Hispanic activists, artists, and other community leaders launched a campaign for 2024 this week titled “Freedom and Unity for Democracy and Against Communism,” which they told Breitbart News was necessary in “a confused world being constantly exposed to socialist and leftist propaganda.”
The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, an umbrella organization representing dozens of pro-democracy groups on and off the island, launched the campaign at an event on Tuesday at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami, Florida. The event featured remarks from anti-totalitarian activists throughout Latin America and the world, including multiple members of the Ukrainian government. Organizers previewed a plan to launch events around the country to oppose communist ideology throughout the next year.
The coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, announced, “Soon, we will do the Anticommunist March on the streets, also.”
The event was a loud display of rejection of socialism and communism from the Hispanic community in America during an especially contentious election year. Months of polling in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential contest shows leftist incumbent President Joe Biden’s support dwindling among Hispanics, continuing trends witnessed in the 2016 and 2020 elections. As in those elections, former President Donald Trump – who has long enjoyed support from the Cuban-American community in Florida – is expected to be the Democrat candidate’s main rival at the ballot box. While the Biden administration has not been as radical in supporting the brutal Castro regime in Cuba as former President Barack Obama’s, Biden did nothing to support the historic 2021 protests on the island and has largely failed to build a coherent policy on Latin America issues generally.
The campaign began with the debut of a new song by Frankie Marcos & Clouds, local icons best known for spearheading the popularity of the 1980s movement known as the “Miami sound,” and Grammy award-winning jazz legend Paquito d’Rivera. The song, “The Anticommunist March,” is an homage to the over 100 million people killed by communism and a call to America to reject deadly Marxist ideology.
“I did not have to use a single metaphor writing it,” Marcos told Breitbart News this weekend. “Every single line, verse, chorus or improvisation speaks of the deception and pain of our people, demanding, crying for freedom.”
A man is arrested during a demonstration against the government of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Havana, on July 11, 2021. Thousands of Cubans took part in rare protests Sunday against the communist government, marching through a town chanting “Down with the dictatorship” and “We want liberty.” (YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty)
The song features the death tolls of communism in various countries, including the 2 million estimated dead in North Korea, the 20 million under Soviet communism, and the upwards of 80 million believed to have been killed in China from dictators Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping.
The artists released both English- and Spanish-language versions of the song, the former performed by actor, model, and vocalist Greg Jackson.
“When I was asked to sing the English version of the song, I immediately said, ‘Yes, I’m in!'” Jackson told Breitbart News. “Communism is born bad. Lenin famously said, ‘You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs.’ Well, there are no omelettes, only millions of broken eggs.”
“Humanity was born free! It is our right, and we will not be sheep-herded by a handful of despots. Freedom is our name,” Jackson added.
Mariori De Marcos, Marcos’s wife and the head of the entertainment firm Jordan-Marcos The Agency, told Breitbart News this weekend that the campaign was an “international agenda for 2024” and necessary to combat global leftist attempts at whitewashing the crimes of Marxism.
China (screenshot, The Anticommunist March -Frankie Marcos & Clouds, Greg Jackson & Paquito D’ Rivera Official Video YouTube)
“The spirit of this event captured an elevated state of unity, envisioning a future where hope, companion[ship], and freedom prevail: hand in hand, lending our voices to a cause that seeks to bring solace, strength, and support to those that need and deserve it,” de Marcos said, “targeting a confused world being constantly exposed to socialist and leftist propaganda, as well as those who have been swayed by the deceptive promises of these ideologies.”
Speakers at Tuesday’s event in Miami highlighted the need for a concerted effort to educate Americans and the world about the thousands of political prisoners and millions of victims of Marxism.
“Freedom is at risk not just in Cuba – where there isn’t any anymore – not just in Venezuela, in Nicaragua, Bolivia, not just in China,” René Bolio, a Mexican jurist who has led international legal campaigns to hold the Castro regime accountable for its crimes against humanity, said at the event. “The threat to our freedom is in the entire world. Why? Because the communists, these totalitarian ambitions, are in a certain percentage of human beings who will always seek more power and total control over others.”
The Berlin Wall (screenshot, The Anticommunist March -Frankie Marcos & Clouds, Greg Jackson & Paquito D’ Rivera Official Video YouTube)
“The Cuban exile community is a demonstration to the world how a battle, how a war against evil … is not lost, because we have not stopped struggling,” he added.
In messages sent from Ukraine, two lawmakers expressed solidarity for the cause of freedom for Cuba and the global defeat of communism generally – a departure from the hesitance on the part of the Ukrainian presidency to antagonize the Castro regime, communist China, or other allies of the invading Russian power. Lawmaker Maryan Zabolsky told the event that he had reached out to the families of Cuban political prisoners personally and embraced the struggle, especially given Russia’s close relationship with the Cuban Communist Party.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Ukrainian parliament, also addressed the event, citing “our common struggle, our joint struggle for freedom against communism, against totalitarianism, against all kinds of oppression.”
The event concluded with awards to honor some of the anti-communist Hispanic community’s most prominent voices for freedom, including Grammy-winning composer and music artist Amaury Gutiérrez.
“It is an honor for me to receive this recognition on the part of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance,” Gutiérrez told Breitbart News. “The lovely energy generated in that hall at the Museum of the Diaspora … was one that radiated yearning for freedom for Cuba and a collective sense of dignity and full confidence in that the future of our beloved fatherland will be irrevocably luminous. God bless my brothers and sisters inside and out [of Cuba].”