14ymedio, Frank Calzón, Miami, July 14, 2021 — In the midst of the enthusiasm, and as a result of the spontaneous and eminently peaceful protests on the island, there is speculation about what should be done to bring an end to the dictatorship that has so badly governed Cubans for more than 60 years.
A growing number of young Cubans, on the island and in exile, continue to demonstrate, demanding the end of the tyranny.
If the opposition on the island, democratic and peaceful, is a reflection of the composition of the Cuban people–men, women, whites, blacks, believers, atheists, homosexuals, artists, independent journalists, priests–the vault of power is not.
As can be seen in the photos published by the state newspaper Granma, the Castro leadership is composed mainly of white, fat, elderly men, some of them soldiers who accompanied Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra exploit.
In the search for ways to the future, Cubans ask themselves: what triggered the protests of thousands of compatriots in many parts of the country? In addition to what everyone recognizes–the prevailing hunger, arbitrariness, and corruption–Cuba undoubtedly entered a new stage with the death of the dictator Fidel Castro.
It is the rebirth of civil society, despite the government’s measures, and a new generation that does not want to be like Che, nor leave the Island, and that opposes the state of affairs openly, not clandestinely in the least, the same as the Poles of Lech Walesa, the electrician and union leader of Solidarity, and the Czechs of Václav Havel, the playwright who organized artists, poets and musicians against his Marxist government.
Both are models for the Cuban opposition, whose intellectual forebears are headed by José Martí, who defended freedom at all costs, and wrote that “dictatorship is the same in all its forms.” They are also guided by Mahatma Gandhi, who defeated the British Empire, and Martin Luther King, who ended racial segregation in the American South.
They all have many things in common and put into practice a strategy of peaceful resistance that, precisely for this reason, extended to the populace in general. That has been denied by the Cuban government, which claims that it faces a violent opposition, and tells the international community that these young people from the poorest neighborhoods are Yankee mercenaries.
In this scenario, an understandable reaction has recently surfaced, due to despair, and the lack of knowledge of, on the one hand the nature of Castroism, and on the other the way Central Europeans and others managed to achieve freedom.
Despite the statements of the San Isidro Movement, despite José Daniel Ferrer, despite Cuba Decide, and of religious leaders of all confessions, opposing violence and an armed uprising, in recent hours young people have emerged abroad who say they are preparing several small boats with weapons to “liberate Cuba.”
We must ask those young people, many who act in good faith, to listen to the Patriotic Union of Cuba, and to study how, without shedding Cuban blood, the San Isidro Movement and the song Patria y Vida have put the Plaza of the Revolution on the defensive like never before. Naturally, many of these young people are not State Security agents, any more than were those who many years ago came to the island in commando operations (resulting in a few sugar-cane fields being burned) and were frequently intercepted and killed when disembarking.
Let us remember that the second-in-charge of one of the organizations best known for such actions told the Miami Herald that for years he had been an infiltrator for State Security, that he had worked as a double agent, that the Cuban authorities knew in advance the details of each disembarkation, and that when the diaspora did not provide resources for the purchase of boats and weapons, the funds came from the Cuban Government.
The message, as the most distinguished and courageous leaders of the opposition have recognized, is that, just as in Central Europe, it is the dictatorship that benefits from violence and the use of arms against it.
If that handful of young people does arrive on the island with their initiative, the regime will surely say that they are CIA agents, salaried employees of imperialism, and will imprison them, claiming that the opposition movement in Cuba is part of such nonsense. Hopefully this does not happen, not only to save those lives, but also to deny excuses to Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel in their discrediting campaigns in this country, in the European Union, and in the international press.
Translated by Tomás A.
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