HAVANA.- They are like the criminal who has no scruples about using his family as a shield to save his skin, and there are few things that provoke more disgust and anger than that. But it has been the tactic of the dictatorship all these years, whether it feels cornered or not, and now that it truly is, we cannot expect anything from it other than more repression. So we have long since reached the point where we should not expect obedience, moderation or the same words of protest that never transcend the claim, and which will therefore be ignored, just as the demands for freedom of expression have been. Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maikel Osorbo, along with the other political prisoners.
In Cuba there is no more political prisoners because a good part of the men and women who dissent, who oppose or who simply wish to think with the freedom that human beings deserve have chosen to simulate obedience, remain silent, remain silent, go into exile, or because they have been forced into one of those “variants” of repression.
Even those who insist that they “emigrated” for economic and not political reasons, if they returned to live in Castro’s Cuba with the changes in mentality that freedom and democratic systems produce even unconsciously, they would potentially be prisoners of conscience, today barely saved by the grace of geographical distance (and by the regime’s urgent need for their dollars).
In that sense, the issue of political prisoners and the repression against freedom of thought should concern us all, and also mobilize us with something more than protests and demands on social networks.
With the guys from El4tico —who now enter that terrifying cycle of confinement-liberation-confinement that we know will end, amid much provocation and excessive violence, in prison or exile, something similar or worse could happen than with Luis Manuel and Maikel, once the San Isidro Movement and what happened to all its members—in prison and in exile—is no longer functioning as a sobering event for them. And it does not work for them to a large extent because of that lack of memory that characterizes Cuban society, much more powerful and lethal, paralyzing, than the sum of the traumas suffered in more than half a century of totalitarianism, and as a consequence of this.
The attack against El4tico is like the reactivation of a vaccine that is losing its effect, and given the critical circumstances that the regime is going through and its traditional “modus operandi”, the possibilities increase that the cruelty will be greater and that the practice will spread against other similar groups, which are already a few on the Island. And around which relevant figures of thought, science and culture who until yesterday identified themselves with Castroism but who today, disappointed and very upset, are beginning to gather, They openly distance themselves from that suicidal, manipulative and reckless discourse of a military caste that, breaking its promises and having plundered state reserves to build hotels and sustain the high living standards of an elite. Which demands more sacrifice and death when the most urgent thing for Cubans is to survive, and then move towards freedom as the only path to prosperity, individual and collective.
What happened against El4tico has been an act of violence used as a crude message, once desertions within the Castro regime are increasing dangerously, weakening that “unity” that is becoming more and more fragmented every day, although not because of the “enemy” – or the ghost that they have created – but because of the communists themselves with their hypocritical attitudes and their deceptive and selfish policies, more than failed.
The proof that Castroism and communism are our greatest enemies, and that therefore we must eliminate them once and for all, is in the systematic nature of their abusive practices.
Now, for example, the blockade on hydrocarbons that the regime tries to pass off as an “abuse” of which it would be a victim, should actually serve to ask us a few questions about what was the true destination of the Venezuelan oil that passed through Cuba or, since there was no such “terrible obstacle” that today definitively justifies the dollarization of all gas stations of the Island, why the fuel deficit has been a persistent, long-standing problem that precedes any presidential proclamation of the United States.
The harsh truth, reported, documented and denounced for a long time by various media outlets, is that before it arrived in large volumes but it was used in other things that were more “urgent” for the Castro regime, which are neither electricity generation for the population, nor food production, nor public transportation, but rather in re-exporting the vast majority of it, in guaranteeing the reserves that in turn guarantee the functioning of the disproportionate repressive apparatus and the maintenance of the way of life of the “leading” elite. (equally disproportionate), and only a tiny amount should be allocated to maintain that perpetual cycle of crisis-misery that feeds the profitable discourse about the “blockade” (which we now see was not such), the “economic war” and the “war economy”, with which they justify all the abuses.
Including the abuse against some young people whose only crime has been to think freely, as well as the disproportionate forces used to silence them, when just a month ago they were crying about the “disproportionate attack” that annihilated all their soldiers who served as a mercenary force in Nicolás Maduro’s security cordon.
The Cuban communists are abusers who very well deserve to be abused and violated with all the disproportion of force that is possible, wherever it comes from. So let us not fall into that hypocritical game of “sovereignty” and “homeland” when the defenselessness to which we have been condemned by Castroism, by stripping us of our right to define together what sovereignty and the homeland are beyond what the communists decide, leaves no other options than, first, expelling them from power, and then trying, with a common effort, little by little, to recover from the damage and trauma.
Obviously, what happened with the El4tico boys is an example of the only language with which it is possible to “dialogue” and negotiate with the Castro dictatorship: violence. And an act of such a level of abuse, arrogance and cynicism cannot be responded to with the always ineffective calls for sanity – which erroneously presuppose the existence of a true will for dialogue – when it is a regime that is criminal by nature, and which therefore must be faced with something more “forceful” than words and diplomatic pressure.
For those who still strive to find an “alternative of peace” that leads to the democratic change to which the majority of Cubans aspire, this episode in Holguín – which is so reminiscent of what happened in Havana with the San Isidro Movement and which, therefore, warns of the systematic nature of the abuse – should be definitive in convincing them that, at this point where we find ourselves, there is no other path to freedom other than that of rebellion, although the most reckless thing we can contribute to that is cross our arms and disobey.
