Cuba Intimidates Dissident Youth with Military Event to ‘Defend Socialism’ on College Campuses

Colleges across Cuba announced on Tuesday that they would organize a “University Student Bastion Exercise” forcing students to engage in military training and “revolutionary, patriotic, and anti-imperialist activities.”

Statements from the universities, according to the independent outlet Cubanet, explained that the event, scheduled for March 27, would honor the upcoming 100th anniversary of the birth of mass murderer Fidel Castro and serve to prepare the nation’s most elite youth to engage in an “all people’s war” in the context of the economic collapse of the country.

Cuba is currently facing nearly unprecedented levels of dysfunction and acute poverty following the arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. As a communist state, Cuba’s economy does not produce any significant profits for the vast majority of people and relies on parasitic relationships with wealthier communist states to stay afloat. Under Maduro, Venezuela regularly traded free oil to the country