• Stresses Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque
at the launch of Los disidentes

“THERE is no difference among Cubans, but between Cuba and the United States,” affirmed Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque at the launch of the book Los disidentes (The Dissidents), by journalists Luis Báez and Rosa Míriam Elizalde.

The launch took place at the José Martí Memorial in Revolution Square. The volume comprises eight interviews with the same number of Cuban Intelligence agents that infiltrated “dissident” groups on the island.

Pérez Roque stressed that the so-called dissidents “are not born by an autochthonous process, but are prompted by the United States. They do not respond to the needs of the Cuban people, but to those of the U.S. government.”

He affirmed: “The people of Cuba are the dissidents for defying the idea of being a colony, who are dissenters from neoliberalism and savage capitalism, from the media dictatorship of the superpowers, and a uniform world with only one standard of conduct.”

The minister explained that the book presents great contrasts; for example “the money these “dissidents” receive from abroad and from the government that is menacing and blockading our homeland.”

And, on the other hand, he recalled how the Moncada Garrison (first action against the Batista dictatorship on July 26, 1953) assailants collected the money to buy weapons from among themselves, and how some of them had sold their work tools, others the furniture in their homes, their jobs and even their vacations.

“These are the differences between certain dissidents and others,” he noted.

“One could talk of the Revolution that has applied its laws with severity and rigor on occasions, but always within a legal framework, without the murders or disappearances that occur in other countries without anyone criticizing the fact,” he commented.

After highlighting the authors’ professionalism, Tubal Páez, president of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), described the newly published volume as exceptional for its compilation of more than 100 documents and close to 50 dossiers on counterrevolutionary organizations and individuals.

“Its content – that includes interesting photographic material – has become a highly effective weapon for halting and eliminating the falsehoods, calumny and demagogy concerning the work, ideas and ethics of the Cuban Revolution,” Páez added.

Elizalde and Báez noted that Los Disidentes is the brainchild of a team of workers, in which the central authors are the 12 State Security agents, who have exposed the barefaced U.S. interference in the island’s internal affairs.

The launch was attended by 12 of those agents, Culture Minister Abel Prieto and José Ramón Balaguer, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party.
 

(Granma) June 25,  2003