Category: Ariel Hidalgo

It also happened in the late 1970s, with the arrests of dissidents who were trying to form the first human rights group, which was not created then because several of the members went to prisons where, ultimately, the Cuban Pro Human Rights Committee was founded in 1983.

Of course this time, with the 11th July protests, they couldn’t detect any conspiracy because there simply wasn’t. Everything was spontaneous. Nobody planned it. However, it was something that could be seen coming. What was coming was an open secret and some of us warned about it. Writers published several articles talking about its imminence. The latest of them, Cuban Dissidence Should Get Ready for a Social Explosion, was published in CubaEncuentro and later reproduced in Havana Times on June 24, less than a month after the outbreak.

Probably for now there are no more demonstrations with the magnitude of those that occurred, due to the fierce repression and all the surveillance measures taken, as well as a new regulation to penalize opinions on the Internet that damages “the prestige of the country.” But the effect of the events of those days is enough so that Cuba does not remain the same as before.

First, with the demonstrations it has become clear to everyone what a large part of the population already knew: the myth that the Cuban people supported that Party-State leadership has collapsed; and second, with the brutal repression, many of those who still doubted the ruthless nature of that regime have now awakened to reality, and this became evident with the attitude adopted publicly by many sectors of civil society, mainly students, which leaves no doubt that fear has already has been lost.

Knowledge of History provides a vision of the future based on present events. Let’s go to Czechoslovakia in 1967, where something very similar happened, perhaps to a lesser extent. The antecedents of what became known as the Prague Spring began with peaceful student demonstrations due to the economic crisis in the country.

The violent crackdown on students ordered by the country’s President and Party Secretary General Antonin Novotny resulted in his loss of popularity, even within the Party itself. In a meeting of the political organization, on 5 January 1968, he was openly criticized by other senior leaders who replaced him in the leadership of the Party with another who aroused more sympathy among the population, Alexander Dubcek. Two months later, Novotny also had to resign as president.

The Cuban leadership is currently suffering a deep popularity crisis, especially in the case of Díaz-Canel and his prime minister, Manuel Marrero, who have lost the power to call others to action, something that became evident in the call for an ’act of revolutionary reaffirmation’ when many, especially students, not only refused to participate but publicly criticized the event.

The latest has been the harsh response of numerous doctors through audiovisuals and letters against Marrero, who has blamed healthcare workers for the country’s health problems. It is to be hoped, then, that it is already “cooking” among the historical leadership to wash their hands and sacrifice, as scapegoats, these two leaders, and replace them with alternatives more palatable tor the population.

But if the situation in the country does not improve, and it cannot improve as long as there is an unsustainable model such as the one that caused the social explosion, sooner or later the outbreak will occur again and no longer will it be thousands who take to the streets but hundreds of thousands. In that case the Party-State will have to surrender to the real changes or get out their tanks and carry out a massacre such as has never occurred in any country on the continent, and in that case the repressors will have nowhere in the world to hide to respond to international tribunals at the level of the Nazi genocide.

There are very well founded hopes that very possibly the examples of the students and the doctors will be followed by other sectors of the Civil Society and, all, united, will raise their voices loud and firm, and this tragedy can be avoided. In Cuba, the artists took the first steps in their demands before the Ministry of Culture on November 27.

In Czechoslovakia the decisive step was taken by the literati. A small group of members of the Writers’ Union — some were even members of the Party, including Milan Kundera — published their discontent in the Union Gazette, and suggested that Literature should be independent of the Party’s doctrine. It was not an inflammatory and damning allegation, of course, but quite the opposite, moderate and very cautious, as it had to be. As expected, they were rejected by the Union leadership, and the Party decided to transfer the Gazette and some editorials to the Ministry of Culture. But that was the spark of a discussion among the writers, many of whom began to defend the authors of the declaration, and the debate even extended within the Party itself.

But there was already a civic awareness of rights and freedoms that allowed, by declaring non-interventionism during the Russian perestroika, the so-called Velvet Revolution to take place immediately, led by a playwright named Václav Havel.

That civic conscience already exists in our people to carry out something similar that I would dare to describe, in tune with our country, our “Silk Revolution.”

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the 14 provinces of the country, beginning on the 17th with Agustín Peña Pórrez, head of the Eastern Army, followed on the 20th; Marcelo Verdecia Perdomo, Brigadier General of the Reserve, then on the 24th; Rubén Martínez Puente, director of the Military Agricultural Union of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, on the 26th: Manuel Eduardo Lastres Pacheco, brigadier general of the Reserve, and on the same day, Armando Choy Rodríguez, brigadier general and general coordinator of the Group of History of the Las Villas Combatants.

All these deaths have in common that the causes of their deaths were not revealed and that their bodies were cremated immediately without receiving the honors normally given to high officials. The hypothesis that they were all of advanced age and that they probably died from the Covid, as some people disaffected to the regime have suggested, face some questions: Did they all agree to die in the days after the protests and the subsequent brutal governmental repression? How many generals died in the two weeks before the protests? Does anyone remember them? Were these five successive deaths a few days after the protests just by chance? Something that I have learned in these 62 years is that in the political world of Cuba there are no coincidences.

I do not affirm anything, but these deaths are very similar to the purges that were carried out in Stalin’s Russia. He executed so many Red Army generals that he later found himself in a tight spot when Nazi troops invaded the Soviet Union. If this is the case in Cuba, obviously it would have to do with those events that occurred in the previous days.

In the first place, we must take into account what it must have been like for many of those who dedicated their lives to defending that regime, to realize that the vast majority of the people, for whom that “revolution” was supposedly carried out, repudiated that regime.

It was not a demonstration in a neighborhood or in a town, but in all of Cuba, and they were not demonstrations of 20 or 30 people, but of hundreds and thousands in each of those populations.

And second, it must have been shocking for many of those high officials to see the repression so brutally carried out against the people, first in the streets and then in the homes, house by house, to violently remove people who were presumed to have participated in the protests.

The soldiers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces have not had a history of repression against the people as has the Ministry of the Interior and, in particular, State Security. It has been said that one of those generals was the one who gave the order to shoot down the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996. In reality, the one who gave that order was Raúl Castro according to the wish of his brother-in-chief, and the pilots were very well chosen: the stepchildren of Wilfredo ’Felo’ Pérez, the one who piloted the plane that fell in Barbados by a bomb allegedly planted by the enemy.

That in the present circumstances a soldier or a sergeant expresses concern about the demonstrations and repression and thinks that changes should be made could get him fired, but that a general does so, with the influence he can exert on his troops, can be considered as treason.

Commander Húber Matos, when he was still at the head of the rebel troops in Camagüey, served 25 years in prison for asking for the leader’s resignation. They simply, could have replaced him, since he had the support of the people at that time, and yet they did not take that risk. Now, with the regime’s weakness, do they have the luxury of letting it go.

So it will not be at all strange that high officials continue to die for unknown reasons.

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Officials began monitoring classes taught by a young professor of Marxism and reviewing his students’ notebooks. They came to the conclusion that he was basing his lectures on the classic works of Marx and Engels rather than the manuals written in Stalinist Russia. They searched his home and found the evidence. Not firearms or explosives but something worse: none other than a dangerous manuscript.

The jealous guardians of politically correct opinion read the text and were terrified. The young professor had been using Marxist methods of analysis not to criticize capitalism as Marx had done but to criticize the social systems of regimes ruled by communist parties.

He was immediately arrested and banned from teaching for the rest of his life. Once released, he continued expressing his ideas and was detained again. State Security attributed his behavior to mental problems and sent him to the psychiatric hospital in Mazorra. He was kept in a ward where neither doctors nor guards dared enter, surrounded by mentally unbalanced prisoners, among whom there was no shortage of murderers and rapists.

When some of them asked why he had been imprisoned there, he explained it was for writing against the government. In their eyes this made him the craziest one there and they distanced themselves from him. The psychiatrist evaluating him did not find anything seriously wrong and, when he learned why the man was being imprisoned, diagnosed him with a “personality disorder” and returned him to State Security.

He was sent to jail along with other political prisoners. But in prison he continued sharing his ideas with fellow prisoners. He was held in solitary confinement in a narrow, enclosed cell intended for death row inmates, behind four iron doors, cut off from contact with other prisoners and family members, where the little food he received was served in a dog’s bowl passed through an opening at the floor covered with a flatiron plate that only opened from the outside.

This “special area,” where speaking loudly could result in a brutal beating, was reserved for those sentenced to capital punishment and dangerous persons who had committed violent crimes. But it seems he was the most dangerous of all because he had committed a heinous crime: thinking. The only time they took him out was to stand trial, where he was summarily sentenced to eight years in prison for having committed “revisionism.”

What does revisionism mean? If you look it up in a dictionary, you will find this entry: “tendency to subject doctrines, interpretations, or established practices to methodical review for the purpose of updating and sometimes denying them.”

Since he had written many magazine articles, and even a book, on the history of the labor movement that were cited in the supplementary bibliographies of many writers’ works, they added this edict to his sentence: “And as for your writings, they shall be destroyed by fire.”

The young professor who was confined in that narrow, enclosed slave pit for one year and twenty days is the one writing these words today, forty years later.

Why so much fear of the words of an isolated, nearly naked man?

In a capitalist world, Marx evangelized for the creation and development of class consciousness among workers, who would unite and overthrow the bourgeois state. But once that state was overthrown, the doctrine’s interpreters created such a tightly controlled social regime that no one could raise awareness of anything else.

One of the reasons this new form of dictatorship is so difficult to overthrow is the almost absolute control it holds over ideas. The man who would later impose this iron-fisted system published, from a prison cell, several articles in the country’s magazines in opposition to the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

It was unthinkable in the 1960s, when the current dictatorship arose, that a political prisoner could do the same. By that time all publications, magazines, periodicals, and broadcast stations had either been shut down or had come under the control of the state, which exerted oppressive censorship.

“They married us to the lie and forced us to live with her.” Truer words were never spoken by the one who, after saying them, imposed his own social system on the nation.

None of it was true but most people believed it. And when a prisoner got out of prison and described the horrors he had experienced, they called him a liar because in Cuba prisoners were not being beaten. The did not believe him even after he showed them the scars from the bayonets. “He probably got those from being cut up in a bar fight.” And if people were not going believe it, how would the world believe it?

Therefore, a year after being released from confinement, half a dozen political prisoners created the first human rights group, the germ of what later became the dissident movement.

Today, with personal computers, mobile phones and the internet, the world of the lie is beginning to fall apart. Blogs, social networks, magazines and independent newspapers have filled the cyberspace with ideas and information. Meanwhile, the nomenklatura remains entrenched in its bunker, increasingly isolated and increasingly in need of psychiatric services to deal with a new illness: panic attacks caused by ideophobia.

*Translator’s note: For those who want to explore this further, in different sources the term is variously “microfraction” or “microfaction,” and is occasionally spelled with a hyphen or as two words.

See: Other articles on TranslatingCuba.com by Ariel Hidalgo

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The crux of the question was probably not whether or not the Cuban regime made the concessions, but the impact that approach could have on the population. The fact that Obama was able to speak without restriction before the entire Cuban people and the cheers and other euphoric reactions of the population towards him, possibly was an alarm bell for them. It seems that now, with the rope around their necks, they are reconsidering the matter.

But the chances that Biden will return to that policy of rapprochement in the immediate term seem nil, not only because of his statements that Cuba is not a matter of immediate interest for his foreign policy, but because it is very likely that he wants to win back the Florida voters who denied him their votes in the last elections if he wants to win a second term. He knows that the decisive weight in that defeat was Cubans and, although he managed to win the White House, Florida continues to be of vital importance. A policy change could only be made after the next presidential elections. But it is evident that the Cuban situation cannot wait four more years.

The hard-line opponents, therefore, clap their hands, because they, especially those in exile, always bet on the policy of the pressure cooker: tighten and tighten the embargo and reduce travel and remittances as much as possible, until the people, out of desperation, take to the streets.

It is not very decorous, by the way, to encourage calamities from afar so that others are the ones to launch themselves into the fire. The writer never advocated that policy, not only so that no one, from within, would tell him: “Come and go hungry yourself, suffer calamities, and then take to the streets,” but because it seemed an unwise strategy to me. The reasons are many and in another era I enumerated them. But in case you have forgotten them, I repeat now the most important ones:

1. Because the regime justifies the disastrous effects of its internal economic policy by blaming the external enemy. Still many of the fanatics and opportunists who continue to support the regime continue to use the rhetoric about “imperialism.” If the embargo imposed by the United States did not exist, the regime would be completely unmasked before all the people and before the world.

2. Because it achieves the solidarity of international public opinion by diverting attention from internal contradictions with the myth of the heroic island resisting the siege of a voracious empire. Year after year, at the United Nations, the United States is condemned almost unanimously, with very few exceptions, for maintaining the embargo against Cuba.

3. Because it justifies the internal repression of critics and dissidents by accusing them of being agents of the powerful external enemy and, therefore, traitors to the homeland. When in 1996 it was clearly seen that the Helms-Burton Act, which would strengthen the embargo, was going to be defeated in the United States Congress, the Cuban government decided to assassinate four peaceful opponents in exile by shooting down two civilian planes, and as a result the law was passed. Hence, many called it, ironically, the “Helms-Burton-Castro Law,” because with that excuse, it allowed the regime to openly muzzle all internal dissent, dissolve a legal institution with reformist projects such as the Center for American Studies (CEA ) and imprison 75 leaders of the dissent.

4. Because the people in Cuba, pressed solve their immediate economic problems such as, for example, a mother who has nothing to put on her children’s plates, do not have the time or mindset to think about holding demonstrations in the streets, but only to wear out their shoe leather looking for food.

5. Because a policy is required that, on the contrary, strengthens the victims by making them economically independent from the State, and prevents the latter from exercising economic coercion ever them, which is why it is preferable to facilitate travel and remittances. When Manuel Moreno Fraginals, author of El Ingenio, already in exile, was asked why the Cuban people, who had previously been so heroic, did not rebel against the dictatorship, he replied: “Because the middle class, the main protagonist of those struggles, was totally suppressed.”

However, the deep crisis facing the country has not really depended on what the Government of any other country has dictated, no matter how powerful it may be. The insubordination of the people in the streets is not due to an external blockade but to the Cuban leadership’s own internal policy stubbornly maintained despite so many setbacks, and above all, to an awakening of the collective conscience. Today they regret that the powerful neighbor to the North does not advance towards a process that ends the external blockade, but they themselves insist on continuing to maintain an internal blockade against their own people.

They could get the country out of this crisis by allowing farmers to sell freely to whom they wish at market prices, lowering the cost of self-employment licenses, as well as abusive taxes, allowing investments by Cubans from abroad as well as aid to their relatives in Cuba so that they can freely promote new small businesses, among other economic measures, and allow artists and intellectuals in the country to express themselves freely to contribute their ideas in the search for a solution that can only come from the consensus of the whole nation in all its diversity.

But they do not, simply because their current policy allows them to maintain absolute power and continue a life of privilege, turning their backs on the growing precariousness of the population, with a blindness only comparable to that of Queen Marie Antoinette of France shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution, who responded when told that the people were starving: “Let them eat cake.”

But that absolute power has begun to break down, and they must be aware that they can also absolutely lose it if they do not realize in time that the true revolutionary process is not the one they stubbornly claim to be leading, a revolution that ended already more than half a century ago, but the one that is already beginning in the streets and neighborhoods of man Cuban cities.

The people have already woken up, they have stopped believing the lies with which they have been deceived for more than six decades and have become aware of their rights, and since no one governs without the consent of the governed, if they do not obey, the governor leaves the government.

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But everything has a limit. Despair and outrage can reach a point where they overcome prudence and fear, and empty pans can become musical instruments* of a national concert. This would not be all, because that symphony could be only the prelude to a storm. Any spark can light a fire.

A complaint on a corner can turn into a neighborhood protest and, from there, growing to a tsunami that sweeps the whole city is a matter of the blink of an eye.

Then there will be no mobs of repudiation or quick-response detachments that can stop crowds ravaging the stores, nor raging concentrations in the Plaza of the Revolution. What will the party leadership do then? Take to the streets in tanks? Repeat another Tiannanmen Square massacre? Cuba is not China, nor are we on the other side of the world, far from the West.

Then it will not be the fault of those who only sinned out of despair, or of the dissenters, or of imperialism, but of those who have not wanted to hear the voice of the people in time.

No one in their right mind who really loves their homeland wants this. Such a scenario can be avoided, and not through threats, arrests, or states of siege, because there will not be enough prisons to lock up so many people.

So far, only reforms have been made, but reform really means changing the structure. What needs to be done now is more than that. They can call it or interpret it as they wish, perhaps as a “revolution in the revolution,” but if they don’t make radical constructive changes from above, there will come changes, also radical, but destructive and from below.

What, then, should leadership do to avoid the latter? The keyword is called freedom. Proceed according to the advice of Abraham Lincoln, who said he destroyed his enemies by making them friends. Convert the self-employed into allies by lowering taxes and licensing costs.

Issue permits for many other professions and provide them with means of work, as well as permits to acquire microcredits from abroad, and you will see how in the midst of tribulations, miracles will be present everywhere, with people solving their problems on all sides.

The treasury coffers will be filled with money, because a swell of small informal producers will leave the black market to integrate into the formal economy. And if they want more productivity in state industries, share the profits with the workers who produce them and grant them the right to have a voice and vote in the affairs of their workplaces or companies.

Grant small agricultural producers freedom to sell their products at the market price to the population. Then many others will want to and give them land, because the State has enough to give and we will see how in a very short time the markets will be filled with fruits, vegetables, grains, and many other foods.

And if they want to get rid of the alleged “internal” enemies, allow human rights activists, those who have more credibility among the critics, to form a National Committee with access to all prisons on condition that reports of violations are delivered to them, which would be very advantageous.

First because they will have the opportunity to correct these evils without the need for international organizations to condemn them, and secondly because constructive criticisms would allow them to provide detailed information on what happens in the multiple instances and sectors, in order to correct them and prevent corrupt and abusive officials who might encourage anti-government animosities. Don’t kill the messenger!

Allow dissidents to run as candidates with the possibility of obtaining seats in the National Assembly, which will have, as an advantage, broadening the horizon of views in conflict resolution, and the framework of ideas that allow a greater variety of proposals for the prosperity of all the people.

I know that making these recommendations or similar ones is almost like demanding pears from the elm tree. But if only a small group of that leadership had the courage to ignore the warnings of the so-called “hard core” (those who are filled with dread even on hearing someone say “democracy”) and begin to take the steps that circumstances demand, they would not be alone, because the entire people would support them.

But if they ignore those who propose things like these and cross their arms, if they do not listen to the warnings of those who only wish to avoid greater evils to the country, if they continue to be arrogant and contemptuous ad do not take urgent measures, and wait for the time of the cacerolazos* — the protests — next will come nothing but Armageddon.

*Translator’s note: The original title of this post is “La hora de cacerolazos”: commonly in Latin American countries people protest by beating on empty pots and pans (cacerolas).

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They can no longer say, speaking categorically, that the people of Cuba support what they call “Revolution,” as they did up until now, when their support at the polls exceeded 90%. The ‘others’ whom they labeled “anti-patriotic,” now make up almost a third of the people. Starting now, if they want to be precise, they would have to recognize, consistent with official data provided by themselves, that part of the people do not support them.

And this story does not end yet; later we will see who are the people who are truly “anti-patriotic.” Because if we talk about the majority who did support them by marking YES, they did so out of fear, because of that psychotic condition they’ve been infected with from above: the incoherence between thinking, speaking and acting.

Because if there were lie detectors in the polling places instead of ballot boxes, it would be a whole different story. The main chains around the people, they carry inside themselves. It is necessary to break them. What is missing among almost everyone in this electorate who voted Yes, is not an awareness of the illegitimacy and fateful operation of this regime – which almost everyone is already convinced of – but the willingness to change.

If, under a dictatorship, the citizens cease to idolize the rulers, if they stop believing in the invincibility of the oppressors, if they believe they can reach a better future, if they stop fearing that the power will excommunicate and repress them, if they perceive that they could prosper a lot better than they do from receiving the gifts of the oppressors, and if they become aware of their rights and perceive themselves as free people, that single conviction will set them free, because they will begin to act as such, and then there will be no tanks or armed squads that can stop them.

The governed have the ability to make the rulers change their way of ruling, because those who rule need those who obey and no one governs without the consent of the governed. If they stop obeying, they stop ruling. If the ruler is on one road and the governed are on another, governability is lost and the ruler is forced to rectify the course.

Who doesn’t remember when, despite the fact that paladares (private restaurants) and the US dollar were prohibited during the Special Period, there was a paladar in every neighborhood and a great share of the people had dollars, and the government was forced to legalize them? But if the rulers cling to their whims, the response will be non-compliance, and just like there are not enough prisons to arrest millions of people, the ruler no longer rules and the ruled become the ruler.

Thus, the oppressed can conquer freedom without hatred or violence. Because “the powerless,” united, are more powerful than the power.

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This is something reminiscent of the growth of the Third State on the eve of the French Revolution in the face of the excessive obstacles of the feudal monarchy. In this case, it is a living and creative force, both economically and culturally, against a political-military superstructure that slows down its development.

2. The power has made a serious mistake in imposing such unpopular measures less than three months from the date chosen to carry out the popular consultation on its proposed constitutional reform, probably because of its confidence that it can continue to benefit from the consent of the population.

Either because of indolence or fear, or, in the later instance, because they feel they can manipulate the results of the referendum to their benefit without unfavorable consequences, as has been done on previous occasions, or because they underestimate the response capacity of civil society, including the protests of well-known personalities which, until now, have distinguished themselves by their support for that leadership.

The result has been a malaise that the opposition could exploit in favor of the campaign to vote NO on the constitutional reform.

3. The granting of access to the Internet through cell phones on the same day, December 6, when the restrictions announced against artists and self-employed workers came into force, shows that their main objective was to divert the attention of the population to better weather the storm of protests. The internet access had been delayed by the fear of unleashing the “untamed wild colt” of the internet on the population with their computers and cell phones.

The new telecommunications technology undermines all centralized structures, mainly totalitarian models, as it breaks the monopoly of government information, dissemination and propaganda, enables rapid communication between citizens in different locations, and facilitates the recording of the outrages of the authorities and a rapid international dissemination through mass communication networks.

The oppressors, especially those who hide behind Marxist ideology, know very well how the changes of social regimes take place, a theory embodied by Marx himself in “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” where he wrote “the productive forces” (read: technology) “when reaching a certain stage of development (…) are in contradiction with the relations of existing production” (read: the economic-political structures of the oppressors) which generates a deep crisis of the system, “and thus opens an era of social revolution,” that is, a time of profound changes.

4. The fact that after the start of the protests the regime reacted by reversing some of the announced restrictions means that citizens (that is, those nominally without power) do exercise power when they become aware of their rights and express, publicly, their willingness to change.

5. The opposition must take note of the magnitude of the protests in general that far surpassed the most numerous of its political demonstrations and adjust, accordingly, its steps and its demands. Instead of urging the population to join them, they must unite themselves with that population in their demands and support them as much as possible, focusing on their immediate needs.

To the extent that they give their support to these spontaneous initiatives, they will achieve the sympathies and support of the people, they will gain prestige, and even, in this way, they will be able to call on them when they need to reach more far-reaching goals.

*Translator’s note: A package of restrictions tightening the conditions of self-employment.

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That president had been democratically elected, while those who today celebrate six decades of uninterrupted power came to it by violence, executing, without guarantees of due process, hundreds of soldiers, and perpetrating a vile betrayal of the ideals of many of their own comrades who had given their blood to restore the Constitution abolished after the 1952 military coup, in addition to celebrating the free elections that that coup had prevented. The caudillo himself had slammed the door on all those martyrs when he asked, during a public rally: “Elections, what for?”

This group has done the opposite of what that president from the 1930s did. It has turned its people into one of the poorest of the continent, as if we had just emerged from a devastating war, with ruins everywhere, including those of most of the sugar mills, after having been the first country in the world in that industry. Today the Cuban people must stand in long lines for a piece of bread and crowd the streets struggling to access any vehicle that moves, because public transport has almost disappeared.

The money obtained from the high prices of sugar in the 1970s and that paid by the inflated prices paid by the Soviet Union — tens of millions, hundreds, thousands of millions — were squandered in wars on other continents to the satisfaction of that leader’s narcissism, while his people suffered precariousness of all kinds.

Was it all the fault of the enemy of the North and its blockade? What kind of blockade is this that, despite itself, Cuba has maintained trade relations with almost every country in the world, and today, even with the farmers of the United States itself? The US embargo only served as an alibi to justify all the disasters provoked by the whims of an omnipotent ruler.

What war is that? What enemy confronts this people? Because he spent his life in an indefinite state of siege, in perpetual suspension of constitutional guarantees, and in a call to ’action stations’, one after the other, waiting for a foreign invasion that supposedly would arrive to ravage the country and seize our homeland. He warned that, if it happened, that enemy would only collect “the dust of our soil drowned in blood.”

Did that invasion ever happen? For almost the whole world it never came to pass. But I say yes, this invasion has been ongoing since the first of these 720 months, and still, to this day, continues to devastate the country.

Because the enemy of this nation is that group in power. The real blockade against this people is imposed by that group with all its bureaucratic obstacles, its prohibitions, its censorship, its persecutions and expropriations of hundreds of thousands of independent workers, and even the semi-slave exploitation of tens of thousands of employees and professionals from whom it takes more than 80% of their salaries.

Everything has been done in the name of “the Revolution.” During these 60 years there has been constant talk of “defending the Revolution,” the Revolution is alive, the Revolution first of all, “within the Revolution, everything, outside the Revolution, nothing,” and so on.

According to the most in vogue definition of that word — “violent change in the political institutions of a nation” — that revolution occurred in Cuba in the first nine years.

That is to say, more than 50 years ago it was over, despite the fact that it is still spoken of in the present, something that no longer exists — or never existed if we consider that it was the result of a betrayal — a ghost that presents itself everywhere like an embalmed corpse that is intended to be believed to still alive, as when Juana La Loca dragged the remains of her beloved Felipe el Hermoso throughout the kingdom of Spain.

It’s time to lay bare the lie once and for all. Here there is nothing revolutionary and much less an elite in power, only a group of reactionaries in a dictatorial cupula trying to perpetuate an unsustainable model that even the caudillo himself, shortly before dying, recognized was unviable: “This model doesn’t even work for Cubans,” he said.

The real war that has ravaged this nation is the one that this group has maintained against its own people for six decades with its insane decrees. And if it continues in power, the aforementioned warning will probably come true and our country will have nothing left but that: the dust of our soil drowned in blood.

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