Gorki Águila “The Castro Regime Wants To Mutate Into A Perfect Tyranny”

Gorki Águila: "The Castro Regime Wants To Mutate Into A Perfect Tyranny"
/ EFE – 14ymedio

EFE (via 14ymedio), 29 September 2016 — The dissident and leader of the
Cuban punk-rock band Porno para Ricardo, Gorki Águila, said in Miami on
Thursday that the "plan" of the Cuban regime is "to mutate into a
perfect tyranny" with an "image much more whitewashed before the world. "

The government of "the Castros needs a lot of money, and they are taking
good advantage of this situation," Águila told EFE, speaking in
reference to an economic opening to foreign investment on the island, at
the end of a news conference at the Institute of Cuban Studies and Cuban
Americans, at the University of Miami (UM).

The event was attended by Cuban dissidents, activists from exile and
leaders and legislators of the Cuban-American community in Miami who
expressed their commitment to the Todos por Cuba Libre/All for Free Cuba
campaign, an initiative that will be presented this coming October 11 in
Miami to demand "real change… toward freedom"

Águila, like other participants, bluntly criticized the widespread view
in the United States that encouraging commercial investment on the
island will support openings toward freedom and the restoration of the
rights of Cubans.

"The Castro regime is a Mafioso regime and to place real confidence in
them is impossible. Their whole lives they have lied and betrayed," said
the activist and musician who asked, skeptically, "How are you going to
do business with the Castros and think that freedom is going to be
possible at some point?"

He said that the current worsening of repression on the island is not
only against dissidents, but also against the self-employed who have
shown their discontent with the stifling of and restrictions on their
activities by the authorities.

Referring to his own case as a musician and composer, Águila said he is
"deeply censored" and watch by a coercive power that bans him from
performing in Cuba. "To me, they say it very clearly: you are not going
to play in this country," he denounced.

"I can't play or even practice in my own home. There is a surveillance
camera on an electric pole aimed at my balcony. They have me under total
surveillance and I don't even remember my last attempt to play in Cuba,"
he said indignantly.

Despite all these calamities, Águila was "optimistic" about the crucial
historical change being pushed by Cubans, what the musician called a
"Cuba with two shores."

For his part, the regime opponent Antonio Gonzalez-Rodiles, director of
the critical forum Estado de Sats (State of Sats) stressed the
importance of galvanizing the fact that all Cubans are "fed up" with the
system at a time when, he warned, the "regime is trying to effect a
transfer of power."

A "transfer" that, according to the press conference remarks of the
ex-political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez – known as "Antúnez" –
should be called "an intended dynastic succession" of a regime that has
imposed a "single, criminal and genocidal blockade for sixty years" on
Cuban society.

Antúnez, who is also national secretary of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo
National Resistance Front, was very confident that the Todos por Cuba
Libre/All for Free Cuba campaign will be a "great success and give fuel
to those fighting for freedom."

Claudio Fuentes, a dissident photographer from the Forum for Rights and
Freedoms, expressed disappointment at the "voices" who express their
enthusiasm for opening Cuba to foreign investment, as long as it is
obvious that "without freedom there is no prosperity."

Source: Gorki Águila: "The Castro Regime Wants To Mutate Into A Perfect
Tyranny" / EFE – 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/gorki-aguila-the-castro-regime-wants-to-mutate-into-a-perfect-tyranny-efe-14ymedio/