Perspectivas / Perspectives

He keeps losing roles for speaking in support of the Tibetan religious leader

From 'American Gigolo' through 'Pretty Woman,' the actor was at the top of studio A-lists, but speaking up passionately in defense of Tibet has taken him down the indie road that has led to two new films and the best reviews of his career.

Hollywood, July 16.– When Richard Gere walked the red carpet at the Academy Awards in 1993, there was no way he could have known that the night would have repercussions for his career more than 20 years later. Invited to present the award for best art direction, he skipped the scripted patter to protest China's occupation of Tibet and its "horrendous, horrendous human rights situation." The late Gil Cates, the show's producer, was furious, calling the political speeches at that year's awards show —Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins also went off script to speak on behalf of Haitian refugees — "distasteful and dishonest" and vowing to ban all three from future Oscars broadcasts.

Undaunted, Gere, a long-standing friend of Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, didn't stop speaking out. In 2008, he called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, and he continues to support the cause through his two foundations, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet and The Gere Foundation in New York. Not surprisingly, he has been banned for life from China.

But now that Hollywood is cozying up ever closer to the authoritarian superpower, and studios are careful not to offend the government that oversees what has become the world's second-biggest box-office market, the star also is paying a price. 

The Cuban Government has encouraged for more than half a century an economy of dependency that requires the freebies and subsidies of other countries for their livelihood, while the country barely manages to produce a fraction of the net proceeds achieved during the Republican era and the people subsist on poverty wages averaging less than one dollar per day. The following report has been drafted in Cuba by journalists who are constantly harassed and often jailed.

The new "Economic Society of Enemies of the Country"

While in Havana the irrational silence of the dictatorship continued on the specific causes that provoked the air tragedy of May 18, and at a time that the heavy rains from tropical storm Alberto devastated homes and flooded thousands of hectares of crops, the new “President” Miguel Diaz-Canel decided to leave the disaster behind to go with his wife to Venezuela in support of dictator Nicolás Maduro.

And the latter, mocking his own people who are now hungry and without medication, sent thousands of cans of tuna, mattresses and other equipment to the island for those affected by the storm Alberto, thus unleashing a wave of condemnation of Maduro by the Venezuelans.

For his part, the president of the country that right now is massively intervening in Venezuela, accused Washington for his “attempts” to intervene in that country. At that very moment, a plane with 100 Venezuelan high officers landed in Cuba to receive training on how to repress their compatriots and how to avoid a military uprising against Maduro who, in turn, have been arresting hundreds of officers while thousands of enlisted men are resigning or defecting from the armed forces.