Since 1959, Cuban military intervention in the Americas began, although the most well-known examples are Che Guevara’s guerrilla in Bolivia, support for the Tupamaro Movement, the Revolutionary Left Movement in Chile, and the Central American guerrillas.
In all these scenarios, the revolutionaries had to become “a cold killing machine,” in the exact words of the bloodthirsty Argentine.
Some claim that this Castroist support even reached US subversive movements like the Black Panthers or the Symbionese Liberation Army.
This violent policy later changed to undermine democracy from its own foundations, an idea proclaimed by Gramsci, whose fruits are quite evident.
Today, it is also known that behind the electoral victories of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, and Lula da Silva has been Castroism, either through the direct action of its intelligence agents or by providing large sums of money for their campaigns.
Obviously, these actions have provided significant political and economic benefits to the Cuban dictatorship, which have served to reaffirm its alleged legitimacy in international forums and to further enrich the Castro family clan.
Regarding the calamitous situation in which our people live today, those politicians who defend Castroism – like the three wise monkeys – see, hear, and speak absolutely nothing.
Joined with them is a long list of “useful idiots” who never fail to appear and who, whether out of naivety, ignorance – or who knows why – continue to play into the regime’s hands. Among them are also renowned academics and intellectuals, defenders of international antidemocratic opportunism.
Apart from Nicolás Maduro’s dogged loyalty, Daniel Ortega and Luis Arce, it is no longer surprising Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s stance in favor of continuing Castro’s legacy.
There are US congressmen who have dared to contradict their fellow Cuban-American colleagues, who know our history much better than they do. As if more than six decades of confrontation were not enough, during which the dictatorship has considered this country its main enemy, some of these politicians have even requested that the Biden administration remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and unilaterally end the embargo.
Recently, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Democratic representative from Minnesota, led a secret visit to the island. Significantly, this visit was not reflected in the Cuban state media and would have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the Herald’s reporting.
These politicians are the same ones who also ask Joe Biden to send money to medium and small Cuban businesses, mostly true state monstrosities. They are the same ones who pretend to ignore – despite Manuel Rocha’s recent arrest – that the dictatorship continues to be an enemy of the US. At this point, I conclude that the work of these politicians in no way reflects that they are acting in the interest of American citizens. I dare say that these citizens would be interested in seeing freedom and democracy in Cuba, stability, economic prosperity, and that it ceases to be a very close political and military threat to the United States. And that is not achieved by trying to favor the dictatorship.
Thank God there are also politicians in the Senate and the House of Representatives who know what position should be taken for the good of relations between both peoples. And I don’t just mean Cuban-Americans.
Republican Senator Rick Scott has been one of the voices from those high government structures who has repeatedly denounced the abuses of the dictatorships established in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. He has not stopped demanding freedom for all political prisoners in those countries. With respect to Cuba, he has clearly stated his demand for respect for all human rights and the restoration of democracy.
In the continent, Argentine President Javier Miléi has emerged, who since taking office has expressed his rejection of the dictatorship and recently publicly supported the protests of the Cubans.
A few days ago, the interim vice president of Uruguay, Graciela Bianchi, offered a brief but very forceful response to a declaration by the National Workers’ Convention of that country, which sought to delegitimize those protests. Graciela made it clear that there is a dictatorship in Cuba and denied the existence of an economic blockade against the island, another of the essential pillars of the Castroist justificatory discourse.
In the European Parliament, Dita Charanzová, Herman Terstch, José Ramón Bauzá, and Francisco Millán Mon have repeatedly expressed their support for the Cuban people’s demand for respect for human rights, the implementation of a democratic system, and the immediate freedom of all political prisoners.
I have only referred to the cases that, off the top of my head, I remembered. They are some of the politicians who have not been beguiled by the fallacious demagogic discourse of those who misgovern our country, although there are many more.
What happened during the session of the Human Rights Council held last November, where Castroism was called out and proved unable to effectively defend itself; the reaction of important politicians, institutions, and even governments to the reality behind Cuban medical missions – disclosed by the NGO Prisoners Defenders – and about the lack of religious freedom in Cuba, problems that have raised concern even at the UN, demonstrate that the political discourse of Castroism’s continuers is rapidly crumbling.
As an African proverb says: “What a lie takes a century to travel, the truth makes it in a second.”
The regime’s credibility in Cuba has already been shattered. It is necessary for the same to happen abroad and for there to be fewer and fewer politicians who are members of the wise monkey club, although it is already written in the New Testament: “There is no worse blind man than he who does not want to see.”
Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces