President Ra\u00fal Castro declared victory for the Cuban Revolution on Saturday in a wide-ranging speech, thanking President Obama for \u201ca new chapter\u201d while also reaffirming that restored relations with the United States did not mean the end of Communist rule in Cuba.<\/p>\n
In a televised speech before Parliament and a group of favored guests \u2014 including Eli\u00e1n Gonz\u00e1lez, the center of a tug of war in 2000 between Cuban exiles and Havana, and the three men convicted of spying in the United States who were released as part of the historic agreement announced on Wednesday \u2014 Mr. Castro alternated between conciliatory and combative statements directed at the United States.<\/p>\n
He stoked the flames declaring near the end of his statement, \u201cWe won the war.\u201d But he also praised Mr. Obama for starting the biggest change in United States-Cuba policy in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government in Cuba will still repress and throw into jail anyone who opposes the Castro regime,\u201d said Blanca Gonzalez, 65, who moved to the United States 13 years ago. Her son Normando Hernandez spent seven years in a Cuban prison, she said, for \u201cpracticing independent journalism\u201d; he was freed in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll Obama is doing is throwing a lifeline to the Castros so that they can continue crushing the people of Cuba,\u201d said Roberto Delgado Ramos,78, who said he was arrested twice, in 1960 and 1964, for \u201ccounterrevolutionary activities\u201d and served a total of 12 years in prison. \u201cThe Castros are the ones who need to pay for the blood that they have spilled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: NYT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Ra\u00fal Castro declared victory for the Cuban Revolution on Saturday in a wide-ranging speech, thanking President Obama for \u201ca new chapter\u201d while also reaffirming that restored relations with the United States did not mean the end of Communist rule in Cuba. In a televised speech before Parliament and a group of favored guests \u2014 … Continue reading “Castro reaffirms Communist rule in Cuba”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[10755,10757,844,9224,10756,201,1638],"class_list":["post-17301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-castro","tag-counterrevolutionary-activities","tag-cuba","tag-embargo","tag-havanna","tag-human-rights","tag-us"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17302,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301\/revisions\/17302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}