Last week, the organization signed an agreement on the Island with the Cuban Communist Party (PCC)
14ymedio, Madrid, 6 May 2024 — “I don’t know what the president is referring to; I don’t know what he sees that needs to be democratized in Cuba.” The phrase is from Boris Barrera, a deputy of the Communist Party (PC) of Chile, referring to President Gabriel Boric. Within the Government there are no tensions with the PC, says Minister Camila Vallejo, a member of that same party, but the leaders of the organization have not taken well to the president’s statements and have not hesitated to let him know.
The controversy broke out on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, when the Chilean president, meeting with the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, spoke about the Island. “The situation is serious in Cuba, where today there is hunger and where it is necessary once and for all to lift the unilateral blockade*, in addition to moving towards democratization within the same country.” Boric’s words would be considered lukewarm by a large part of the international community, but they have been enough to anger one of the parties of his government’s coalition.
“Each country has the political system that it wants and that it imposes on itself (…). Cubans have given themselves in a democratic and sovereign way the political system they have,” Barrero told the president. His opinion was joined by Luis Cuello, head of the caucus of the communist deputies, who added: “The people of Cuba have the right to determine their own political system.”
“Cubans have given themselves in a democratic and sovereign way the political system they have,” Barrero told the president
On the same Friday, in the Círculo de Periodistas de Santiago de Chile, Lautaro Carmona and Bárbara Figueroa, president and secretary general of the PC, respectively, told the party’s militants about their recent trip to Cuba during an event in which funds were collected “to support Cuba.” Carmona said that during his time on the Island he learned “first hand, the effects of the criminal blockade* imposed by the United States.”
But his trip had another purpose, the signing of an agreement of “exchange and cooperation” between the communist parties of both countries, signed on the Island by Roberto Morales, current secretary of the organization and policy of cadres of the central committee of the PCC. Carmona provided some details of its content, among which stands out the “bilateral cooperation in the field of digital political communication, especially the work on social networks with the purpose of disseminating obje