Juana Orquídea Acanda claims her right to be wrong. It would be good to know if she used to be so benevolent from the bench.
14ymedio, Juan Manuel Cao, Miami, 14 April 2025 — The judge feels judged. Misjudged. She, who for more than thirty years was part of a flawed judicial system. What an irony! Juana Orquídea Acanda Rodríguez has been deported to Cuba for hiding her communist militancy and her work in one of the key ministries of official repression. Judge Juana, like the Pope, claims her right to be wrong. It would be good to know if she used to be so benevolent from the bench. She even considers herself a victim of injustice, and now refers to the American dream like the fox in the fable of the apples: “After all, they’re unripe.”
But the unjust Judge Juana, it must be admitted, has had bad luck: on the day of her retirement, Castro’s television praised her repressive work, and she declared herself proud of it. She even had a lyrical outburst, hugging a bouquet of Soviet flowers, her eyes half-closed, as she uttered the sentence that condemned her: ” This tribute is indescribable; it is recognition of a lifetime’s work, of what I did; realizing my dreams, and it is the greatest example of what the work of the Revolution is all about.”
Unfortunately for her, and for her idyllic retirement in enemy territory, the internet immortalized such partisan enthusiasm, and the relentless YouTube has played a trick on her. Now, she is back in the socialist paradise, enjoying the blackouts and all the work she praised in public and planned to betray in secret.
Now, she is back in the socialist paradise, enjoying the blackouts and all the work she praised in public and planned to betray in secret.
But, I repeat, our ill-fated Joan of Arc wasn’t as lucky as others: those many who have been just as complicit as she, or worse, and yet were never paid in public honors, and therefore, as in the movie Men in Black, they live among us, go to the same supermarket, buy with coupons, or have Medicaid, and nothing will happen to them because there is no proof of their infamy and their lies.
Miami is the capital of republished biographies, where many have found the opportunity to rewrite their pasts. Some with such an excess of imagination that, in two strokes, they have gone from being repressors to repressed, metamorphosing into heroes of a movie they never starred in. And that’s fine: we all, like cats, have the right to a second and even a third or seventh life, but we must recognize that there are some who go overboard. And there are others who are as strongly anti-Castro as they were for Castroism before.
That’s the human side. Let’s now look at the strategic side. It is good for the repressors to know there is no impunity; that should discourage them. Theoretically, it serves to protect the victims. It is also ethically correct. But on the other hand, a closed-door policy could entrench the scoundrels: finding no way out, seeing that there is no possible forgiveness on the other side, they would rally around the power that protects them and defend it tooth and nail.
Those who call, for example, on the Castro army to rebel, might as well be plowing the sea. It is because of dilemmas like these that it is so difficult to deal with arbitrary powers. History is replete with similar examples. Although, as Grau San Martín said: “When the dog is dying, the ticks leave.”
Those who call, for example, on the Castro army to rebel, might as well be plowing the sea.
There is one aspect of Judge Juana that’s shocking. When journalist Mario Pentón manages to interview her about her abrupt repatriation, she gives an extremely superficial and frivolous assessment of what happened: “I think I had an experience. Having experiences is a good thing. I lived, at least, under the conditions that were, but I lived 21 days in the United States. I didn’t know that. It’s something I learned.” Her reflection seems insubstantial. One would expect something less stupid from someone who passed sentences for so many years. Poor convicts. It’s what Hannah Arendt defined as the banality of evil.
Here we go.
Meanwhile, we continue to pluck the daisy, here and there.
I hope not for much longer.
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