Havana Cuba. — Fortunately for the anti-Castro Cubans residing on the Island, the times that the regime’s halberdiers consider the golden age of agitation and communist propaganda have definitely passed. I am referring to the sixties and seventies of the last century, when, of course, there was no Internet or social networks, and there were only two television channels in the country.
To make matters worse, both frequencies, when the “Maximum Leader” spoke, were put in a chain. At that time, the indoctrinators of the only party were not yet grouped in the “Ideological Department” of the Central Committee, but in what they called “Revolutionary Orientation.” Their work of manipulation was facilitated by the monopoly of information they held.
But the years passed, and the “wild colt of the internet” -expression used by the repressor Ramiro Valdes— remained accessible to ordinary Cubans, no matter how expensive and poor quality it is. Channels multiplied on television; even today there are two stations that, strictly speaking, are not controlled by the aforementioned national propaganda apparatus: I am referring to the Russian RT already the chavista telesur.
Of course, the access of one and the other to the televisions of ordinary Cubans does not respond to criteria of objectivity or pluralism; nothing further from that. Their presence among us is solely due to the Castroist desire to ingratiate themselves with the dictatorships that respectively created and operate them (those of Putin and Chávez-Maduro). It also helps that both are incapable of airing any material that in any way censors or criticizes the Havana regime.
On the contrary: from time to time certain materials appear in one or another that exaggerately praise what happens in what was previously called the “Pearl of the Antilles.” This is what happened with the documentary that, under the name of The Cuban Enigmabroadcast this Sunday, at eight o’clock at night, the Chavista television channel.
During the hour that the program lasted, journalists identified with Castroism, ex-leaders of the regime and selected ordinary Cubans paraded before the cameras. The participants did not mince words when referring to deficiencies suffered by the inhabitants of the Island. For example, one of the ex-hierarchs: “The economic crisis reached extreme levels that were expressed in the macroeconomy, but also in domestic consumption, where families had to invent the most unexpected ways to survive”.
Also: “Getting food and cooking it, (…) washing clothes and finding soap or toothpaste became feats that were recounted every day.” Or an ordinary Cuban: “very bad food, very bad”; “days of going without eating”; “days of not giving the girl anything because there was nothing to eat”. By way of summary, again an old mayimbe: “Cuba had to reinvent itself.”
If you, dear reader, are imagining that the participants in the documentary and its makers are referring to the calamitous situation that our country is suffering right now, then it is time to change your mind. Although the catastrophic state of our current economy more than deserves condemnatory words like the ones I have just reproduced, The Cuban Enigma It is not about the sad truths of 2023.
No. Under the pretext of making history, those who participate in the tape refer to another, much earlier reality. I am referring to another deep crisis that took place during the turn of the millennium, and was baptized by the “Maximum Leader” with one of those euphemisms that he loved to devise and impose: “Special Period in Times of Peace.”
And in that journey through distant memories, of course there was no shortage (they couldn’t do it!) of manipulation and historical distortion. The documentary does not insist too much on Russia’s guilt (for the Chavistas now it is not a matter of getting bad with the dictator Putin!). But it is insinuated that the fundamental change introduced by Gorbachev and his immediate successor (carrying out trade based on international prices and not the privileged ones established to prop up the Castro regime and its economy) represented a kind of betrayal of principles.
The film also deals in passing with other events that, at least for Castroism, had a certain interest in the years of transition from one millennium to another: among these, the saga of the then child (and today a brand new deputy to the National Assembly) Elián González , the civic protest known as “El Maleconazo” and the alleged location and transfer to Cuba of the remains of Ernesto Guevara and his companions on the Bolivian adventure.
Of course, in the documentary, as an illustration of the realities described, the scenes of long lines in front of the shops to purchase some of the few products on offer could not be missing; also those of human clusters that hung on each of the doors of the urban buses that transported the Cubans from the crowd. If now they wanted to make a similar material (which is not the case), the filmmakers could spend more work: in many stores there are no queues because there is nothing to sell; and the buses do not pass.
In short, the Sunday delivery of The Cuban Enigma It constitutes an excellent example of how the propaganda media at the service of international communism manipulate and distort the realities. And how, under the pretext of making history, they elude the realities established by their ideological cronies in the different countries they govern.
OPINION ARTICLE
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