The Hackneyed Expression / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Yes to Love, No to Terror

It has cost the historic circles of power in Cuba a great deal of work to maintain a balanced discourse with regards to their sensitivity and solidarity with the terrorist attacks on the United States, or any country with which they have marked differences. It’s part of a rhetorical double standard to both accuse the U.S. administrations, and to do the same thing here.

There is no point in sending messages of condolences on the one hand to antagonistic governments and the victims of terrorism in their societies, and to defend, in a veiled way, the perpetrators based on the old saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This behavior has become so common in Cuba, sadly, become the style as it is pervasive.

Perhaps that is one of its objectives. Every time they send a condolence message in the name of the Cuban people, they ride roughshod over and later question, as an automatic protocol requisite, what they say is the concert of democratic countries in the world.

At the same time we have witnessed the ambiguity with which they refer to the Taliban and Bin Laden on the TV Roundtable show–a program whose reason seems to be to constantly criticize Washington and the fierce and endless battle against their successors–of allegations that the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers was a deliberate internal action, and long snake of et ceteras, that hangs from Cuban fundamentalists like a long tale of falsehoods. I’m not saying I have a monopoly on the truth, but this conduct seems like media terrorism.

The Cuban government claims that the United States consistently applies, with respect to Cuba, a double standard of good and bad terrorism according to their interests. And they themselves don’t?

I would add that in our country we annually commemorate the death of the revolutionary martyr Sergio González, The Band-Aid. A man known for planting bombs before 1959, who established the record of a hundred in one Havana night.

The arrogant hypocrisy of “do as I say, not as I do” from the spokesmen of the single party echoes the speeches and propaganda like “plastic explosives,” and offers feedback and bombardments of hate and injustice, but what really worries me is that I am splashed with that rotten stew.

It seems that as a Cuban citizen I am not being represented fully by those in power for over five decades in my archipelago: leaving me no option but to save my anti-terrorism reputation by placing these little media firecrackers to draw attention.

May 9 2011