Havana Cuba. — This Monday I was glad to be able to read in this same digital newspaper a journalistic work who is my double colleague —as a man of law and as a communicator—, Alberto Méndez Castelló. This is one of the authors that I usually follow, but he hadn’t been able to do it for exactly a month, because that was the time that he was without publishing on these pages of CubaNet.
Such inactions continue to be alarming, especially in these times of exacerbated repression. Although we are sorry to have to say it, in recent weeks our homeland has been the scene where deplorable information has emerged: that of journalists who have abandoned their professional practice as a result of threats and coercion perpetrated by the political police. What a shame for Castroism!
The very interesting article published on Monday by Mr. Alberto (whose reading I recommend to all the followers of this newspaper) served to reassure me in that sense. His long silence, which lasted for a month, must have had another cause. Perhaps the simple lack of inspiration (something that —I confess— also happens to me, since I prefer to sink into relative silence rather than write about anything).
In short, the wait has been useful: the writing of my colleague from Las Tunas fulfilled my expectations. Particularly happy seems to me the long sentence in which, referring to his compatriots, the author supposes them “in search of food, a breath of air or a path to flee from communism, hunger, misery and the terror of a life without a promising future”; they, he says eloquently, “crowd like cattle next to the fence.”
But there is in that journalistic work a detail that is repeated over and over again and with which I disagree. From the title to the final sentence, on nine occasions, to refer to the State or the prevailing regime in Cuba, the adjective “totalitarian” or the noun of the same root are used. Does that term reflect the reality that prevails today in our long-suffering Homeland?
I think not. And I consider, in addition, that the matter presents an interest that is not purely theoretical or speculative. Quite the contrary: the correct assessment of the essence of the regime that we suffer today in Cuba is very important. Only this accurate knowledge will allow us to properly orient ourselves to today’s realities on the Island and aspire to find —finally!— the way out of today’s calamitous reality.
Located in this context, I think the first thing to point out is that the Castro regime has (and has always had) a firm totalitarian vocation. But in today’s Cuba, when the regime is already in its terminal phase, there is a good distance between the hypothetical wishes of the leaders and their realistic aspirations.
Of course, Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel (and also their faithful servant, the spy Gerardo Hernández Nordelo) would like to have ordinary ordinary citizens, brutalized by the system, carry out those absurd and humiliating night guards ordered by the Defense Committees of the Revolution (CDR), the organization of informers and collaborators headed today by the spy who, they say, fathered a son by remote control.
But those times are definitely behind us. Also those in which an ordinary Cuban who aspired to acquire an ordinary item (such as a refrigerator or a television) only had the option of doing so through the all-powerful State (in the case at hand, through the obedient single official union, which was in charge of distributing the purchase options of these electrical appliances “for labor merits”).
Or, if we move to the field of socio-political ideas and behaviors, today it seems to us that the positions of those who, in order to “not point out” themselves, distanced themselves from their close relatives residing abroad and cut any ties with them to not to “stain” those autobiographies known as “tell me your life”, which was essential to elaborate in order to aspire to occupy a middling position.
I repeat that the totalitarian vocation has always been present within the communist hierarchy. Even at the time of the founder of the dynasty, when the Castro regime still deserved the adjective that —I think— now the colleague Méndez Castelló attributes to him without foundation, the desire to establish an even greater domain over his subjects filled the boss with hopes shift.
For example, when making his trip to slave North Korea, Mr. Fidel Castro returned with great enthusiasm from the unfortunate Asian country. The spectacle of Pyongyang (the only conglomerate more or less worthy of the title of city) devoted entirely to the streets to flatter the visitor and comply with the orders of the Kim on duty left the “Commander in Chief” dazzled!
The native of Biran would have loved it if we Cubans were less “booksellers”, more “disciplined”, like the Asians. But the differences that existed at that time between Cuba and North Korea were, ultimately, nuanced. Both countries were totalitarian. Except that, as between the different circles of Dante’s Inferno, there were small degree discrepancies between one and the other.
And of course, the current Cuba, with a regime that maintains its vocation for absolute control, but that cannot materialize those desires because it is already in its terminal phase, does not deserve to be described as “totalitarian.”
It can be bad when the majority of citizens do not hide to express their disagreement with the embarrassing prevailing state of affairs; when those who, due to conservatism, continue to belong to some of the “mass organizations” do nothing in them. When the prospects of emigrating (which decades ago only a few —the most daring— dared to express) are now debated in public with absolute self-confidence and by the majority of citizens!
It seems clear to me that it is not possible to continue talking about totalitarianism in Cuba after a great national upheaval like the one in July 11 of last year, which made it clear that our people are fed up with communism!
OPINION ARTICLE
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