By Ana Hurtado on April 4, 2023
photo: Abel Padrón Padilla
Cuba’s victories are piling up. There were many people who were full of praise for the victory of the U.S. baseball team in Miami, without expecting that this “defeat” for the Cuban team, and I am putting it in quotation marks on purpose, was the best thing that could happen for everyone in the face of public opinion and the international panorama.
What happened at the Miami ballpark is unprecedented; it is no longer talk of hatred, but of anger, as Pascual Serrano recently described at the Patria Colloquium held in Havana, the feeling emanating from all those who hate and suffer from the progress and advances of the Cuban people.
These are people who are not only against the government of the largest of the Antilles, but against their own people. What generates within a human being such affection as to insult and attack his own people? What moves them? Comparisons are odious, but it is enough to compare how the athletes of the Cuban team were received there, and how these people are received when they come to the island, or how representatives of U.S. governments have been received when they have come. Respect versus insolence.
It is not them, and this is not a justification. It is the machinery that pulls the strings behind it. Cuba has been at war for more than six decades, and this arms conglomerate keeps changing its shape, but its mission is always the same: to sink it. They did not succeed at the Bay of Pigs, they did not succeed when the socialist camp fell, and they are not succeeding now with the information and psychological warfare. This battle that is taking place now is taking place in the minds of men and women who are vulnerable to all kinds of information that reaches them by any means. It is no longer possible to distinguish what is true and what is not. And the enemies of frankness know it well. And they know that, in these times, is where they have to sink their teeth. This fight is the greatest challenge facing the defenders of the Cuban Revolution, the defenders of Fidel and those who hope for a better world.
We are confident that it is possible to fight against the predominance of capitalist values and hegemony, which have the upper hand in the Western world, and which little by little, through the Internet and cultural aspects, are trying to infiltrate Cuba. Manipulation is powerful, but it is not all-powerful. People have intuition. The good ones exist. And even if many are fooled, they cannot fool them all. Those who live in Miami, or in Spain, or in any other capitalist country, may have a distorted image of the Revolution, because of how they have been told, how they have been poisoned, how they have increased their discontent and hatred to transform it into anger. But that, consciously done, does not have to be forever.
The Dantesque episode in Miami was not decisive, but I have no doubt that it influenced the Cuban people to close the line at the time of the united vote in the elections of March 26. It served for this people, dignified and fighting, to see what is outside and the poison that is injected from the empire. Every time there are elections in Cuba, the enemies launch campaigns to turn them into a referendum against the revolution. Historically, this has been done on radio and television. As it could not be less, now also virtually through digital media and social networks.
But always, and forgive the expression, “it always backfires”. Because in this land, they are educated, and they are not so easily fooled. It is not easy to wash your conscience that they make you quickly do in any other country. The cultural war is hard, very hard, but here there is dignity, here there are values and there is confidence in the sovereignty that passes irremediably through socialism. In order to be eternally free and emancipated.
But that freedom has not been and is not given as a gift, it is forged and conquered every day. In fact, yesterday, April 4, was a historic date in this Homeland. On April 4, 1962, a congress of the Association of Young Rebels was held, which changed its name and began to be called as we know it today: Union of Young Communists. That same day, Fidel gave the closing speech and as always he emphasized the youth, because they are and will always be the relay of any process of continuity:
“The revolution that we are making is not the revolution that we want; the Revolution that we want is the Revolution that you are going to make”. And that is why, as Fidel continued, “Our society will be a society without exploiters or exploited, without privileged or discriminated”.
Before April 4, 1962, Cuban youth had already been protagonists in decisive moments in the country’s history, such as the Literacy Campaign and the Battle of Playa Girón.
What would this and other revolutions be without the role of the youth and their responsibility? Fidel always appealed to a responsible youth. A few days ago I myself was able to share with young and not so young Cubans, but all united in the end:
The image of how much Cuba works must be shown to the whole world. How much this socialist system leaves its skin on the basis of the principles and ideas of its heroes. As did Mella in the student struggles, Fidel in the Moncada, and so many more who gave their lives in this land, today free of any chain they want to impose on it, but with an imperial punishment, which it bears for having this freedom. Free or martyrs, the heroes would say.
The struggle, in this multipolar war, lies in the growth of Cuba, in the image of Cuba, not only in the media, not only fighting the matrixes of opinion against the defamers and enemies. But also in the daily work done with conscience and responsibility so that this revolutionary country advances. It is not only built from discourse but also from action.
And that is an indestructible mixture; that is the lethal mixture that as it takes steps and steps, this island, with the passing of the years, will rise in the ocean as an increasingly iron and indomitable bastion.
Source: Cuba en Resumen