HAVANA TIMES – Determined not to recognize their responsibility for the crisis that’s left Cuba deep under water, the Communist Party apparatus has decided to make El Toque another scapegoat that absolves them of their failures. For several weeks now, there’s been a clear escalation of a devious campaign to implant in the Cuban people the embryo of opinion that the responsibility for the devaluation of the national currency lies with our media outlet.
Putting all hands to the task in their network of disinformation, using real profiles, but leaning heavily on spokespeople who hide behind pseudonyms, the official propaganda megaphones – Granma daily newspaper, the official website Cubadebate, and government radio and television programs – replicate messages crafted in the State Security offices. According to these messages, the rise in the price of foreign currency and the inflation are fictitious phenomena, created from outside the country.
They’ve placed emphasis on attacking the credibility of our service that monitors the informal hard currency market [a feature we call “the ElToque rate”]. They want to erode the legitimacy that this has earned as a reference point for the country. Manipulating the anxiety caused by the current crisis and the scarcity of public information, including statistics and financial processes, they are clearly focusing their efforts on packaging us as a destabilizing strategy, with the underlying aim of focusing our co-citizens’ fury and irritation on us.
The new campaign is seeking to create a consensus that could justify punitive actions and throw a smokescreen over the gov