By Luis Toledo on November 22, 2021
photo: Vladimir Molina Espada
A good portion of the world’s attention has been drawn to the enormous difference between the events that took place in Cuba last July 11 and November 15. Such difference was not the result of chance, nor of what the mis-informative media tries to sell as “brutal repression by a fierce dictatorship”.
These media outlets do not denounce – at most they mention them timidly, pretending impartiality – the crimes of governments such as the Colombian, Chilean, Israeli or U.S. governments. Particularly in the latter’s case, whose repression against its citizens who, coming from African, “black” ancestors, are at a disadvantage in a country dominated from its origins by white supremacy or “white messianism”.
In Cuba, no matter how shamelessly its enemies try to invent it, nothing remotely comparable to these crimes occurs. On July 11, members of the National Revolutionary Police -women included- went out unarmed to defend public order and public tranquility, and they were the ones who received the blows from the demonstrators. If any vehicle was vandalized, it was a patrol car.
Then, angelic voices of non-repression chimed it to claim that no one should be imprisoned, not even those who assaulted and looted establishments or threw explosives against medical attention centers, including pediatrics. With their actions they showed themselves to be in the lineage of those who on May 8, 1980 -also in the context of provocations plotted by the empire- set fire to the Le Van Tam children’s circle in Havana, and it took the heroism of the people, with Fidel Castro present on the scene, to completely save a total of five hundred and seventy children.
More space would be required to characterize all the voices that have condemned “the repression” in Cuba, but for the most part they come from the tendencies characterized by those who demonize everything the Cuban Revolution does to defend itself from the forces bent on crushing it. Among those voices there has been no lack of those who invoke God to ignore the differences between the Cains and the Abels, forgetting the holy wrath of Jesus before the merchants in the temple.
The great difference between July 11 and November 15 was marked by the information. On July 11 the country arrived without the necessary preparation, hence it was surprised. A careful analysis of the subject would require greater deployment and depth, and could lead to discovering the ravages of ignorance together with the aftermath of indiscriminate prejudices with respect to technology. But even without such analysis, it is possible to speak of an underestimation of the potential of maneuvers encouraged in social networks by unscrupulous forces and people with great resources, and it is possible to think that there was naivety, a condition that is not advisable because it is considered “the fault of the good guys”.
It seems that the indications of November 27, 2020, and subsequent derivations from them -in the face of which one could have the impression that the Cuban authorities were unprepared and in good faith- were not enough to have a clear notion of what was in the making. Seen from today’s perspective, to get an idea of where those winds were blowing, think about the role that one of the promoters of those events who was assigned by his bosses for July 11: to take over the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television.
They wanted to reedit in that organization what José Antonio Echeverría did in Radio Reloj on March 13, 1957. Obviously, they did not include in their forecasts some elementary data: such as the convictions, courage and patriotism in that pre revolutionary spirit that moved the student hero and his companions, capable of acting to the last consequences in the fulfillment of the missions they undertook.
The outcome of November 15 regarding their pathetic visible manager -the real and decisive ones were, and are, in the United States, and continue to rage at the failure of their plans- ratified the importance of this fact. Courage does not characterize mercenaries, like those who at the Bay of Pigs declared themselves cooks or “embarked”.
With indisputable details and evidence, the information deployed in the days prior to November 15 made it clear, in addition to the constitutional legitimacy of prohibiting the so-called peaceful protest, that it did not seek any improvement for Cuba. Just as they have shied away from referring to the blockade, and even more from condemning it, those who orchestrated it represent in the national territory the terrorists and stateless persons who, with a representative lair in Miami, serve the imperialist power bent on strangling Cuba through hardships.
This attitude became even more evident in the midst of the pandemic, when the blockade was tightened with the more than 240 measures implemented by the Republican Caesar Donald Trump and maintained by his successor, Democrat Biden, each one more abominable than the last. Those measures prevented Cuba, or made it extremely difficult for it to acquire basic resources to face the coronavirus, cure the infected and save lives. Nevertheless, Cuba’s achievements on this front are evident, not only for the good of its people, but also for many others around the world.
In spite of the millionaire resources and the shamelessness of the anti-Cuban media, the clear and honest information displayed by Cuba before November 15 would prevent honest people from being confused into believing that taking to the streets was a healthy way of expressing nonconformity against hardships. In any case, they would have to direct their protests against the government of the United States, responsible, promoter and protagonist of the aggressiveness that keeps Cuba in the hardships it has to face on a daily basis.
Even criminals of the nature of those who on July 11 committed such outrages as looting stores and beating up other citizens, would be clear that the country could not allow such acts. Above all, the annexationists and lackeys of the U.S. government would know that among the people -in that great majority that can be called the Cuban people- there would be no confusion as to one fact: what was announced as a “peaceful march” obeyed the warmongering plan to create disturbances that could be used by the U.S. government as a pretext for military intervention in Cuba.
They would not be afraid of repression by a police force that -consistent with its trajectory since 1959- performed as well as it had on July 11 in order to maintain order without relying on the use of force. They would fear, however, the anger of the people against the pro-imperialist maneuvers. If the local representatives of these maneuvers had taken to the streets to fulfill the script that their bosses had drawn up for them from abroad, the forces of order would have had to protect them. Not only so that the response of the offended people, determined to settle accounts with them, would not contribute to aggravate the disorder, but also to prevent acts of self-aggression, a foreseeable tactic in such personages.
Did their farces end with the departure for Madrid of their most visible vernacular ringleader, helped by the complicity of Spanish authorities, heirs of those who in 1898 humiliated themselves before the United States? It would be another act of naivety to think so. The enemies of the Cuban nation, even when they know they are historically doomed to failure, will not rest in their purpose of getting Cuba to wear itself out by responding one by one to their maneuvers, and neglect the work it should continue to do for the good of the people and their quality of life.
It is not for nothing that the popular rogue protagonists, which has had fun announcing the formation -in the Madrid of the PP, Vox and some “socialists”- of a new duo by the name of Juan and Yúnior, has seriously copied the fabrication of a junior Guaidó for Cuba by the U.S. government and its agents. The sarcasm is deservedly cruel, if one takes into account the political circus in which the alleged Guaidó senior that the CIA bet on also failed but criminal and active hostility against the Bolivarian Venezuela has stopped.
One should not underestimate the danger of a monster whose death throes, however long they may last, announces its end and its consequent desperation to maintain a hegemony that, if a diabolical miracle does not occur, has already escaped it. From there, and from its chain of failures against Cuba, despite the enormous damage it has done to this country, comes the festering rage of the irrational and abject campaign it launches from all sides in order to erase the Cuban Revolution and the example it continues to set for the world.
In such a context, in the face of the fallacious parallel reality that the empire and its servants construct of Cuba to denigrate it as if it were a failed state and justify its liquidation by hunger and disease, and by arms if they have no other option, Cuba has an inescapable responsibility: to bring to a successful conclusion the mission of building in its territory a real, forceful reality for the happiness of its people, whether or not there is a blockade.
Such an achievement would be unthinkable if the counterrevolution manages to take over the country. That is the force from which imperialism has tried, unsuccessfully, to fabricate a Cuban opposition. Here the true and only “opposition” that has present and future space is the one represented by the patriotic and revolutionary population determined to fight against everything that has gone wrong and to fight for the eradication of deficiencies of any kind.
Source: Cuba Periodistas, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English