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The Cuban professor and playwright Roberto Viña Martínez reported in a post on Facebook that he has been expelled from all the institutions where he taught, after expressing critical opinions about the concept of "sovereignty" and the current situation in the country.
He recounted that the decision was "arbitrary" and deprived him of more than 70% of his already insufficient salary, in a context of widespread economic crisis in Cuba.
Viña Martínez, who worked as a teacher at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), stated that her expulsion was due to a post on social media and her "political dissent," although—she explained—these positions had not been an obstacle in previous years.
"Just a post serves as a pretext for the sovereignty of the palace dogs and cultural commissars to take action and prevent me from continuing my work, in which I am neither mediocre nor seeking honors," he wrote.
In his text titled “Let's Talk About Sovereignty”, the professor reflects critically on what he considers the falsehood of the official discourse regarding popular power and national independence.
"True sovereignty, enacted as doctrinal practice, comprises various tropes that, in their conjunction, offer a spectrum of autonomy far removed from official rhetoric," she asserts, while denouncing that "a country with an aging, hungry majority burdened with psychological issues cannot be a sovereign and proud nation."
The academic also criticized the role of the Cuban regime in the destruction of the country's essential structures: education, production, health, and energy. “There is no food sovereignty without food, nor energy sovereignty on an island stuck in the Middle Ages,” he pointed out.
After his expulsion, Viña announced that he would reinvent himself outside of institutional confines and would continue teaching "from the sovereignty of decency." "The theater and creation help ensure that the sovereignty of sanity does not dissolve in a sea of misfortunes and vain sacrifices," he concluded.
The case of Roberto Viña Martínez adds to a growing list of teachers, artists, and professionals who have been sanctioned or expelled in Cuba for expressing opinions contrary to the regime. Censorship and repression against critical voices within the country's academic and cultural institutions remain a common practice under the control of the state's ideological apparatus.
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