HAVANA, Cuba.- “Gradual dismantling of the embargo”. A few days ago I read that phrase on social networks, and I saw it repeatedly in some posts and comments. Little by little, the Biden administration seems to be lifting the misnamed “blockade”, providing aid to Castroism at the most critical moment in its history. American Airlines and Jet Blue will increase their flights to the Island starting in December, so that Cuban emigration continues to supply, thanks to the everlasting “maleteo”, everything that the totalitarian system implemented by Fidel Castro is unable to produce and provide.
It has not been enough for the White House to authorize for the first time in more than six decades the direct investment of a United States entity in the Cuban private sector, although the secrecy of the State does not allow the people to know in what those thousands of dollars will be invested and which would be the Cuban counterpart that will benefit from such an association. It has not been enough to open up again to people-to-people exchange, that little game of spies and influencers with a “progressive” spirit who say they advocate for a better world, but long to found a CDR in the very heart of Times Square.
This new thaw is not like Obama’s. It is perhaps more daring and, according to certain sentimental Cubans, a rag picker, because when it was thought that the oldest dictatorship in the West had its days numbered, that supportive “enemy” appeared with his dollars and his condescension, without stopping criticizing -so that the opposition is not offended – the increase in repression on the island and the constant violations of human rights.
Meanwhile, it is becoming more apparent every day where the blockage actually resided. Now it is allowed to import frozen products, as if the hunger of this town were a thing of yesterday and not of sixty years ago. If it couldn’t be done before, it wasn’t the fault of the US Congress, since the only thing it denies the Cuban dictatorship is credit, because it knows that Castroism and its continuity are poor pay, boisterous people and thieves.
Flexibility from there, new measures here, and every day fewer Cubans are interested in understanding the dangerous situation we are in. The dollar is around 180 Cuban pesos, there is no way to contain inflation and the regime has placed the entire burden on the shoulders of the émigrés. Whoever has an immediate relative abroad, or many devalued pesos to buy what comes from overseas, eats and heals here. Outside there is no more life. Many people must be dying in Cuba, but nobody talks about that.
The flight via Nicaragua does not stop, hence the usurers are very calm watching the dollar rise, while the needy sleep in the doorways and sidewalks near the CADECAs to catch up and be able to buy the 100 USD (or euros) that they get . If the current rate is maintained, the dollar will reach and exceed the barrier of 200 pesos before the end of the year, because there are many Cubans willing to pay them at any price in order to reach the southern border of the United States.
They come from all the provinces, covered in national currency to buy thousands of dollars. The scenario is so disastrous that there is no better investment than planning the flight from a country that is already being sold to pieces, and under the noses of a people that only serves, it seems, to dispute the approval or not of the Family Code.
The Blue Diamond company expands through a ruined archipelago, while the “Varadero Gourmet 2022” festival shows another Cuba, distant even from the reality of the famous resort, today silent and boring like any country town. These types of events serve as a front for the regime to seal agreements with equally criminal businessmen, attracted by the possibility of making quick money when the Yumas begin to fill the Island thanks to the generosity of the current Democratic administration.
The political and economic landscape is too incongruous for Cubans to be interested in what may happen in the near future. Those who due to lack of resources -or courage to jump on a raft- are forced to survive here, no longer wonder where we will end up. They concentrate on making more queues and reselling more expensively to pay for the goods that arrive in abundance, also very expensive, from Miami, and to deal as best they can with the brutal escalation of the dollar, which with each peso that rises further buries the hopes of Cubans of come out afloat
Cold thaw, without boasting or Tampa Bay Rays. Gradual dismantling of a policy that some consider wrong, so that an obviously failed state continues to live, denying its crimes, strutting before the free world without paying its debts; while it encourages emigration and maintains itself from exile by its own citizens, whom it oppressed and stripped of fundamental rights.
There is no doubt that Castroism is in its final phase, but the coda extends and life goes on. The time of the regime is not the time of the Cuban people, who today abandon everything without looking back because they have already seen this movie, and they know that second parts were never good.
OPINION ARTICLE
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