The COVID-19 reached the thresholds of the Center Fidel Castro Ruz, Located in the neighborhood capital of the Vedado, forcing to suspend the opening of the premises, created under a law of the National Assembly of Popular Power in 2016 and a Presidential Decree of 2018.
The official opening had been announced for the end of 2019, and for reasons never explained, it did not take place. By 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 thought to preserve the ideas of the former Cuban dictator and the initial invitation has been delayed.
What was originally supposed to be an inaugural event, with the regime’s main page this past Friday, January 8, coinciding with the entry of the rebel hosts in 1959, has had to be postponed due to the outbreak of the pandemic. in the place that has been renovating for many months.
the pandemic knocked on the doors of the headquarters where it is thought to preserve the ideas of the former Cuban dictator …
Now the streets are tidy, the center facilities painted, new lighting, renovated grilles, carefully cut grass, new drainage for the green areas and two small palms at the main entrance to the central mansion, and much guarded in the center by a dozen security cameras, and police guard.
The façade, in gold metal, reads “Center Fidel Castro Ruz”, a place that would be a kind of mecca of the “revolutionary left”, where the “important foreign visitors” would go to see exhibitions, audiovisual samples and sign a book of honor praising the finite.
In the premises of the premises there is now talk of preparations for the reopening, tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, January 12, although in a Havana where coronavirus cases are growing by the day, any event runs the risk of being suspended or canceled. lat on more than one occasion.
But when asked by local employees, they clarify that for the general public it will open its doors in February, with scheduled visits. The “party” or the “Tángana” for the start of the Center has not been announced in the Cuban press.
In a whole block, which goes from Avinguda Passeig to Carrer A, between 11 and 13, there are the facilities of the Center, the legal basis was established on December 27, 2016, a month after the death of the Cuban ruler, and approved by the National Assembly of the People’s Power.
a place that would be a kind of mecca of the “revolutionary left” …
Legislation no. 123 of 2016, called “On the use of the name and figure of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz”, Stipulated at creation of a center to protect the ideas of Fidel Castro, while forbidding putting his name on streets, squares or commercial use. The exception to the rule (of the law in this case) was that of using the dictator’s name “to name any institution that is constituted for the study and dissemination of his thought and work.”
In February 2018, while Raúl Castro was still president of the Councils of State and Ministers, an initial group was created to preserve the documentation, study and dissemination of Fidel Castro’s ideas. In that initial meeting Castro instructed Miguel Díaz-Canel, already at that time first vice-president of the Councils of State and Ministers, to control the fulfillment of the tasks and the group that would be elaborating ideas for the organization.
At the head of this group they named a Alberto Alvariño Atiénzar, A retired colonel who became the party’s ideologue, who in addition to proclaiming himself a professional typographer, studied in the USSR to be a “politician” in the Castro brothers’ army and was at the helm of the Verdera Green Magazine for about four years, then moved to the Political Directorate of the Ministry of the Armed Forces (MINFAR) in the Ideological Work section.
From MINFAR, the colonel became an official of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CCP) where he held the position of deputy head of the Ideological Department. In this place he had at his disposal the April Publishing House, Getting to publish diverse books, from the life of a Cuban professional boxer to the one of rebels who died before 1959. One of its books had the prolog of Fidel Castro and another one the one of Raul.
With this endorsement is that he launches the former Minister of the FAR in Alvariño to lead the group, which among its members has had Eusebio Leal Spengler, The now deceased Havana historian i José Miyar Barruecos, Who was secretary of the Council of State from 1980 to 2009 and the person who for most years was fighting daily with the Cuban dictator.
The official position of colonel is now that of head of the Documentary Heritage Preservation Office, Without specifying whether he will be in charge of the Fidel Castro Ruz Center.
In November 2018, Alvariño was commissioned to attend an extraordinary session of the Council of Ministers, already under the control of Díaz-Canel, to present the progress in his work and the team he led. There he explained the political character of the center and the acquisition of high-tech equipment for the use of interactive information.
One of the missions of this entity, which is 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 distorting life, work and figure of the Historical Leader of the Cuban Revolution, “the former colonel told the island’s ministers.
The work schedule, which he had already presented in February to Raúl Castro, was to finish the construction works by the end of 2019, and Alvariño repeated this to the members of the Council of Ministers. But the plans were not fulfilled as they were laid out; and at the beginning of 2020, the first cases of COVID-19 were declared in Cuba.
The media then stressed that Díaz-Canel, in his capacity as President of the Councils of State and Ministers talked about “obstacles” that they had to overcome “the people involved in this beautiful project” and even to “advance in their conformation,” without specifying what inconveniences they faced or what bureaucratic or political hurdles they face to integrate this select group of 30 people.
In February 2020, when the rise of VOCID-19 and the spread of the disease around the world began, all the buildings intended to protect Castro’s legacy had not yet been restored in Havana. .
Precisely at the beginning of the year 2020, in the days when millions of pesos were in motion to repair the house colonies of the Vedado where the Center rises; three children, Maria Karla Fonts and Lisnavy Valdés Rodríguez, aged 12, and Rocío García Nàpols, aged 11, died in Old Havana when they fell from the balcony of a building in the Jesús Maria neighborhood.
The tragedy took place on Monday, January 28, in the apartment located at No. 102, between Revillagigedo and Vives, a building that was being demolished, with no signs to warn of the danger of passage.
Lawyer Sergio Osmín Fernández wrote, quoting Díaz-Canel’s Twitter account: “Three girls have lost their lives today after another dilapidated building collapsed in Havana. No Due Process is needed. You. those responsible for diverting resources to issues outside the well-being and security of Cubans. “
Different publications abroad such as Cubacomenta i CiberCuba published in their digital pages details of the reconstruction of the mansions in the area, the sidewalks and the avenue of Carrer Passeig, and of the complaints of the neighbors about the precarious situation of housing in the capital, the damaged streets, and the destroyed sidewalks, including in this area where the embassies of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bulgaria, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea are close by.