Last Updated on January 25, 2021, 4:37 AM AST by Anthony Morris
We are into the era of soft coups. Past coups d’état and invasions get terrible press. There are images of U.S. troops invading the Dominican Republic in 1965 or marching through El Chorrillo in Panama in 1989, for example produced bitterness and anger.
In many years, U.S. military interventions in Latin America have fallen into disrepute and gone out of style.
On the other hand, a soft coup is when a group of people in the opposition masquerades as the bulk, creates discussions and confrontations and wears under the majority is giving everyone gives in to their immense pressure.
Examples of this are also visible in Honduras in 2009 and in Brazil in 2016, as well as in Bolivia in 2019, where a coup has been overturned by the release of the presidential election results in October 2020. Cuba and Venezuela have also withstood the force of a soft coup, but the pressure is continuing.
Soft coups are at times more complex to understand than hard coups or interventions by the U.S. Marines. This is because soft coups are often featuring information related wars, in which the United States uses archetypes of dictators and freedom fighters to define international relations. A remastered epic is also shaped by false speeches of heroism by the protagonists selected by the United States.
Cuba is no stranger to U.S. pressure, with invasions, assassination attempts and a blockade shaping the life of Cubans. Over the years, there have been several efforts to conduct a soft coup on the Cuban Revolution.
In November 2020, a small group of people who think they are independence fighters fortified themselves into a house in the San Isidro area in Old Havana.
Legitimate issues got swept into what arrived to be different attempted soft coup: a dialogue between artists and cultural traditions, political opportunism, the pandemic, and a deepening economic crisis worsened by the new round of single measures imposed by the outgoing Trump government (which include blocked remittances, more financial permissions, and abuse of oil tankers).
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
