Havana Cuba. – According to the most recent data from the United States Customs and Border Protection Office, Cuba has reached second place, only after Mexico, in statistics on irregular migratory flows.
Nearly 29,000 Cubans arrived at the US border in the month of October alone, which represents 12.51 percent of all migrants, thus displacing, for example, Haitians who, with nearly 7,000 registered , occupy the tenth place in the table, and are 2.91 percent of migrants.
But knowing what we Cuban men and women know —even though we remain on the Island for the reasons that assist us—, that place in the table is only the second, and not the first, as long as we have the sea in between.
Because, if the waters open up or evaporate for a few hours, all the queues that exist today in Cuba —for the chicken or for the passport, in short, to survive— would cease to exist, only to form a single path to the North, which would have from being the most massive and extensive of all: the queue to emigrate, escape, flee.
And it is that Cubans do not “emigrate” these days, but are fleeing and they do so because of that fear that “things” will continue to get worse, and not only in economic matters —I hope it was only for that reason that they Cubans go—but in everything that makes up our reality, which is so “unreal”, absurd, it has seemed like a nightmare for a while.
Although there is talk of fed up, hunger, repression and even “disappointments” (and “desertions”) as well as many other things, “fear” is the word that is heard the most in these days of mass exodus. Not only in relation to that “credible fear” that must be demonstrated before the judge to avoid being returned to hell, but also with those fears that we have integrated into our lives because the regime has inoculated us to make us more docile, more ” faithful”.
Perhaps because we are used to it we do not realize it. There are even those who could think themselves free of it, but in Cuba fear —like the sum of all our fears— is everywhere, and nobody, absolutely nobody escapes, not even the most “tough” types of the regime that these days from street protests and burning social networks, from tight shoes and empty pockets, they have not stopped trembling.
Trembling with fear, they have gone out to beg for alms towards Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China because the ship is leaking like never before and even the tourists, having discovered that our “exoticism” is nothing more than hard and crude misery, are stampeding, and along with them many businessmen fed up with cheating, uncollected debts, manipulations and complicity.
Even the phrase “political stability,” which they have used as a bait for foreign investors, is uttered between stammers and murmurs, not at the top of their lungs as before the July 11, 2021.
If something has remained relatively “stable”, “abundant” and even relatively “well distributed”, during all these years of dictatorship it has been fear. And although more are beginning to lose it at street level, the truth is that our fears are too many and not even the bravest manages to get rid of all of them with a single shake.
There is fear in Cuba and it is our daily life. He does not lie, not at all, the one who, not afraid of lying before a judge in Texas, says that he is afraid. Because even if neither his voice nor his hands tremble, even if he barely says what the lawyer recommends that it is better to be “credible”, each Cuban who arrives at the United States border does so carrying thousands of fears that, although Don’t be aware of them, they are the ones that made you say “I can’t take it anymore”.
Fear was what made our parents teach us first, before talking, to gossip and then to lie, to feign loyalties to be “politically correct.” From them and from our teachers we learned that being “revolutionaries” is pretending because being sincere would only bring us problems. And they were right, in their advice and their fears.
That scolding of “talk softly!” We all suffered it, and we even learned not to say “Fidel” but to touch our chins, as in sign language, when even within the four walls of our home we felt, and still feel, watched, listened to, discovered, and persecuted.
It is that even in the heart of Miami I have seen Cubans murmur and caress their chin when they talk about Cuba and the late dictator. And if that is not proof that fear is in our blood, at least it is proof of our very sad history.
It is the fear that comes to us from everywhere. Including the feisty threat of the spokesman, of the policeman disguised as a journalist on national television and who in despair, because of his own fears, makes a fool of himself by defending the indefensible and launching nonsense like that most recent one that a meme against the regime is a weapon of terror
And it is that the memes so widespread from our phones are, perhaps, the most illustrative expression of the loss of fear in those who, in accordance with the wishes of the Communist Party, should be more terrified every day but, due to the fury they unleash, They are also evidence that the Cuban dictatorship is the enemy of humor, since it only knows how to govern by virtue of fear.
The regime likes to see us tremble with fear because if we tremble and fear their hierarchs, they stop trembling, and the “political stability” that they like to proclaim even with their voices shaking is based on that “emotional balance”.
Both the judges who decide on “credible fear,” as well as the high-ranking US officials who come to talk about immigration issues in Cuba —hiding their fears with smiles and handshakes— should keep this detail in mind, as well as understand the true dimension of our fears, although some may seem incredible, or not at all significant in a world like today where almost everyone has something to fear.
Possibly the migratory wave will end shortly while something cruel is cooking between both shores and the smell of the stew reaches us in the form of strong rumors and new fears. New fears but at the same time already known, especially that one, the most terrible of all, claustrophobic, of being trapped with no way out on an Island that is becoming more inhospitable every day.
OPINION ARTICLE
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