We Are Not Continuity, We Are Rupture / Miriam Celaya

Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel, Ramón Machado Ventura and Ramiro Valdés (photo: rtve.es)

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, West Palm Beach, United States, 2 August 2019 —  On July 30th, the digital edition of the Granma newspaper published yet another of the usual hodge-podge stew texts we are so used to, in which the term “mercenary” (through Wikipedia), the crisis of Venezuela, the Helms-Burton Act in its Third Chapter, the recent report on Venezuela prepared by Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which the autocrats of the Palace of the Revolution have found so hard to swallow, and – finally as a main course – the “stateless” in Cuba who, “by vocation” and even for chump change (…) lend themselves to any shady deal against the country that saw them draw their first breath”.

This time the official regurgitation would be perfectly inconsequential, except for its timing, in the midst of a true offensive against independent journalism and autonomous groups of the civil society.  Also, by the prosaic manipulation of facts and terms with the sole purpose of conditioning public opinion in favor of an eventual raid against all public action that they deem adverse, it is punctually directed against the “traitors, stateless and ill-born mercenaries”, who have had the inexcusable audacity of exercising their legitimate right to request the presence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and its observers in Cuba, as well as the preparation of the corresponding report.

In this regard, and putting aside the fact that Cuba is a UN member country, the Castro scribe says “that these reports come with the script and writing of the US Department of State and it is worth noting that all these infamies have crashed against Cuba in the presence of truth (…) and with the dignity of a whole people that knows how to identify, fight and defeat its enemies, be they internal or external ”.

Because the Plaza de la Revolución has an instrumental and bipolar vision of the international organizations to which it belongs: they are legitimate if they condemn the Embargo (“blockade”, as they call it), but they are spurious if they denounce the excesses of Castro’s power or that of their allies.

But not because it’s overused is the official strategy less perverse, especially when all the setbacks suffered in recent times by the cream of the crop of regional progress -today almost folded into Havana’s Palace of the Revolution and the Palace of Miraflores in Caracas -is added “the betrayal” of someone who was assumed until the day before, and not without foundation, to be a reliable ally, tolerant of the dictatorial excesses of her leftist friends, socialist Michelle Bachelet. Good times are definitely not here for the Castro regime’s “progressive” millionaires, and they prepare to defend their power, their lair and their privileges with equal intensity.

Thus, although neither the international organizations attached to the United Nations nor Bachelet herself in her years as President of Chile have ever given due attention to the demands of Cuban civil society and to allegations of human rights violations in Cuba, the dictatorship prefers to shield itself inward, just in case. And since the elders of the Historical Generation are running out of health or biological time to continue to face displeasure or to fight “battles” — even less so now that the adversaries are the current generations of Cubans who have taken the pleasure of feeling like citizens and not plantation slaves — their beneficiaries and scribes have the sacred mission of stepping out.

They are, paraphrasing Granma’s servile scribe, the true mercenaries of vocation (himself included). Or perhaps it is more accurate to call them insignificant low-cost mercenary slaves. It is they who function as verbal minions against Cubans who, for dignity and for their love of Cuba, have the courage to rebel against the dictatorship, it is they who bark “emboldened” because they feel protected by the landlord, they are also the ones that live on crumbs and “sell their soul to the devil” for travel and small perks and those who “lend themselves to the most vile actions against their fellow citizens.” If it were not for the poison he extracts and the danger that he contains, we almost would have to thank the reporter for the accuracy of the self-portrait.

And it is not that too many expectations need to be made about an eventual (and practically unlikely) incursion of the UN High Commissioner in Cuba, starting with one insurmountable obstacle, the dictatorship would not allow it. But the initiative is worthwhile, not only because Bachelet’s functions include attending to the claims of those who have been systematically violating basic human rights for 60 years, but because every civic front in Cuba undermines the foundations of totalitarianism, and sets precedents for the civic rebirth of Cubans.

The Scribe lord, mercenary slave of the Granma libel, does not understand, and neither do his masters understand that those of us who signed that letter that so much frightens them are not traitors or stateless, but quite the opposite. They do not understand, in their infinite stubbornness, that more and more Cubans than they can imagine are not “we are continuity”.  We are rupture.

Translated by Norma Whiting