Manuel David Orrio del Rosario, former Cuban State Security agent, believes that there is a campaign against the media that does not correspond to economic science
14ymedio, Madrid, 13 May 2024 — The emphasis of the Cuban regime in its campaign against El Toque, which it accuses of manipulating the dollar exchange rate in order to agitate the population and as part of the US “hybrid war” against Cuba, is not convincing if science is applied. The latest to demand that “the truth be seen face to face” is Manuel David Orrio del Rosario, an economist, former spy and retired journalist who collaborates with some left-wing media, such as the anti-capitalist Kaosenlared. The expert points out that, in this dispute, he — “a defender of the Cuban socialist project” — can only be “with the truth and economic science.”
Orrio defends the professionalism with which El Toque calculates and disseminates its popular currency exchange rate in the Cuban informal market and offers an implacable argument: “Economy is a science, not a game for improvisers, crude propagandists or unwary people who fall into their traps.”
Before beginning his dissertation, the expert develops the importance of choosing reality even if it means giving “weapons to the enemy” and he does so by quoting words from a kind of holy Castro-communist trinity: Fidel and Raúl Castro, first, and Lenin himself if still doubts remain.
Orrio del Rosario describes El Toque as an opposition media outlet, and admits that it may or may not be financed by the United States while noting that, “like it or not” it is a reference thanks to its reports on the exchange rate. Some 407,000 people follow it on Facebook, compared to the 2,600 followers of El Dato, the page with which Cuban officialdom calls to counteract the medium. “Perhaps here appears the deep reason for the campaign; although, it seems, the ‘ideologues’ have a shortage of economists,” he says ironically.
Orrio del Rosario describes ‘El Toque’ as an opposition media outlet, admits that it may or may not be financed by the United States and notes that, “like it or not” it is a reference
The expert regrets that the Government, instead of trying, if it can, to provide solutions to the rampant problem it has with inflation and the informal currency market, insists on “attempting to discredit it through propaganda. In particular, this ‘enemy’ character is insisted upon and the attempt is made to discredit the scientific nature of El Toque’s reports regarding the informal exchange rate,” he adds.
He also reproaches the Government for having done nothing more than mentioning, while not implementing, an alleged program of economic macrostabilization and “correcting distortions,” also mocking what he considers a “señora distortion: the Creole laxity of official exchange rates.” Furthermore, he goes so far as to cite Marxism itself to question government theses. “A good question, by the way, is how eco