Havana Cuba. — Several days after the explosion in the Saratoga, when rescuers continue to dig and remove bodies from under the rubble – the death toll has already risen to 42 – speculation and rumors about the tragedy continue.
From the first moments, the official explanation was that it was an accident due to a gas leak. The first to assure it, even before the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) began the pertinent investigations into the incident, was President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Many in the street and on social networks, if they do not speak of a terrorist attack, affirm that there was negligence and question the official explanations, in which they find numerous loose ends and contradictions.
And it is that the Cubans, after six decades of State secrecy, of the manipulation and concealment of reality, of the lies and half-truths of the official press, there is no way for them to believe in what the government says. Not even when what he says is true or close to the truth, as seems to be the case now.
If it were a terrorist attack, the regime would already be taking advantage of it. And he wouldn’t have to go to great lengths to prove that only monsters would be capable of committing such a crime. Returning once again to the role of victims – this time with good reason – would more than compensate him politically for the possible tourists who would be scared of Cuba, but who would return sooner or later, because where in this world can you be completely sure that you cannot a terrorist attack occurs.
Also, if it were an attack, it would have served the regime to stir up hysteria against opponents among the population and unleash repression against them without having to look for other pretexts or invoke emergency decree-laws.
Accident and all, but there was repression. The rapid response brigades were activated and the activist Angel Cuzawho was the first to report the explosion by posting the video he took with his phone on social media, was arrested by State Security, as if reporting an accident constituted a crime.
Díaz-Canel, when the smoke from the explosion had not yet completely dissipated, took the opportunity to attack independent journalists. Thus, politicizing the matter, he spoiled the good gesture that meant his haste in reaching the scene of the accident.
Not even at times like this do the bosses decide to remove the labels from journalism, which should be only one: attached to the news and the truth.
The rumors about what happened in the Saratoga are due to official secrecy, information opacity and the lack of questioning in the media at the service of the State. Only after the protests on July 11 and 12, 2021, has the regime decided to confront them. But evidently, they don’t work disgusting television clunkers like edged. Always acting defensively, failing to convince anyone, but rather creating rejection, cannot be the solution.
Until just a few years ago, the Internet and social networks snatched the monopoly of information from the regime, we Cubans found out what was happening in Cuba through “the antenna” or through gossip on Radio Bemba.
Now, if the regime reports something that does not suit them, it is when they no longer have another option. And usually, it’s late to prevent rumors from spreading. Even the most absurd.
In Cuba, everything is a state secret, but for Cubans, secrets make us itchy. Very itchy.
If guided by the official media, it is as if in this society there were no muggers, rapists, psychopaths and no one killed out of jealousy. As if we spent our lives preparing for the next combat march. But it happens that bad and worse things happen. And we always find out everything. Or almost everything. Only with the distortions, truculence, exaggerations of those who swear to be witnesses of the facts or “know it by good faith.”
By virtue of the mystery of the masonic lodge of the bosses, the balls (as old as Castroism) and the rumors fill the void created by the lack of information.
A truth in time is always less harmful than the smallest of rumors. Perhaps when the regime learns that lesson, it will begin to have some success in its fight against independent journalists and all the press that insists on describing it as “the enemy.”
Of course I do not intend to give advice to the regime on information policy. With how clumsy and arrogant these bosses are, triumphalists even when they count the dead and the injured in an accident! For me, let them continue with their clumsiness and their blunders, and let them sink, the faster, the better, for the good of all Cubans.
I had made up my mind not to talk about the Saratoga tragedy. Other colleagues —Ana León, Ernesto Pérez Chang, Jorge Ángel Pérez, René Gómez Manzano— have done better. But the pain does not allow me to remain silent. If they want, the bosses can now accuse me of politicizing the issue.
OPINION ARTICLE
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