We are an Island of “wanderers” with a government of beggars, since in reality the “base of everything” is not the lemon but alms.
HAVANA.-. -For many of us, no matter where we live, the passing of Hurricane Melissa It is a disgrace, a catastrophe but, precisely for that reason, for the regime and its accomplices it is a blessing.
For guys who produce nothing, experts only in picking low mangoes, in traveling around the world as high-ranking beggars, the tragedy of thousands of homeless people, without food or immediate ability to produce it, is like a time of prosperity. And if we don’t ask our usual lazy person par excellence, the vampire Sandro Castrowho very quickly took out his Classic card—and not any other—to see if, even by chance, he manages to suck some green cards.
Because the chaos of the winds and waters not only leaves desolate landscapes, scorched earth, empty souls, but it usually erases with its powerful forces even the strongest memories, making them believe that the regime is really that fat poor thing that not by chance, while the gale was blowing, walked around Saudi Arabia and Qatar passing the brush to see if, among other “benefits for the people”, they would drop something on the market. Sorry, I meant to say to the “Local Development Project” of Lisa Titolothe granddaughter of Raúl Castro.
To that immense drain of donations and aid that constitute the PDL, the “personal initiatives”, NGOs, “civil organizations” and religious groups that, as a privilege, have the support of the regime, to that bottomless barrel (to accommodate external funds) is what they call “official channels” to collect the hundreds of millions of dollars that arrive throughout the year, with or without a hurricane, but which these days will arrive as if in a shower of gold.
And along with them the forgiveness of debts, the renegotiations, exemptions, the extension of the financial corralito to foreign companies under the pretext of the humanitarian contingency. In short, everything that reaffirms us as a “vulnerable” country, as an Island of “wanders” with a government of beggars, since in reality the “base of everything” is not the lemon but alms.
In the middle of this October the Vietnam Red Cross raised 21 million dollarsadded to the 15 million delivered by the Vietnamese government in September. But in 2024, Canada had handed over half a million to the regime, nonsense compared to the 100 million given by China in 2023, to the almost 70 million euros from the Italian Agency for Cooperation, to the 25 million from the Official Development Assistance of Japan, or to the 18 billion that, only until 2014, Venezuela transferred to Cuba between loans and investments. And aid from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Europe and the entire world is missing here, which would include the hundreds of international organizations to which Cuba clings like a leech.
The figures from recent years make it clear: donations have become the most profitable industry for a dictatorship that in sixty years says it has not learned how to live with a “blockade” although it has learned how to get rid of it without some not realizing that in reality it no longer knows how, nor can it, live without it, or rather, without the pretext and narrative of a country besieged, cornered, suffocated when the porosity of the embargo is colossal, to the point that it is so Last year alone, 2024, the number of donations since The United States exceeded 40 million dollars.
What we have already seen are not the only millions that arrive “from outside” by virtue of this “blockade” story. The simple task of typing “donations to Cuba” into the Google search engine is enough to obtain hundreds of results that, without a calculator in hand, will give us an idea of how “prosperous and sustainable” the business of donations and foreign aid is. Which are channeled through the “official channels” imposed by the regime as a condition for those who wish to help those who really need it.
The dictatorship has surrounded and guarded the donation business with henchmen and accomplices who, in turn, take advantage of the crumbs that fall to them. The context is so miserable and the people they use as “support personnel” are even more miserable (to the point that, with each wave of donations, a parallel and underground “donation” market emerges, for mattresses, construction materials, clothing, food, etc., verifiable on the streets and online sales sites) that it becomes almost impossible to trust that our aid will reach the victims in its entirety.
There is no legal way to do it, there is no way to help other than by doing it directly to the victims, on a personal basis, feeling the reality and verifying that the beneficiary is certainly not one of the many scammers who today in Cuba manipulate kindness in their favor from a distance, just as the rulers have taught them to do, having learned from the systematic practice of the regime itself for which a tragedy is the best of harvests.
