Hot War / Lilianne Ruíz

Since the socialist camp fell, our politicians miss the Cold War and now should be celebrating the possible war between the dictators and the western democracies.  They have worked for years with this objective.  But they still talk on the radio about their ideological press releases, hypnotizing multitudes, that “the world cries out for peace.”

If the world were governed by religious dictators or by a proletariat dictator, there would not be much hope for human beings.  If, although they didn’t come to dominate, two blocks of power were established as in the fateful Soviet times, the fate of civilians would be like in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, where they jailed and abused citizens with the impunity that conceded the Cold War, in that the priority of the whole world was to not descend into a nuclear war.

It is not that the dictators have learned to respect religious differences, nor differences in sexual orientation, nor have they come to the time in which they have to respect political differences, there were concessions they made at some point, with their call of the “sense of the historical moment” to preserve their power.  If this sense changes they will return to show how they are:  “if the enemy tires out you have to annihilate them”, land of macho men, atheists, and revolutionaries.

People say that in the 80s, the markets were packed with food, condensed milk at 20 centavos, all we children went to school and we believed that the Americans were very evil and that some mercenaries had come to invade us and that bearded figurehead who would not stop speaking and gesturing had brought at last the first defeat of Imperialism in Latin America, and that was good.

Nobody told us in school that the President of the United States withdrew support of that invasion where imperialism wasn’t defeated but other Cubans coming from the country that historically has been the refuge of Cubans to overthrow tyrants.

In that historic lie taught in school, one can discern traits of the beneficiary of the lie.  If I had been an adult in that time and I wouldn’t have agreed that there was an abundance of food in the markets and never would have believed that that figurehead was better than me or my friends, because in all of the versions from my life, in all the endless pastures of space, in parallel universes, I detest the underdevelopment and servility of Castrocommunism.

What surprises me the most is the similarity with Stalinism, it isn’t possible they haven’t even learned the most minimal details.  It comes to them from inside, it is human nature.  Like an opportunistic sickness, they appear when capitalism has left the masses of people discontented, they offer them a better society, but they don’t tell them the conditions of this contract that never appears anywhere means that the payment will be the person himself, a debt that will not be paid with money because the leaders are in charge of that and nobody can own anything because they can’t be unequal, a lot of poverty for everyone and no freedom of conscience, nor of expression, no type of initiative.

All the dictators are similar, the same aesthetic, a grey curtain, a photo of the leaders, some flowers, very bad energy.  Now that the news in Cuba suspiciously announced the manifestations of support for Putin and the legality of the elections in Russia it makes me wonder if a secret fraternity exists with the KGB. I who in those days looked on with so much happiness, with more than 20 years of difference, the documentary about M. Gorbachev, on the History Channel on pirated video.

 Translated by: BW

December 19 2011