There will always be an Emilio.
Source: RealCuba's blog
by Deisy Francis Mexidor, 27 February 2011.
Shortly before this interview was published he was considered the “spokesman of Ladies in White” as well as the “independent journalist” who had issued the highest number of reports for the anti-Cuban media. His statements reveal that the US subversive policy against Cuba is still in place.
“Greetings to the audience of Radio República. Broadcasting from Havana, this is Carlos Serpa Maceira, director of the Union of Free Journalists of Cuba…”
The surprise has been huge: Carlos Serpa Maceira, the “independent journalist who issued the highest number of reports for the anti-Cuban media in 2009 is simply ‘Emilio’, an agent of Cuba’s State Security.
The organs of the Ministry of the Interior decided to reveal his identity, which is an irrefutable evidence of the work carried out by the counterrevolutionary groupings in the country, disclosing their mentors and the sick pursuit by successive US administrations to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. To this end, they direct, finance, support, protect and encourage a kind of dissidence that has no legitimacy in the Island.
Where were you born?
I was born in Matanzas, in Cárdenas, the hometown of the students’ leader José Antonio Echeverría. I was born one October 10th, the same day when, back in 1868, the Father of our Homeland launched the cry “independence or death” at the ‘La Demajagua’ sugar mill. That is why I was named after him, Carlos Manuel.
But you are specially attached to the Isle Youth, aren’t you?
I live there and my daughter was born there. She is already 18 years old. The Isle of Youth is part of my history and is in my heart.
In what context ‘Emilio’ was born?
‘Emilio’ is my nom de guerre inside the State Security. That was the name of my uncle, who raised me. I thought that by taking his name I could best honor his memory and all what he always fought for. He fought during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Emilio, the agent, started to accomplish missions since the year 2001.
Whom did you contact back then?
I contacted the so called Comité Pinero Pro Derechos Humanos, which was then presided over by Hubert Rodríguez Tudela, who is currently in the United States. Afterwards I joined the Fundación Isla de Pinos de Derechos Humanos y Fomento Territorial, another counterrevolutionary grouping that was based there, of which I became a sort of “spokesman”. It was then when I started to write my first reports for Radio Marti.
Afterwards I contacted the Unión de Periodistas y Escritores Cubanos Independientes, an alleged press agency whose profile was similar to that of the aforementioned groupings. This was headed by Fara Armenteros, who is currently residing in the United States too.
How did that contact take place?
I used to work as a state inspector. I was first approached by some counterrevolutionary individuals, which I immediately reported to the State Security. From that moment on a decision was made for me to engage in this mission.
How did you make it to Havana?
Given the very complexity of the missions I was carrying out, I was instructed to move to the capital of the country. Thus I was able to expand my contacts with the counterrevolution’s world.
Based on your experience, what is your opinion about this so called internal ‘opposition’ or dissidence?
The counterrevolution has sold its soul to the devil. They are mercenaries. They are no patriots, nor do they have any principles. Their minds are pinned on the dollars and on campaigning for profits. I will give you one example: Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez), is a man who has become extremely famous abroad.
If he says he will convene a counterrevolutionary march anywhere in Cuba, he will automatically receive money for that.
From here they report that the “demonstration” was attended by 150 or 200 persons –which is not true, because whenever he has done things like that, the only ones in attendance have been himself plus two other provocateurs. But then, what does Antúnez do with that money? Well, he devotes himself to having an easy life.
You have such cases as Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, who receives bundles of money –and we know who is Martha Beatriz-; Elizardo Sánchez, Juan Carlos González Leyva –the latter is the executive secretary of the self-proclaimed Consejo de Relatores de los Derechos Humanos en Cuba.
González Leyva has taken advantage of his hireling condition to obtain personal benefits. For example, by means of the Refugees Program of the US Interest Section, he has facilitated the departure from the country for some women with whom he had an affair. Likewise, under the pretense of recharging the phone cards of some inmates, he has asked the counterrevolutionary organizations based in Miami for money, which he then steals for himself.
It is obvious that none of these so called dissidents have any moral. They are only moved by the lust for money. Besides, many of those linked to these groups have even asked for the tightening of the blockade against our homeland.
They came to me once saying that they could run a blog for me and that they will name it ‘El Guayacán Cubano’. They said to me in very clear terms that they wanted this blog to be similar to the one ran by counterrevolutionary Yoani Sánchez, so that I could gain some money and make a living out of it.
And, how was this supposed to work?
I was explained that, through the blog, supporters will be requested to contribute some money, and they further emphasized this: “we are going to run the blog El Guayacán Cubano, and you ask supporters to contribute some money so that you could make a living out of it.”
The person who really runs this blog is Enrique Blanco, a counterrevolutionary based in Puerto Rico, who belongs to Operación Liborio, a project aimed at financing the so called opposition from abroad.
He has uploaded several reports in the blog as if he were me. If for any reason I was unable to attend any given activity, which would be usually associated with the Ladies in White, he would establish direct contact with them and draft the report.
Since you made reference to the information issue, how difficult it is to organize a media campaign against Cuba?
It is not difficult. In my case I only have to get in touch with Radio Marti and they immediately call me back. I could right now invent some piece of news and without further confirmation or verification they will air it.
Recently I fabricated a whole atmosphere around the trial against a counterrevolutionary lady. I said that on my way out from home, I had passed by the headquarters of Havana’s People’s Provincial Court and that I had seen a huge display of State Security agents. I added that I was also able to see some foreign journalists there, although they were not able to catch sight of me…
I also ‘embellished’ the report a little bit by adding the story that the Security agents had managed to recognize me and that I had been pushed into a car and that, under severy threats, I had been driven to a nearby police station.
When I called Radio Marti the person who answered the phone wanted to get the ideas straight: “When you say you have been threatened you must be specific as to the types of threats”. I told the person not to worry, that I would do it that way. Thus I fabricated my piece of news.
Radio Marti does not confirm anything. The point is to denigrate Cuba for whatever reason. After I conveyed that information, I was asked to broadcast the report in the news shows.
In all media campaigns against Cuba, the scripts always come from abroad. It is broadly built on lies, stories of false arrests, incidents that have never existed but are fabricated.
Which are the organizations that lend themselves to magnifying those campaigns abroad?
With absolute certainty the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) and Reporters sans frontières (RSF). These are two organizations that round the clock, seven days a week, are ready to promote any disparagement campaign against our country.
How does the Refugee Program of the US Interest Section work?
The Refugee Program of the US Interest Section is aimed at providing evidence that there is an alleged group of persons that are leaving Cuba due to politically motivated persecutions. Most of the “internal work” carried out by the counterrevolutionary elements here is based on that.
When coming to the Refugee Section, these persons are required to provide evidence of the harassment they are subject to by the Cuban government; they invent “arguments” to be able to get a visa.
The manipulation of the refugee category is clearly evidenced by the number of visas granted for this concept every year. However, when many of those individuals get a resident status in the United States, they come back to Cuba as visitors without being bothered or arrested by the Police or the State Security, something that does not happen to those who are truly refugees in other countries.
In order to have a clear idea of this manipulation, intended to offer the world a distorted image of the Cuban reality, you may consider that only in the year 2009, the number of visas granted amounted to 4 646, and that in the year 2008, a total of 5 093 persons traveled to the United States.
During the provocations orchestrated by the Ladies in White in March 2010, one of those women who belonged to the Ladies in Support group told me the very first day: “Serpa, I need you to help me with some evidence, because I am scheduled for an interview at the Refugee Section next week”. She was looking for a political “recommendation”. They are very much after the pictures showing them in the marches, because the Refugee Program demands, among other things, that they are part of the news published by the Internet, so their work is based on that. Believe me, any of these women go there, carry some pictures…and that is considered a solid evidence by the US Interest Section.
The US Interest Section is not the only one that supports the internal counterrevolution. What about other embassies?
Here in Havana there is a select group of embassies of the European Union member countries that are openly supporting subversion, and I can mention some.
The diplomat Jacek Padee was attached to the embassy of Poland. He was in charge of Political Affairs and he was frequently present in these activities.
Before concluding his mission here, Mr. Padee was given the task of picking up the videos I had taken in several locations of Cuba to produce a documentary film about counterrevolutionary Orlando Zapata Tamayo. He sent those videos from his computer to Pedro Corso, a ringleader of the Institute of the Historical Memory against Totalitarianism based in Miami.
The Netherlands embassy usually supplies resources to the counterrevolution, particularly stationery. It also provides them with access to the Internet.
The embassy of the Czech Republic supplies medicines to these groupings; they summon the “dissidents” to its headquarters in order to document the human rights “violations”. Mr. Pete Brandel, an official of the Czech embassy, had an outstanding role in these activities. The Swedish embassy is also involved in these actions.
The Counselor of the German embassy, Volker Pellet, adopted a flagrant conspiratorial attitude in all these actions. He took to the streets to support the Ladies in White, as part of his provocative activity.
That is to say, in all these ill-intended plans against our people and its Revolution, some European embassies in Havana have lent themselves to this dirty game.
Regarding the way in which the US Interest Section works, I can refer to the behavior of two of their officials: Kathleen Duffy and Lowell Dale Lawton.
In one of the so called literary tea gatherings that were usually sponsored by the Ladies in White, Laura Pollán, the ringleader of the group, asked me to take a video of the moment when she is thanking the Cuban American National Foundation for the support given to the group.
I shot the video and talked to Mrs. Duffy, who told me: “I have already asked my superiors for permission”, and using her personal computer she saved the videos I shot in a thumb drive. She opened up a Youtube account on my behalf and uploaded the video.
During the events occurred in March, Laura Pollán instructed me to convey some messages to that official, because she was the one who monitored the alleged human rights violations.
So has been the case with Lowell Dale Lawton. He asked me to make an evaluation of the actions carried out by Ladies in White, especially after the rejection and criticisms he received from the media after his participation in those provocative actions.
Lawton has received through e-mails the photos and reports he himself has requested from me. Exactly the day after the counterrevolutionary march organized in Miami by Gloria Estefan I visited the US Interest Section, and Lawton came up to see me at one of the Internet centers they have, saying that he wanted to speak to me alone to ask me some information about what had occurred on March 25 during the provocation orchestrated that day. The issue of those women has been no doubt very much manipulated. They have a green light at the US Interest Section.
Furthermore, those women have so far orchestrated all of their provocations because they have felt the protection granted by the Cuban police force and the members of the Ministry of the Interior. They know these forces would never allow the occurrence of any tragic incident, which is what these people have been looking for.
The US Interest Section follows all these actions very closely. They not only support the subversive activities of the Ladies in White but those of all other groupings.
Right now, after the decision adopted by the Cuban government to release the counterrevolutionary inmates, I think they are lacking the proper grounds to carry out their provocative actions. Therefore, I have realized they are very much focused on exerting pressures on some Ladies in White, among them Laura, so that they abandon the idea of leaving the country. They are putting up a media campaign whereby they are telling the world that Cuba is resorting to forceful deportation.
Here you can see how contradictory their policy against the Island is. They first encourage people to emigrate in an attempt to show that the Revolution lacks support, and now they do not want the counterrevolutionaries they themselves fabricated and encouraged to leave the country because then they will be left without any actors to carry out their subversive plans.
Who is really Laura Pollán?
Laura Pollán was a teacher by profession. After she got involved with the Ladies in White she has given herself airs of prominence and lust for money. There have been some clashes between her and the other ladies of the group for that reason.
She is a close friend of Eulalia San Pedro, known as Laly, a member of the Cuban American National Foundation. Eulalia is the one who sends funds, on behalf of the CANF, for all the provocative actions.
By the way, when I started to work as the “journalist” of the Ladies in White, in my reports for Radio Marti and other media and Internet websites, I usually mentioned the very frequent calls made by Eulalia to Laura during every literary tea gathering, until one day, when Laura Pollán herself and Miriam Leyva, another lady who used to belong to the group, asked me (HE SMILES) not to mention any more Eulalia’s name or CANF in my reports, because that was a terrorist organization and they were afraid that any given day they could appear in the Round Table TV program.
Laura is a manipulative, very cunning person. She has been involved in illicit businesses. Her name appears in the VIP list of the US Interest Section, which is a guarantee that she will be received either in the morning or in the afternoon, no matter at what time she may arrive at that place.
Who provides the channel for the reception of the supplies sent to the counterrevolution?
The main channel is the US Interest Section, which has no qualms about violating the Vienna Convention. I would dare to assert that about 80 per cent of those supplies are conveyed through the diplomats of the US Interest Section.
A lot of boxes have been sent for the Ladies in White from Miami by counterrevolutionary Frank Hernández Trujillo, who belongs to the group in support to the “dissidence”.
The US Interest Section has distributed laptop computers and other stuff. Curiously enough, whenever they hand over something, they require the signature of the persons who receive it, as if it were an asset borrowed from any state-owned company. As far as I know they do that because in case these persons leave the country, they are required to give back what is not theirs.
Who are the terrorists with whom they keep the strongest links?
In addition to the CANF, they keep links with Horacio Salvador García Cordero, who belongs to the so called Consejo por la Libertad de Cuba. He works with Luis Zúñiga Rey.
They also keep links with Ángel Pablo Polanco Torrejón, who has been promoting here a counterrevolutionary project called Iniciativa Pro-Cambio, precisely under the instructions given by Horacio and Zúñiga.
Can you describe some of the facilities received by the members of the “opposition” who have access to the US Interest Section?
In my opinion, one of the most striking things is to see all what they do so that this counterrevolution has access to the Internet. They have put up three Internet navigation centers inside the US Interest Section. There is one upstairs in the Consulate, called Eleonor Centre, and there is also the Lincoln Centre and the Benjamin Franklin Centre. They call them Centros de Recursos Informativos (Information Resource Centres) of the US Interest Section, which are directed by the Press and Culture Bureau of the USIS.
There they distribute counterrevolutionary literature and, for example, they reproduce as many as 100 copies of The Miami Herald newspaper, so that it could be distributed among the counterrevolutionaries. They also make these materials available to any person who may go there for any migration procedure.
I continue to see the US Interest Section as the “General Headquarters” from which the tactics and the strategy of the counterrevolution are designed. The members of the counterrevolution are trained and instructed there. They are allowed to print leaflets, statements on any issue, reproduce the materials they afterwards distribute in that same place to their own officials.
What about you? How do you access the US Interest Section?
As they did with many others, I was allowed to go every Wednesday, but when they recognized me as the “journalist” of Ladies in White, they also authorized me to go there every Monday. Sometimes I have been allowed to enter the US Interest Section and work there.
Do you currently hold any special category given by the US Interest Section?
I got a US visa. The US government welcomed me through the Refugee Program, given my “counterrevolutionary” background. They decided I was being “persecuted” for my work as an “independent journalist”.
In what year was that?
On November 16, 2009. By the way, the visa was arranged by some European Union embassies here in Havana, specifically by Ingemar Cederberg, ex Minister Counselor of the Swedish embassy.
How is a “dissident” fabricated?
I am a fabricated dissident. My case is an example of the way in which it is possible to make people abroad believe there is a “huge” opposition and proliferation of “anti-Castro” groups, as they are usually called.
In this little world, you may find me as a member, executive, spokesman…of virtually phantom groups, which exist only in papers. However, internally, the people do not even know these groups exist because they are not rooted in society; much less do they have followers.
I’ll be more explicit: I am the national coordinator of the cultural and civic project Julio Tang Texier, financed from Miami by the terrorist Ángel de Fana Serrano, who belongs to the organization Plantados por la Democracia, who has already served a 20 years imprisonment sentence in Cuba for organizing terrorist activities. But right now, he likes to make out he is a pacifist, an alleged “human rights” advocate.
I am the director of the independent library Ernest Hemingway; the director of the Union of Free Journalists of Cuba –an “organization” that is made up by another five persons, all of them strongly interested in leaving the country. That “Union of Free Journalists” is also financed from Miami, in this case by the Directorio Democrático Cubano (DDC).
I was the representative of Brigada 2506 , through which I received a mobile phone and funds for the organization of provocative actions in our homeland and…well…I am the correspondent of the magazine Misceláneas de Cuba, which is printed in Sweden and is directed by counterrevolutionary Alexis Gaínza.
I have been appointed spokesman and member of the board of the so called Frente Nacional de Resistencia y Desobediencia Cívica in Cuba, whose economic support comes from the DDC, Mujeres Anti Represión (MAR) por Cuba and other groups based in Miami which are part of the self-proclaimed Asamblea de la Resistencia.
As if this were not enough, I was given the task of serving as the national liaison of presumptive Opposition Governments which are directed by Enrique Blanco from Puerto Rico, the one that runs my blog.
That is how a “dissident” or a member of an alleged opposition is fabricated. Today they hide under the guise of independent librarians, independent journalists, “human rights” advocates”…
What do you think is the main strength of the Cuban Revolution?
It is that unity that has existed between the people and its Revolution; that unity around our invincible Commander in Chief Fidel Castro and Raúl; the soundness of the ideas that we have historically defended.
At some point I thought that while it is true I could not be a combatant of the Rebel Army, or a member of the clandestine struggle against Batista, and I did not take up a weapon to fight the mercenaries who landed through Bay of Pigs, or was not a militia detached to his trench during the Missiles Crisis, nor I had the opportunity to fight in Angola of Ethiopia, life had given me the opportunity to accomplish this mission and being in the line of fire for the defense of our people.
No doubt, there are still those who continue underestimating us, but one thing is very clear: The Cuban State Security organs have been, are, and will continue to be present at the right time and place. The enemies of the Revolution, inside and outside our country, have not just learned the lesson, because always, when least expected, there will be an Emilio.
Recuadro: Tita, your father is not a traitor.
Since I started to do this work, I have lost many friends. Therefore, when I was told that my identity would be revealed I first felt very happy, because that was a gift for my daughter Tita. She would know that her father is not a traitor.
I remember once, when she was younger, Rolando Jiménez Posada, a counterrevolutionary who is in prison right now, came to see me at my home. My daughter came across the idea of taking a piece of chalk and writing on the floor of the car porch a phrase that read: “Freedom for the Five Heroes”; and Jiménez Posada told me: “Tell me something: Is that what you are teaching your daughter?”
My friends will know now that I never changed sides. But at the same time I am sorry that my identity is revealed because thanks to my work I was able to promote to important positions inside the counterrevolution and I could have continued to be of some use.
