Havana Cuba. — A new tragedy has shaken Cuba. On the north coast of what is now the province of Artemisa, a border patrol boat prevented a large group of Cubans from fleeing abroad last Saturday. The method used was boarding: as they say in maritime language, the Castro ship “passed through the eye” of the speedboat occupied by the fugitives, causing its shipwreck and half a dozen deaths.
Among the deceased is a little girl barely two years old. How awful! This innocent, like the adults who lost their lives on this occasion, join the numerous deaths caused by the Castro regime in similar incidents that have taken place over the years. It is enough to repeat the names of the ships “Río Canímar” and “13 de Marzo” to remember those other crimes.
The reactions to the reprehensible event have not been long in coming. For example, it was learned that, in support of the victims, the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FDHC) has included in its list of repressors several of the communist officers involved in the tragic event. In the opinion of the prestigious institution, it is a “cold-blooded murder”.
The Castroists express something very different. In the official note issued in this regard by the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT), there is simply talk of a “collision”, without making the slightest attempt to explain the causes of that impact. The only thing that is said about it is that the collision with the boat from the United States took place “during its identification.” If someone manages to understand that sentence, I will be grateful if you explain it to me.
But what is truly outrageous is the Castroist version of the causes of this new tragedy: “A new event with a fatal outcome occurs as a consequence of the hostile and cruel policy of the United States government against Cuba, which tolerates and encourages illegal departures from Cuba to the allow the permanence in its territory of irregular migrants”.
Here the first thing that should be pointed out is the intellectual orphanhood of the peniferos of the repressive body that wrote the note. So clumsy is his use of Spanish and so at odds with logic are his reasons (some name must be given to them) that, contrary to what might be expected, it seems that “Cuba” was the one “that tolerates and encourages illegal departures.”
But leaving aside the terrible wording, the most outrageous thing is its claim to accuse our great neighbor to the North of what happened. In this, the spokesmen for Castroism act like a crazed parrot, who repeats the same thing over and over again, when the concurrent circumstances have changed, and they have done so in a radical way.
As the communist parrots seem not to have found out, I inform them that the United States abandoned the so-called “wet foot-dry foot” policy several years ago. According to the latter, migrants who managed to reach land were welcomed in that country, while those detained on the high seas were returned.
This was so, it was so, but since the distant times of the Obama presidency it is no longer so. In the midst of the desperation of the Cubans on the Island to flee from the “paradise of the proletariat” at any cost, it is rare a week in which an illegal exit attempt by sea does not take place. It is also rare the week that a repatriation of Cubans arrested in that attempt by authorities of the northern country does not take place. This includes many who managed to set foot on American soil.
The accusation against Washington and its policies could have some basis when the arrival on North American soil was enough to guarantee reception. With this I am not saying that the Castroists were right then, because they were not: if I were ever to throw myself into the void from the twelfth floor of a building it would not be because of my confidence in the expertise of the firefighters waiting for me below or in the high quality of its networks; I would do it just because the building is on fire.
But if the propagandists of Antillean communism were wrong at that time, much less so now, when —unlike what happened then— most of the fugitives who manage to set foot on US soil are returned to the Island. guilty of tragedies like this now is the government of Cuba, not the United States.
To finish, I must point out that the Embassy of the latter country in Havana, when referring to the deadly boarding, has described it as an “accident”. It is, I think, a serious and very unfortunate blunder, which well deserves to be rectified.
OPINION ARTICLE
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