HAVANA, Cuba. – So that we know well that the misfortunes have not ended, that fires, floods and unusual earthquakes are not coincidences, but rather signs in a dying body, comes the deadly explosion in Holguín and the loss of more young people who suffered the same fate that those innocents of Matanzas in the August 2022 fire; that the men and women buried by the rubble of the Saratoga hotelin May of that same year.
But there is no “chance” nor has it been an “accident”, nor were there any in the previous explosion also occurred in a military arsenal in Holguín in July 2020, or in the crash of the helicopter that was part of the escort that transported Miguel Díaz-Canel from Holguín to Guantánamo, in January 2021, with five soldiers dead; either the other device damaged in April 2024 in the vicinity of the Santiago de Cuba airport, presumably after Raúl Castro’s transfer from Camagüey, which left three Air Force personnel dead.
In all cases, in the absence of a convincing explanation, due to the delay and even the absence of conclusive results from investigations (which were not even carried out, at least not in the case of the Saratoga hotel, whose reconstruction began almost immediately), knowing that the evidence would be ruined), the delay and lack of elements with which the “official information” arrives—which responds more to the pressure of independent media and social networks than to the desire to inform truthfully— , they make it clear That either it is too much bad luck, or they simply prefer to pass off as accidental what is clearly revealed to be intentional.
It is not, as some think, that they were “accidents”, attributed to “human errors”, to abandonment by the authorities (as in the case of the floods in Guantanamo), to abuse of power and violations of security protocols. (as in the fire at the Matanzas Supertank Base), what lies behind the misinformation is simple impunity, because by presenting one or two severed heads of some military man or small-time leader, many would be satisfied, even the parents who demand justice for their dead children, but it is evident that these catastrophes are not things of chance, nor of incompetence, but rather events that occurred with complete intention and that, therefore, would destroy that discourse about the “unity” with which the regime attempts to justify itself, while exposing the dangerous internal fractures that today threaten Castroism and its “continuity” with death, and that go beyond the couple of dismissed ministers.
The dictatorship prefers to appear as a victim of incompetence, even laggard in clarifying the facts, as “secretive” or not at all transparent, than to publicly recognize itself as internally fragmented, besieged and betrayed by its own forces and, worse than the above, ignorant of which are those disloyal factions that, well aware of the vulnerabilities of the system, of the cracks, know how to use them as the best of weapons, precisely because they are susceptible to camouflage themselves as accidents, as coincidences, like human errors.
The enormous crack of disloyalty discovered by Raúl Castro in 2009 in Fidel Castro’s Support Group itself was not at all closed with the wave of dismissals that literally emptied the offices of the Council of State. But that was just a piece of a terminal cancer metastasizing, and the clearest sign is that Castroism had arrived at the new millennium in frank decomposition, with scandalous dismissals, such as those of Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina (of whom Miguel Díaz-Canel had been great friend and second in command in the national UJC, when he was the first secretary of the organization).
Thus, each year the conflicts and systemic fragmentations, internal ruptures and dissidence have become more extensive and deeper to the point of leading to the mass exodus experienced by the only two political organizations allowed by the regime: the Communist Party of Cuba and the Union of Young Communists, which have been forced to abandon the selectivity of years ago to end up practically giving away membership or pressuring people who aspire to certain better-paid state jobs to become militants as a condition sine qua non.
In the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) it is no different. The cases of desertion, disappointment, discontent and corruption increase alarmingly, despite the fact that it continues to be, together with the Ministry of the Interior, the last reservoir of ideological loyalty that the regime has, although every day it is more permeated by a mentality practical, opportunistic, who hardly sees the passage through military life—the shorter, the better—as a guarantee in the aspiration for some important position or position in their business system, that is, in the conglomerate known as GAESAwhere the internal competition to improve position in the true pyramid of real power in Cuba is intense, bloody, monstrous, so much so that there are still those who refuse to see it as casual sudden death, in July 2022of who was the best-known boss of bosses, General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, not when it occurred precisely between major catastrophes: just over a month after the explosion of the Saratoga hotel and a month before the fire at the Base Matanzas supertankers.
Now in Holguín (the place where Díaz-Canel was secretary of the PCC for many years and where he met his current wife), something has happened again that they will not tell us in a note, something that will be very distant from the version that the Ministry of The Armed Forces have drafted, under pressure, a version that greatly contrasts with the mobilization of troops, the police deployment, the displacement of senior commanders, the closure of access roads even to places distant from the events, in addition to the warning to residents of the vicinity about the consequences of disclosing information or images about what happened, especially when the day before several people say they saw an unusual movement of a convoy of trucks heading towards the site of the explosion.
A bad start to 2025, especially for those who still persist in speaking in terms of superstition. Because if there were any doubts about the curse that, some say, weighs on the Island, catastrophe and death once again come to prove the reason for those who do not need more signs to understand that we are “salad.” But it is because perhaps for a long time we have had in our hands the definitive solution to so many problems and misfortunes but we continue with a clenched fist, enduring it, postponing it, imagining that someone will come from “outside” to finish what depends exclusively on those “inside”, or that a Messiah is needed—or at least that leader that everyone would be willing to follow if he were as perfect as we desire from our many imperfections—to take to the streets and cry out for an end to our anguish, that Let this “saltation” that is actually called dictatorship go away forever.
