Havana Cuba. — On one side of Párraga and separated from the Electricity Division by the National Highway and a stretch of manigua is the El Comodoro neighborhood, a transit community located in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, one of the poorest in Havana.
As in the other 104 transit communities that exist in Havana, that transit, the period of shelter that is supposed to be temporary for families who have lost their homes, can last for ten, fifteen, twenty or even thirty years.
On August 2, about twenty women residents of El Comodoro, several of them with their children, blocked the National Highway, in the so-called first ring of the Eight Ways, to protest the subhuman conditions in which they live.
They warned that they would not leave the place until President Miguel Díaz-Canel came to listen to their demands, but after several hours, and after a spectacular police deployment, they agreed to leave the road and settled for meeting at a nearby school with municipal and provincial officials of the Communist Party, to whom they raised their complaints.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ7zbyFA3e0
According to a State Security profile on social networks, the women, who said they were revolutionaries, remained confident and hopeful, waiting for the solutions promised by the officials.
As usual, the officials of the Communist Party and the Government do not skimp on promises to abort a problem, that is, in case it is not resolved beforehand by the police.
The State Security versions cannot be trusted, but I have no doubt that some of the women who blocked the highway, after being taken to school, have said that they are revolutionaries and have even chanted a slogan and shouted “Viva Fidel ”.
Fear, opportunism and double standards mean that some still take refuge behind these shields, even though they know that no one believes them and that they will be of little use if the repressors are frightened and, resentful as they are, take seriously their protests.
As a result of the merciless indoctrination to which we have been subjected during these 63 years of dictatorship, many Cubans, although they complain and protest, although they have no doubts that “this is bullshit and there is no solution”, feel itchy, they are afraid of openly proclaiming themselves in against socialism and “the revolution”. They planted in their brains that “being against the revolution” or being “counterrevolutionary” is something terrible. And fewer want to know about the opposition, decimated by jail and exile, divided and as worn out as the regime.
In recent days, exasperated by hunger and blackouts, thousands of people have staged protests in dozens of cities and towns in Cuba. The cacerolazos, the shouts and posters against the regime and the insults to Díaz-Canel have not been lacking. But in some places, without having to exaggerate with the repression, the authorities have managed to calm down the protesters and go home after listening to the explanations of the officials. Thus, at least for now, until the next uproar, or until there is a Tiananmenthe dictatorship is weathering the storm.
When it comes to explaining, the bosses —who far from solving the problems aggravate them with their clumsiness and stubbornness— do not take too much care in their pretexts and justifications, which invariably lead to the US blockade.
Some bosses, arrogant and arrogant, get exasperated by the complainers and become aggressive. As happened a few days ago to General Samuel Rodiles Planas, the head of Physical Planning, when he accompanied Prime Minister Manuel Marrero on a visit to a fishing cooperative and lost his temper at the claims of a worker. The old general, accustomed to not having his orders discussed, almost had a stroke. He shouted, without fully understanding what the matter was about, that he did not accept pressure. Marrero had to intervene to calm him down. And the unhappy worker of the complaint, repeated, as if it were a mantra, that he was “revolutionary” and “he was dying for this.” Only then did General Rodiles begin to calm down. “Ah, well, yes,” he exclaimed, as Cheo Malanga, that TV character played by Enrique Arredondo, would have said.
To listen to justifications that are not convincing and on top of that have to proclaim that they are “revolutionaries” and that they trust the Party and its leaders, they must not wear themselves out. Let them resignedly endure the pangs of hunger, the heat and the mosquitoes, and patiently, without clanking the cauldrons or shouting profanities, wait for them to turn on the light.
OPINION ARTICLE
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