The Island was too small for Fidel Castro and he set about conquering the rest of the world
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 30 September 2024 — The ideologues of the Castro model repeat ad nauseam that their struggle is based on a supposed “cultural decolonization.” Abel Prieto Jiménez, a storyteller, civil servant and advisor to generals, has become tiresome with this matter. His latest books and conferences are like a catauro [basket] where he inserts loose phrases, gossip and memes, obsessively attacking Sylvester Stallone or Shakira and labeling anyone with a minimally liberal discourse as fascist. One of his most laughable anecdotes is about how Che was worried about young revolutionaries who read comics in the 60s, because Superman demoralized the effort of the Agrarian Reform.
Another of the champions of this “decolonizing battle” is the Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet. With his European passport, the highly paid intellectual travels through Latin American dictatorships, offering his unrestricted support to figures such as Díaz-Canel, Nicolás Maduro and Daniel Ortega. The Galician-Parisian says that the handicap of the left is ethics, because the left is incapable of lying. He could not be more cynical. The Cuban Revolution itself was born on the basis of four founding lies: the repeated denial of communism; the hope of free elections; the guarantee of forming several political parties; and the promise to respect freedom of the press. The lies did not last very long. In just two years, that supposedly authentic revolution became a tropical copy of the Stalinist model.
The lies did not last very long. In just two years, that supposedly authentic revolution became a tropical copy of the Stalinist model.
From then on we would learn to say “homeland” in Russian, we would copy the Bulgarian Constitution, we would travel in Ladas, Moskvich or Karpaty cars, we would send our children to study in Leningrad, and we would replace Mickey Mouse with Masha and the Bear, until the mighty Soviet empire said “ konets ” (end). For 30 years, we were culturally closer to a Pole or a Serbian than to our own former culture. We allowed the Russians to establish not only military bases on our land, but even atomic missiles. The crudest slap in the face to the word “sovereignty” was when we applauded the Warsaw Pact tanks entering Prague to crush its spring. Half a century later, the Cuban regime once again applauds interference, shamelessly supporting Putin in his invasion of Ukraine.
Fidel Alejandro Castro was, in essence, a colonizer. An unbounded admirer of his namesake Alexander the Great, he always thought that Cuba was too small for him. And, once he achieved the status of an Antillean demigod, he set about conquering the rest of the world. Cuba did not send its armies to Africa to decolonize that continent, but to establish Marxist regimes loyal to Moscow.
The USSR provided the weapons and we provided the dead. The most notorious case was in Angola, where Cuban soldiers massacred tens of thousands of Angolans, even after their country had gained independence from Portugal. On May 27, 1977, more than 30,000 dissidents were tortured or killed by Agostinho Neto with the help of the Cuban military occupation. In 2019, the president of Angola publicly apologized for that massacre. But the Cuban regime has never apologized.
Not to mention all the damage we caused in Latin America, infesting the region with armed guerrillas. Although almost all of them failed, many were linked to drug trafficking and others mutated into conventional politics. Today we have the Nicaraguan dictatorship, repudiated by the vast majority of the international community, but unconditionally supported by Havana. Ultimately, it is its bastard daughter. And in Venezuela we have shown that the Castro model is not only capable of ruining a small country, but can also metastasize poverty, in record time, even in the richest country in the region.
In Latin America today we have the Nicaraguan dictatorship, repudiated by the vast majority of the international community, but unconditionally supported by Havana
Much has been said about Castro-communism and its characteristics, but not so much about Castro-capitalism. The model example was the Convertible Currency Department (MC). Beyond the four executed in 1989 during the Causa Uno [Cause Number 1], the company laid the foundations for what is now Gaesa. Castro-capitalism is defined by being monopolistic, shady, hermetic, by having relations with drug trafficking, by the use of front men, by being controlled and led by the military, by money laundering, piracy and ghost companies, by being above the law and the comptrollers. Castro-capitalism uses human beings as merchandise, having healthcare providers as its star product. The Cuban State’s trade in doctors is more lucrative than remittances or tourism, and has been described by several human rights organizations as “modern slavery.”
We should also define Castro-imperialism, which seeks to replace Uncle Sam with Uncle Putin; to replace Batman posters with T-shirts of a Joker like Che Guevara; to vindicate the ETA, the ELN and Hamas; to impose Maduro as a “democratic paradigm”; to demonize the liberal model; to appropriate the discourse of minorities that it previously persecuted and marginalized; to replace the bourgeoisie with civil servants.
No, Mr. Abel Prieto, you are not seeking to decolonize anything at all, you are seeking to recolonize. You dream of imposing the hegemony of a single party and a single way of thinking throughout the world. Fortunately, fewer and fewer people are buying your rhetoric.
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