In the end, the public emergence of Colonel Alejandro Castro Espín, the pretender to the throne, was swift. First he was seen at the foot of the aircraft steps receiving the three remaining spies on December 17. Now he is seen accompanying Daddy at the great meeting and, most importantly, presenting himself—in some form—to President Obama, when the person who should have been there was Vice-President Diaz Canel, who was supposed to assume the presidency in 2018, at the end of Raul Castro’s second term, and the sixtieth year of his family’s.
We had predicted by elementary deduction the simple theorem of Castro shamelessness: don’t trust puppets. All that remained was how and when they would publicly unveil the prince.
“Another Castro ahoy!” warns the boy from the crow’s nest, but in this case the ship ran aground on the coast six decades ago and we found no suitable maneuver for the development and freedom of the Cuban people.
Alejandro Casro Espín seems to me to most resemble the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: they share a similar military and espionage trajectory.
Cuban life seems like a TV melodrama that continues episode after episode, season after season, never reaching a final resolution.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
April 12, 2015
Border Prison Unit, Havana
