The Lifting of the Cuban Embargo: A Necessary Commentary / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

Jeovany Jimenez Vega, 9 August 2021 — Sandalio, in your diatribe against the embargo, there are a couple of points which aren’t logical – nor ethical either, but let’s stay with logical – because they have been  definitively refuted by events.

The embargo is not all that inviolable when the Cuban government has never stopped trading or receiving tourists from more than half the world, including all of Europe, Russia, China, most of America and a very long etc.  But where you keep getting it wrong – and where your error is the most inexcusable and fundamental – is when you say again and again that “to go against the Cuban people is a terrible thing”, when you refer to the patriots who are opposed to the lifting of the sanctions against Castroism.

Sandalio, you need to get the message: Castroism and the Cuban people will never be the same thing. Please don’t mix up completely opposed concepts; forget your idea that those of us who oppose the indulgences of the the dictatorship, do it because we don’t love our people and we wish them ill, when it is totally the opposite. That is a typical Castroist argument, Sandalio. Don’t make me suspicious!

These patriots, among whom I am proud to be included, support the embargo and whatever sanctions are applied against the dictatorship which is oppressing us, because of their clear conviction that any resource which might enter Cuba resulting from international concessions will never be applied, NEVER! for the good of my people.

Instead of that, they will inevitably be controlled by the stupid Castroist oligarchy which, you mention, squandered, robbed and diverted to fatten up their secret accounts in tax havens, and ultimately, only used to strengthen even further its lethal repressive apparatus.

That is written in the Bible, Sandalio, and to close your eyes to something so logical and predictable makes one doubt a person’s intelligence and good faith, and makes me suspect their complicity with the regime, above all after the ample historic evidence displayed last July 11th (a day of mass protests in Cuba).

What more do people like you need, Sandalio,  than a July 11th, to make you understand that the hatred and grudge are not fed by my people but by those who beat them during those historic days??!! How many more people detained or dead do you need before you understand that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Castroism and my people, and that it is not the fault of the Cubans, whether inside or outside Cuba? When will you understand that Castroism always passed, passes, and will pass through the triumphal arch,  however many bridges of love are laid out to it because it is not interested in any authentic dialogue, which it will always be opposed to, by nature and essence.

Who were the miserable people, Sandalio, who hit and subjected to summary justice hundreds of semi-adolescents just for protesting, not giving a shit about their own current constitution, ratifying it as a dead letter.  None of this has anything at all to do with the embargo, and it would continue to happen, and worse things too, if this very day all the sanctions were cancelled and the regime felt more secure and legitimate because of it. To doubt that offends the intelligence and sensitivity of millions of Cubans, Sandalio!

Nothing suggests that changing this strategy, maintained “without obtaining any results in decades”, will stop the dictatorship easily adapting to new circumstances and, in the face of every new proposal, bringing up new excuses and never granting us the rights we claim, above all because experience predicts the exact opposite: if it accepts new sources of finance from unwary creditors, Castroism will reposition itself and there will be nothing for Cuba but more repression every day, more poverty and less liberty.

It is not “the Americans”, nor any exiles, Sandalio, who stoke resentments and keep the majority of the diaspora totally angered with the Cuban government. No!! Those doing that are precisely the same Castroists for whom you are pleading forgiveness every time they mistreat, neglect and defraud us in every consulate; when they blatantly help themselves to part of every remittance; when they prevent us from freely entering and leaving our own country because of political bias, in fact, for the thousands of accumulated reasons counted up by this people during over six decades of absolutism, peasant! It is Castroism, and nothing else, that ruins our lives, and keeps our families as hostages in Cuba, Sandalio!

How dare you try to pass that most serious responsibility to people other than those who hold us up at the Cuban customs?  Just to insinuate such an idea is an aberration and frankly immoral, when you, like millions of Cubans, know that the only people guilty of this abomination are in Havana, not in Washington! It will be impossible to achieve this “brilliant future vision” that you invent in your mental masturbation, Sandalio, while every peaceful proposal from the Cuban civic opposition is received by the Communist Party/State Security duo as a provocation and ends up coming to blows.

Please don’t bang on any more about the idea that supporting the well-deserved sanctions against those who tyrranise us, they tease and shit in all this “good tone and optimism”, which outdated people like you hallucinate in your alienation is an act of treason, when the real traitors are in the Plaza de la Robolución (**play on words between Plaza de la Revolucion, a large square in Havana, where the seat of government is, and “robo”, meaning theft) waiting for people like you to do their dirty work.

Please, have some self-respect, Sandalio, it’s always a good idea to preserve a little dignity if you don’t want to remain a traitor to yourself … no matter how angry you paint yourself!

Translated by GH