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Thirteen Montrealers say they have been the target of a harassment campaign launched by the Cuban government to stop protests against one-party rule on the island.
A social media account that – according to Cuban defectors – is being opened by Cuban state security has spread detailed allegations against 13 people accusing them of trafficking cocaine from Colombia to Canada.
Carlos Andrades says he is one of them. On March 21, he arrived in his native Havana to visit his 95-year-old mother. Traveling with him were his Canadian-born daughter and granddaughter.
Andrades said he had long been active in opposition circles and had been barred from entering Cuba on several previous occasions. He said he traveled on this occasion with some trepidation.
“I have a 95-year-old mother, so I have to go,” he said.
Shortly after arriving, Andrades said, he was visited at his hotel by a woman in a military uniform who handed him a piece of paper ordering him to be interviewed at a detention center operated by Cuba’s Interior Ministry.
Interrogation – by a man who introduced himself as Col. Luis Morales – this was videotaped and will soon be used as one of the elements in the elaborate accusations against him and twelve fellow Cuban-Canadian dissidents.
Andrades said interrogators showed him evidence that he participated in demonstrations and posted comments critical of Communist Party rule. Under a new Cuban law, online criticism can be prosecuted as cyber-terrorism.
“They show you a picture and you’ve done this, and you’ve done this. So you’re up against a wall because you’re not in Canada,” he said. “Canada cannot protect you in any way.”
Andrades said interrogators also suggested he was involved in drug trafficking to finance the operations of anti-government YouTubers. He gave it a special name: a Montreal-based anti-regime YouTube channel with nearly 90,000 followers.
The arrival of the internet in Cuba has directed the Cuban government’s attention to the threat posed by online influencers in exile. It seems to have chosen to attack again using the online weapon – YouTube.
Sayings forever
El Guerrero cubano (“the Cuban soldier”) is a YouTube account that broadcasts attacks on enemies of the Cuban Communist Party, sometimes using videos of interrogations by Cuban state security.
The person behind Guerrero’s account did not show his face in the video. A recent Cuban government defector has identified the individual behind the account as Colonel Pedro Orlando MartÃnez, head of the political wing of Cuba’s National Revolutionary Police.
Andrades said that after the interview, she was allowed to leave Cuba with her children, so she was relieved. But the interview convinced him that he could never go back.
“I knew from the beginning – I got on the plane, it was my last trip to Cuba,” he said. “And I had to say ‘goodbye’ to my mother. It wasn’t easy.”
Three weeks after Andrades returned to Canada, Guerrero cubano’s account uploaded the first video detailing what he claimed was “a network of drug traffickers supplying the counter-revolution in Canada.”
The posted video includes several clips of Andrades’ interrogation. No one said anything disturbing about drugs, about themselves or others.
In the narration accompanying the first video, Guerrero claims he has more footage from the interview that will be released later. The second video, released two weeks after the first, showed more clips of the interrogation but still did not include Andrades’ admission of drug trafficking involvement or accusations against others.
In the video, Guerrero cubano accused 13 Montrealers of using a food import business owned by one of them to smuggle cocaine bought from a Colombian family network called the Solazars. The account said the man used someone else’s trucking company to distribute the drug across central Canada, New York and New Jersey.
The money, according to the video, will be used for terrorist attacks against Cuba.
“They are poisoning and destroying the Canadian population, especially the youth,” says the narration for one of El Guerrero’s videos. In the picture of the photo of the Cuban-Canadian meeting with the Leader of the Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre, the narrative accuses him of “openly contradicting the current Canadian government, especially the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
“They need the Conservatives to come to power in Canada.”
Andrades said his Cuban interrogator questioned him about group meetings with Conservatives, described Polievre as “another Trump” and said Havana would prefer to see Trudeau stay in power.
CBC News asked the Cuban embassy about the case, but did not receive a response. Public Safety Canada and Global Affairs Canada also did not respond to inquiries on the matter.
‘War needs money’
One of the 13 people named in the video Guerrero was, at one point, a major drug trafficker. Maximo Morales was arrested in 1990 after Montreal police made the city’s largest cocaine bust. Morales is accused of carrying 1,500 kilograms of cocaine in one year, which he bought from the Medellin cartel. He received a ten-year sentence.
The money generated by the trade, Morales said, was intended to finance anti-Castro opposition operations, especially the purchase of land, weapons and equipment for a training camp in the Florida Everglades.
The 1980s were a time of ferment in Cuba’s exile community, with many groups plotting to overthrow the Castro regime.
“This is a war,” Morales said. “It’s an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And war costs money.
“I was arrested, I received a ten-year sentence. I served my time and after that I returned to society.”
Although he admits he was “no angel,” Morales said he was forgiven and hasn’t been in trouble with the law since. He owns several businesses, including a real estate company and Aliments Morales, based on Montreal’s east side, which imports and distributes Latin food products.
The business was heavily involved in Guerrero’s video, which showed Aliments Morales importing cargo into the country – such as a container containing ten tons of pigeon peas from Ecuador – and said the shipment contained cocaine.
Morales said he has had no contact with the world of drug trafficking since his release from prison and that none of the 12 other people he named have been involved in the illegal business. CBC News has spoken to seven of the 13 individuals named in the video; they all said they had no criminal records.
The 12 individuals include Morales’ brother Gerardo – who was still living in Cuba at the time of Maximo’s arrest – and his son, also called Maximo, who was a child when his father was imprisoned.
Some of the people on the list have businesses that are also identified in the video. They include the trucking company the video claims was involved in distributing the drugs, and the dance studio it named as a meeting place for the conspiracy. Also named as a member of the conspiracy is a Montreal-based anti-regime YouTuber with nearly 90,000 followers.
All the people named in the video deny the existence of the network.
Tito Cardenas is the owner of Titisalsabor dance studio. He said he was put on the list because he made anti-government comments in a widely circulated Radio-Canada article.
“I think that’s when he started following me,” she told CBC News.
“I think people need to understand that this is a method that all dictatorships use. When you are an opponent of a dictatorship, the first thing they will do is attack your reputation in any way they can.”
Allegations of involvement in drugs and homosexuality are favorites of Cuban state security, he said.
“I think the next step could be trying to put some physical evidence to try to incriminate me,” he added. “I have a dance studio where it’s relatively easy to plant something. I’m not going to put a guard at the door to disturb all my students.”
The police could not help
Felix Blanco, a financial adviser who was also named in the video, said he was also worried about being caught in the frame.
“I went to the police and I said, look, I’m afraid that they’re going to put something in my house, that they’re going to put something in my car,” he said.
Blanco said he called the Canadian Security Intelligence Service [CSIS] hotline and are advised to call the RCMP. He said the RCMP then told him to speak with the local police service in Brossard on Montreal’s South Shore.
He said all the authorities he spoke to could not help because the campaign was anonymous and came from outside the country.
He said he believed the call to authorities was recorded and that Brossard police gave him a card with a case file number.
Unlike most of those on the list, Maximo Morales Jr. (son of Maximo Morales) was born in Canada and never lived in Cuba.
He said he believed one of the goals of the campaign was to sow doubt and suspicion in the Cuban exile community and make opposition activists believe their friends could be regime informants.
“They want to destroy society, and they’re trying to create a community of just rumors – ‘this person, this person’ – instead of focusing on real issues like, why isn’t there food in Cuba?” said.
He said what his community is going through is similar to what is happening to several other diaspora groups in Canada.
“I hope the government will do more to protect Canadian citizens and citizens who have escaped dictatorships like in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, China, North Korea, Iran,” he said.
“The regime does not stay within its own borders. It goes beyond its borders to persecute those who speak against it.”
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