HAVANA, Cuba. – The Castro regime paralyzed the releases supposedly promised to the Vatican without even reaching half of the 553 announced. He did not release one more prisoner after Donald Trump, a few hours after assuming the presidency of the United States, on January 20, Cuba would return to the list of countries sponsoring terrorismfrom which it had been removed a few days before by Biden.
Is the Catholic jubilee announced by Pope Francis over? Is it retaliation? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) assured that the releases had nothing to do with the removal of Cuba from the list and the other measures with which Biden had pleased the Cuban regime…
No more assuming Trump, the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel and the premier Manuel Marrero They wore the olive green uniformas they do every time there is a disaster situation, and accompanied by generals, they went to a military maneuver range.
It is known that the Trump Administration, with Cuban-American Marco Rubio as Secretary of Stateis going to make it difficult for late Castroism, but the continuity bosses exaggerate with their nervous and disproportionate reactions. With that obsessive fixation they have with the United States, conditioning all their actions to what the neighbor to the North does, the communist bosses show their plattism.
The Plattist mentality has lasted longer than the Platt Amendment that originated it. The Amendment, legislated by Senator Orville Platt and imposed by the US Government on the 1901 Constitution, was repealed in 1934, but Plattism still endures.
Today it is more alive than ever. As alive as when politicians, during the first decades of the Republic, at the slightest sign of crisis, asked for sanity to avoid a US military intervention. As happened in 1906, when after President Tomás Estrada Palma with a “combat cabinet” tried to forcefully legalize his re-election and the liberals took up arms, Don Tomás, powerless in the face of the insurrection, requested the intervention of the marines. . And as it almost happened again in 1912, when the uprising of the Independents of Color (there are still those who try to justify the massacre of thousands of black people with the argument that it prevented an intervention), and in 1917 when José Miguel Gómez ended the uprising of the liberals against the government of conservative Mario García Menocal to avoid US intervention.
They were Plattistas who, upon the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, instead of confronting it, packed their bags and went to Miami, confident that, in a matter of months, they would return to Cuba, after the marines, to recover the properties that were confiscated from them. And the Castro regime is plattist, which has been invoking the dispute with the US for 66 years, blaming the embargo for all its failures and preparing to defend itself from a possible US attack to pose as David in front of Goliath, buckling itself into the plaza mentality. besieged, accuse anyone who dissents of being a mercenary, deny the slightest space for political freedom and justify human rights violations.
The dictatorship is so plattist that it prefers the US Government as an interlocutor rather than the civil opposition, which is the one with whom it should discuss democracy and human rights.
Castroism achieved that today, in Cuba and in exile, there are more Plattists, attentive and dependent on what Washington does, than in the times of the Platt Amendment.
Plattiism has been alive and thriving in these six decades. You only had to look at the exaggerated expectations created after the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States was announced in 2014. There were fools who considered that Obama had to capitulate and that it was “the greatest triumph of the Revolution.” We had to listen to the owners of paladares and hostels, to the taxi drivers and pedicab drivers who hoisted the Old Glory, and to the vast majority of Cubans making plans waiting for the flood of “Yuma” tourists loaded with dollars and loquitos to arrive. for wasting them in Havana or Varadero. The wise officials took for granted the exports of Yankee farmers, the investments, the profits that would come through the Mariel Special Development Zone and the credits that they would obtain from international banks.
But Fidel Castro, with one of his “reflections” in the newspaper Granmaput in the spoon, scared his successors and made them slow down the thaw. And so they wasted the opportunity that Obama gave them, because, against all odds, Trump won the elections in 2016.
When there are presidential elections in the US and the Republicans win, it is the Plattists’ run. They are rioting on both shores of the Strait of Florida. Those on the side over there, who want them to tighten the noose on the dictatorship and put an end to it. And those on the side here, with new pretexts to play victims, continue to fuel the flames of a jingoistic and unhealthy nationalism, trusting in Vladimir Putin (who is the only one they don’t dislike for Russian imperialism).
The 2024 elections, due to the highly polarized environment that preceded them and because of everything that is at stake, including democratic institutions, have been the most crucial since the Civil War. But many Cubans, from there and here, approach the issue in a simplistic and opportunistic way.
It’s nice how nothing more and nothing less than the newspaper pontificates and gives lessons on democracy Granmahe National Television News and the program Round Tablebreaking records for cynicism and impudence.
On the Island, in the streets and in their homes, Cubans talk about what the Trump Government will be like almost as much as they talk about the food that is scarce, the money that is not enough and the prices that do not stop rising. I wish they would express themselves with such vehemence about the problems here, where they have no voice and their vote does not count beyond their constituency. But the majority say that they are not interested in politics, especially if it can lead to problems with State Security and its snitches. Of course, they are not thinking about politics, a topic in which they are illiterate after six decades of brutalizing indoctrination, but in terms of remittances, recharges, visas, packages and chicken “made in the USA.” As if the problems that plague them depended more on the president of the United States than on the bosses who have plunged us into this disaster!
The toughest anti-Castro people in exile trust that, in four years, Trump will put an end to the regime, suffocating it economically, without paying much attention to the suffering – which they see as a necessary and inevitable evil – of his starving compatriots in Cuba.
And the dictatorship aspires to survive this new Trump Administration, as it survived the previous 12 administrations, since Eisenhower, and to emerge with a US government that lifts sanctions, softens the embargo and opens the floodgates to investments, tourists, and remittances, of course, which is why they hold the relatives of residents abroad hostage.
