HAVANA, Cuba.- The current Cuban rulers have always managed to appear as victims of the “cruel” actions of their enemies. All the actions of Castroism, both inside and outside the borders of the island, are presented as legitimate responses to such aggressions. A situation that is exacerbated in the context of the dispute with the United States. Here the Cuban leaders enjoy their role as David facing the giant Goliath.
If we had to list some of the intermissions of this long plot, we would have to start, of course, with the United States “blockade”. This is the main argument used by the Cuban authorities to try to justify all the mistakes exhibited by the island’s economy, politics and society. Although the statistics show that Washington’s food sales are increasing, the official discourse of Castroism insists that the blockade remains intact, and is to blame for Cuba’s failure to advance. We would not want to be in the shoes of any Castro official who forgets to mention the blockade when addressing public opinion.
The Cuban military intervention in Africa, in the 1970s, was also presented as a defensive action against the aggressions of South Africa and Somalia against Angola and Ethiopia, respectively. However, the truth finally broke through. In Angola, support was given to Agostinho Neto’s MPLA, which had had ties with the Cuban rulers since the 1960s, to the detriment of two other guerrillas -the FNLA and the Unita- with equal rights to fight for the independence of their homeland. And in Ethiopia, the Cuban performance was more scandalous, since the Castro troops defended a ruler who declared himself Marxist-Leninist, and ended up being a genocide of his own people.
That role of victim that Castroism enjoys so much has also been transferred to its allies in these days. We see it in that point of view held by all the official spaces in the country – as if it were democratic centralism in a meeting of the Communist Party or the UJC – by blaming the United States and NATO for the war taking place in Ukraine . Castroism closes its eyes and plugs its ears so as not to see or hear the unanimous worldwide rejection of the excesses of Vladimir Putin. There are the 140 nations that in the UN condemned the Russian aggression, and the sports and cultural entities that veto the participation of the Russians in their activities.
And what about the opinion held by President Díaz-Canel, in the sense that Cuba is a victim of the immigration policy of the United States government towards the island. In other words, Cubans die in the Straits of Florida because their neighbor to the north encourages illegal departures by accepting them if they reach its shores. Not a word about the terrible living conditions that exist in Cuba, and that forces its population, especially the young, to flee the island.
The most recent chapter of this saga corresponded to that organic intellectual of Castroism who goes by the name of Iroel Sánchez. In an article in the newspaper GranmaIroel points out that “what will make our victory irreversible, in addition to economic sustainability, is the consolidation of our counter-hegemony in the field of subjectivities”.
Here an appeal is made to a defensive counter-hegemony that would confront the hegemony that the author sees coming from the United States, specifically from South Florida. In this way, Castroism justifies all the outrages committed against the Cuban opposition, arguing that they resort to their counter-hegemony to defeat the internal agents of the hegemony held by the imperialist enemy.
The saddest thing of all, in addition to what it means to repress the desire for freedom of Cubans, is the number of people across the seas who allow themselves to be duped by this stratagem of Castroism.
OPINION ARTICLE
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