Adopting Other Terminology / Fernando Damaso

Fernando Damaso, 7 March 2015 — According to official pronouncements, conversations between the governments of Cuba and the United States are proceeding in a serious, respectful and substantive way regardless of the fact that each party is defending its own point of view.

But what is striking is the way representatives of the official media continue to use the worn-out terminology of the Cold War by repeatedly parroting terms like anti-imperialist, anti-annexationist, anti-colonialist and other anti’s from the voluminous repertory crafted by the international left.

While it is true that they do not have the freedom to alter their rhetoric and must wait for orders from above before doing so, it seems that should have already happened. It seems it pains them to be do something positive and forego using such inappropriate language.

These “sweet words” don’t fool anybody; they have fallen out of favor. Besides, they were never used in reference to Soviet imperialism, which oppressed Eastern Bloc countries by imposing its political system on them, nor to the so-called “fraternal republics” which made up the Soviet Union. Such sweet words have always carried deep ideological overtones and have only ever been used in reference to the “enemy” or, in other words, to western governments.

The current language should be one that focuses on peace, respect for diversity, dialogue, cooperation, coexistence, development, well-being and other related themes. The old, obsolete language should be cast aside if we aspire to live together in a civilized way.

[Our apologies to the translator of this post for the delay in posting it here; it got “lost” somehow, until an eagle-eyed reader noticed that it was on Fernando’s blog but not on Translating Cuba.]