Eleven News Stories Not Reported in Cuba in 2011 / Ernesto Morales Licea
Eleven News Stories Not Reported in Cuba in 2011 / Ernesto Morales LiceaErnesto Morales Licea, Translator: Unstated
1. The Arab spring
Only when the events in Egypt exceeded the predictions, did the Cuban press note (with tweezers) some isolated incidents. Nor had it published anything earlier about the riots in Tunisia and Yemen, nor did it later dig into the deposition of Hosni Mubarak. On Libya and and the fall of Muammar Gadaffi, it limited itself to denigrating the role of NATO, without mentioning the popular movement against the dictator. On Syria, Cuban press coverage remains minimal.
2. Latin Grammy Awards
As no Cuban artist in residence in the island won a Latin Grammy in 2011, the Cuban press accolades applauded only the Puerto Rican duo Calle 13, and omitted all exiled Cuban artists who were winners: Amaury Gutiérrez, Lena Burke, Paquito D 'Rivera and the late Israel López "Cachao".
3. UN special report on Iran's nuclear program
On November 8 the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations presented a detailed report which showed not only Tehran's efforts to achieve the atomic bomb, but to do so in record time, based on special designs of enriching uranium by catalysts process methods. Not one word of this report was revealed in Cuba, an ally of the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
4. Convictions for child prostitution
Five were implicated in the death of a 12-year-old child prostitute in the eastern city of Bayamo and four subsequently arrested for ties to a child prostitution ring were sentenced in September of this year to prison terms of between 10 and 30 years. Three of those convicted are Italian. Despite the national and international turmoil after the death of the girl, in 2010, the Cuban press did not reflect on the case.
5. Sports defections
In addition to promising young players such as the pitcher Gerardo Concepción and footballer Yosniel Mesa, two major athletes fled Cuba in 2011 through risky and illegal ways. The great Yoenis Cespedes, member of the Cuban baseball team and current national home run record holder, left the island on a boat bound for the Dominican Republic in the summer, and expects to contract with the major leagues. Paralympic swimming champion at the 2011 Pan American, Rafael Castillo, crossed the border and sought political asylum in the United States. Nothing was said officially in Cuba about either of them.
6. The "cubañoles"
In 2011 Cuba set a record for requests for Spanish citizenship. According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the Spanish consulate in Havana has already nationalized some 66,000 Cubans, and it is estimated that at the end of the process about 190,000 residents of the island will be citizens of Spain due to the Law of Historical Memory (qualifying requires having a Spanish grandparent). In Cuba, not only has this event been silenced, but Internet pages with information about how to apply are blocked.
7. Hugo Chavez's Cancer
With the exception of an official note on the surgery in June of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, news coverage on successive chemotherapy treatments in Havana, relapse, revenues emergency in Caracas and in general the Venezuelan president's illness has been practically nil.
8. Bill Richardson's visit to Havana
Only after former New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson declared his frustration with the unsuccessful trip he made to Havana in September, did the official Cuban press counter with the reasons why the government had not allowed Richardson will meet with Alan P. Gross, let alone bring him back to the United States. During his stay in Cuba, Bill Richardson was ignored by the Cuban media.
9. Pablo Milanes Controversy
Nor was a a visit to Miami by one of the two most important singers of the Cuban Nueva Trova movement, Pablo Milanes, mentioned, nor was a word published about his accusatory statements against the repression of the Ladies in White and the stifling centralization of power. Only by alternative means did Cubans learn of the controversial Pablo Milanes concert at American Airlines Arena in Miami, and his public break with the regime of the island
10. Cuba's first gay wedding
An event covered by the international press found no place in Cuban journalism: the wedding of Wendy Iriepa, a transsexual, and the homosexual dissident Ignacio Estrada in August. Not even because this one-of-a-kind wedding occurred on the "symbolic" date of August 13th (the birthday of Fidel Castro) did the Cuban media report it.
11. Record for corruption
Scholars of Cuban issues classify 2011 as the "year of corruption in Cuba." Scandals in the fields of nickel (Sherritt International and Cubaníquel), telecommunications (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, known as ETECSA), the Cuban Volleyball Federation, the Tobacco Industry (Habanos SA), among others, led to dismissal of ministers such as Yadira Garcia (Basic Industry ) and legal actions against sports officials such as the glory of Cuban volleyball, Raul Diago. On all these scandals, the Cuban media issued terse notes, or in some cases ignored them entirely.
Cuba’s Justice System Mustn’t Be Blind
Cuba's Justice System Mustn't Be BlindDecember 29, 2011Fernando Ravsberg
HAVANA TIMES, Dec 29 — Upon hearing the news of the pardon of 2,900 prisoners, a friend who's a "revolutionary" warned me that "the streets are going to turn bad"; while a dissident complained to me that "the Cuban government's decision was too limited." The controversy sparked my interest, so I went looking for some of those who were released.
I talked with three of them for a good while. Though those conversations didn't get me any statistical parameters, it was enough to make me realize that not necessarily all of those men and women would return to the streets to repeat the crimes committed in the past.
This also made me wonder about how fair it is to keep a man locked up for 36 years — married and trained in prison as a level "A" technician in electricity for machine assemblies — for a crime he committed when he was a 17-year-old adolescent.
It's certain that some of those pardoned will fail to re-integrate themselves into society and will return to crime, but that cannot serve as an argument to deny all the others a second chance.
Prisons shouldn't be used as punishment, but as places of confinement for those who are unable to live in society without harming the rest of us. But under this criterion, there's no justification for keeping them behind bars when they're not dangerous.
It's very healthy that each year the authorities will be obligated to review the cases of people placed in their custody to serve a sentence; men and women should never be denied the right to rehabilitation.
The 2,900 released at Christmas time adds to the 200 political prisoners released since Raul Castro assumed the presidency, and to those figures should be added the commutations of the death sentences of dozens of other convicts.
We can hope that this is a first step towards the elimination of capital punishment, because it's a penalty where there is no turning back, even if justice is mistaken. It's also a cruel punishment that denies human beings the opportunity to correct themselves.
I know that my opinion is not shared by many Cubans. In street interviews on the topic, most people with whom I spoke were in favor of maintaining the death penalty for serious crimes.
In any case, deputies in parliament raised the need to revise the Cuban penal code, and I imagine this will be one of the items on its agenda. However it's certainly not the only one, because the challenges facing Cuban society today are enormous.
Despite Raul Castro's insistence on the need to prosecute cattle thieves, the sentence for that crime shouldn't be greater than that applied to those who caused the deaths of dozens of mentally ill patients from hunger and cold.
If, as the president said in parliament, the main enemy of the nation is white-collar corruption, it seems logical that the government would arm itself with a strategy and a legal structure that allows it to fight harder and more efficiently.
How much has the country lost through the embezzlement and theft in the areas of civil aviation, nickel, cigars, telephone services, food imports, biotechnology, transportation and spare parts, sugar and even within some companies run by the military?
The truth is that any of those convicted leaders or officials did much more damage to the national economy in one year than could have been done in the whole life of some Cuban cattle rustler killing cows.
If the government fails to eliminate the milking of the nation's industries, it will mean little if ordinary Cubans increase productivity on their jobs, use less electricity or stop receiving subsidies. The sacrifices of the people will end up in private bank accounts abroad.
In parliament, the president blasted them as "corrupt bureaucrats." He accused them of holding positions "to accumulate wealth, counting on the eventual defeat of the revolution" and he warned that "we will be relentless" in the fight against that "parasitic plague."
In the same address he announced that there are documentaries and filmed interviews of "white-collar criminals." Nonetheless, these can only be viewed by deputies and other leaders, denying that opportunity from most citizens.
Can people be asked to understand the gravity of what is happening when most of the information is hidden from them? Is it correct to maintain secrecy around an issue that affects the entire nation? And will the national media again bury its head and pretend nothing is happening?
From what has been leaked, few of these cases have anything to do with national security. The silence only serves to keep people passive in the grandstands circulating rumors – some true, and others preposterous.
The lack of transparency in fighting corruption seems to prove the correctness of Cuban writer Lisandro Otero when he concluded that under capitalism, citizens don't know what will happen, while under socialism they never find out what has happened.—An authorized translation by Havana Times (from the Spanish original) published by BBC Mundo.
Jailing of Cuban dissidents denounced
Posted on Tuesday, 12.27.11
Jailing of Cuban dissidents denouncedBy Juan Carlos Chavezjcchavez@elnuevoherald.com
Activists and groups advocating individual freedom in Cuba denounced the jailing in maximum security prisons of three peaceful opponents, including Ivonne Malleza Galano, who this year carried out a series of daring street protests.
The arrests coincide with the massive amnesty announced by Cuban leader Raúl Castro of about 2,900 Cuban prisoners. Five political prisoners were also released, according to information given on Tuesday by Elizardo Sánchez, director of the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, based in Havana.
"Suddenly the signs are very negative," Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald. "Because while there is an amnesty of criminal and political prisoners, three people who simply staged a small peaceful protest on the streets without any kind of force or violence are being jailed."
Malleza was transferred to Manto Negro women's jail in Havana together with dissident Isabel Hayde Alvarez Mosqueda. Both could be sentenced to five years in prison. The third opponent jailed is Malleza's husband, Ignacio Martínez Montero.
Malleza, a member of the group the Ladies in White, began to draw attention in the last few months because of her work in the opposition
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/27/2563791/jailing-of-cuban-dissidents-denounced.htmlmovement.
Cuban Dissident Freed Hours After Violent Arrest
Cuban Dissident Freed Hours After Violent Arrest
HAVANA – Prominent Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas was released without charges several hours after his "violent" arrest in the central city of Santa Clara, his family and colleagues said Monday.
Fariñas was headed for church on Sunday together with a group of 10 opposition members when "three (police) patrol cars blocked their way and the cops began to push and shove them inside," Ramon Jimenez, spokesman for the dissident group United Anti-Totalitarian Forum, told Efe.
"The police were violent with them and Guillermo was treated worst of all," Jimenez said.
Fariñas' mother Alicia Hernandez confirmed Monday the account of her son's detention and said that, after returning home around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, he had to go to the doctor "because he was in a lot of pain."
The 49-year-old psychologist and independent journalist went on a hunger strike last year for more than four months following the death of opposition prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, to demand the release of political prisoners suffering severe illnesses.
Guillermo Fariñas, recipient of the European Parliament's 2010 Sakharov Prize for the defense of human rights, was arrested briefly on several occasions this year, the last time in mid-September during a wave of detentions of dissidents in Santa Clara and other towns in central Cuba.
According to the opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, the Communist government has intensified the "interior repression" against dissidence over the last month, and estimates that 380 people were arrested for political reasons in December. EFE
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=456174&CategoryId=14510
Raul Castro’s Daughter Launches Blog
Raul Castro's Daughter Launches BlogPublished December 22, 2011EFE
Just a few weeks after going tweet-to-tweet with dissident Yoani Sánchez in a bracing welcome to the open debate that reigns online, Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and director of the National Sexual Education Center, has launched a blog.
"El blog de Mariela Castro" featured Castro's first two posts on Wednesday, although readers have not yet been provided with the chance to leave responses or comments.
Castro, well-known in Cuba for her work in favor of the rights of sexual minorities, published her first blog article on the visit she made in October to Amsterdam and another on the discussions in the Cuban legislature concerning the "racial problem" on the Communist-ruled island.
In the second piece, Castro says that she was invited on Tuesday to a working meeting of the National Assembly at which lawmakers discussed racism and in which Culture Minister Abel Prieto and parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon also participated.
According to what she said in her blog post, the 53 years of the Cuban Revolution confirm that the country must work on an ongoing basis on educational and social communication strategies to achieve "cultural changes" in society and "full justice."
The second and last plenary session of the National Assembly this year will take place on Friday.
Mariela Castro last month opened her first Twitter account (@CastroEspinM), which in just a few hours engendered debate and a controversial exchange of messages with independent blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has – over time – been critical of the Cuban regime.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/12/22/raul-castros-daughter-launches-blog/
Cubans wait, hope for end to travel limits
Cubans wait, hope for end to travel limitsBy Rosa Tania Valdez and Jeff FranksHAVANA | Fri Dec 23, 2011 5:24am EST
(Reuters) – Cuba is abuzz with speculation that President Raul Castro will soon announce policy changes making it easier for Cubans to travel abroad from their communist island.
Without being specific, he has promised to ease restrictions that make it difficult for most Cubans to leave the island and return, one of the biggest gripes about life under the government in power since Cuba's 1959 revolution.
Castro could disclose the reforms as soon as Friday, when he will speak to a session of the National Assembly, but there are also rumours they will be announced in early January.
The government has been tight-lipped about his plans, but Castro said in an August speech to the assembly that change is coming.
He said officials were working to update migration policy with an eye toward increasing ties with Cubans who have left the Caribbean island and are living abroad.
Today's emigrants are leaving for economic reasons, not political, he said, and "almost all still love their family and the homeland where they were born."
Cuban exiles, who send more than $1 billion a year in remittances from abroad, are an important source of money for the cash-strapped island and are expected to bankroll small businesses and real estate purchases now permitted under economic reforms by Castro.
How far he plans to go with travel changes remains to be seen, but Cubans' hopes are high.
They want him to eliminate costly and time consuming requirements for such things as government permission to both leave and return to the island and for a letter of invitation from a friend or relative in the country they intend to visit.
They also would like to see an end to limits on how long they can be away and on the right to bring their children along on trips, both of which are in place to encourage their return.
CUBAN EXODUS
Cuba imposed travel restrictions to slow an exodus that began with the 1959 revolution and has continued only partly abated. An estimated 2 million Cubans live abroad with most of those in the U.S. and particularly in Miami.
Castro said many of the rules "played their role in certain circumstances," but then "lasted unnecessarily."
Cubans agree. They say they would like to visit family members abroad and see more of the world than the island most have never left.
"Everybody has the right to travel, to know other countries for family reasons, economic reasons, work reasons, and I think it would help the development of Cuban society," student Jose Ricardo told Reuters in Havana.
"I have family in the United States and it would be good for me to go see them," said retiree Ricardo Cuesta. "It would be good for everyone."
Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has been denied exit from the country since 2004, said on Twitter that her bags are packed and she was "ready to test the limits of the possible" by going to the airport as soon as changes are announced.
"Rights are not to begged for, they are to be exercised," she said.
Even if the government loosens travel restrictions, Cubans still will face visa requirements in many countries, including the United States.
But under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, the U.S. also allows them in if they cross the Florida Straits and set foot on the beach. (Editing by Kevin Gray and Anthony Boadle)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/23/uk-cuba-travel-idUSLNE7BM01620111223
Cuba, North Korea, and Vaclav Havel
Cuba, North Korea, and Vaclav HavelRay WalserDecember 21, 2011 at 11:30 am
On learning of the death of Kim Jong-il, Cuban authorities immediately declared three days of official mourning. Their action underscored longstanding ties of intimacy between two of the world's most oppressive, most anti-American regimes.
The death of North Korea's tyrant also evoked a feeling that the Cuba of Fidel Castro, age 85, and reigning leader Raul Castro, age 80, will soon be overtaken by the passage of time, ushering in fresh and similar regime uncertainties.
Independent-minded Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez sees deep parallels: "genealogy has been more determinate than ballot boxes, and the heritage of blood has left us—in 53 years—only two presidents, both with the same last name. The dauphin over there is named Kim Jong-un; perhaps soon they will communicate to us that over here ours will be Alejandro Castro Espin [Raul Castro's only son and possible heir]."
Unlike North Korea, which remains remote and distant from the U.S. and the West, Cuba continues to enjoy the benefits of travel and tourism despite its inhospitable political climate. According to Cuban authorities, the island will receive more than 2.5 million visitors in 2011, many from the U.S., who have taken advantage of Obama-era travel concessions.
Yet, the stagnant and repressive political system grinds on, and the regime shows no signs of loosening its grip. It lashes out viciously at small groups of activists who dare protest the absence of democracy, such as a December 2 roundup of 46 dissidents, and complains loudly about intrepid protesters who pulled off a fireworks display off the coast of Havana to protest human rights violations.
Sadly, friends of Cuban liberty mourn the passing of former Czech anti-Communist dissident and ex-President Vaclav Havel, the antithesis of a Kim Jong-il or a Castro.
In a full lifetime, Havel never shied away from support for dissidents, democracy, and freedom in Communist Cuba. On travel to Cuba, he was firm: "I don't think we can go to Cuba and lie sunning on the beach, having a good time and enjoying a drink, without noticing what is going on around us."
Today's neo-realists in the White House and State Department prefer relative silence when it comes to Cuba's 50-plus years of dictatorship. They seek good relations with a regime that admires the regimentation of North Korea rather than the freedom of the United States. Yet, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright observed in eulogizing Havel's life and actions, "the urgency in his [Havel's] voice came less from lofty expectations of human character than from the distress he felt at those who accepted injustice simply because it was easier to look away than to resist."
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/21/cuba-north-korea-and-vaclav-havel/
Political Arrests on Rise in Cuba, Opposition Says
Political Arrests on Rise in Cuba, Opposition Says
HAVANA – The opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said Monday that in December there have been 388 temporary detentions for political reasons in Cuba.
"We are very disturbed by the increase of what is called 'low intensity' political repression consisting of being kept in custody for hours, days or weeks," Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the illegal but tolerated commission, told foreign correspondents.
"We have absolutely confirmed – up to yesterday, Dec. 18 – 388 detentions for political reasons, many of them violent," he said.
Sanchez said that the political, economic and cultural situation and that of civil rights in Communist-ruled Cuba "continue to deteriorate."
As an example of his complaint he presented the case of Henry Perales, who appeared at the same press conference to report that he was violently arrested and jailed by police together with a group of dissidents when they tried to carry out a peaceful march on Dec. 2 in the eastern town of Palma Soriano.
Perales, 27, said that he and his friends were beaten by security agents and, in his case, by the driver of the bus they put him in.
"When I got on (the bus) I yelled 'Long live human rights!' The driver had a tool in his hand, he struck me with it and when I called him a murderer he hit me again," Perales said.
He said police took him to a medical post where he was given nine stitches to close the wounds caused by the blows. Afterwards he was jailed for nearly five days and was later released without charges.
Perales said he intended to present a "formal accusation" against the bus driver, and Sanchez confirmed that the commission will aid the dissident in his efforts to obtain justice. EFE
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14510&ArticleId=453903
Dissidents send out images of police crackdown
Posted on Saturday, 12.17.11
CUBADissidents send out images of police crackdown
One dissident got nine stitches, another oneBy Juan O. Tamayojtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
Cuban dissidents have sent out photos and videos of a large police crackdown in the eastern town of Palma Soriano that left at least five government opponents with head wounds, black eyes and other injuries.
One photo of the Dec. 2 roundup of 46 dissidents shows Henry Perales with two wounds on his shaved head that required nine stitches to close. Another shows AbrahanCQ Cabrera with one stitch on his forehead.
"That wound bled a lot because it was on a blood vessel, but it was a kick to the ribs on the right side that made me fall to the ground … It still hurts," Cabrera told El Nuevo Herald Friday by phone from Palma Soriano.
The images were sent to the newspaper by Luis Enrique Ferrer Garcia, U.S. representative of the dissident Cuban Patriotic Union. His brother, former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, heads the Union and was one of the men arrested in the Palma Soriano crackdown.
Union members and supporters took two weeks to smuggle out the photos and videos, via emails, because they had to work slowly and carefully to avoid police agents who were trying to find and seize the images, Luis Enrique said.
The Palma Soriano roundup was one of the largest and harshest police crackdowns on dissident in recent years. All were freed hours or days later – one of them 12 days later – without charges.
Forty-six men had gathered in a Palma Soriano house starting on Nov. 30 with plans to stage a street protest two days later to demand the release of all political prisoners and respect for human rights.
Cell phone videos shot inside the house showed many of the dissidents saying they wanted to show they were not U.S. paid "mercenaries," as the government brands them, but rather "defenders of human rights."
The unidentified narrator of some of the videos referred to the police already deployed outside "and the repression that awaits us."
Police indeed arrested the dissidents as they left the house in groups of four and five, and a video taken from a second-story balcony showed them punching some of the protesters and forcing them onto a U.S.-styled yellow school bus parked at the end of the block.
Cabrera said the bus driver, dressed in civilian clothes, hit him as well as Perales and several other dissidents with a wrench once inside the bus. A police officer in uniform later ordered the driver to stop hitting the detainees.
Other photos show dissidents Misael Valdes Diaz and Alexis Yanch OiCQ with black eyes and Emilio Dinza with a large bump on his forehead. Other dissidents reported black and blues from police strikes.
Angel Moya, a former political prisoner who was reported beaten in a police station after his arrest in Palma Soriano Dec. 2, said police punched him on the way from the house to the school bus but not afterwards.
Moya said Friday that he spent 12 days in a police lockup, in a cell that was smelly and had no water or lights and that he shared with common criminals.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/17/2550399/dissidents-sent-out-images-of.html
Fidel Castro: Guilty of Murdering the Cuban Nation / Angel Santiesteban
Fidel Castro: Guilty of Murdering the Cuban Nation / Angel SantiestebanAngel Santiesteban, Translator: Regina Anavy
The Cuban dictatorship criticizes the possibility offered by the U.S. government of accepting Cubans who cross the Florida Straits in a bid to achieve their dreams. They write lengthy manifestos to disguise the reality of the island, and blame the ones who suffer the problem. Which means looking at the result and forgetting the cause.
Of course, who in Cuba would question this required view of the problem? Who would dare to question the "cause" when no name other than the Castro brothers can come up? What have they done with this country? Where is the success at the cost of the slain under their orders? What is the price of human and material losses in the last 50 years? Why does Fulgencio Batista now not seem so tyrannical? Who took charge of surpassing him, to be a more extremist dictator? Who filled the prisons and shot the young people who were dissatisfied, desperate, dissident, and every one who opposed them? How many years in prison did they get for attempting to leave the country illegally? They punished them with the same sentence imposed on Fidel Castro for attacking the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba.
In 1967 my godfather received a letter from a cousin in Miami, trying to convince him to emigrate with them, and in which he warned that a government like Fidel Castro's could become a communist and totalitarian one. They arrested him and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, which he served to the day. They had opened his letter, which he never received. When he came and saw me after almost 11 years, he started to cry for all the time lost unfairly. He hugged my mother, and pleading with his gay gestures, said he never wanted to see a man at his side again. He spent 10 years of being used by the beasts, he told my mother in the middle of crying.
Who has been more of a dictator, Batista or Castro?
We know, according to the story that they told us themselves, that the Batista government abused, tortured and secretly killed the young people, then left them lying on the roadside. Which we considered horrendous. But didn't Fidel Castro shoot them in front of people?! Desperate young people who tried to steal a passenger launch in the bay of Havana to go to Miami in order to work, to fulfill their dreams that were more urgent than a "revolution" that didn't know how to support them? And who were deceived, after being stranded at sea for lack of fuel and being towed by the Cuban Coast Guard to the Bay of Mariel and negotiating with the authorities, who spoke on behalf of Fidel Castro, after being guaranteed that nothing would happen to them, and if they surrendered, in exchange they would receive a minimum punishment?
Their own companions in the boat, among them foreigners who testified that they were not mistreated nor did they understand that their lives were in danger at some point, even if things were tense, asked for leniency for the young men. But they were executed in front of Cuba and the world. Without a trial. Hours after their capture. They waited for their mothers to leave to get clothing and toiletries for them to clean up, and before they got home they were informed that their sons had been shot by strict order of the State Council. Of course, Cubans remained silent, and some intellectuals and artists were left with dirty hands, so much so that not even their own poetry will save them from Hell. And all because of cowardice, by thinking about their own welfare. And now they repeat like parrots that they had to do it because there was a real threat that the U.S. fleet would invade Cuba, to complete the practice of violating the sky and waters. That has never been proven. But if it were true, it still would have been murder. They did not think about their children, their grandchildren. Would they have done the same? Surely not.
Intelligence at the service of mega-malignancy
We can't deny that Fidel Castro has been of uncommon intelligence, only that he used it for personal gain, and for family purposes. Others would say in the service of the Devil. But what would have happened if Fidel Castro had done what he promised from the Sierra Maestra? If he had fulfilled all those dreams of a better Cuba, without departing from democracy and the principles of the most advanced civilization? Perhaps he even would have accepted, in the style of King Juan Carlos of Spain, being the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Cuba, but without intervening in the affairs of state. Alone he could have been in charge of a human revolution, destined to improve the lot of all Cubans, regardless of race, creed or political affiliation.
But those who have a bit of common sense know that Fidel Castro would never have been satisfied with overseeing the rules and rights of the Cuban nation. He wanted more. He always wanted more. In fact, he left Cuba — too small, like Cinderella's glass slipper was for her sisters — and began looking for expansion in other continents, so that he forgot about Cuba. We alone were the means of sacrifice for his mega-dreams, his mega-revolution, his desire to be a mega-president, a mega-leader. To this he dedicated his life, trying to hoodwink us in his delight with words of principles and tenderness, to deceive others and add them to his purposes with patriotic, heroic, "internationalist" locutions. Fidel has served as a great magician of the word, I always picture him blowing a flute to make the snake dance, and in this case the snake is in the mirror, it is his own image that dances with his own interpretation, hence the great trick that he has exercised for over half a century: "the enchantment."
And many fell asleep under his enchantment, are still sleeping, the minority, because the majority feign sleep, but it's nothing more than fear that keeps them pretending compliance with the orders of the magician-dictator.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Translated by Regina Anavy
10 December 2011
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