COVID-19 reached the threshold of Fidel Castro Ruz Center, located in the Vedado district of the capital, which has to suspend the opening of the property established by a law of the National Assembly of Popular Power in 2016 and a presidential decree of 2018.
The official opening was announced for the end of 2019 and did not take place for reasons never explained. At that date, the chosen area was still under repair.
Now, in January 2021, the pandemic knocked on the doors of the headquarters where it is intended to preserve the ideas of the former Cuban dictator and the original invitation has been delayed.
What was originally going to be an opening ceremony, with the regime’s staff last Friday, January 8, to coincide with the arrival of the rebels in 1959, had to be postponed due to the outbreak of the pandemic in the property it has now been throwing itself on for many months. renewing.
The pandemic knocked on the doors of the headquarters where it is intended to preserve the ideas of the former Cuban dictator …
Now the streets have been restored, the amenities of the center painted, new lighting, renovated fences, carefully cut grass, new drainage for the green areas and two small palms at the main entrance of the central house, and the center is very guarded by a dozen of security cameras, and police guard.
The façade, in gold-colored metal, features ‘Centro Fidel Castro Ruz’, a place that would be like the mecca of the ‘revolutionary left’, where ‘important foreign visitors’ would visit exhibitions, audiovisual exhibitions and signs. an honorary book in which the deceased is praised.
On the premises of the property, they are now talking about preparations for the reopening, tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 12, although in Havana where coronavirus cases are on the rise every day, every event is at risk of being suspended or canceled in more than one occasion.
But when they ask the staff of the property, they make it clear that it will open to the general public in the month of February, with visits planned. The “party” or the “Tángana” the start of the center has not been announced in the Cuban press.
In an entire block, running from Paseo Avenue to Calle A, between 11 and 13, are the Centre’s facilities, the legal basis of which was established on December 27, 2016, one month after the death of the Cuban ruler, and approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power.
a site that would be like the mecca of “revolutionary left” …
Law No. 123 of 2016, named “On the use of the name and figure of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz”, the establishment of a center to protect Fidel Castro’s ideas, while banning his name from streets, squares or its commercial use. The exception to the rule (of the law in this case) was the use of the late dictator’s name “to name an institution established for the study and dissemination of his thought and work”.
In February 2018, while Raúl Castro was still chairing the Councils of State and Ministers, a first group was formed to preserve the documentation, study and dissemination of Fidel Castro’s ideas. At that first meeting, Castro entrusted Miguel Díaz-Canel, already the first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers, to oversee the execution of the tasks and the group that would develop ideas for the entity.
They put it at the head of that group Alberto Alvariño Atiénzar, a retired colonel who became an ideologue of the party, who not only proclaimed himself a professional printer, but studied in the USSR to become a ‘politician’ in the Castro brothers’ army and was in charge of the Olive Green Magazine for about four years, before moving to the Political Directorate of the Ministry of the Armed Forces (MINFAR) in the Ideological Work section.
From MINFAR, the Colonel becomes an official of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (PCC), where he holds the position of Deputy Head of the Ideological Department. In that position he had the Casa Editora Abril, which even published several books, from the life of a Cuban professional boxer to that of rebels who died before 1959. One of his books had the foreword by Fidel Castro and another that by Raúl.
With this approval, the former minister of the FAR launches Alvariño to lead the group, which has had among its members Eusebio Leal Spengler, the late Havana historian and José Miyar Barruecos, who was secretary of the Council of State from 1980 to 2009 and the person who has spent the longest daily contact with the Cuban dictator.
The colonel’s official position is now that of chief of the Office for the Preservation of Documentary HeritageWithout specifying whether he will be in charge of the Fidel Castro Ruz center.
In November 2018, Alvariño was instructed to attend an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers, already under the control of Díaz-Canel, to present the progress of his work and the team he led. There he explained the political nature of the center and the purchase of high-tech equipment for the use of interactive information.
One of this entity’s missions, whose doors are still closed when more than four years and two months have passed since Castro’s death, is’ to contribute to the confrontation of enemy campaigns aimed at warping life, work and figure . of the historic leader of the Cuban revolution, ”the former colonel told the island’s ministers.
The work schedule, which he had already submitted to Raúl Castro in February, was to complete the construction works by the end of 2019 and this was repeated by Alvariño to the members of the Council of Ministers. But the plans were not fulfilled as planned; and in early 2020, the first cases of COVID-19 were declared in Cuba.
The press media then stressed that Díaz-Canel, in his capacity as Chairman of talked about the “obstacles” that “the people involved in this wonderful project” had to overcome and even “move forward in its formation,” without specifying the inconveniences they faced or the bureaucratic or political obstacles they faced to this select group of 30 integrate people.
In February 2020, when the rise of COVID-19 and the spread of the disease around the world began, in Havana they had not yet finished restoring all of the buildings intended to protect Castro’s legacy.
Right at the beginning of 2020, in the days when millions of pesos were in motion to repair the great colonies of Vedado where the Center is located; In Old Havana, three girls, María Karla Fuentes and Lisnavy Valdés Rodríguez, 12, and Rocío García Napoles, 11, died when the balcony of a building in the Jesús María neighborhood fell off.
The tragedy took place on Monday, January 28, in the house at No. 102, between Revillagigedo and Vives, a building that was being demolished, with no signs warning of the danger of passage.
Attorney Sergio Osmín Fernández wrote, citing Díaz-Canel’s Twitter account, “Three girls were killed today after another dilapidated building in Havana collapsed. No need to pursue proceedings. You are responsible for diverting funds. to questions that have nothing to do with the welfare and safety of Cubans. “
Various publications abroad such as Cuba responds and CiberCuba published on their digital pages details of the reconstruction of the mansions in the area, the sidewalks and the Alameda de la Calle Paseo, and the neighbors’ complaints about the precarious housing situation in the capital, the damaged streets and the sidewalks destroyed, also in that area near the embassies of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bulgaria, the People’s Republic of China and those of North Korea.