Juan Juan Almeida, 16 Dec 2012 — When being “Papá’s boy” I decided to break out of my bubble, I knew I would face criticisms and threats. But I never imagined that the wicked and fearful smile of Carlos Fernandez Gondin while I was cruelly expelled from the funeral of my father on the orders of General Raul Castro, would remain in my memory as eternal scar. I wished I had died that day.
Today I want to write about his sons for whom, more than medication, I recommend an exorcism. It has not been easy for them to have a father who is believed to be a popular hero and is just a bunch of medals. It’s a pleasure to color the image of the occasional smiling General Gondin, with guidelines more than stories, whom they called “The Fairy Godmother” because he loves to make numbers out of names and turn people into a national security issue.
Despite his small stature, grotesque manners, and hideous countenance, General Gondin Fernandez is a man detached and extravagant, especially with what is not his. Let’s say that like Farouk, the last Egyptian monarch, the soldier referred so inclines to the promiscuous, is extravagant and a kleptomaniac.
Thoroughness is his virtue. Spying for Raul, and sharing the love of vodka, he became head of the Military Counterintelligence, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Division General, First Vice Minister of the Interior, and with the arrival of Raúl to the presidency of the Republic of Cuba, the cloying Gondin thought to occupy the throne of his Ministry.
But no, the theories are flawed and even the Roman Empire lasted four centuries longer than expected. With the entry onto the scene of Alejandro Castro Espin as Colonel Coordinator of the activities of his father, and the total subordination MININT to Vice Admiral Julio Cesar Gandarilla Bermejo, Head of the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, the only sailor who can not swim; exacerbating the fears of Gondin who, feeling displaced, dedicates himself to mining in silence the old wall of loyalty.
There is nothing more frustrating for a climber than to feel he is a spectator. But his life continues to be a sort of ossuary. He is shy, intense, unusual and almost mute; severe prudent, unscrupulous, sadistic and not the least starry-eyed. Despite all his glory, and although enjoying the benefits of selling fake battles, he appears paranoid and insecure. Maybe because of this he visits the empyrean realm of divination with a gentleman of Havana. Miramar, to be exact.
Hungry for power, he knows exactly where to run in panic situations. With his arrogant appearance, and his ridiculous outfit, he loves hunting, fishing, and is steadfast to the allegory of terror. Some say Gondin is a good man, who did not reach tenth grade, and doesn’t know the article of the Declaration of Independence that says “When a government becomes a danger to its own ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it.”
“Commander in chief, at your orders” has been his motto in life. But his work — by his own comments — is reduced to inventing the impending accident, one that also seems fortuitous, such as making one of the beautiful granddaughters of the chief slip and fall into the bed occupied by the gentleman lawyer, President Rafael Correa, during one of his visits to Havana. We must not think evil, that’s not pimping, hustling, nor even a foreign siege, it is a coldly calculated attempt to change the geopolitical division of the region.
December 16 2012
