The Culture of the Big Stick / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

Foto: Orlando Luis Pardo
Faced with the interference of the Yankees and the European Union: UNITY! Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Something very serious happens in a country where people live by stealth and avoid criticizing the decisions of their government, where the transcendent issues are spoken in a whisper, quietly monitoring the environment, just in case; where so many do not consider honest labor as the only morally legitimate source to earn the bread they will put in the mouths of their children.

Something very serious happens in a country where Parliament unanimously supports provisions to undermine the welfare of their people and keeps intact laws whose practicality expired long ago. Something very serious happens where unions betray their purpose and becomes the point of a spear capable of lodging itself in a worker’s back; where, paradoxically, beating people is legitimized as a way of ensuring the freedom of man.

What is presented by the Cuban government as a monolithic consensus, as unanimous support for its line of thought, is nothing more than paralyzing fear, which reduces the individual to zero, shuts off his voice with an overwhelming power before which he knows he is completely helpless.

Because if something has become typical in Cuba it is the culture of hard blow. Every time convincing arguments have failed to implement any particular action or policy … there goes the whack that is reluctant to accept any decision so “democratically” taken!

For what I say, my example is very illustrative. When the then Minister of Public Health received that demand for attention from 300 workers in his sector with respect to wages, 5 minutes would have been enough to give a response a few paragraphs, which, regardless of its content, would have been correct, but far from this he chose not to respond ever, and months later along comes… the cudgel of the caves! So here I am five years later, still disqualified, struggling to recover my profession and denouncing the injustice.

Now, knowing the tiger by his stripes, I sense they are paving the way to neutralize this little matter of the bloggers. As they have demonstrated repeatedly that they do not know any other way to resolve disputes, it would not surprise me were they to lash out at any moment, using whatever variant of the wide spectrum they possess, be it through the typical raid, through individualized attacks, creating diplomatic friction with some embassy that offers a breach to the Internet to the Cuban strictly deprived of this service by his own Government.

Any excuse will serve to get that nail out of the shoe. Something tells me that they are about to show their big claws.

June 16 2011