HAVANA, Cuba.- Fortunately, although there are quite a few, the majority of Cubans who have adopted two attitudes that affect our national self-esteem and speak very badly of us as a people are not: those in Cuba who exaggerate with the victimization of the precarious conditions in which we liveand a few abroad who are in favor of increasing the martyrdom of their compatriots because they believe they deserve it as punishment for not having gotten rid of the Castro regime.
The first are those who, in messages and phone calls, exaggerate their sufferings and shortcomings, which are not few, to gather information. financial aid —which will always seem insufficient— from their relatives and friends abroad. As if they were rich and did not have to attend to their own needs, reduce their expenses and restrain themselves from many things in order to save and be able to help the people they have in Cuba. And even then it will not be enough, because millions of dollars are needed to be able to meet all the needs of a family in Cuba.
I clarify again that I am referring to compatriots who exaggerate with their requests, which are sometimes luxuries and whims, not to those who, due to their meager monetary income, depend on the remittances from their relatives to feed themselves and buy medicine.
I know of many cases of people who demand designer clothes and shoes, sophisticated phones and money for quinceanera photos, a stay in a hotel, the iyabó ceremony, a lavish wedding or other luxuries that their relatives in Miami or Madrid often cannot afford.
Let’s not blame them. It is the result of the situation of poverty to which the regime has led us. If we add to that the idealization of capitalism as opposed to communism and the loss of values that Cuban society has experienced, we will understand the ease with which many compatriots have accommodated themselves to the inconsiderate attitude of being supported full-time and without limitations.
In contrast, there are Cubans abroad who think that all the sanctions against the dictatorship are not enough, even if they end up harming the people and not the victims. the bosses.
They are the ones who say that everything we are going through in Cuba, even the greatest hardships, we deserve for being submissive and tolerant. As if the regime had not encountered resistance in Cuba after the last rebels in Escambray were crushed. As if there had not been a human rights movement, the Christian Liberation Movement, Varela ProjectUNPACU, independent journalism, 11J; as if thousands of Cubans had not passed through the dungeons of Castroism (more than a thousand right now) and, despite that, opposition activism and protests in the streets do not cease…
The sad thing is that some of those people who are now so radically anti-Castro, when they lived in Cuba, were integrated into the CDR and the CTC, they did not want to know anything about dissidents and they absolutely and disciplinedly complied with all the tasks and ordinances of the regime.
But most of those who are against travel and remittances are people who left long ago and who have no family left in Cuba. Many have had their property stolen, have been in prison, have had their relatives and friends shot… One can understand their pain, but not the lack of understanding and empathy with their compatriots who can do little on their own to free themselves from a dictatorship willing to do anything to cling to power.
Ask those who have elderly parents and children in Cuba if they share this radical position, if they are willing to let them go hungry and get sick so that not a single dollar they send them or spend on their trips goes into the coffers of the dictatorship.
There are those who think that all of us who are in Cuba are accomplices of the regime and that is why we deserve to be punished. And if not, we should leave the country. As if leaving Cuba would change and make people different and better, even the communist henchmen who are recently defecting and going to the United States.
They do not understand that with these extreme attitudes what they achieve is to divide the exile and favor the Castroist discourse about “haters” and “the intolerance of the anti-Cuban mafia.” And also, at the end of the road, the Pharisees and infiltrators who from Miami say they build bridges of love, and who are always willing to meet with the representatives of the regime, pay them homage and make them faces every time the MINREX calls them.
