“My name is Carlos Leonardo Vázquez González, I am a doctor and for more than 25 years I have been the agent Fernando of the State Security Organs to which I have dedicated my life and in which I am sitting today to make this public complaint to the people of Cuba so that it is not fooled by leaders created by manuals. Cuba will never be intervened by the great enemy of the North. “
Carlitos, as he is known by his colleagues in the hospital, appeared on the Cuban television news this Monday, turned into a national hero, making this strange confession. His objective, he says, is to stop the demonstrations called for this Monday, November 15, and to try to portray their organizers as agents sent from the United States to cause chaos on the island and overthrow the Government.
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To do this, the agent publicly reveals his alleged identity as a member of the Cuban secret services and recounts what he describes as one of the most important missions of his career: the infiltration of an event held in Madrid in September 2019 attended by several opponents and in which former President Felipe González participated as a lecturer. Some of those present at that meeting doubt the testimony of Carlos Leonardo Vázquez as a secret agent with a 25-year career and suggest, however, that it could be someone pressured by the Government to act as an informant.
The Madrid seminar, entitled ‘Dialogues on Cuba’ and convened by the Madrid headquarters of Saint Louis University (USA) and by the Torcuato di Tella University (Argentina), is part of an academic research project entitled ‘Times of changes and role of the armed forces in Cuba ‘and is directed by Laura Tedesco and Rut Diamint, experts in security and defense issues in Latin America and specialized in the role of the armies in transition processes. Diamint and Tedesco say that that seminar was a mere academic meeting.
The Cuban intelligence services had information about the event in Madrid since 2019, but the news has now been published because one of the main organizers of the protests this Monday, the playwright Yunior García Aguilera, participated in the seminar. Cuba wants to portray García Aguilera as an agent chosen by the US to carry out subversive tasks and the seminar is an important element of his narrative. “I wanted to send a message to this people that they did not deserve, they do not deserve, nor will they deserve what was being plotted behind this supposed peaceful march that was to be held on November 15,” says the alleged spy.
“The regime wants to deny the obvious: that Archipelago [colectivo convocante] and the march are totally genuine proposals, born within Cuba as a result of the economic, political, social, cultural and moral crisis that we suffer and as a consequence of the lack of rights, democracy, freedom and citizen sovereignty, “García Aguilera posted on Facebook .
According to the seminar program, the objective was “to exchange ideas about the political future of the island” and “to understand the role that the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) could have in the coming years.” “This workshop will discuss the changes that are looming in Cuba and the role that the FAR can take in the face of these transformations.”
The “agent Fernando” assures that two generals taught there, one Spanish and the other Chilean. The only Spaniard who participated is the academic Rafael Martínez, who is not a military man. Martínez tells elDiario.es that he was invited to speak about his book ‘Soldiers, politicians and civilians: reforming civil-military relations in Latin America’. The Chilean is Marcos Robledo, another academic specializing in security issues who was Chile’s undersecretary of defense during the government of Michelle Bachelet. He is not a military man either.
Diamint and Tedesco’s project began in 2016 and since then they have traveled to Cuba to interview different elements of Cuban society. They have also organized three other seminars such as the one in Madrid with some of those people interviewed. Two of them were in Miami and another in Buenos Aires (2018).
Now the academics have realized that the intelligence services were also monitoring them. Cuban television has published images secretly recorded from what appears to be inside a vehicle. In the video they appear entering the Bertolt Brecht Theater. On one of those visits to the theater in 2017 they met Yunior García Aguilera.
“They would watch us because we were foreign academics who traveled once a year. We met a lot of people, including government workers or related journalists, and that’s how the follow-up could begin,” Tedesco told elDiario.es. Now, Cuban television has put them in the spotlight as responsible for the alleged plot.
In another of those visits to Cuba, they interviewed an alleged doctor, Carlos Leonardo Vázquez González. They reached Carlos through someone very trusted by the two academics, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a long-time dissident on the island. “He introduced him to us as his doctor,” says Tedesco. “We went to his house [del médico] and he shared with us his complaints about the health service: deficiencies, arbitrariness, corruption … “, he assures. As health is a fundamental leg of Cuban society, Tedesco and Diamint considered it interesting and invited him to the Madrid event.
Cuesta Morúa confirms to this medium that Carlos Leonardo Vázquez attended him personally as a doctor and also to members of his family and other dissidents. However, like many others, Carlos’s history as a secret agent for 25 years is not believed and suggests that he may have been pressured by the government to act as an informant.
Tedesco’s version matches the one given by “agent Fernando” himself. “My profession as a doctor helped me to open the doors within the dissidence in Cuba. These characters demand medical attention and I could cite you examples of counterrevolutionary leaders whom I have attended during these 25 years, such as Rosa María Payá and Manuel Cuesta Morúa, with whom I have had a close relationship during the time I was in the State Security Organs. With some I came to have personal relationships that helped me to develop my work during all these years, “says the alleged agent, who now walks through the Cuban television sets in a robe recounting his experience.
“Laura Tedesco and Rut Diamint were at my house a year before the course was held. With the closeness that I had achieved through an opponent, we sat down like family. At that moment the officer was there. [de inteligencia] who takes care of me and I sent him to make coffee. This is where the idea of this fourth workshop arose, which was to be held at some point and which was ‘Change for Cuba, the role of the revolutionary armed forces in a transition process,’ adds the informant. Tedesco, however, says that there there was only his nephew, who was critical of the government and who was going to go into exile soon.
“My feeling of the attendees is that they were people who were very fearful of each other. Some even said that there might well be someone there who would say something and harm them,” Rafael Martínez, professor at the University of Barcelona, told elDiario.es expert in civil-military relations and one of the speakers at the seminar. “The level was not particularly high either,” he recalls. “I had to adapt to a basic level like high school. At no time did I get the feeling that a soft hit was being prepared there.”
“The supposed spy was very old in front of the rest of the assistants and gave me an impression of even a certain candor. He was very detached from the rest,” says the academic, who reminds him quietly. “He was outside the central nucleus of the audience and tried personal approaches, but the young people did not want to. They said they had never seen him. It is true that he spoke that the changes were necessary and showed adoration for the figure of Adolfo Suárez” .
No one identified him then as a government agent, but now some say they did suspect him. “I don’t think I had any interesting conversation with him. Rather I remember that he spent most of the time in silence and taking photos, something that generated some jokes in the group,” Yunior García said in his Facebook post after hearing the news .
“In all the workshops we did, they always told us that there was going to be an informant. Some of those who attended the Madrid workshop immediately suspected this man because he was a doctor and because he was taking photos all the time,” says Tedesco . “He was also too affectionate and solicitous. They were suspicious, but Rut and I don’t have that training to figure out who is working for Cuban intelligence.”
Yunior remembers that he received anonymous attacks a year ago for attending that event in Madrid and then he wrote something on the networks about it. “The informant doctor got my number and called me scared. He asked me not to mention his name for the world. I reassured him and told him that it was not my intention to do something like that.”
Just one day after the revelation was made public, Carlos Leonardo Vázquez González was honored at the National Institute of Oncology and he even received a plaque from the Minister of Health to thank his services. “The debt I have with the country I have not paid yet. My greatest tribute is the people of Cuba, the revolution and our invincible commander-in-chief: Fidel Castro,” he said.
