HAVANA, Cuba. – The debate on Cuba has become repetitive and, therefore, banal. There is no escape from the same circle of opinions that are often so indecent, so inconsequential and disconnected from national events that any attempt to respond seems like an uphill struggle, too much effort for nothing.
Between here and there, the emigration that does not stop and the crisis that worsens beyond what was foreseeablethe paths to daring to talk about the future have narrowed dramatically. “The future comes from far away and drags us along,” says a neighbour ironically after hearing some unforgivable nonsense said by the bricklayer who has just solved a problem at home.
The aforementioned is not a brutish type, he expresses himself with a certain eloquence and is distinguished by a common sense that is difficult to find in these times, when sadness devours everything. We already know how things are, so there is no point in continuing to hammer on about a reality that “the people below” cannot solve and the “people above” do not want to solve. The problem is that the bricklayer is convinced that those who rule in Cuba are doing everything wrong because they have no other choice, because “the blockade is intensified” and “this with Fidel “it didn’t happen”.
It is necessary to see and hear it to understand those who claim that the Cuban people have what they deserve, and to finally cut short the hopes of those who believe that the humble, who are still owed a revolution, will come out to demand their rights. That “mass” that the optimists hope to see scattered throughout the Cuban streets as they have seen in Venezuela The Cubans, who have been putting the regime in check for the past few weeks, are absolutely happy with their status as survivors. What’s more, they consider the current situation, unbearable from every point of view, to be preferable to capitalism, which provides them with refills, food and medicines; yes, because even if they pay for them at hyperinflated prices with their hard-earned money, these are goods from capitalism, thanks to the fact that this Cuba, disfigured by Fidel Castro’s socialism, produces absolutely nothing.
These poor people of the earth deny the illustrious past of the Island and even the savage acts of repudiation of the Mariel era because “they didn’t see them.” The testimonies don’t count. That’s true: some participated, when they were 13 or 14 years old, in a conga where people rhythmically shouted “out with the lumpen, out with the scum,” without knowing what those words meant or to whom they were directed. Decades later, with those events revealed in all their crudeness, they continue to see the conga and the chorus as a party, without realizing that this hatred between Cubans was sown and fueled by the regime of Fidel Castro, who must be forgiven for such excesses because “he put Cuba on the map and this barbarian [Miguel Díaz-Canel] is the one who has done everything wrong.”
We should not be surprised if very soon the oppressed send letters to The Vatican calling for the canonization of the late dictator, who is no longer considered the fifth discoverer of Cuba ―according to He catalogued it the delirious Office of the Conservator of Matanzas―, but as the sole discoverer, the protector, the alpha and the omega… What we have to hear while this country sinks into shit, falls apart and people live and die in conditions that would shame any human being with a minimum notion of dignity!
In Cuba, forgetfulness and servility have permeated all sectors, but it is alarming to see that the poorer the individual, the more he defends the whip that lashes him, and no one can say that it is due to ignorance, because for six decades the doctrine has been the same for everyone. Those who call themselves “people from below” do not believe in the need for freedom because they have no other aspiration than to put food – or whatever the regime sells them as such – on the table and have some extra pesos to get through the blackout with rum and wireless speakers. They walk around dazed among With Edge and AméricaTeVé to justify their apathy, claiming that if those here are not good, those there are not either.
So they resort to hope, because it is the only thing left for those who saw their time pass and sat back with their arms crossed, waving the little flag of July 26, repeating slogans or bringing repudiation to the doors of Cubans in their own land, under this same sky, by express order of Fidel Castro.
Many of those who call themselves “people from below” want to stay right where they are. They hide within themselves fickle beasts, ready to support any revolution not to get them out of misery, but so that everyone remains equally miserable.
