Cuba resists | Reviews | Page 12

Few ignore my solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. For 40 years, I have frequently visited the island for professional engagements and invitations to events. For a long time, I publicized the resumption of dialogue between Catholic bishops and the Cuban government, as described in my books. “Fidel and religion” (Fontanar / Companhia das Letras) y ‘Paradise Lost – Travels in the Socialist World’ (Rocco).

I know in detail Cuban daily life, including the difficulties encountered by the population, the challenges to the Revolution, the criticisms of the intellectuals and artists of the country. I visited prisons, spoke with opponents of the Revolution, lived with Cuban priests and lay people opposed to socialism.

When they tell me, a Brazilian, that there is no democracy in Cuba, I descend from the abstraction of words to reality.

How many photos or news items have been or are seen of Cubans in misery, of beggars scattered on the sidewalks, of children abandoned in the streets, of families under the viaducts? Something like cracolandia (the land of crack), the militias, the long lines of patients who wait years to be treated in a hospital?

I warn friends: if you are rich in Brazil and you are going to live in Cuba, you will know hell. You will not be able to change your car every year, buy designer clothes, travel frequently on vacation abroad.

And, above all, he will not be able to exploit the work of others, keep his employees in the dark, be “proud” of María, his cook for 20 years, and who denies him access to his home, to schooling and to to health. plan.

If you are from the middle class, get ready to experience Purgatory. Although Cuba is no longer a state-owned enterprise, the bureaucracy persists, you have to be patient in the queues of the markets, many products available this month might not be found next month due to the inconsistency of imports.

However, if you are salaried, poor, homeless, or landless, prepare to meet Heaven. The Revolution will guarantee your three basic human rights: food, health and education, as well as housing and work.

You can have a huge appetite for not eating what you like, but you will never be hungry. His family will benefit from education and health care, including complex surgeries, completely free, as a duty of the state and a right of the citizen.

There is nothing more prostitute than language. The famous democracy born in Greece has its merits, but it is good to remember that at that time Athens had 20,000 inhabitants who lived from the work of 400,000 slaves … What would one of these thousands of servants answer if we asked him why? the virtues of democracy?

I do not wish for the future of Cuba the present of Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras or even Puerto Rico, an American colony to which independence has been refused. I also don’t want Cuba to invade the United States and occupy a coastal area of ​​California, like Guantanamo, which has been turned into a torture center and illegal prison for suspected terrorists.

Democracy, in my concept, means the “Our Father” – the authority legitimized by the popular will – and the “Our Bread” – the distribution of the fruits of nature and human labor. Electoral rotation does not make, nor does it ensure a democracy. Brazil and India, considered democracies, are blatant examples of misery, poverty, exclusion, oppression and suffering.

Only those who knew the reality of Cuba before 1959 know why Fidel had so much popular support to lead the Revolution to victory.

The country was known by the nickname “Caribbean brothel”. The mafia dominated banking and tourism (there are several films on this subject). The main district of Havana, also called Vedado, bears this name because blacks were not allowed to circulate there …

The United States was never satisfied with having lost Cuba subjected to its ambitions. For this reason, shortly after the victory of the Sierra Maestra guerrillas, they attempted to invade the island with mercenary troops. They were defeated in April 1961. The following year, President Kennedy declared the blockade of Cuba, which continues to this day.

Cuba is an island with few resources. It is forced to import more than 60 percent of the country’s essential products. With the tightening of the blockade promoted by Trump (243 new measures and, so far, not withdrawn by Biden), and the pandemic, which has zeroed out one of the country’s main sources of resources, tourism, the situation internal has worsened.

The Cubans had to tighten their belts. Then, the dissatisfied with the Revolution, who gravitate in the orbit of the “American dream”, promoted the demonstrations of Sunday July 11 – with the “solidarity” help of the CIA, whose boss has just toured the continent. , worried about the election results in Peru and Chile.

The one who best explains the current situation in Cuba is its president, Díaz-Canel: “The financial, economic, commercial and energy persecution has started. They (the White House) want an internal social explosion to be provoked in Cuba to demand ‘humanitarian missions’ that lead to invasions and military interference. We have been honest, we have been transparent, we have been clear and at all times we have explained to our people the complexities of today.

“I remember that over a year and a half ago, at the start of the second half of 2019, we had to explain that we were in a difficult situation. The United States began to step up a series of restrictive measures, tightening the blockade, financial persecution against the energy sector, with the aim of drowning our economy, this would cause the desired massive social explosion, in order to call for a “humanitarian” intervention, which would end with military interventions.

“This situation continued, then came the 243 measures (by Trump, to strengthen the blockade) that we all know about, and finally it was decided to include Cuba in the list of countries that sponsor terrorism. All of these restrictions led the country to immediately cut various sources of foreign exchange income, such as tourism, Cuban-American travel to our country and remittances. A plan was formed to discredit Cuban medical brigades and Cuban solidarity collaborations, which received a significant share of foreign currency for this collaboration.

“All this situation has generated a situation of scarcity in the country, mainly of food, medicine, raw materials and supplies to be able to develop our economic and productive processes which, at the same time, contribute to exports. Two important elements are eliminated. : the capacity to export and the capacity to invest resources.

“We also have limitations in fuel and spare parts, and all of this caused a level of dissatisfaction, added to the accumulated problems that we were able to resolve and which came from the Special Period (1990-1995, when the Soviet Union collapsed, with serious reflection in the Cuban economy).

With a fierce media campaign of defamation, within the framework of the unconventional war, which tries to break the unity between the party, the state and the people; and he tries to classify the government as insufficient and incapable of ensuring the welfare of the Cuban people. The example of the Cuban Revolution has worried the United States greatly for 60 years. They applied an unjust, criminal and cruel blockade, now intensified by the pandemic. Blockade and restrictive actions they have never taken against any other country, not even against those they consider their main enemies.

Therefore, it has been a perverse policy against a small island that aspires only to defend its independence, sovereignty and build its society with self-determination, according to principles that more than 86% of the population have supported.

Amid these conditions, the pandemic looms, a pandemic that has affected not only Cuba, but the entire world, including the United States. It has affected rich countries, and it must be said that faced with this pandemic, neither the United States nor these rich countries had all the capacities to cope with its effects.

The poor have been hurt, because there are no public policies aimed at the population, and there are indicators related to the pandemic confronting with worse results than Cuba in many cases.

Infection and death rates per million population are significantly higher in the United States than in Cuba (the United States has recorded 1,724 deaths per million, while Cuba has 47 deaths per million). As the United States retreats into vaccine nationalism, the Henry Reeve brigade of Cuban doctors continues their work among the world’s poorest (for which, of course, they deserve the Nobel Peace Prize).

Without the possibility of successfully invading Cuba, the United States persists in a rigid blockade. After the fall of the USSR, which provided the island with the means to bypass the blockade, the United States attempted to increase its control over the Caribbean country.

From 1992, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to end this blockade. The Cuban government has reported that between April 2019 and March 2020, Cuba lost $ 5 billion in potential trade due to the blockade; over the past almost six decades, it has lost the equivalent of $ 144 billion.

Now the United States government has stepped up sanctions against shipping companies that transport oil to the island.

It is this fragility that opens a flank to demonstrations of discontent, without the government having put tanks and troops in the streets. The resistance of the Cuban people, fueled by examples like Martí, Che Guevara and Fidel, has proven invincible. And we must, all of us who are fighting for a more just world, be in solidarity with them.

*Of Cubadébat.