The Latin American Studies Association (LASA) included among the speakers of an academic panel on the events of the July 11 in Cuba to Colonel of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) Abel Enrique González Santamaría, denounced on their social networks the journalist and academic José Raúl Gallego.
“Colonel Abel Enrique González Santamaría is not only a high command of the MININT, but he was one of those closest to Alejandro Castro Espín, son of the dictator Raúl Castroin the powerful and already disintegrated Defense and National Security Commission,” said the Cuban journalist.
Gonzalez Santamaria is the compiler of the book entitled Views in context. Approaches from the university to the current Cubawhich Gallego described as “a pamphlet put together in a few days with texts published on social networks by opinion agents, cyberclairs and mediocre professors who dedicated themselves to criminalizing and delegitimizing the 11J protests and, in turn, justifying the serious violations of Rights committed on those dates by the Cuban State”.
Various Cuban academics and intellectuals joined the criticism of the US organization for the selection of the police agent as rapporteur on a topic such as the 11J protests.
“That Cuba section of LASA a while ago is a compilation of the most dishonest positions on what is happening on the Island. Already this, which is the last and most dishonorable, does not surprise me”, commented journalist and political scientist David Corcho.
“Between MININT agents and complicit intellectualsCubans and foreigners, because in the United States there are a lot of those who, as long as they are anti-imperialist, think it’s super good that we have to suffer a dictatorship in Cuba,” added Cuban academic Hilda Landrove.
The past 2021 LASA was involved in a controversy after publishing a statement about the 11J protests in Cuba what was qualified as “a lack of respect” by dozens of Cuban academics and triggered a wave of resignations from the organization.
Days later more than 160 artists, activists and academics launched a new petition to the members of the LASA Commission on Academic Freedom and Human Rights to issue a explicit and “unambiguous” statement about his “commitment to the rule of law in Cuba”.