OLPL in “A New U.S.-Cuba Policy: Did Cuba Win?”

OLPL in "A New U.S.-Cuba Policy: Did Cuba Win?"
Posted on March 1, 2015

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsIssX8X0iU

Fifty-plus years of US diplomatic stalemate and economic sanctions have
failed to bring freedom to the Cuban people because they were not
designed to bring freedom to the Cuban people, but to penalize a regime
that started by sequestering Cuban sovereignty by violent and
anti-democratic procedures (reestablishment of death penalty, radical
hatred speech, citizen apartheid), by the illegalization of civil
society and all forms of property (both private and public, including
the press), and by tyrannizing every institutional power into a despotic
State, plus the militarization of the nation to the point of demanding a
nuclear attack against the United States from Cuban territory.

The 50-plus years to come of US diplomatic relations and capitalist
engagement with Cuba can neither guarantee the advance of fundamental
freedoms in my country, nor our liberation from the successive Castro
generations, because a market economy is not a redemptive formula and it
has already been implemented by authoritarian systems as a tool for
tyrannical control of all basic rights. And this is a wicked word that
President Obama, Pope Francis and General Castro have secretly agreed to
postpone: the rights of the Cuban people.

As the pro-democracy leader Oswaldo Payá stated many times until he was
extrajudicially executed in Cuba on July 22nd 2012: Why not the
recognition of all our rights now? What is good for Americans since the
18th century is still not good enough for Cubans in the 21st century?

Is this about US interference, as in the hegemonic past times when the
capitol of DC was the capital of the continent? Or this is only about
insulting the intellectual capacity of my people, wise enough to escape
in a pedestrian's plebiscite in search for a real "normalization" of
their lives far from an abnormal socialism?

Democracies seem guilty of their duty to foster democracy worldwide, but
Castroism has been more than proud to Castrify democratic countries
(Venezuela is the most tragic example today), as the recently liberated
5 Cuban spies in US have declared when ordered as National Heroes back
on the Island: we are ready to commit our crimes again if we are ordered
to do so. Sic semper tyrannis.

Why not the effective solidarity and the pressure of the international
community, so that the legal claims that have already mobilized tens of
thousands of Cubans be respected by our non-elected authorities? Why not
take advantage of these US-Cuba negotiations to seat in the same table
the historical gerontocracy with the alternative civil leaders, after we
have risked so much to conquer freedom of speech and to raise awareness
on human rights violations and the anthropological damage in Cuba?

In moral terms, the unpopularity of US policies given the popularity of
the Cuban Revolution worldwide should be less important than the
unpopularity of the retrograde regime within the Island, if a true
transition is to take place in Cuba today. Unless, of course, advancing
American interests in the Western Hemisphere now means advancing
American interests in Western Union.

Did Cuba win?

Cuba cannot win because perpetuation in power is always a failure and
the best approach to endure a fossil past, despite the faith in the
future expressed by Nancy Pelosi, as the US executive branch enforces
resolution after resolution, involving exclusively those congressmen and
NGOs and think-tanks and press magnates and corporations' tycoons that
hurry to shake Raul Castro's hand without asking him a single
uncomfortable question, thus legitimizing he who abolished the Cuban
Congress and Cuban Chamber of Commerce and Cuban think-tanks and Cuban
NGOs, as well as the exercise of free press. By the way, convenient
Cuban dissidents are also called into play, not for the rule of law, but
for the rule of loyalty.

The rationale seems to be that, as it is impossible to hold the Cuban
government accountable, the appeasement of the dictatorship into a
dictatorcracy is now the lesser evil, mentioning "Cuban civil society"
only for political correctness in presidential speeches, while in fact
excluding us from the new status quo.

I am not sure about "what everybody needs to know about Cuba" (as in
Julia Sweig's book) but I am certain of what nobody dares to know about
Cuba. Milan Kundera, maybe the best of Cuban novelists who is a Czech
who writes in French and lives in Switzerland (a perfect mixture for
freedom), knew that "the old dead make way for the young dead" for "the
struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting".

Therefore, even if this is a small step for democracy, it's also a giant
leap against independency. And decency. The Cuban policy of the US is
the ironic victory of The End of History: from our War against Spain to
the anti-Imperialist Revolution, the growing "Common Marketization" of
international relations is what really counts.

That's why for the first time in the history of our hemiplegic
hemisphere it's paradoxically in a Communist country where the cry of
"Yankees, come home" echoes. In fact, you are more than welcome to try
to fool our terminal tyrant with US dollars. But having dwelt in the
entrails of said terminal tyranny during never-ending decades, my only
remaining resistance is a sour skepticism to soothe our soul.

(Original in English)

Source: OLPL in "A New U.S.-Cuba Policy: Did Cuba Win?" | Translating
Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/olpl-in-a-new-u-s-cuba-policy-did-cuba-win/