14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 16 November 2021 — From the failed assault on the Moncada barracks in 1953 until the ’Tarea Ordenamiento’* [Ordering Task] debacle, defeat has been a constant in the history of what has come to be called the Cuban Revolution. The intention to industrialize the country, the claim to “liberate” Latin America, the 10 Million Ton Harvest, the Food Plan, business improvement, the Granada disaster and the dismantling of the Wasp Network would be enough to affirm that the victories have been scarce.
At a price that no one will be able to calculate until the secret documents of the Ministry of the Interior are declassified, the repression to prevent the Civic March for Change called by the Archipiélago group has been effective only because the streets were kept empty by a blow of terror. This required the mobilization of thousands of troops throughout the country, as well as making hundreds of vehicles available and countless expenditures in logistics.
More than the disproportionate disbursement of public coffers to instill fear in an unarmed population, it will be necessary to assess how much was spent on political capital, how much international trust was squandered, how much disappointment in their own bases will have been provoked by this nonsense of using force against those who just wanted to walk through the streets. The streets of their own country.
No matter how abject the people who volunteered to participate in the repudiation rallies against the organizers of the march, the dirt that has remained on their consciences will grow with time. When their offspring see on social media the vulgarity, abuse, brutal intolerance with which their parents or grandparents angrily insulted decent citizens, they will have no way of explaining to their children or grandchildren that they were doing the right thing.
If that is the peace that has been proclaimed by the one who holds the title of “President of the Republic,” if that is the type of dialogue that he has claimed to be willing to promote, then it is he who provokes the confrontation and the desire to tell him: “Save yourself those proposals, we do not understand each other.”
This one of 15 November 2021 will be a bitter “victory” to remember, it will be swept under the carpet, as happened with the repudiation rallies of 1980 that do not appear in any glorious anniversary of those displayed by officialdom, and whose participation as a perpetrator no one proudly notes in their autobiography.
They should be ashamed.
*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = The [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others.
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