Cuban Politics During the Last Six Decades / Somos+, Hector Fernandez

The island of Cuba in the Caribbean.

Somos+, Héctor Fernández, 23 May 2020 — For more than five decades, the Castro brothers – good thieves that they are – did all kinds of illicit business, such as trafficking in arms, gold, marble, drugs, anything that could be beneficial to the Government. Africa, America, and Europe were their primary settings. They seized such Nubian assets as minerals and antique art and began training paramilitary groups in different countries, with the free and “disinterested” collaboration of Russia.

As a boy, I heard of all these exploits of the Cuban government, and whenever it was talked about in my house or in Havana, the sadness of my family showed on their faces. How could the Island crumble in the face of the people, who were being robbed in different ways – such as when all property was taken from the peasant owners, the functionaries telling that they would receive benefits by going to community buildings, where they would be better off. It was so sarcastic that many refused and were subjected to insults, called “worms”, and being harassed by the government militia all the time until they could take it no longer and had to turn over their property.

Just like the Colombian guerrilla army that made good people leave their native cities and emigrate. Almost more than 405-million Latin Americans emigrate daily because of these revolutions, which are believed to promote a truly just system, but all they do is to senselessly and inhumanely massacre a people.

The average Cuban learned what it means to be with God and the Devil: one goes to church and later returns to adore the image of Fidel and Raúl.

Leonardo Padura is one more apprentice of this double standard, a writer whose pen has the gift of wisdom but whose corrupt soul, like many others, is not transparent because his government so demands it. It is like the mulatto on the street corner, the mulatto criollo, nonchalantly proclaiming, “Here I am, passing for white until they find me out….” And this is the double skin, the double standard of today with God, tomorrow with the Devil.

Therefore, one way for Cuban women to protest is by prostitution; that is how they tell the Government that a hungry woman will sleep with a man who buys her dinner. It is a way of showing her bottom to the authorities, as the African Americans do by wearing their pants down by their knees (a form of protest that started long ago in jailhouses). It is the way the people have to protest, their only weapon. Society styles its fashion according to the oppression it is subjected to; there is nothing worse than to fight with God and tomorrow be friends with the Devil.

One question that emerges from the atrocity of an almost half-century of errors is, how does Castro-style socialism function? It is a question that comes to all our minds. This was answered by a friend of mine who, sincerely and without evasiveness, gave his opinion: “How does it function? By political slogans, without thinking, by repetition.”

They judge the value of a human being by his titles as if these were an indicator of one’s intelligence, by his professional achievements and not for being a true believer, using the double mask of the Revolution, the double standard. The famous Tapados [Hidden Ones] – Communist Party militants who for convenience and not by conviction rule the people – corrupt leaders who squander the few resources that the Country has, inventing economic projects that in the end do not give results… Cuba has received the equivalent of the Marshall Plan 8 times from the former Soviet Union and has not obtained any results.

The economy remains deaf, blind, and dumb, it does not obey anyone’s orders … it has its laws … with the North American embargo, and on top of that, with a centralized economy that does not work, at some point, it should – it must – change.

China, for many, is a model; but how can we say that this is good for others? A country full of socialist slogans and laws can never be an example to anyone.

One of the most harmful blockades* on the Island is demagogy and the total lack of pragmatic economic models.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

*Translator’s Note: The term, “blockade,” is used by the Cuban government to refer to the US embargo against Cuba.