Coronavirus and Oppenheimer’s Final Fabrication

Some top officials in Ecuador’s government have gone to the US media to deny the authenticity of some videos released in social networks where the alleged burnt of corpses in the streets — victims of the Covid-19 — is being posted. This is basically a failed attempt to save Ecuador government’s honor and shows its incapacity to contain the pandemic.

Liars, as it happens to thieves, believe that it takes one to know one. To do so, they have resorted to damage control based on the same strategy they criticize: fake news as a weapon of political subversion.

In the article recently released by El Nuevo Herald, Andrés Oppenheimer — Argentine journalist rooted in Miami — raised this question: are there fake news farms in Venezuela, Mexico, and Cuba trying to destabilize some Latin American countries by getting the most out of the coronavirus crisis and hence creating a wave of outrage against democratically-elected governments?   

Indeed, Oppenheimer quotes Ecuador’s Interior Minister María Paula Romo: “fake news farms have benefitted from the crisis in Guayaquil aiming at destabilizing the country.  The goal is to generate panic and sell the idea of a chaotic nation, the government is not in charge and there is an urgent need to replace the current administration.”

The truth is there is no need to post fake videos or create a trolls farm operating secretly in a hidden place of the world, to prove the current government of Ecuador is not in charge and there is a total chaos in the city of Guayaquil. The world knows that: “to the thousands of photos spread worldwide of empty cities and hospitals jammed triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, several videos and testimonies of people dying in the streets come up in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, as well as corpses waiting for days to be picked up in their homes.” “Corpses wait inside the houses or are left in sidewalks as nobody wants to pick them up. What’s going on with infected people? Families wander around the city knocking at the doors of any public hospital where there are no beds available.”

 The aforementioned quotes were not taken from any media in Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela. As far as we know, unless Oppenheirmer finds the opposite, BBC is not conspiring with any of these governments nor supports former Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa.

The truth is the government of Ecuador has no moral authority to talk about fake news. Fake news — in the justice field — are, for example, the lawfare process that following its new ally’s orders — the government of the United States — Ecuador has unleashed against former President Rafael Correa or the campaign of lies, also made in USA, by which the Cuban medical brigade was abruptly expelled from that nation. Needless to say Cuban doctors’ expertise and solidarity would have contributed a lot with the Ecuadorian people in these dark hours.

But such an old fake news farm like El Nuevo Herald has even less moral authority. Its editorial policy consists on triggering campaigns of fabrications against the governments of Venezuela and Cuba. In contrast to Oppenheimer, I am not fabricating anything. For years, this paper has been part of the propaganda apparatus created by the US in its subversive war against Cuba. It is no secret either that the US government has financed since the 1980s a radio station with this very same purpose and revealed in February 2018 the existence of a Task Force group to “support” a dozen of independent media whose supreme purpose even in times of crisis is to manipulate information aimed at wreaking havoc among people in Cuba.

I am not fabricating anything if I say that these Oppenheimer’s statements are in line with the viewpoints aired last Friday by Michael G. Kozak — one of the top officials in the US State Department. He, while referring to Cuba, said: “The (Cuban) regime is spreading dangerous news worldwide on the virus aimed at dividing the international community.”

Finally, what to say about one of the columnists of El Nuevo Herald, he is the author of one of the most notorious fake news of last century. Now a critic of fake news, he launched in 1993 the book “La hora Final de Fidel Castro (Fidel Castro’s Final Hour)” when it looked like Cuba would collapse due to the domino effect caused by the collapse of the Socialist Bloc.

But such hour never comes. Shame on him! Fidel lives on the continuity of the Revolution and the human legacy of the Cuban medical brigades, which is saving millions of lives in the world.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff