This Thursday, August 15, Manuel Menéndez Castellanos, who until a few years ago was closely linked to the repression of our people, arrived at the Miami International Airport.
I was significant in the way he tried to hide his face, but above all to see him sitting in a wheelchair that the airport services allocate for sick people and from which he quickly got up as soon as he was received by the welcoming committee of his CDR, sorry, by his relatives. It was curious to see him in a pink shirt, something that reminded me of an interesting book by Fernando Martínez Heredia entitled “The Shift to Red”, although in this case the path of the former communist gendarme has been the other way around, from red to pink and from there perhaps he jumps to the polychromy of the rainbow and what it currently represents. something that wouldn’t surprise me.
Mario Pentón, a journalist for Martí Noticias, recorded his arrival. And the recording reflected how the violent character of this Castro polychinela continues to be rooted in her soul, as well as her cowardice. Because Manuel Menéndez Castellanos acted like what he has been and what all those who, like him, occupy high positions in the Castro nomenclature have been. He was cowardly when he refused to answer the reporter’s questions, he was also cowardly when, feeling protected by those around him, he slapped the journalist’s phone with a fleeting imitation of what the Minister of Culture did against a young intellectual a few years ago because in reality it is an action demonstrating the intolerance of the dictatorship. reproduced ad infinitum by the agents of the Castro police every time they try to prevent a citizen from testifying to our reality.
Having known in my own flesh how far the lies and manipulation of Castroism can go, the proverb “think wrong and you will be right” is enthroned in my mind when analyzing events such as the arrival of this henchman.
First secretary of the Communist Party in my native province, Cienfuegos, between 1993 and 2003, there are many anecdotes that I heard from the mouths of some of my compatriots that link him to notorious acts of corruption during that decade, although he always escaped any problem due to his proven dog-like genuflection towards the Castros.
After being “released” from his position in 2003, he went on to “work” in the central committee of the communist party as part of Fidel Castro’s team. Then his name began to be less mentioned in the official media. Now he arrives here and perhaps his mission is to strengthen the discredited groups that support the dictatorship from this country or to train them in situ in techniques of social disorders in the universities. Who knows if he comes with the mission of making, together with Misael Enamorado Dager, former first secretary of the communist party in Santiago de Cuba and with Arelis Casañola Quintana, former first secretary of that party in the Isle of Youth, a political force that works with the objective of strengthening the purposes of the dictatorship within this country. I have not been the first or the only one to warn about this possibility from these pages.
When I think about how easy it has been for this type of “political refugees” or “family reunified” to settle in this country, I cannot help but think with pain about the situation that the couple of Protestant pastors formed by Ramón Rigal and Ayda Expósito along with their children, worthy Cubans who have not been able to obtain the support of a sponsor or a humanitarian visa from the State Department, still live there in Cuba. despite the fact that They have been and continue to be politically persecuted and were declared prisoners of conscience by international human rights organizations.
I find it very worrying that at this point in the game, despite the cases of Ana Belén Montes, the Wasp Network and the most recent one of Manuel Rocha, blunders like this occur. That a repressor like Manuel Menéndez Castellanos has been able to satisfactorily pass an interview at the U.S. embassy in Havana, hiding his past as a senior leader of the dictatorship, can only reflect two situations: that the Immigration Service of the United States of America needs to strengthen its verification mechanisms or, simply, that there is complicity on the part of some decision-makers of this administration with the Cuban dictatorship. Both situations demonstrate how fragile the protection of the security of this country is in the face of dangers such as the arrival of individuals of unquestionable communist affiliation such as that of this Castro correveidile.
On days like these I would like to be in Florida, Kentucky or Texas and closely follow in the footsteps of cowards like those mentioned. The least they deserve is an act of constant repudiation on the part of the Cuban community, which is truly committed to the values on which our heroes founded our nation. The least they deserve is tranquility, that good so precious to every human being and that they have always denied to Cubans who are not like them.
Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces