Author: Jeovany Jimenez Vega

That is why when this new Tania, whom nobody has appointed – although, to be fair, she does not declare herself an “official” interlocutor either- now addresses Díaz-Canel calling him Mr. President in a tone too honeyed for the Creole palate, and almost begs him for that reconciliation that the blunt Castroism has always denied us, alarm bells go off within the Cuban opposition, not by chance more radicalized. As almost always, it is usually that group which is most vehemently opposed to the upstart proponents of dialog, not because of wounded pride or gratuitous rancor, but because a greater maturity has given it the healthy habit of objectively analyzing situations without sweetening them, and holding on to the protection of the confrontational logic to which the reiterated waves of repression have forced it.

This opposition with its feet on the ground does not rule out the possibility that the regime has planned to set up a controlled stage on which to play out its own theater and thus evade real questions. Hence, when Tania arrives hand in hand with Eliecer Avila in this hushed kind of way, it cannot help sounding to many people like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Let’s remember that Eliecer, the “boy from the ICU”,( University of Information Sciences) rose to stardom with a famous video that went viral in a Cuba without Internet, which gave him unusual visibility, where he questioned several government policies before Ricardo Alarcón. That video, which was not recorded surreptitiously but with several professional cameras on sturdy tripods – something clear from the correct framing, the stable posture and several shooting angles- somehow mysteriously circumvented the infallible censorship of the political police, and the rest is known history.

Here I am saying nothing and proving nothing, but perhaps that inexplicable event still reverberates in our imaginary subconscious and emerges now, just when we get, by way of Eliecer, this “reformed” Bruguera, so candid, hinting at rapprochements with a counterpart which has never been inclined to abandon its intransigence, and that, on the contrary, continues to break records of house arrests, detentions, acts of repudiation,  and vandalistic raids. This is happening at a time when it is essential to have an overall perception in order to avoid costly distractions. Let us not expect obvious evidence; there never was and there never will be under Castroism, which is why all reading here must be done between the lines, from a panoramic perspective that guides us in the midst of a complex context always subordinated, don’t forget, to the enormous work of penetration of the Cuban opposition., maintained for more than half a century, by the State Security.

My introduction to this post is not gratuitous. Let us keep hold of the certainty that the Cuban State has always maintained a mafia-like approach in its relationship with its people: this bunch of no-goods commit crimes, break their own laws, steal with full hands and profits from our misery, extorts us inside and outside Cuba when we pay unjustified and expensive extensions, when it monopolizes exorbitant prices in its network of commerce; it makes use of force if you complain to it, it abuses its power when it makes generalisations about its lousy management, it traffics in influences in its public functions and restricts the division of powers when it sets itself up as judge and jury; it blackmails millions of Cubans when it denies them entry or exit to their own country because of political biases, in short, pure Mafia in the strictest sense of the term, and it is with these people that the dialogue partners hope to reach agreements.

If the prediction comes true and the regime agrees to “dialogue”, the most consistent opponents will never be invited to its assembly: Antonio Rodiles on behalf of Estado de Sats, José Daniel Ferrer on behalf of UNPACU, Coco Fariñas speaking for FANTU, Berta Soler for the Ladies in White, and the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, will be among those not invited. Nor would the most vocal voices of the Cuban Independent Press be invited, from Yoani Sanchez to the dozens of activists inside and outside Cuba who would deserve to be there for having exercised, against all the odds, their legitimate right to disseminate truthful information, and have been the nail in the regime’s shoe.

No, this would not be the opposition they would invite to “dialogue”. Castroism has a different plan that would not expose it to real dangers: it would set it up according to its prepared pre-established script, and that is why it plants and equips its agents with credible profiles, to keep the door ajar and for everything to flow smoothly when the time comes. At that table, they would play a rigged deck, Castroism would bet on its cards and would invite only lightweight interlocutors and the occasional small-time voice so it could impose its usual monologue.  And it wouldn’t matter that at that precise minute its repressive apparatus would be continuing in the streets doing its business. Another dirty trick, comparable to the tomfoolery when Fidel Castro used to call “cordial” meetings in Havana to “normalize” his relationship with the emigrants.

What would happen next is obvious. the diplomatic and publicity offensive would follow, where he would employ his media figureheads, collect outstanding favors, pressure his extensive network of international accomplices,,squeeze the balls of his blackmail victims, and activate his agents in the US and Europe to pave the way for reopening the door to this Biden who until yesterday was trying to reactivate Obama’s freebies. That would be the ultimate purpose of the trap. With all this, Castroism would try to calm tempers while silencing the most critical voices and demoralizing the most radical opposition, but above all, it would gain precious time in the midst of this chaos generated by its absolute lack of cash flow and its pathetic political isolation, sinking every day deeper into an irreversible crisis that is leading it to a potential social upheaval.

A completely different scenario, however much it may resemble it, would result from an authentic step-by-step negotiation, in the style proposed in ADN. In that case, clearly, each step forward would be dependent on previous concrete measures, leading to real and progressive openings -you give me, I give you; you don’t give me, I don’t give you- that is to say, verifiable changes would be demanded a priori, which is, in essence, exactly what the opposition is demanding. This could lead to the irreversible implementation of democratic mechanisms that would lead to a negotiated exit from the abyss. A utopia? Definitely yes, in light of current events, but also a door that we should leave ajar to avoid bloodshed in the future.  It would be a supreme folly to refuse a negotiated solution that would lead us to real freedom and full democracy.

The danger exposed here does not come from the kind of negotiation I have outlined above, no. Processes of this type have previously resulted in the liberation of peoples in South Africa and India and were even decisive in the Spanish transition, among other happy examples, but the prevailing conditions in Cuba at the moment are very different: in our case the opposition has not managed to cohere and show enough muscle to put pressure on its counterpart. As long as this essential condition is not met, such a negotiation will be impossible in the Cuban context, and the dictatorship knows it, that is why it is now preparing a new trap to offer us, once again, its cup of hemlock.

Listen to me, Cubans! If Castroism succeeds in pulling off such a trick, it would be able to reposition itself on its throne and then we could live under terror for another 62,000 years. From these facts an undeniable evidence emerges: whoever accepts a “dialogue” under such rules of the despotic government of Diaz-Canel would actually negotiate with the hidden power behind him, would be an accomplice and participant in the dictatorship’s game and would be guilty of an unforgivable act of betrayal of the homeland. At that moment, Corleone’s premonition would be valid: if that day comes, we will see who participates in the deception and we will know who is the traitor.

Translated by GH

the terms of the current Constitution, which they promulgated in a fit of demagogy – and with their now customary cynicism they included in the objectives of their nonsense “… to protect the interests of citizens… to ensure access to telecommunications services… and the rights to equality, privacy and secrecy in communications…”, as if millions of Cubans, massive victims of the digital blackout perpetrated on 11 July, were not already long accustomed to the systematic censorship by ETECSA’s servants, and had not witnessed the innumerable pressures in the weeks following ’11J’ – threats of dismissal from work or study centres for repeating information about the protests or showing support in any way for the victims of the repression – throughout the entire country.

But even if I am not willing to abide by it, to begin with I propose that this decree be applied to the President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez himself – and this time I omit his second forename to avoid confusion – since we can all remember how this gentleman made an irresponsible call to violence through his social media account last July 11; a call that the Cuban people will never forget, inciting his communist hordes to repress my people -something he did not do from a park bench, but on national television and social networks, from his position as President of the nation!

We all clearly heard this scoundrel shout “…the combat order is given…!” after which, together with the usual repressive hordes of the MININT, the army’s elite pack – whose only mission, presumably, should be to defend the people from external aggressions and never to turn against them – was unleashed to crush the cry in the only way it knows how: with beatings, imprisonment and summary trials without any right to defense.

No one would dispute the direct responsibility that Díaz-Canel had in that massacre, as well as the media clowns who have incited hatred from those same social networks that today they want to constrain for years, and who also comprehensively defamed the defenseless opposition, and threatened them in a thousand ways – read the Humberticos  and the Serranos, the Randy and the Froilanes, followed by a shameful etc.

That is why I also propose to apply Decree-Law 35 to them, because all of them, with a greater or lesser degree of responsibility, have thousands of times, with millions of Cubans as witnesses, carried out acts clearly catalogued in the three subcategories of this Royal Decree as crimes of a high level of danger: repeating false news in the media – every time that they deliberately lied to our people; blocking millions of accounts in social networks – when this miserable wimp perpetrated the cowardly digital blackout of July 11; and spreading harmful information with total bad faith – lies intended to delegitimize the opposition by presenting them as mercenaries at the service of a foreign power.

Of course, after July 11, you could hardly leave out from the decree the pearl that represents the call to insubordination – section (category 3, subcategory 3) – as a “…disturbance of public order…” and a “…promotion of social indiscipline…” catalogued with a very high level of danger, and for which the regime will of course have reserved its most refined resolutions of condemnation.

But as self-defense is the most basic of rights, millions of false profiles will be opened from where my people will go into that kind of digital hiding that many will opt for. That is why from the exact minute this post is published, I wish to make public that Jeovany Jimenez Vega – el Chino, to my friends – will never hide behind a false profile: I never did it and am very proud to say I certainly will not do it after 11 July.

Anyone who does not want to know what I think is perfectly entitled not to visit my wall and to ignore my tweets, but I will always show and defend my love for my homeland, in accordance with principles written in stone, that I did not learn in any party manual, but are influenced by the sacred thoughts of José Julián Martí – which will never be questioned.

My freedom of thought and opinion is an inalienable right that I will never entrust to the mercies of any despot! If from now on my words are not more incisive or aggressive against those who subjugate my people, it will only be because of my lack of talent, or because I cannot find the exact words to portray all their crudeness and the deepest contempt they arouse among my people.

The cowards who still oppress my beloved Cuba are warned: do not expect any indulgence from me, and I will not expect any from you! If you do not want to be called dictators and murderers, you will have to stop acting like them;  this is a war to the death between my people who fight for freedom and the tyrants who destroy it, and I am willing to leave my soul, my skin and my life outside or inside Cuba in that war.

I say this to make things clear.

Translated by GH

But as if that were not enough, Raúl Castro closes this grey year with a flourish and launches a final shit decision to fuck up the lives of 95% of Cubans. Because that is the only way a pensioner could look at it, even if his monthly chequebook is quintupled, if he still sees his electricity tariff quintupled and the cost of every food item in his shopping basket increased in the same proportion. It is pointless  throwing into circulation millions of pesos if they are going to be devalued on the spot: without properly addressing demand we will have our hands full of fake currency, volatile paper, and we will be faced with a useless attempt to weather the storm without really solving any problem.

Hopelessly doomed to failure, and coming at the wrong time, a policy that does not even mention measures to emancipate SME activity, to stimulate and protect small entrepreneurs or agricultural producers, or the product of their work, or to provide them with a legal personality that would make it possible to legalise orderly trade and provide for a universal, egalitarian, fair and sensible system of taxation; then, and only then, would another cock crow.

This pig´s breakfast calls for another comment, for being an arbitrary immorality, the icing on the cake for Cuban emigrants: the obligation to pay to Havana 4% of the gross monthly income earned from their work abroad while they hold the status of permanent resident in Cuba, even if they do not permanently reside in the country. The measure, which has been contemplated in Law 113 since 2013 (an ugly tale) would come into force from January 2021, a decision that has been received with open hostility by our emigrants wherever they live and their families in Cuba.

This unfair imposition is an armed robbery and will be very difficult to deal with for those who do not physically reside on the island, but who visit their family for a few days each year and are permanent residents only in the migratory sense – which is, of course, pure semantics – and who therefore have not made effective use of public services on the island for years, or decades, but only from time to time, Cubans who also work their asses off abroad under different circumstances to support their families inside and outside Cuba, but who above all – and this is the big issue – already pay taxes in those respective countries, where of course they pay social security and make effective use of public services. This double taxation now demanded by the regime in Havana is unacceptable, and will never be logical for an emigrant who must also pay double taxes to the same shameful regime that forced him to leave his homeland.

There are of course other, less radical measures that could be considered to cover the expenses of Cubans who do not wish to change their migratory status because they eventually visit the island while living abroad – there is travel insurance, possible differentiated rates during their visits for certain services, to cite just a few examples – but something very different presupposes putting one’s hand in the pockets of emigrants every month, because in this case we are dealing with an excessive abuse, a real armed robbery, and evidence of the bad faith of those who are once again blackmailing with the idea of prohibiting emigrants from entering their own country – for such will be the punishment of the insubordinate – and taking millions of families in Cuba hostage as a bargaining chip in this dirty game of late-Castro Stalinism.

Although calling this blunder an unauthorised decision would only make sense in the light of the Creole joke, because evidently we are facing a package of measures as draconian as they are well premeditated. Something so comprehensive and complex to implement can only be the deliberate perversity of some opportunistic son of a bitch. Something like this implies an intentional decision to fuck up our lives, and is the tacit answer to those who still do not understand why Raúl Castro left unratified those Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that in a fit of puerile boasting and waste of consummate demagogy was signed by Fidel Castro in February 2012.

Will these measures solve the Cuban problem? Raúl Castro’s secretary himself, his wimp Díaz-Canel, made it clear to all of us that they will not. Will they alleviate the shortages on our table, or will they fill some basic basket of goods? Even pre-school kids in Cuba know the answer to that. Or will they only aggravate the public debt and further jeopardise the already astronomical budget deficit? This is something that even the stupidest person  understands. Isn’t increasing wages without an increase in production and without a proportional increase in supply the same as filling a bottomless bucket and will only devalue the current currency even more brutally? This is something that even the least gifted student learns from his first class in any economics faculty, even at the University of Havana.

It is obvious that the most stubbornly uncooperative Castroism has opted to continue ploughing the sea. The clique of opportunist henchmen in power know perfectly well that this is just another mental straw, and they know this because they also know very well what could be done to get the country out of the quagmire. Of course they know it perfectly well, but the alternative of giving up their class privileges and giving the people back their real rights would be to the detriment of their selfish and bourgeois way of looking at things.

Although nothing more could be expected of Castroism than for it to persist to the end in its anthological parasitism. But these delusions may be its final death rattle, the definitive confession of an agonising regime that knows it has failed, that recognises it is incapable of generating wealth and therefore goes out to steal it from the world. In the event, they only have in mind Louis XV’s maxim which the octogenarian minor military man seems to repeat when he throws everything into the shit while thinking – if he still thinks – after me the deluge!… and the Cubans can go fuck themselves!

Translated by GH

The leadership of Castroism needed someone sufficiently insipid and lacking in character, someone whose lack of magnetism would guarantee an absolute lack of leadership and whose genuflection – which we have witnessed during the “government” farce of the last five years – would ensure smooth sailing through the calm waters of obedience without casting any shadow whatsoever; The rascals in Havana’s La Plaza de la Revolucion knew full well that such a wimp would never pose any danger to their clan which, behind the scenes, has continued to pull the strings of royal power without a fuss.

And so, to conclude, let it be said in plain language: Díaz-Canel was re-elected because he has governed very well so far! Such a statement should come as a surprise to no one because, as always, anyone who wants to find the right answer only has to ask the right question: for whose benefit was Díaz-Canel supposed to govern, what was and still is his real mission, was he elected and then re-elected “by the pointing of a finger” to promote, foster and stimulate the prosperity of the Cuban people? In the face of such rhetorical questions, superfluous answers are superfluous: it is enough to go out into the street and look at the harshest face of our poverty to conclude, after such obvious evidence, the clearest and simplest of truths: this puppet was brought on stage to “govern” for and on behalf of the Castro regime, never for the benefit of the Cuban people, and so far he has done it very well!

And consider if that is what has happened: there are our more than a thousand political prisoners of July 11 as clear proof of their servility to the chosen way forward, the most abject continuity; there is the most bestial repression against our authentic civil society; there is the most painful and massive exodus in Cuban history, the result of the post July 11 repression, which long ago made the total number of emigrants from Camarioca in 1965, the Mariel exodus in 1980 and the one that followed the rafter crisis of 1994 pale in comparison; there is your “government” at the bottom of all world standards of freedom of the press, its enviable indexes of repression and of common and political prisoners per number of inhabitants; there are still the laws in force that under their disastrous management have turned the Cuban legal system into one of the most repressive in the world and further criminalised our civil rights, including laws that continue to restrict the right of emigrants to return and invest with due guarantees in their own country, that continue to stifle the national economy in every possible way – the true and only origin of our poverty – while the cynical mourners continue to blame it on the external embargo. In the meantime, the money has continued to flow unceasingly into the dictatorship’s coffers thanks to the effective management of our current shit in office.

This gentleman will go down in history for all this; his most profound legacy will be to have made lemonade the basis of everything, for having played the saddest role in this circus: that of the clown who, from above or from below, nobody respects, condemned as he is to be remembered forever, renamed in all the ends of the earth – and for this, people, you do have to be laughing like Díaz-Canel

Translated by GH

No, Cubans! with this scum there is no room for half-measures: abstaining completely and not making any appearance in the murky tent of their circus is the only thing that can do them any harm under such circumstances; this would be the only way to hinder, in no small measure, their cynical set-up. You must know that as soon as you enter a polling station and sign the register you will have voted “yes” in the dictatorship’s statistics and therefore don’t attend this farce, full stop. They will inflate the figures anyway, yes, most certainly. Would they dare to forge the signature of an absentee voter, perhaps, they are unscrupulous enough for that and more, especially when they feel so unpunishable. But at least let’s not make it easy for them: faced with hundreds or thousands of empty polling stations, they would have to polish it and it would undoubtedly be exponentially more complicated for them to set up their own mess.

Even in the twenty or so countries where voting is compulsory by law, there will always be those who prefer to pay the fine in exchange for their abstention from punishment, but never forget, ’Liborio’, that in Cuba voting is still a right and not an obligation and therefore it is up to no one else but yourself to exercise it; after all, you have little to lose.

That is precisely where the main battle of the dictatorship is fought, where it wins or loses, within ourselves, and by this I am not saying that it is easy, nor as simple as it seems at first glance. Let’s leave naivety for the motivational catharsis of Facebook, for those who push from the outside without having a fucking idea of what it is like to live in the heat of the moment under a totalitarian state. No, no one says it’s easy, but that essential first step, I hope you understand, is the only really essential and necessary one: once you have made the light, believe me, there will be no turning back: you will see how your tormentor grows smaller and smaller, and not because he is less perfidious or less evil, no, but because it will be you who will have grown up and risen with dignity, no longer contemplating him on your knees.

But that miracle does not fall from the sky my friend, that inner rebirth is only achieved after a relentless search for truth and constant inner growth, after a titanic battle waged within yourself, and when the hatching has taken place, once the chakras are aligned with your authentic dignity you will feel emancipated, you will look at fear in its right emotional dimension but without its irrational paralysing capacity and that, at last, will distance you from the lies that have ruled your life.

When you have the courage to defy the informer who dares to pressure you to vote for something you don’t believe in; when you have the personal courage not to give in to the fear that four sons of bitches have planted in your bones; when it becomes morally unacceptable for you to wave flags in a parade and then mumble your grudges alone, or attend a meeting where you know that a delegate will talk shit and then vote on your behalf in parliaments that decide nothing; when it stops being acceptable for you to applaud in the assembly with the same hands that then steal in your company and you get tired of begging for handouts, when that dormant dignity awakens in you and you cry out “enough, Cuba has endured enough humiliation! and you make your family, your friend, your neighbour understand it, on that day and not before, Liborio, we will leave the parades and the dictatorship’s schools empty and we will be screwing the oligarchs who have traded so much with our poverty. That historic rant will be a new July 11 (July 11, 2021, day of protest marches in Cuba) — and hopefully the definitive one — that the Cuban people will explode in the face of Castroism.

Translated by GH

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On a superficial view of the matter, there are the immediate demands from Luis Manuel — that is, the ending of the hostility towards the activists and the return of their works – but this would be too partial a view which leaves some important factors out of the equation. For the government it could be convenient in tactical terms to accede to Luis Manuel´s demands; It would mean little to return his works to the activist in the face of the connotation that such a “compassionate” gesture would have for a Biden who, after sending strong signals, has now hit the brakes and is observing in standby — something that has Castroism on tenterhooks, even when it claims the contrary — because it would be prudent to resolve the case if only not to stoke the fire.

We should bear in mind that before this Havana had to deal with more serious crises, like Coco Fariña´s  hunger strike, following the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo in 2010; then the international press focussed its attention on the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) resulting in the demand for the freeing of the Black Spring protesters. That crisis had to be managed during Obama´s first term, under pressure of a European Union Common Position which closed off Havana from Europe.

In contrast, today, the government of Díaz-Canel is not being watched by international media,  and although it is sinking in an irreversible economic crisis, it is not under attack from the political point of view — in fact, since six months ago, the Cuban government is a member of the UN Council of Human Rights!¡¡??!

Today the world is not showing much interest in Cuba; other topics, such as the conflict in Palestine, the Belorusian situation, the increasing tension between the US and Russia and the trade war with China, as well as the the crisis in Colombia, are drawing its attention, and it is just in this inattention toward things Cuban where we find one of the keys to the current wave of repression by the Cuban dictatorship.

We can add another most important factor to this evidence:  the dictatorship´s continuing potential for repression. If we take objectivity as the starting point for our argument, free from catharsis and deceitful triumphalism which often portend imminent  breakdowns, we can note that up to this moment the dictatorship has not even had to arrange extreme measures — grand displays of special troops and the use of riot squads or regular military units — to control brief bouts of insubordination.

We cannot forget that this huge repressive apparatus which eagerly waits to spring into action — ignorant cannon-fodder, indoctrinated and blind — is the same one that advised and participated in the direct carrying out of violent repressive escalation during the grave crisis which, in 2017, shed blood on the streets in Venezuela: which served as a great laboratory and rehearsal where Castroism could try out its tactics of repression and extreme control, and, don´t be in any doubt, took careful note of it.

When we put these scenarios into perspective, we realise that, in spite of the unsustainable economic situation, today´s Cuba is still far-removed from the premonitory climate for a such a social explosion, which is hard for somebody to understand who takes a bird´s eye view of our reality and who has not lived beneath a Stalinist totalitarianism. The Castroism has had plenty of time to crystallise, and has been very aggressive and systematic in its indoctrination which now appear absorbed into the very genes of entire generations of Cubans, so that, until now, it has been enough for the murderous thugs to activate these conditioned reflexes by appealing with relative success to their supreme resource: the learned helplessness, that philosopher’s stone of every absolutist regime, which has become the best weapon of Castroism.

That is why it is not against Luis Manuel, nor against the activists of Obispo Street, that this battle is being waged today, but against 14 million Cubans. The dictatorship knows that this war is won or lost in the collective psyche, that is why it is towards that unfathomable and total fear that this pristine message is directed: don’t even try, it will never be worth the trouble of opposing it, you can do nothing against Big Brother. Dilute yourself in your condition of flag-waver in the shapeless mass, settle for that, your place and your destiny, where you will be the standard raised in my parades, my basic medium, that malleable statistic always useless when you think, the impersonal rag that I undo and reuse, just insect, protoplasm, gob that I spit out when I want. Do not claim anything, demand nothing, with you I will always do whatever the hell I feel like, and anyone stupid enough to oppose it will be made to pay dearly.

This aberrant and despotic handling of the Alcántara case in full view of all should be understood as a fully-fledged declaration of principles, with which the dictatorship lectures us and pursues humiliating us, delighted in its arrogance. It seems orgasmic to Castroism to perceive how its poison paralyzes us and it pleases it to see us curled up in our comfort zone while it tears another Cuban to pieces like one more line is drawn on the tiger’s skin. This impudent kidnapping is an open challenge to civil society and a challenge to the opposition to test how far they dare at this precise moment when social networks are just imposing their dynamics despite the low penetration of the Internet and systematic censorship, granting greater immediacy and visibility to increasingly numerous and daring complaints and citizen initiatives, something the regime warned against with great nervousness.

But it has never been the same to summon a demon as to see it arrive. Although it is true that the regime maintains police fences, that it has kept more than one activist in house arrest and carried out numerous arrests, I do not believe that it has dealt with all of them from time to time to the point of rendering inoperative that network which, to a greater or lesser extent, has spoken out publicly before and after November 27, and yet now, almost a month after the San Isidro leader was detained and in the midst of an insulting official silence, he has not achieved a sufficiently energetic projection that favours the release of Luis Manuel and the rest of the imprisoned activists.

Let us imagine with what orgiastic joy the executioners will at this precise moment look into the eyes of what remains of Luis Manuel after this torture, and ask him where are all those brothers of the cause who protested against Decree 349, or the group of rebels in front of the Ministry of Culture that day in November. Will the activists awaiting trial along with common prisoners since the Obispo protest not say anything either? How is it that the people of San Isidro, of Havana and of Cuba as a whole are not constantly asking the authorities wherever they are, or the medical management of “Calixto García”, or directly to the Minister of Public Health why that young man who fights for the usurped rights of all Cubans is kept imprisoned in a Havana hospital?

From all this it can be concluded that Cuba’s harsh fight for freedom cannot be undertaken with the passionate intensity of a sprint ending up in exhaustion after the first few meters, but rather as a long-distance race conceived in strategic terms, which can only be won with firmness and perseverance; it is a war that only the chosen ones can fight, those really willing to risk their skin and persevere til the end.

Once this wave of repression has passed, we will be taught how useless it will always be to try to build idyllic bridges between a subjugated people and their tyrants, we will have verified how little catharsis is worth and that dictatorships do not lie down with songs, but we will also be more mature and it will be more obvious to us that freedom will come only when this people vibrates in resonance with its dignity, assumes risks to conquer its rights and dares to jump into the void. When we have finally accepted that as the only way in which a people shakes off tyrants, only on that day – not one hour more, not one hour less – will we be able to sink the dagger in a definitive thrust to the heart of the beast. It will be just that day when you lose your fear, you Cubans who are listening to me, when the dictatorship collapses.

Translated by GH

Instead of that, they will inevitably be controlled by the stupid Castroist oligarchy which, you mention, squandered, robbed and diverted to fatten up their secret accounts in tax havens, and ultimately, only used to strengthen even further its lethal repressive apparatus.

That is written in the Bible, Sandalio, and to close your eyes to something so logical and predictable makes one doubt a person’s intelligence and good faith, and makes me suspect their complicity with the regime, above all after the ample historic evidence displayed last July 11^th (a day of mass protests in Cuba).

What more do people like you need, Sandalio,  than a July 11^th, to make you understand that the hatred and grudge are not fed by my people but by those who beat them during those historic days??!! How many more people detained or dead do you need before you understand that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Castroism and my people, and that it is not the fault of the Cubans, whether inside or outside Cuba? When will you understand that Castroism always passed, passes, and will pass through the triumphal arch,  however many bridges of love are laid out to it because it is not interested in any authentic dialogue, which it will always be opposed to, by nature and essence.

Who were the miserable people, Sandalio, who hit and subjected to summary justice hundreds of semi-adolescents just for protesting, not giving a shit about their own current constitution, ratifying it as a dead letter.  None of this has anything at all to do with the embargo, and it would continue to happen, and worse things too, if this very day all the sanctions were cancelled and the regime felt more secure and legitimate because of it. To doubt that offends the intelligence and sensitivity of millions of Cubans, Sandalio!

Nothing suggests that changing this strategy, maintained “without obtaining any results in decades”, will stop the dictatorship easily adapting to new circumstances and, in the face of every new proposal, bringing up new excuses and never granting us the rights we claim, above all because experience predicts the exact opposite: if it accepts new sources of finance from unwary creditors, Castroism will reposition itself and there will be nothing for Cuba but more repression every day, more poverty and less liberty.

It is not “the Americans”, nor any exiles, Sandalio, who stoke resentments and keep the majority of the diaspora totally angered with the Cuban government. No!! Those doing that are precisely the same Castroists for whom you are pleading forgiveness every time they mistreat, neglect and defraud us in every consulate; when they blatantly help themselves to part of every remittance; when they prevent us from freely entering and leaving our own country because of political bias, in fact, for the thousands of accumulated reasons counted up by this people during over six decades of absolutism, peasant! It is Castroism, and nothing else, that ruins our lives, and keeps our families as hostages in Cuba, Sandalio!

How dare you try to pass that most serious responsibility to people other than those who hold us up at the Cuban customs?  Just to insinuate such an idea is an aberration and frankly immoral, when you, like millions of Cubans, know that the only people guilty of this abomination are in Havana, not in Washington! It will be impossible to achieve this “brilliant future vision” that you invent in your mental masturbation, Sandalio, while every peaceful proposal from the Cuban civic opposition is received by the Communist Party/State Security duo as a provocation and ends up coming to blows.

Please don’t bang on any more about the idea that supporting the well-deserved sanctions against those who tyrranise us, they tease and shit in all this “good tone and optimism”, which outdated people like you hallucinate in your alienation is an act of treason, when the real traitors are in the Plaza de la Robolución (**play on words between Plaza de la Revolucion, a large square in Havana, where the seat of government is, and “robo”, meaning theft) waiting for people like you to do their dirty work.

Please, have some self-respect, Sandalio, it’s always a good idea to preserve a little dignity if you don’t want to remain a traitor to yourself … no matter how angry you paint yourself!

Translated by GH

is an understandable vital reflex, but on the other hand the second needs to be assumed and understood as a philosophy of life which can end up destroying human dignity.

But it is completely shameful to recognise yourself as a coward! It follows that a Cuban who calls himself apolitical is in reality paying his tribute of fear to the dictator, while he shelters in his blanket of egotism, hiding from human misery within his comfort zone; converted into a non-person, giving up his self-respect and, with no dignity to defend, reduces the world to a plate of lentils, as if all that was needed to make life worthwhile was just to eat and to shit. In essence, there is no difference between such a vegetative existence and the scarcely organic routine of a pig or an insect.

I don’t know how they manage that, but there are plenty of them who do not even trouble themselves over the hundreds of young people who, since July 11th, are stuck, with cowardly convictions, in Cuban jails  — after all, when all’s said and done, they aren’t your family! — and don’t care either about the imposition of a diktat like Decree 35, [a decree penalising “ethical and social harm, or incidents of aggression” in social networks], among other gems of dim-witted Castroism. No, I simply don’t believe it is possible to be so insensitive, everything in me refuses to accept that it is enough just to down a Coca Cola of oblivion in order to live like that; it would be like listening to an Afghan woman who was unaware of the return of the Taliban, and that the reimposition of fundamentalism was just like water off a duck’s back. No! That is not ethically or practically possible!

That’s why I bite my tongue in the face of these unfeeling nonentities, but on the other hand my soul revives when I hear young people like Yordenis Ugás [Cuban professional boxer]  — a completely accomplished Cuban, an acclaimed sportsman, who entered world professional boxing history independently of the result of his next match with the star Pacquiao [Filipino  professional boxer] — who does not forget his valiant people and who, at the peak of his career, devotes the fight of his life to the humble Cuban people fighting for their liberty. The outcome of his match this Saturday in Las Vegas hardly matters: Cuba has already chosen its champion and awarded the prize to his proud son — the belt of dignity! [Ugás won.]

Examples like this move me, I recover my faith in the human race and can only feel full of pride. It’s impossible to avoid the contrast with the clown Cesar La Cruz [Cuban amateur boxer], set up as the Castroism front-man during his final in Tokyo: a miserable tambourine who betrayed his people when he attempted to legitimise some assassins who only a few days before had massacred their own people, to the same opportunists who one day not far from now will be thrown away like kitchen rags when they are no longer useful, as happened before with hundreds of our champions who now are dying of hunger in Cuba, abandoned in their faded glory.

There are definitely no apolitical Cubans: there are only decent Cubans, ready to place their grain of sand and pay the fair price for it, just as there are cowards who prefer to keep quiet because they are afraid, and  make out they don’t see the bottomless abyss into which the land where they were born is sinking. That’s all; there are no other pages to turn here. To the Cuban who reads this, you have to choose in  which of these two groups you will live your life; in a barbarism like Castroism, there are no other options. If you are offended by what I am saying, I don’t care any more — those are the bad habits that come with age, or perhaps the hangover from July 11th, I don’t know; but, do you know what? … it doesn’t bother me too much either way!

Translated by GH