Sunday Digression / Fernando Damaso

The anniversary of the Cuban Republic passed on May 20, and if something was written or said in the official media it was, once again, to criticize and make a big deal out of it, charging it with every possible evil and a few impossible ones.

In addition to calling it a pseudo-republic, media-created and neocolonial, the highlight was classifying it as not independent because of the existence of the Platt Amendment for more than three decades, until it was abolished in the ’30s through an agreement between the governments of Cuba and the United States.

This ideologically manipulated history is well-known. According to it, Cuba was only truly independent starting in January 1959.

However, the assertion is not completely true: it ignores the “Brezhnev Amendment,” which for more than thirty years as well (until the disappearance of the USSR), held Cuba under the aegis of the Soviet Union, followed by the “Chavez Amendment” which extends to this day.

During the first, Cuba was not independent, as its actions and policy responded, first, to Soviet interests, including an article of submission in the 1976 Constitution [from 1959-1976 the Castro regime governed without any constitution at all]; nor was it independent during the “Chavez Amendment,” as it responded to the interests of “Chavism,” a mixture of populism and anti-Americanism.

In other words, if earlier, according to government propaganda, Cuba was not independent, then after, it has not been either. It’s as simple as that.

26 May 2013