The Mexican President Comes Out of the Closet and Makes His Castroism Public

Miguel Díaz-Canel and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during the parade for the Independence of Mexico. (Presidency of the Republic)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Joel Ortega Juárez, Mexico, 17 September 2021 — Miguel Díaz-Canel, nominal president of Cuba, appointed by Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, both of the dynasty in power since 1959, has been invited by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known familiarly as AMLO) to the ceremonies celebrating the beginning of the Independence of Mexico.

The Mexican president has come out of the closet and made public his support for Castrismo, a late-arriving definition of the president’s political preferences, ideologies and fanaticism. His right-wing opponents are on the verge of a fit of hysteria.

The Castro supporters of the 4T (“Fourth Transformation”, as López Obrador calls his government, which would mean the fourth fundamental change in Mexico after Independence, the Benito Juárez Reform and the Mexican Revolution) will be able to stop playing ostrich and proclaim openly his admiration for the Castro dynasty, probably convinced that AMLO’s coming out of the closet is a “turn to the left” that demands the unconditional support of “the communists” and the “revolutionaries” to confront the coup plotters of the enemies of change and of the people.

Some former communists, other “Marxists” do not care that the current government represses feminists, leaders of native communities, teachers, normal students, workers in many hospitals, the doctors themselves. They don’t care if it fires tens of thousands. It is enough that it receives the Cuban president with all honors to give support to López Obrador for his defense of “socialist Cuba.”

Militants or left-wing parties, such as the Communist Party of Mexico, have very critical positions towards the AMLO government — on September 14 they marched down Reforma Avenue with a large banner that read “without workers’ power there is no real change.” They now contradict themselves and are moved by the visit of the dictator and organize demonstrations welcoming “President” Miguel Díáz-Canel in defense of the “achievements of the Revolution.”

To affirm that is an insult for Cubans, especially for the most oppressed. Cuba is an island where something similar to a so-called socialist social formation ceased to exist a long time ago. Some old PRI members inside and outside Morena have always been Castroites. It is a phenomenon that needs to be studied, one which allowed the Mexican authoritarian system to shield itself against the emergence of guerrillas in Mexico, and Castroism to have an exit door to the “West.”

This “Castroist pax” was not exempt from tense episodes, since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. López Obrador himself has said that he had differences with Fidel Castro when he came to the inauguration of Salinas and when he gave asylum to Carlos Ahumada. During the PRI government, at different times, Cuba suffered the expulsion of several of its diplomats accused of carrying out espionage activities.

We must not forget that Mexico, in the voice of the then Foreign Secretary Manuel Tello, argued that Cuba was “incompatible” with the Pan-American democratic system, at the same time that it abstained from voting on the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States. Only abstention is what the Mexican pro-Castro members, mostly PRI members, remind us every time they can, as an example of dignity and “congruence” with the “principles of Mexico’s foreign policy of “non-intervention” and respect for the “right of self-determination of the peoples.”

The balance of 62 years of relations between Mexico and Cuba is one of great sympathy with the Castroism on the part of the the PRI, PAN and, now, Morenist governments. This idyll obeys a convincing policy of blackmail before the gringos, but with limits. Mexico never wanted to trade in oil to avoid the shipments from the USSR to the island. In a word, when it came to definitions, Mexico aligned itself with the United States. The force of the myths is very impressive.

Faced with all that gibberish, it is almost impossible to criticize the Castro dictatorship. Whoever does it is “an agent of imperialism, the CIA or a traitor.”

The PRI governments are not criticized for the massacres committed against the people, but they are respected for their policy of “non-intervention” in relation to Cuba.

Faced with all that gibberish, it is almost impossible to criticize the Castro dictatorship. Whoever does it is “an agent of imperialism, the CIA or a traitor.” The PRI governments are not criticized for the massacres committed against the people, but they are respected for their policy of “non-intervention” in relation to Cuba.

In Cuba there is an immense amount of business controlled by the high bureaucrats of the Cuban Communist Party, the Army and the State companies. Those bureaucrats are billionaires. They are a new class, as Milovan Dijlas called it in Yugoslavia long ago.

The famous Ochoa Case made clear the existence of a policy to provide foreign exchange that included drug trafficking from Colombia, created and promoted by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro himself.

This unbearable reality has been recounted by the most prominent writers and is part of the new music of young people, also of cinematographic and theatrical creation, of all kinds of arts. It is in the word of mouth of the people, despite the terror of a police society, where neighbors denounce their neighbors or even relatives their own relatives.

Overcoming hunger and terror, two months ago, first in San Antonio de los Baños and later in many cities and towns on the island, people came out to demonstrate. The response of the State and of Díaz-Canel was brutal: they went out to beat the protesters, intimidate them with weapons, and then detain hundreds at the doors of their homes or even by invading their modest homes.

Testimonies of women, young people, children, mostly from poor neighborhoods in Havana, Camagüey, Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba, recount the abuse, torture, beatings and arrests of many people whose whereabouts were unknown for weeks.

Except for some Trotskyist groups, including one within Cuba, almost all the “left” on the continent and in Europe continue to worship the  Cuban dictators. This attitude favors the most vulgar anti-communism, which uses repression and hunger against the people as a sign of the “condition” of repression and misery that “communism” produces. Those who defend the Castro dictatorship are, paradoxically, the best propagandists of anti-communism.

Continuing the ostrich policy and refusing to see reality has very high costs for the radical struggle against capitalism throughout the world, including the island of Cuba.

While the Mexican president receives Díaz-Canel, several thousand Cubans are crowded into Mexican territory and participate in caravans to break the savage siege of the National Guard against them. Cubans continue to flee in small boats or in improvised rafts made of tires in order to find something different to be able to survive and send money to their relatives.

AMLO adores remittances, as he says it whenever he can. In that he also agrees with Díaz-Canel. They speak against imperialism, they are disappointed in denouncing the blockade, but Cuba receives millions of dollars. Without remittances, hundreds of thousands or millions of Cubans would experience famine.

That prison socialism, of hunger and a cheap brothel, is exactly the opposite of that which the peasants, workers, intellectuals, students and women fought under the leadership of the “bearded young men” Fidel, Camilo, Abel Santamaría and Che Guevara, among others. before the Castros showed themselves as autocrats. Cuba stopped being a socialist country long ago. The fight for a society free of exploiters, oppression and absolute lack of freedom has to break with the cult of dictatorships such as the Castro regime. Without breaking with that model of barbaric socialism and communism, the anti-communist groups will be strengthened.

It is very pathetic that some political forces that have suffered ineptitude, fraud, and crimes against popular opponents by the López Obrador government fall into the trap of “greeting” Díaz-Canel’s visit as a leftist and anti-imperialist sign.

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