Whip to impose silence in the Cuban dungeon
Fidel Castro demonstrated his political acumen when he arranged to be reduced to ashes after his death and expressly forbade monuments or statues to be erected to him afterwards. The Cuban dictator was well aware that sooner or later his or other presumably lasting monuments would be torn down and reduced to rubble.
Of course, the Cuban dictatorship will not fall overnight; not for nothing has it been languishing for sixty years now, without the increasingly old-fashioned gerontocracy that runs or supervises it having gone beyond mere cosmetic reforms. The slightest advance, forcibly imposed by the development of technologies such as the internet, has always been questioned by the guardians of the supposedly revolutionary essences. What is not reported, and therefore not known, does not exist. That is why the old guard of Cuban communism always opposed the population having free access to the internet, fearing what has happened now: that the world would be able to see how a totalitarian regime is doing things. It is true that certain progressives, basically European and certainly Spanish, do not even the evidence of incontestable images and testimonies seem to dissuade them from their pro-goodist and justifying conception of a bloodthirsty regime.
These progressives systematically refuse to carry out the test of the contrast with the reality of communism. They know the outcome in advance, because there is not a single case in history in which such a totalitarian doctrine has led to the real improvement of the peoples who have suffered it. It could be argued that China is the historical example they are so eagerly looking for. But, with respect to the great Asian colossus, its ultimate success remains to be seen, beyond its dazzling material conquests. The crushing of freedoms and of the slightest gesture of dissent or protest does not seem to be going in the direction of building a society made up of happy individuals.
As for Cuba, there is nothing new with respect to the traditional methods of its dictatorship: harassment, beatings, arbitrary arrests, kidnappings and all kinds of gradual torture, including of relatives, from whom the whereabouts of those arrested are consciously concealed, keeping them in the uncertainty of whether they will perhaps end up disappearing forever.
What is new is that a large part of the people, at least those who are not part of the "nomenklatura" or of the regime's repressive structures, have lost their fear. You have to lack practically everything, including hope, to rise up against a repressive apparatus as greased and suffocating as the Cuban one, which is the best indicator of the desperate situation the country and its dictatorial regime are going through, and the massive and simultaneous uprising in at least forty cities and towns in what was once called the Pearl of the Antilles.
As is also the norm, President Díaz-Canel, closely watched by Raúl Castro and the old guard of the more than worn-out revolution, has resorted to clichés: the Yankees' "blockade" or the cobblestones are to blame. It is not the time to blame the cha-cha-cha, especially when the sadness of the ostensible lack of food and the means to combat the coronavirus pandemic make up the most melancholic picture in a country that has always, even in the worst circumstances, distinguished itself for its contagious joy and resilience, to use the fashionable term to describe its ancestral capacity for resistance.
Neither European nor Spanish diplomacy calls the ferocious Cuban dictatorship by its name. For the moment, though tougher, is the US reaction of President Joe Biden, under direct pressure from the powerful Cuban community in Florida, a state that directly turned its back on him in the last presidential elections, and which may open an even wider gap with the Democratic Party in the 2022 mid-term elections.
Castroism does not make it easy for Biden. As vice-president under Barack Obama, the re-establishment of relations between the United States and Cuba and the flood of aid and exchanges led him to believe that, in return, if not the avenues of freedom would be opened on the island, at least some alleyways, roads or alleys would be opened. Once again, the disappointment has been huge, because a communist regime, whatever its name (Castroist, Chavist, North Korean or Belarusian Lukhasenkoist) cannot be reformed. Its everlasting response is more whip, more repression, more misery, and worst of all, more impunity. All this fuels weariness, hopelessness and, ultimately, fear because there is nothing left to lose.