement against the Government of Cuba through the cultivation and promotion of local hip-hop artists.

Due to its long history as a facade of the CIA, USAID subcontracted the operation to Creative Associates International, a company based in Washington DC with its own history of undercover actions.

Creative Associates found his key man in Rajko Bozic, a veteran of the Otpor group!Backed by the CIA, which helped to overthrow the nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic, and whose members became a “export group of a revolution" that sowed the seeds of several color revolutions ".

Making a music promoter, Bozic approached a group of Cuban rap called the villagers, known for his fiercely antigubernational hymn, "rap is war".The Serbian agent never told the villagers that he was an asset of American intelligence;Instead, he said he was a marketing professional and promised to make the group leader an international star.

To carry out the plan, Creative Associates launched Zunzune.

After a year, when the villagers intensified their rhetoric, mocking the Cuban police as unbalance.

The shame surveys in Washington, with Senator Patrick Leahy grumbling: "Usaid never informed Congress about this and should never have been associated with something so incompetent and reckless".

Danny Shaw, associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies at the City University of New York, met the villagers for several prolonged visits to Cuba.He also met Omni Zona Franca, a group of poets and performance artists of Rastafari orientation based in the Alamar neighborhood, in Havana, which served as inspiration for the San Isidro movement.

Shaw said that artists' hostility towards Cuba's socialist system was so intense that many of them denied the existence of the US blockade.“I tried to explain my way of understanding the economic war, and they told me:‘ You can come and go as you want, do not live here, so it is easy for you to be Marxist ’.And they were right, if you completely decontextualized the situation, "he told The Grayzone.

According to Shaw, some members of OMNI Free Zone began visiting the United States and Europe to participate in art festivals and interviews with corporate media in Spanish in Spanish."When the stories about the support of the Usaid to the Raperos and Cuban artists came to light, then everything made sense to me," he reflected.

In 2014, the USAID was exposed again when Creative Associates turned to organize a series of false HIV prevention workshops that, in reality, were political recruitment seminars.

An internal document of Creative Associates filtered to the media in 2014 referred to false workshops on HIV as the "perfect excuse" to enlist young people in regime change activities on the island.

President Barack Obama presented his plan to normalize relations with the Government of Cuba just when the last operation of USAID was exposed.As a condition for diplomatic recognition, Obama insisted that Cuba expand internet access.

The Venezuelan Research Website Mission truth then warned: “We are attending an update of the mechanisms, methods and modes of intervention.All harmony at this time is totally illusory.What is already placed under the ‘normalization’ label in the Cuban socio -political environment provides the minimum operating conditions to facilitate the idea of a ‘Cuban spring’, a test tube revolution… ".

The 3G Internet Network arrived in Cuba in 2018, allowing Cuban young people to access social networks on their phones.Now, instead of turning the social media platform such as Zunzuneo, American intelligence focused on developing technology such as Psiphon so that Cubans could access Facebook and YouTube despite Internet cuts.

NED and USAID took this opportunity to build a powerful online anti -government apparatus.The new batch of media backed by the United States, such as Cubanet, Cibercuba and DNA Cuba, represented an echo chamber of toxic insurrection, mocking President Miguel Díaz-Canel with insulting memes and asking for their processing for high crimes, including genocide.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry has promoted the United States efforts, helping to create and finance the anti -government blog the touch, through an NGO called RNW Media.

Ted Henken, an American academic and author of "Cuba's Digital Revolution," told Reuters that Cuban leaders "calculated bad Years and a half".

"Nothing [protests] would have been possible without the nascent 3G network that has allowed millions of Cubans to access the Internet through mobile devices since 2018," said the corporate medium online Quartz.

As Cuban access grew to the anti -government media, the Trump administration increased the NED budget by 22% in 2018.

That year, NED's budget for Cuba allocated about 500.000 dollars for recruitment and training of anti -government journalists, and to establish new media.

Another subsidy of the NED budgeted funds to “promote the inclusion of marginalized populations in Cuban society and strengthen a network of partners on the island", which implies targeting in Afro -Cuban.

NED has put a great emphasis on infiltrating the hip-hop scene in Cuba.In 2018, the American government entity contributed 80.000 dollars to the Alma Cuban Foundation to “empower independent artists to produce, act and exhibit their work in community uncensored events", and 70.000 dollars to an NGO based in Colombia called the Urban Cartel Foundation to “empower Cuban hip-hop artists as leaders in society."

Urban poster publishes an online magazine clearly inspired by Vice, the main vehicle of Hipster Imperialism.In addition to keeping readers informed about the latest releases of Cuban rap artists contrary to the government, the magazine funded by the US government dedicates entire sections on their website to drug use, trans culture and vegan lifestyle and vegan lifestyle andecological.

Al atender la sensibilidad de los autodenominados radicales de orientación académica, los escritores del medio utilizan habitualmente la letra “x" para borrar las distinciones de género, lo que da lugar a pasajes como el siguiente: “cuerpxs trans, marikonas, no binarixs, racializadxs, monstruosxs…".

The surprising proliferation of online opposition media, the vitriica anti -government propaganda and the infiltration of the United States in the cultural scene of Cuba, which accompanied the expansion of the country's internet services, caused unprecedented repression byof the country's leaders.

“Los años en los que se produjo el descongelamiento de las relaciones con Estados Unidos, tuvimos mucha tolerancia a nivel interno", reflexionó la periodista cubana Cristina Escobar."That's because the government was not besieged.But then Trump won. Y ahora la dirigencia siente que nunca debió confiar en Obama".

A few hours after taking possession in April 2018, President Díaz-Canel proposed Decree 349.The new measure would force all artists, musicians and interpreters to obtain the prior approval of the Ministry of Culture before advertising their work.

Raised in direct response to the recruitment of rap artists and other cultural figures by American intelligence, decree 349 explicitly prohibited the dissemination of audiovisual materials containing “sexist, vulgar or obscene language." Aunque la ley nunca se aplicaría formalmente, la oposición cubana consideró la disposición como un ataque directo a la subcultura del reggaetón que se filtraba en el paisaje urbano del país.

Almost overnight, a group of artists and musicians mobilized to protest against the decree.With the name of the San Isidro neighborhood, in Havana Vieja, where several of its members lived, the new movement was directed directly to the cultural influential of the Global North, presenting itself as a diverse collection of independent visual and rappers who fought for nothingmore than artistic freedom.

Perhaps for the first time, the opposition of Cuban rights had a vehicle to enter the progressive circles of abroad.

With US flags.UU.in hand, facing the State and courting the celebrities

On November 6, 2020, a police officer appeared at Denis Solís's house, an openly antigubernational rapper affiliated with the San Isidro Movement.Solís soon aim with the police phone camera and broadcast his challenging meeting on Facebook live.

Tras burlarse del agente con insultos antigay, Solís proclamó: “¡Trump 2020! Trump es mi presidente".

La visita de la policía fue desencadenada por la excitada cobertura que Solís recibió del Diario de Cuba, una publicación financiada por la NED, y de otros medios antigubernamentales, por un tatuaje estampado en su pecho que decía “Cambio; Cuba Libre". También había acudido a Facebook para jactarse: “Comunistas, ahora van a tener que arrancarme la piel del pecho".

La condena de 8 meses de prisión que recibió Solís por “desacato" -un castigo claramente inspirado por el espectáculo que generó con su livestream- fue la chispa que dio origen a la huelga de hambre de noviembre de 2020, que lanzó al Movimiento de San Isidro a la escena mundial.

The strike was carried out inside the house of Old Havana of the San Isidro Movement coordinator, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.Otero, Afro -Cuban artist, has caused the anger of the government by desecrating the Cuban flag, wrapping it with its naked torso in the toilet and while brushing the teeth, or spreading on it in underwear with the flag of the United States.

In another provocation, Otero gathered children to run through their neighborhood waving a giant American flag, which caused an immediate police response and their own detention for four days.

The hunger strike of a week in the house of Otero generated an unprecedented international media show, and generated support statements of Jake Sullivan, the next national security advisor of the Biden Administration, and the then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

A skillfully staged visit to the place of the hunger strike by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, a high -level Cuban journalist and literary based in Mexico, had contributed to galvanize the interest of international media.

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Dressed in a black turtle neck and from the ranks of the educated elite of Cuba, Álvarez, with glasses, presented a marked contrast with Otero and his rude companion, the anti -government rapper Maykel Osorbo.For government officials, tempted to rule out protest leaders as a group of vagrants vulgar, the figure of the Gentil Escriba presented serious complications.

Álvarez soon found a space in the opinion section of the New York Times to promote San Isidro among the liberal public of the United States, while they weaken literary metaphors on how to walk on the cobblestone with high heel shoes to denigrate the bureaucracyCuban communist.

“El movimiento [San Isidro] se ha convertido en el grupo más representativo de la sociedad civil nacional, reuniendo a cubanos de diferentes clases sociales, razas, creencias ideológicas y generaciones, tanto de la comunidad de exiliados como de la isla", afirmó el escritor.

On November 27, 2020, when the confrontation between Cuban artists and the state, a group of artists began a seated in front of the Ministry of Culture of Cuba.Original protesters were mostly trained by artists whose work had been sponsored by the Cuban State.And unlike San Isidro, many of them rejected the rhetoric of regime change, instead opting for a dialogue with the Minister of Culture to resolve the conflict over freedom of expression.

As explained by the sociologist Rafael Hernández in a detailed study of the sitting, the dialog. El New York Times y otros medios anglosajones centraron su cobertura directamente en la chusma anticomunista de San Isidro, mientras que los artistas cubanos de izquierdas “permanecieron invisibles para la prensa extranjera, que no los considera noticia, al igual que a los veteranos y jóvenes disidentes", observó Hernández.

The intense media coverage of the sitting placed the San Isidro movement in the international scene, which earned them the attention of famous artists and writers from the United States and Europe.In May 2021, after Otero was again arrested for Cuban security, an open letter was published to President Díaz-Canel in the New York Review of Books, one of the main magazines of the liberal writers of the United States, inThe one that liberation was demanded.

Signed by a cast of prominent black and Afro -latin cultural figures, including Henry Louis-Gates, Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz, the letter illustrated the success that San Isidro was having in the erosion of the support of the American black intellectuality to the Cuban revolution.

With access to the main liberal bodies of the US media and with the support of the Latin American studies departments throughout the country, the cultural group was taking out the anti -communist opposition of Cuba from its traditional right -wing base in Miami.

But his success was not an organic phenomenon.In fact, San Isidro had been propelled to the international scene thanks to the important support of the United States Department of State, its subsidiaries for regime change and right -wing business pressure groups, desire for Cuba to open up to business.

“Viva la anexión": el Departamento de Estado, la OEA y los lobbies empresariales se asocian con San Isidro

Every day, in the magazine the sneezing he founded, Carlos Manuel Álvarez and his colleagues present the bad news of Cuba. Mientras pintan el país como un infierno comunista dirigido de forma catastrófica e invadido por las víctimas de Covid-19, comercializa su medio como “independiente".

Actually, sneezing seems to be one of the many media projects incubated by the National Endowment For Democracy (NED).

“The collaborators who make the magazine are paid for work produced, with a fixed salary of 400 CUC. Hasta que me fui, El Estornudo era financiado por la NED y la [Fundación] Open Society", dijo Abraham Jiménez Enoa, antiguo redactor de la revista, refiriéndose respectivamente al brazo del gobierno estadounidense para el cambio de régimen y a la fundación de George Soros.

The sneezing is part of a constellation of delegated media to criticize the Cuban response of Covid by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), an NGO that received 145.230 dólares de la NED en 2020 para “fortalecer la colaboración entre los periodistas independientes cubanos" y capacitarlos en los medios sociales.

The anti-government media that operate under the auspices of IWPR also include a tremendous note, a LGBTQ theme site that routinely accuses the Cuban government of homophobia and transphobia, even when the Díaz-Canel government has advanced in the legalization of gay marriage, hasOpen the army to homosexual soldiers and has started official pride events.

The Board of Directors of the IWPR is made up of former NATO officials and corporate media figures, including the former president of the Financial Times.Although the NGO has since erased its list of sponsors from its website, a archived page reveals associations with the NED and its subsidiaries of the US government, as well as with confirmed contractors of British intelligence such as Albany Associates and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Carlos Manuel Álvarez is not the only member of San Isidro near the US regime change entities. Además de él, está Yaima Pardo, una cineasta cubana y especialista en tecnología cuyo documental de 2015, “Offline", hizo hincapié en la necesidad de la expansión de Internet para fomentar la disidencia.

Pardo is currently the DNA multimedia director of Cuba, an anti -government medium based in Florida who received 410.USAID dollars only in 2020.

Esteban Rodríguez, de San Isidro, reportero de ADN Cuba, ha celebrado como “perfecta" la prohibición de remesas familiares a Cuba impuesta por Trump, que debilita económicamente. “Si estuviera en Estados Unidos, habría votado a Trump", dijo Rodríguez a The Guardian.

When San Isidro launched its international campaign against Decree 349, it chose to do so in the Organization of American States (OAS) - the regional organization based in Washington D Burlada by Fidel Castro as “the Yankee Ministry of the colonies."

There, the co -founder of San Isidro, Amaury Pacheco, was received by Luis Almagro, the secretary general of the OAS who would help orchestrate the military coup on the right in Bolivia that same year.They were also present to welcome Cuban artists officials of the State Department and Carlos Trujillo, a loyal to Trump's right who serves as the United States representative before the OAS.

“El arte en Cuba es más necesario que nunca", proclamó Almagro. “Es necesario exponer los desafíos de la represión" del Estado cubano.

As reported by the Samuel Robinson Institute, based in Venezuela, San Isidro has strengthened its ties with the international right through the Cadal Foundation, which nominated it for the Freemuse prize for artistic expression, sponsored by the state of NATO.Cadal is at the center of a network of libertarian organizations that take advantage of companies money to boost the fundamentalism of the free market throughout Latin America.

Among the closest partners of Cadal is the Atlas Net.

The Think Tank is also sponsored by the US State.UU., la NED y sus filiales, incluyendo el Centro para la Empresa Privada Internacional, que se dedica a “fortalecer la democracia en todo el mundo a través de la empresa privada y la reforma orientada al mercado".

In January 2021, the main members of San Isidro, including Otero and Pardo, participated in a web seminar organized by another group of right -wing experts backed by companies.This time, they were invited by the Latin American Federalism Center and the Foundation for Liberty.

Sponsored by multinational companies determined to transform Cuba into a paradise of the free market, and inspired by the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the Foundation based in Argentina is also directly affiliated with the Atlas Network.

Among the participants in the Web Seminar was Iliana Hernández, reporter of Cibercuba, one of the many anti -government media that have emerged in recent years after the expansion of Internet services.

En un debate sobre las elecciones de noviembre de 2020 en su página de Facebook, Hernández argumentó que como Trump “iba a tomar medidas más duras contra la tiranía… creo que, por la libertad de Cuba, debería ganar Trump".

He also detailed the wide coordination between the San Isidro movement and the state department officials who provide services at the United States Embassy in Havana.

Referring to their conversations with the EE hard line business managers.UU., Timothy Zúñiga-Brown, and his predecessor, Mara Tekach, Hernández commented: “In this last conversation with Mr..Tim [Zúñiga] Brown, what he told me was, ‘How can we help?That is, what can we do?Because, I mean, he wanted to receive orders from me and not vice versa. Le dije cómo podía ayudar".

Otero has also cultivated close relations with officials of the United States Department of State.In July 2019, he and other members of San Isidro proud.

Adonis Milan, un director de teatro de La Habana afiliado a San Isidro, publicó fotos en Facebook de él mismo, un artista de reggae y miembro de San Isidro llamado Sandor Pérez Pita, y Otero “disfrutando de unas horas de libertad dentro de Cuba" mientras se tomaban selfies con marines estadounidenses.

“Viva la anexión", escribió Milan en un post en el que expresaba su “ferviente pasión por la bella gringa".

Asked by a journalist about the meeting he held in a street in Havana with the former EE business manager.UU.Tekach, Otero replied: “It's a diplomat.I can meet Mara Tekach or the France ambassador;With my friend, the Holland ambassador, or with that of the EU. Incluso con el presidente cubano, Miguel Díaz-Canel, si algún día quiere hablar conmigo".

In April 2021, the Cuban Government claimed to have discovered documents that revealed payments of 1.000 dollars a month to Otero from the National Democratic Institute, a subsidiary of the NED.The accusations came to light just when the artist planned.Otero flatly denied having received payments from the US government regime change teams.

By then, Otero had become a star of a collaborative viral anthem that had provided the Cuban counterrevolution a unifying slogan and a protest soundtrack.

Presentamos “Patria y Vida", el himno de rap favorito del Departamento de Estado de EE.UU.

The first song to which the mobilization of the Cubans is directly attributed to protest against their government was recorded by a group of rappers and reggaeton artists that included two members of the San Isidro Movement.

Aclamada por el medio de comunicación estatal estadounidense NPR como “la canción que ha definido el levantamiento en Cuba", “Patria y Vida" ha acumulado más de 7 millones de visitas desde que se estrenó en YouTube el 16 de febrero de 2021.

Recorded in Miami, the song has three self-exiled Cuban performers: Yotuel, from the Hip-Hop Orishas group, the reggaeton duo of the zone and the singer-songwriter Desmer Bueno. Los complementan dos miembros del Movimiento San Isidro, radicados en La Habana: los artistas de hip-hop El Funky y Maykel “Osorbo" Castillo.

Osorbo ha proclamado que “daría [su] vida por Trump" si el presidente estadounidense impusiera un bloqueo total a Cuba con “las costas bloqueadas, que no entre nada, ni salga nada… como hicieron en Venezuela."

El vídeo de “Patria y Vida" se abre con la curiosa imagen del héroe anticolonial cubano José Martí fundiéndose con la del padre fundador de Estados Unidos y esclavista colono George Washington.

In the climax of the song, the rappers osorbo and the funky appear on the screen flanked by Otero, from San Isidro. Afirmando haber filmado su actuación subrepticiamente, los raperos aparecen sin embargo en un vídeo de alta calidad coreando “¡Patria y Vida!".

Este eslogan era un giro abierto del mantra revolucionario cubano, “Patria o Muerte", que fue pronunciado por primera vez por Fidel Castro en un acto en memoria de los estibadores muertos por el sabotaje mortal de la CIA al carguero La Coubre en el puerto de La Habana en 1960.By investing Castro's vote of defending the sovereignty of Cuba with his life, the authors of the song point to the anti -imperialist political culture instilled to the Cubans over six decades.

The verses of Osorbo and the Funky mix lacerating attacks to the socialist government with tributes to San Isidro:

“We keep going, security, diverting with prism

These things indignant me, the enigma is over

Ya está bien de tu malvada revolución…".

Apenas una semana después del lanzamiento de la canción, la directora entrante de la USAID, Samantha Power, se dirigió a Twitter para proclamar “Patria y Vida" como un reflejo de una “nueva generación de jóvenes en Cuba y de cómo están luchando contra la represión del gobierno".

Although Power is not especially known as the connoisseur of hip-hop, he has earned the reputation of creating failed states in places like Libya orchestling humanitarian interventionist military campaigns.It is difficult to imagine that his sudden interest in a viral anthem of Cuban rap was not guided by a dedication to regime change on the island.

El Grupo del Partido Popular Europeo del Parlamento Europeo, de centro-derecha, también se movilizó para promover “Patria y Vida" apenas una semana después de su lanzamiento. En Bruselas, el parlamentario europeo Leopoldo López-Gil -el oligarca español padre del golpista derechista venezolano Leopoldo López- ayudó a recibir a Otero, Yotuel, del Movimiento San Isidro, y a varias otras figuras detrás de la creación de “Patria y Vida".

“Hoy les pido que condenen al gobierno cubano, para que mi isla tenga la fuerza de levantarse…" declaró Yotuel. “Mi pueblo necesita a Europa, mi pueblo necesita que Europa señale al abusador".

También estuvo presente en el acto del Parlamento de la UE Juan Guaidó, el falso “presidente" de Venezuela designado por Estados Unidos que lanzó un fallido golpe militar junto a su mentor, Leopoldo López Jr.

En los días siguientes, los intérpretes de “Patria y Vida" siguieron haciendo las rondas de cambio de régimen.On March 12, Yotuel and people in the area maintained a zoom call with state department officials, informing them about the success of the song and the demands of the San Isidro movement.

Tres meses más tarde, como informó el periodista Alan MacLeod, la USAID de Power publicó un anuncio de 2 millones de dólares en oportunidades de subvención para las organizaciones de la “sociedad civil" que buscan promover el cambio de régimen en Cuba.

Destacando la estrategia de larga data de la agencia de explotar los grupos demográficos más afectados por las sanciones de Estados Unidos, el documento hizo hincapié en la necesidad de programas que “apoyen a las poblaciones marginadas y vulnerables, incluyendo pero no limitado a los jóvenes, las mujeres, LGBTQI +, líderes religiosos, artistas, músicos, y las personas de ascendencia afro-cubana".

En el documento, la USAID señaló a “Patria y Vida" como una victoria propagandística que ayudó a producir un “momento decisivo", y que presagiaba las protestas que estaban por venir.

Less than a month later, on July 11, Otero called to go out to the streets of Havana on behalf of the San Isidro Movement. Pronto, cientos de manifestantes se reunieron en el malecón de la ciudad, algunos con carteles que decían “Patria y Vida".The vision of the opposition of a national uprising capable of destroying socialism seemed to be charging form.

Behind the protests there were a number of factors, from the collapse of a power plant in the city of Holguín, to the vacilating attempts of the government to unify the currency, through the economic wounds open by the American blockade and that continue to suppose through theSPECIAL PERIOD OF PRIVATIONS.

But through the warriors of the culture of San Isidro, now delegated by Washington as official faces and voices of the Cuban opposition, the demands of the protesters were interpreted as a maximalist scream so that Washington intensifies their efforts to change regime.

The San Isidro movement goes to Washington

Aunque las protestas se desvanecieron rápidamente, los comentarios del presidente Joe Biden denigrando a la Cuba sometida al embargo de EEUU como un “estado fallido", y prometiendo añadir nuevas sanciones aplastantes a las impuestas por Trump, sugirieron que la administración demócrata no volvería al proceso de normalización de Obama.Therefore, a key short -term objective of the lobby was achieved from the Miami regime change.

The hearings of July 20 at Congress on Cuba in the Foreign Affairs Committee.

There, the representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a right-wing democrat of South Florida, cited a comment from the liberal academic Amalia Dache in which she attacked Black Lives Matter for her declaration of solidarity with the Cuban revolution.Then he pointed to Afro -Cubans as an emerging base of the anti -communist ferment on the island.

A varios metros de distancia estaba sentado el representante Mark Green, un republicano pro-Trump, luciendo una camisa con el lema “Patria y Vida" debajo de su chaqueta.

That same day, in the Capitol, the rightist Victims of Community Memorial Foundation honored the San Isidro movement during its summit of the Captive Nations Week.

In his speech to present the Human Rights Prize for dissidents to the Movement of San Isidro, the founder of victims of communism and veteran operational of the conservative movement, Lee Edwards, declared: “It is not always politics, but culture, the culture, thewhich is so important in the battle that we are fighting at this time."

Maykel Osorbo, el artista de hip-hop que protagonizó “Patria y Vida", aceptó el premio en nombre de San Isidro. “Hermano mío, quiero darte las gracias de todo corazón", exclamó en un mensaje pregrabado a la multitud de republicanos plateados de derechas.

As we will see in the second part of this investigation, agents sponsored by the United States government and affiliated with the San Isidro movement helped to lay the foundations for July protests in Cuba from US soil.Working from Florida, they launched the hashtag #Soscuba asking for the intervention of the United States in Cuba months before it floods social networks.