14ymedio, Pete García, Miami, 5 June 2025 — “I’ll see you at Unpacu,” Jose Daniel Ferrer told Edmundo García in the middle of a television debate held in the studios of the MEGA TV network, in Miami, in a space led by then journalist and now congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar. In that context, the phrase was an invitation from the first to the second to visit the headquarters of the opposition group, to prove its existence, something García emphatically denied in the program.
Ten years have passed since the event and that phrase, seen in retrospect, could be interpreted not as an offering but a prophecy.
And today the former host of the Cuban Television program De la Gran Escena, a former defender of the regime and an enthusiastic Fidel loyalist, has passed, in his own words, into the opposition camp, and from his YouTube platform he attacks Havana and its rulers day after day.
It is not a strange case, quite the opposite. The individual mentioned above thus goes on to be part of an endless list of those disenchanted with Castroism, a heterogeneous group that includes conscientious objectors and others who, as I suspect is his case, deserted when they stepped on their toes or were discarded after being used.
Some leave through the front door, others through the back. At this point, it doesn’t matter.
If Castroism has been efficient in all these years of folly, it is in producing defenestrated and disappointed people.
“Look at yourselves in my mirror,” Edmundo warned the still servants of the island’s hierarchs, in a recent interview on Guennady Rodríguez’s YouTube channel 23yFlagler.
Our history is complex, where oppressed and perpetrators often mingle
Our history is complex, where oppressed and perpetrators often mingle.”There are pure victims,” said Carlos Alberto Montaner wisely, “but they are very few.” Those who repressed in 1960 were then repressed in 1961, he added, and so on throughout this period of totalitarianism, which has not yet culminated. Therefore, summarizing the conclusions of this Cuban writer who died last year, in our process of reconciliation towards a civic future in a plural Cuba, in democracy, there should be not only justice applied according to the degree of responsibility of each one, but forgiveness ceremonies, where the Cuban people apologize to themselves for the damage that has been done. The part for what they are accountable, of course.
Edmundo García was, it is fair to say, at least as far as I know, only an accomplice of opinion. And I say this because in Miami there are former direct members of the repressive arm of the Cuban dictatorship. Some of them even converted – I want to think from the heart – into fervent fighters for freedom and democracy in Cuba.
And if there is something that is “continuity” it is the fact that revolutions, like Saturn, devour their children, as it happened in the France of Robespierre, who was also beheaded. No one in Cuba, outside the close circle of the royal family and its closest supporters, is safe from the guillotine.
So, if some of those who today fervently applaud the speeches of power from the chairs of the Central Committee or any other department of control and repression of the Government, read these lines, take note: look yourselves in Edmund’s mirror. Go out the front door or the back door, it doesn’t matter. Mañana será demasiado tarde. Tomorow will be too late. We look forward to seeing you at Unpacu.
Translated by LAR
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