50-plus years of US diplomatic stalemate and economic
sanctions have failed to bring freedom to the Cuban people because they were
not designed to bring freedom to the Cuban people, but to penalize a regime
that started by sequestering Cuban sovereignty by violent and anti-democratic
procedures (reestablishment of death penalty, radical hatred speech, citizen
apartheid), by the illegalization of civil society and all forms of property
(both private and public, including the press), and by tyrannizing every institutional
power into a despotic State, plus the militarization of the nation to the point
of demanding a nuclear attack against the United States from Cuban territory.
The 50-plus years to come of US diplomatic relations
and capitalist engagement with Cuba can neither guarantee the advance of
fundamental freedoms in my country, nor our liberation from the successive
Castro generations, because a market economy is not a redemptive formula and it
has already been implemented by authoritarian systems as a tool for tyrannical
control of all basic rights. And this is a wicked word that President Obama,
Pope Francis and General Castro have secretly agreed to postpone: the rights of
the Cuban people.
As the pro-democracy leader Oswaldo Payá stated many
times until he was extrajudicially executed in Cuba on July 22nd 2012:
Why not the recognition of all our rights now? What is good for Americans since
the 18th century is still not good enough for Cubans in the 21st
century?
Is this about US interference, as in the hegemonic
past times when the capitol of DC was the capital of the continent? Or this is
only about insulting the intellectual capacity of my people, wise enough to
escape in a pedestrian’s plebiscite in search for a real “normalization” of
their lives far from an abnormal socialism?
Democracies seem guilty of their duty to foster
democracy worldwide, but Castroism has been more than proud to Castrify
democratic countries (Venezuela is the most tragic example today), as the
recently liberated 5 Cuban spies in US have declared when ordered as National
Heroes back on the Island: we are ready to commit our crimes again if we are
ordered to do so. Sic semper tyrannis.
Why not the effective solidarity and the pressure of
the international community, so that the legal claims that have already
mobilized tens of thousands of Cubans be respected by our non-elected
authorities? Why not take advantage of these US-Cuba negotiations to seat in
the same table the historical gerontocracy with the alternative civil leaders,
after we have risked so much to conquer freedom of speech and to raise
awareness on human rights violations and the anthropological damage in Cuba?
In moral terms, the unpopularity of US policies given
the popularity of the Cuban Revolution worldwide should be less important than
the unpopularity of the retrograde regime within the Island, if a true
transition is to take place in Cuba today. Unless, of course, advancing American
interests in the Western Hemisphere now means advancing American interests in
Western Union.
Did Cuba win?
Cuba cannot win because perpetuation in power is
always a failure and the best approach to endure a fossil past, despite the
faith in the future expressed by Nancy Pelosi, as the US executive branch
enforces resolution after resolution, involving exclusively those congressmen
and NGOs and think-tanks and press magnates and corporations’ tycoons that
hurry to shake Raul Castro’s hand without asking him a single uncomfortable
question, thus legitimizing he who abolished the Cuban Congress and Cuban Chamber
of Commerce and Cuban think-tanks and Cuban NGOs, as well as the exercise of free
press. By the way, convenient Cuban dissidents are also called into play, not
for the rule of law, but for the rule of loyalty.
The rationale seems to be that, as it is impossible to
hold the Cuban government accountable, the appeasement of the dictatorship into
a dictatorcracy is now the lesser evil, mentioning “Cuban civil society” only
for political correctness in presidential speeches, while in fact excluding us
from the new status quo.
I am not sure about “what everybody needs to know
about Cuba” (as in Julia Sweig’s book) but I am certain of what nobody dares to
know about Cuba. Milan Kundera, maybe the best of Cuban novelists who is a
Czech who writes in French and lives in Switzerland (a perfect mixture for
freedom), knew that “the old dead make way for the young dead” for “the
struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”.
Therefore, even if this is a small step for democracy,
it’s also a giant leap against independency. And decency. The Cuban policy of
the US is the ironic victory of The End of History: from our War against
Spain to the anti-Imperialist Revolution, the growing “Common Marketization” of
international relations is what really counts.
That’s why for the first time in the history of our
hemiplegic hemisphere it’s paradoxically in a Communist country where the cry
of “Yankees, come home” echoes. In fact, you are more than welcome to try to
fool our terminal tyrant with US dollars. But having dwelt in the entrails of
said terminal tyranny during never-ending decades, my only remaining resistance
is a sour skepticism to soothe our soul.
1 comentario:
My dear knight of a thousand stars,I commend your perseverance, passion for thruth and undying convictions in your present quest to shed a light on what Cubans truly need and want. There's much I could say about the so called "normalization."However,I'll say only this: the US administration as well as many politicians, academics etc., think that they have the Midas touch,sort of a magic wand that can change Cuba. Underlying the arrogance of such misguided believes is racism and prejudice, which in some cases is unconscious, but very much the backdrop of what's going on. Of course I also do not discard the mighty dollar as a powerful reason for the "mercaderes" who couldn't care less about the Cuban people. To me,this whole circus is quite sickening and shameful as well as profoundly painful and sad. AT
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