On 7 July the 1c4Cuba campaign held a public online meeting Let Cuba Speak! End the media war on Cuba!. The meeting expressed solidarity with the Euskadi-Cuba Association and news outlet CubaInformación, which faced down a legal action earlier this year for reporting the truth about the blockade of Cuba. The meeting had representatives from both organisations, including José Manzaneda (coordinator of CubaInformación), Milagros Acea (member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Maestra Euskadi Association), and Andoni Iturbe (member of the Board of Directors of the Euskadi-Cuba Association). There were also other contributions from Keith Bolender (author of Manufacturing the enemy: the media war against Cuba). Simon McGuinness addressed the meeting as spokesperson for the 1c4Cuba Campaign, which Rock around the Blockade (RATB) helped found in 2022.
The meeting discussed updates on the legal victory of José Manzaneda and the Euskadi-Cuba Association, who were acquitted of spurious charges of hate speech and defamation of character in a Madrid court on 15 February 2024 (see FRFI 299). The accuser Javier Larrondo, president of the right-wing group ‘Prisoners Defenders’, brought the case after CubaInformación published an article describing him as a war criminal for upholding the illegal US blockade of Cuba and slandering Cuba’s international medical brigades as ‘mass slavery’. Larrondo lodged an appeal against the verdict but was unsuccessful.
The lawfare attack by Prisoners Defenders is just one example of the censorship faced by pro-Cuban media which must be opposed. Meanwhile, the mainstream media rarely mentions Cuba except to attack its achievements. Bolender explained this biased media coverage: ‘for the press to report on Cuba’s side would be an admission of the criminality of the US’s regime change policies’. Unchallenged media attacks on Cuba such as those waged by Prisoners Defenders can be extremely damaging, since they undermine Cuba’s international medical cooperation; Manzaneda explained that ‘it is not only ideological and political warfare but also economic warfare’. Bolender ended the meeting with a positive call to action: ‘get the truth of Cuba out through organising’.
Ellie O’Hara
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 301 August/September 2024
