By ARMANDO DURAN
The unlikely but true event produced an unforgettable impact. To adorn the equally amazing visit of then President Barack Obama and his entire family to Havana, Karl Lagerfeld, creative director of the House of Dior, on the night of May 3, 2016, transformed the famous Paseo del Prado, the historic heart of a city that fell and falls apart, on a spectacular stage to present to the world and a group of special guests his collection prepared for the spring-summer of that year, according to him, inspired by Cuban music.
That was the very scenario that 5 years later, on July 11, 2021, hundreds of outraged young people were selected to denounce from the rooftops the devastating effects of the economic crisis, the continuous electricity blackouts and the growing social inequality. They demanded justice, freedom and the end of the dictatorship, but not to the sounds of the conga that Lagerfeld’s models danced to make the dressmaker’s creations even more seductive, but to the rhythm of “Patria y Vida”, a slogan song raised by the members of the San Isidro cultural movement as a civil and libertarian response to the Homeland or Death dilemma with which, on March 5, 1960, Fidel Castro raised with the Cubans the need to make that political and existential decision that would characterize the times of submission to come. Until the day of judgment.
The protest, which at no time ceased to be peaceful, had begun in the early hours of that morning in the Plaza de la Iglesia and adjacent streets of San Antonio de los Baños, a small city of around 35,000 inhabitants, 26 kilometers southwest of Havana. The images of a multitude of young people who took the rulers and the ruled by surprise with their angry protest demonstration were broadcast live and direct by the protagonists of the drama themselves and constituted a full expression of the collective citizen discontent. For that simple and threatening cause, that street outburst immediately spread to Havana and several dozen cities and towns on the island like wildfire. Strong reason, said Yoanis Sánchez in a note published last Monday in the digital newspaper 14 and a halfto remember that on July 11 Cubans “ate our fear.”
However, the response of the ruling party, always cruel, ruthless and immediate action, was not long in coming. The same morning of the event, Miguel Ángel Díaz Canel, a very gray successor with no history of the Castro brothers in the supreme positions of the State, went to San Antonio de los Baños and, after seeing what was happening and understanding the message, he notified him to the country and to the international community that “the combat order is given”. He then called on all revolutionaries to take to the streets to defend the Revolution, “because the streets belong to the revolutionaries and we are not going to allow any counterrevolutionary, in the pay of US agencies, to provoke the destabilization of the country.” He ended his alert warning that, “since the streets belong to the revolutionaries, we are going to face them (the enemies of the Revolution) wherever it may be, with decision, firmness and courage. They’ll have to step over our corpses! We are ready for anything!”
And, indeed, that was what the regime did. Its well-oiled repressive machinery, men and women in uniforms, and thugs with ostentatious physical corpulence and evident lack of morals, all with a license to silence with blows, in the name of an implacable State that has never stopped feeling like the absolute lord and master of lives. and haciendas, attacked the defenseless protesters, who, as the photos and videos show, only wanted to testify to their desire to breathe even if it was just a breath of fresh air and to be able to refuse to commune with the millstones of an ideology that It has cost millions of Cubans a lot of blood and much suffering, and it says nothing to anyone anymore.
The result of the protests a year ago is convincing. According to figures released by the Cuban Attorney General’s Office, 1,337 protesters had been arrested, more than 700 were accused of having committed the most diverse and extravagant excesses and, so far, 381 have been sentenced by the courts to between 5 and 20 years. from prison Among them, Maikel Castillo, alias Osorbo, a 39-year-old rapper, sentenced to 9 years in prison for “attack and defamation of institutions”, and his colleague Luis Manuel Otero, to 5 years, for the crimes of “outrage against national symbols, contempt for authority and public disorder”, both co-authors of the song “Patria y Vida”, a monstrous “crime” for which they were actually and remain kidnapped. Palpable, very palpable verification of how justice is applied in Cuba and how the government of the Communist Party of Cuba, constitutionally the supreme power of the State, cares for and protects the rights of its citizens.
Of course, the truth of that July 11 is very different from the official version. As summed up by Mauricio Vicent, knowledgeable like few others about the Cuban political process and for years a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper The country in Havana, in a chronicle published in the newspaper’s edition last Monday, “if you ask today in the streets of Cuba, the majority will give you the same answer: the hardships, the social unrest and the deterioration of living conditions that motivated the outbreak of July 11 and 12 of last year not only continues, but has worsened in the last 12 months.
In other words, what happened a year ago in Cuba had nothing to do with the secret agenda of some perverse national or foreign enemy, nor with conspiracies promoted by “US agencies.” Wow, what happened then was not a “vandal coup” by the enemies of the people and the Revolution, as the leaders of the Communist Party of Cuba disciplinedly repeat to justify once again the permanent and ferocious persecution of “the others.” That what really happened then in the streets of the island can be repeated at any time despite the state of siege to which millions of innocent Cubans have been subjected for more than 60 years, as a natural consequence, a year ago and much more now , of the monumental failure of a supposed revolution that since January 1, 1959 has offered to lead its children to an infinite sea of happiness and what it has done is sink them into an unfathomable abyss of physical and spiritual misery.
On the first anniversary of those protests, Díaz-Canel has boasted that the true significance of what happened a year ago must be understood as a resounding triumph of the Revolution and a sovereign defeat of the empire. In other words, that July 11 did not happen the never seen and, therefore, the Cubans, rejoicing in their revolution subjected to the criminal aggression of the “blockade”, will have to resign themselves to continue seeing from far away the super luxury of the hotels and restaurants built with their sacrifices to receive and please the wealthy of the capitalist world, and they will have to continue suffering, irremediably excluded from the prefabricated bubble of tropical paradise that Cuban tourist propaganda sells at gold prices in the main capitals of the planet, the misery they suffer in the miserable streets of a Cuba that tourists do not visit. Until one day the oppressed have no choice but to eat their fear again. With all its brutal consequences, but encouraged, because on that future occasion, the victory will be forever. Overcome!
*Humanist Encounter It is directed by Julio César Moreno León. Its Editorial Board is made up of Macky Arenas and Marcos Villasmil.
* Armando Durán has been a minister, parliamentarian and ambassador. He was director of The Caracas Newspaper, The truth of Maracaibo and editor of the weekly Friday.
