The Castros’ Late Halloween / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

Left: Raul Castro. Right: The news announcer on Cuban television appearing in uniform as if the country was at war.
Left: Raul Castro. Right: The news announcer on Cuban television appearing in uniform as if the country was at war.

Editor’s note: This article was written before Fidel Castro’s death.

cubanet square logoCubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 18 November 2016 — Just hours after the finish of the November 8th US elections, the Palace of the Revolution in Havana sounded its trumpets of war, summoning another of its ridiculous bombastically named strategic-militaristic exercises: 2016 Bastion Exercise and Defense Days, that will take place from November 16th to the 20th.

They have named this pantomime The War of All People, and the scarce resources of the ruined hacienda will be squandered in its undertaking, which demonstrates how cohesive the Cuban people are with their Revolution, how united we are, and how capable of deploying our combative nature to confront “any of the enemy’s maneuver” with our powerful weaponry.

It’s like a Halloween with costumes and commotion, but without candy. Army officers wear their jackets with epaulettes and pin all the ritual insignias and logos on them, resigned to the nuisance of being briefly away from the comfort of their well-served tables and air conditioned offices.

The starving little soldiers of the Compulsory Military Service are mobilized for days, loaded with ammunition and old weapons to play the eternal warrior drill against an imaginary enemy, while the forever fools dress up as militiamen, courageously wielding their wooden stick rifles. Pretend warriors and weapons for a make-believe war. Cuban military military maneuvers are probably the current laughing stock on a planetary scale.

In the unthinkable event that ‘the enemy’ decided to really attack us, no one in their right mind can ignore that the war would be much shorter than this ridiculous Castro simulacrum, and that it would inexorably result in a crushing defeat for Cuba’s troops. One would have to be an idiot to even imagine a different result. Pitiable.

So then, what would be the point of waging a war that was lost from the start? What’s up with all the pathetic display of conflagration of the Senile Olive Green Club? What’s the point of the speeches and typical Cold War retrograde gestures in the XXI Century?

The attitude of the Castro regime is all the more untimely if we consider that, during the past four years, Cuba has been the stage for peace dialogues between the Colombian Government and the FARC narco-guerrillas aimed at reaching a consensus agreement after half a century of civil war in this South American country, a goal apparently reached just a few days ago.

Let us also remember that the CELAC Summit, held at fill blast in Havana, where all of Latin America, with a drum roll, was declared a Zone of Peace.

But in reality, the apparent bipolar disorder of the olive green gerontocracy, of simultaneously brandishing attitudes so opposed – calling others to peace and calling Cubans to war – especially within two years of the restoration of relations between the governments of Cuba and the United States, reveals several substantive issues.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that the masters of the Palace of the Revolution do not have the least idea of how or where to lead the nation, and that their only interest is to keep clinging to power in perpetuity – reasons that force them to improvise on the fly, lurching as castaways in a colossal storm – the truth is that the government desperately needs to conserve its beloved enemy, even when the enemy keeps ignoring such a negligible adversary.

The official hysteria that is being reflected on the aggressiveness of the speeches, in the return to extreme nationalism, in the invocation of the old ghosts of “ideological divisionism” and in the use of the Government press monopoly as a barricade for slogans and evocations of the past, shows how much damage the rapprochement and distention policy begun by the outgoing U.S. President, Barack Obama, is inflicting on the regime.

Although, in principle, Obama appeared as a beacon of hope in the bleak horizon forecast for the future of the Castro regime, it has turned out to be, in short, a true nightmare for the General-President and his clan. Castro II has failed to access the desired capital, and what is worse, he has lost his essential sustenance of his ideological control on society.

Indeed it so happens that more than half a century encrypting the backbone of the government’s policy about the belligerence and hostility of the external enemy that threatens us has turned confrontation into the system’s only strategy. In fact, this sustained conflict is so essential to the Castro policy, both outside and inside the country, that if the U.S. regime did not exist, they would have had to invent it.

But, in these outdated belligerent infatuations, other elements are being reflected, such as the alienation of the system, plunged in an irreversible crisis and the disconnection between the government and the current reality, with the world political context, and with the interest of the (un)governed. Obviously, the General-President and his troupe do not understand that in Cuba nobody believes in the old fable of Little Red Riding Hood-Peoples besieged by the Wolf-Imperialism which can only be protected and saved by the Woodsman-State Government Communist Party.

Today’s Cuba is different, as are Cubans. Over 50 years have not passed in vain since a young and energetic Fidel Castro convened the first military mass mobilization because of the inauguration of an American President, and 36 years since “The War of All Peoples” was conceived as a strategy to militarily mobilize millions of Cubans every US election year. The political benefits of fueling a conflict with the Northern giant were substantial, but the fable of the Tropical Riding Hood has worn thin and no longer has an effect.

Cubans today know that Castro’s hostility towards the U.S. is a sign of weakness, not of strength. Neither do they believe in the revolutionary epic nor are they committed to a regime perceived as the biggest obstacle to freedom, prosperity and personal fulfillment. Nobody seems interested in imaginary battles, in particular if they are waged against the nation that has become destiny and home to millions of our countrymen.

Currently, Cubans who are not leaving for “enemy” territory to follow their dreams are setting their best hopes on the day when the bastions of the Castro regime fall, and the political strategy of the future government, elected by them, is Prosperity for All the People. They simply want to live in peace, without misleading fables and without wars.

Translated by Norma Whiting