Chronicle on Cuba - December 2005

Exile Community

December 6: Cuba deserves “a peaceful transition”, said Cuban poet Raúl Rivero, exiled in Spain, and called on the international community “not to let the political prisoners on the island be forgotten”. Rivero was in Paris to thank the director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Koichiro Matsuura, for having been awarded the Guillermo Cano prize for Freedom of the Press in 2004. During his statement, Rivero said that Cuba is supposedly the most anti-American country of the world, “but it is the one with the most fascination with the United States, where the people reject the left because they associate it with poverty and repression” . (EFE, 6/12/05)

December 8: Thousands of Cuban exiles congregated in a mass held in the church of Saint John Bosco, in solidarity with the anti-Castro activists Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat, arrested by the federal government for possession of a small arsenal of weapons. Monsignor Emilio Vallina called Alvarez and Mitat “two victims of the injustices of many men”. Alvarez is considered to be the benefactor of Luis Posada Carriles, who is in an immigration jail in El Paso, Texas. (El Nuevo Herald, 9/12/05)