A 40-plus audience attended the opening of the Humor From My Pen, an exhibition of the prison cartons of Gerardo Hernando, in Christchurch.
Gerardo is one of the "Cuban Five” - five Cuban agents who infiltrated terrorist groups based in Miami and were, on supplying the gathered intelligence to the US Government, imprisoned. The real and self-confessed Miami terrorists remain at large in Miami.
Cuba Friendship Society spokesperson Paul Piesse, in inviting Cuban Ambassador to NZ María del Carmen Herrera Caseiro, to open the exhibition noted that it was 'contemptibly hypocritical to pick-and-choose which terrorists you oppose and which you will support; it is terrorism itself which is the evil'.
'The United States' Piesse observed 'incarcerates five Cuban citizens whose sole “crime” was to infiltrate and oppose Miami-based terrorist groups. At the same time it (the US) supports and sustains those very terrorist groups. So are these groups really terrorists, or merely dissidents? Since they have blown up a Cuban airliner in flight (no survivors), bombed Cuban tourist hotels and invaded Cuban airspace contrary to air traffic control – sometimes boasting about these terrorist activities - the answer is clear.'Echoing Aleida Guevara's comments in London earlier in the weekend Piesse said it was hoped that the exhibition would contribute to '“breaking the blockade of silence imposed on the truth”
The Ambassador gave a brief update on the current legal situation of the Five and, having attended university with Gerardo, provided an insight into Gerardo the individual. He graduated with a degree in International Political Relations in 1989 and while in university participated in amateur festivals as part of a theater group and also as a cartoonist-humorist.
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"the
Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence,
freedom and justice, unparalleled for its principled and selfless
character."
Nelson Mandela
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The exhibition is open 10.am to 5pm Monday to Wednesday and 10.00am to 7.00pm Thursday and Friday at Room Four Art Space 336 St Asaph St.
