Two Accursed Words / Fernando Damaso

Fernando Damaso, 30 July 2015 — Prohibition and prosecution are two words widely used by Cuban authorities since their accession to power an amazing fifty-six years ago.

From the first months they prohibited political parties and organizations, free speech and the free press, the exercise of trades and professions outside state control, and the public practice of religion. They banned private education and health services, privately owned companies and businesses, and everything that would hinder the totalitarian regime they were establishing. To achieve this, they persecuted  everything that emerged contrary to it.

As for prohibition, they banned: free exit from the country; private trips abroad; access by Cubans to hotels, shops, and other facilities set aside for foreigners; possessing foreign currency; buying and selling houses and cars; fishing from a fixed platform; the sale by farmers on the free market of agricultural products; and even the sale of creations by artists, who should always be creating “within the Revolution.”

The victims of this prohibitive megalomania number in the millions, and the damage to the country in the billions, much more than can be blamed on the American blockade (embargo). Those who have lived under these daily absurdities can vouch for that.

As for persecution, they have persecuted all, under the “totalitarian principle” that “everything that is not properly authorized, is prohibited.” To do this they have created vast agencies of persecution. They persecute the political dissident the same as the commercial intermediary, the street peddler the same as the owner of a duly established restaurant or cafeteria. The problem is to persecute, in order to maintain the terror that induces subjugation. It is not the result of a random act.

Even today, after eliminating some absurd prohibitions, they have increased persecutions. It could not be otherwise: it is the only way to keep a failed economic, political, and social system in place for a while longer.