This story has been updated to include additional comments from Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.
A rally organized by Georgia Republicans meant to show solidarity with the Cuban people deteriorated Sunday, as GOP officials were shouted down by activists drawn to what they thought was a nonpartisan protest against Cuba’s authoritarian regime.
The ruckus upended an event attended by hundreds and headlined by several Republican officials, including state party chair David Shafer and many candidates for statewide office. The backlash to references of U.S. electoral politics grew so fierce that a group of 100 attendees left the rally and held their own protest elsewhere.
The rally, held outside a Sandy Springs restaurant, came on the heels of a wave of protests that have rocked the Caribbean nation. Over the past week, Cubans took to the streets in numbers not seen in decades to denounce government oppression and painful shortages of food and medicine.
Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere see the Cuba crisis as a new opportunity to court Cuban American and other Latino voters — a bloc of the electorate that has tilted to the right and proved receptive to conservative rhetoric from former President Donald Trump and his allies bashing socialism and communism.
The Sandy Springs rally was hosted by Ozzy Llanes, the owner of the Cubanos ATL restaurant, and the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Georgia (RNHAG). In the days leading up to Sunday, the Georgia Republican Party promoted the rally on social media and reached out to reporters to attend while Llanes’ press release for the event and other social media posts focused on solidarity, not partisanship.
The site was adorned with lawn signs for the campaign of Democrat-turned-Republican Vernon Jones, who has launched a challenge against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Signs were passed out that said “Cuban Lives Matter” and prominently featured the logos of both the Georgia GOP and the Latino group, videos of the event show.
Attended the rally in support of a Free Cuba today in Atlanta! @bluestein @jfradioshow @seanhannity @OANN @seanspicer @DonaldJTrumpJr @DanScavino @CLewandowski_ @warroommovie @FetchYourNews pic.twitter.com/ph8ciOo3gR
— Seaver for Lt. Governor (@seaverforltgov) July 19, 2021
But a large group of protesters present on Sunday, many of them clad in Cuban flags and waving “Cuba Libre” banners, were not in the mood for hearing political speeches and bristled at what they perceived to be limited representation of Cuban Americans among the rally’s speaker lineup.
“We were there solely for the intention of bringing awareness to the humanitarian crisis that is going on in Cuba,” said Adalys Santos, a second-generation Cuban American. “We were not there to talk about Georgia politics or U.S. politics, for that matter … I was enraged by what was happening.”
When Shafer told the crowd that “Joe Biden is lying when he says that the riots in Cuba are because of the pandemic,” he was interrupted and visibly stunned into silence by loud booing from the crowd. Shouts of “stop” and “we are here for Cuba, not for you” were heard, according to a video of the event published by the conservative BKP Politics outlet.
On Wednesday, Shafer told the AJC that his recollection of the moment is different: he said the crowd was booing Biden, and that he paused his address because he supported the booing. He also sent the following statement to the AJC: “The Democrats are lying when they say the demonstrations in Cuba are about the pandemic. Cubans are demonstrating for freedom from tyrannical communist oppression and Republicans stand with them. I was proud to join the National Republican Hispanic Assembly at the rally and to stand with Cuban Americans like Rey Martinez and Caesar Gonzales who are also Republican elected officials or candidates.”
Boos also rang out when state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, a Paulding County Republican, dedicated part of his address to criticizing Georgia’s U.S. Senate delegation.
“Not hearing from Sen. Warnock and Sen. Ossoff right now is pathetic,” he said.
Earlier in his speech, members of the crowd shouted: “We are here to talk about Cuba!” and “There is not one Cuban here with the microphone!”
Speeches by other Republicans, including state Insurance Commissioner John King and Loganville Mayor Rey Martinez, were also met with boos and other criticism. Both are among the most prominent Latino figures in Georgia; King is the first statewide Hispanic official in Georgia.
At one point, a member of the crowd, Cuban American activist Ahmed Cabrera, rushed the stage and spoke.
“You Americans are trying to help us, but this is not the way that we want it,” Cabrera said, mixing Spanish and English as he asked the speakers not to “promote any agendas here.”
“I am a Republican as well. I support the Republican Party, but we need to get in the moment right now. Right now, the moment is for Cuba, not for an agenda.”
Credit: Manuel Cruz
Credit: Manuel Cruz
Supporting Cabrera in the crowd was Indira Rodriguez, who moved to the U.S. 16 years ago as a political refugee.
“Most of the Cubans that were there at the protest, and 99% of the Cubans I know, we are conservative, we are Republican. But what we saw from those politicians was a lack of respect,” she told the AJC in Spanish this week.
Llanes, the restaurant owner, also seemed concerned about the politicization of the event. In a brief address to the crowd, he said that the protest was “not about politics, this is about Cuba.”
He added, as heard in the BKP Politics footage: “Make sure we keep the attention back” to that.
Almost an hour into the rally, Johsie Cruz, a Venezuelan native and Republican candidate for Georgia’s 4th Congressional District, got a hold of the microphone.
By then, as seen and heard in a livestream viewed this week from Cubatlanta, a Facebook page, a sizable part of the crowd had clustered away from the stage, and had begun chanting the popular protest anthem “Patria y Vida,” or “homeland and life,” a spin on the communist regime’s decades-old slogan of “patria o muerte” — homeland or death.
Screaming into the microphone, Cruz tried to quiet the chants.
“This is a sabotage. Each one of you is sabotaging the Republican (National) Hispanic Assembly” of Georgia.
“No venimos a dividirnos,” she added in Spanish. “We didn’t come here to get divided.”
In response, according to Rodriguez and Santos, a group of around 100 people left the rally site, and relocated to downtown Atlanta, where they kept protesting in front of the CNN Center.
Immediately following the rally’s conclusion, Cruz started a Facebook Live of her own. In the 20-minute video, she took aim at the protesters who interrupted her speech.
”A lot of white [people] were like, ‘What do you mean? We are here to help them out, why are they not supporting?’ Because they are communist. They are here to sabotage, distract and divide,” said Cruz. “Today was 100 percent Cuban communism strategy in that parking lot.”
Shera Hastings, chairwoman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Georgia, didn’t respond to an AJC request for comment. In an interview with Univision conducted at the conclusion at the rally, she also complained of “sabotage by some.”
Lautaro Grinspan is a Report for America corps member covering metro Atlanta’s immigrant communities.
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