The Cuban academic and independent journalist José Raúl Gallego Ramos published a powerful message directed at the official journalist Abdiel Bermúdez Bermúdez, after learning that the Cuban Embassy in Mexico presented him as the spokesperson for the Cuban scholars during a discussion held at the Ibero-American University of Mexico City on October 28.
The event, titled "Voices of Encounter, Lives in Motion," was organized as part of the Government of Mexico's Excellence Scholarship Program for Foreigners, with participation from students from Cuba, Colombia, and Bolivia.
According to the official post from the Cuban embassy, Bermúdez highlighted "one of the most significant moments of the meeting" with the phrase: "One does not leave Cuba even when in Mexico; Cuba is everywhere."
Gallego responded on Facebook to the embassy with a detailed complaint about the repressive practices of Cuban diplomats against the interns that Bermúdez claimed to represent.
"Those people you are meeting 'on behalf of the Cuban scholars' are the same ones who have sent others to assault the Cuban scholars who have peacefully demonstrated in front of the embassy," she wrote, also listing threats to scholars when processing their passports, interrogations of Ibero students upon arriving at Havana airport, and months of obstacles preventing them from leaving Cuba and returning to their academic programs.
The most serious accusation points to the systematic infiltration of the university itself: "They are representatives of State Security officers who blackmail those studying at Ibero in Cuba to watch over and inform on their classmates as well as Cuban and Mexican professors at the University."
Gallego, who holds a PhD in Communication from the Ibero-American University —class of 2018-2022— knows that environment from the inside. In 2018, he was sanctioned as a professor at the University of Camagüey for collaborating with independent media and defending a student who was threatened with expulsion. The reprisals forced him to leave Cuba, and he completed his doctorate at the same institution that he now cautions against.
"You may not know it because you arrived in Mexico just yesterday, so to speak, but given your proximity to power in Cuba and how quickly you have associated with these despots from the embassy, you should know it better than anyone," he told Bermúdez, who arrived in Mexico last September with his wife, the journalist Liudmila Peña, for a study-related stay.
Bermúdez is one of the most recognized faces of Cuban state television: presenter of the National Television News and Cubavisión Internacional, and winner of national journalism awards in July. His appearance as a spokesperson for the scholarship holders at the embassy, just weeks after arriving in Mexico, was described by Gallego as a whitewashing of the dictatorship.
The message also included a direct warning to the Patronato and the faculty of Ibero: "Remember that in Cuba, an institution like Ibero could not exist, because private or religious education is not allowed, and that for many years the Cuban political police has been trying to infiltrate the institution, with the aim of influencing not only the Cuban students studying there but also using it as a means of penetrating the Mexican academia through blackmail and influence operations."
Gallego closed his message with a specific offer to the university: "If you want to discuss the topic and hear concrete examples, with the names of your scholarship recipients who have been victims of these practices, we can talk about it. It's the least I can do for an institution to which I owe so much."
A report from the organization Citizenship and Freedom published in September documented 12 patterns of repression against young Cubans in at least five countries, concluding that "exile does not interrupt persecution."
In September 2021, regime supporters physically assaulted Cuban protesters outside the embassy, and similar attacks occurred again in November 2022.
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