Angel Santiesteban
What mystique surrounds "power" for tyrants, that the obsession of
keeping it leads to sacrificing their people, their family and their own
lives? They disguise their obstinacy with ideals, which require constant
sacrifices, with those whom they have betrayed and they pursue no other
real intention except continuing to "command" the nation. All dictators
create totalitarian government structures, where democracy is stifled so
that fair elections are not even remembered, which undoubtedly would
cause the loss of their regimes.
When the riots started in Libya, I realized what the final result would
be for the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, although I imagined the legal
variation with which the absolutist Saddam Hussein was condemned. The
leaders, after appropriating power, executed those who opposed them, and
determined to do everything to keep in power.
History has shown that you can not hold a people in rebellion. You do
not get to lie and frighten several generations without being punished
for that. No political machinery and repressive, even Cuban, which I
consider the most effective of the many that have existed, can contain
the right to freedom for all Cubans.
Fidel Castro has lived like a king who demands that his subjects the
sacrifice their lives. Several generations in the twentieth century have
dedicated their existence as ritual human sacrifices offered to the
supreme god. Lives lost that did not receive anything in return. not
even their children and grandchildren have understood what they were
offering. They understand that they were deceived, martyrs in vain who
did not manage to change or improve the present nor the future.
Fidel Castro knows that time of life left to him is no longer
"important", if we estimate what he has accomplished in his years of
full and vital life, it has not been enough to recall it as a happy past
(meaning "important," given his proven incapacity to contribute to the
ailing economy or to democracy). Nothing of what he promised my
grandfather, then my father, as he also tried to do with me, with my
children, and if we let him right now with my grandchildren, has been
achieved. Ideals are to empower people, not vice versa. Ideologies can
not devour a country. And that great forgery of Fidel Castro, his big scam.
His brother Raul Castro, now President of the nation by appointment of
the dynasty, who realizes that his presence is like a bus stop along a
route where the bus will soon continue on its route after half a century
of dictatorship, tries to delay as much as possible a natural evolution
of the society which will oust him from power. He tries to fool us with
the unattainable carrot, false political strategies, which are nothing
more than dikes that try to contain the force of water beating against
the iron gate that blocks our way to the future, to social, intellectual
and economic development. His political inexperience leaves a bad taste
making us feel undervalued.
What is sad is that it is probable that lives will be lost. The amazing
thing is that the Castro brothers know it, as Hussein and Gaddafi knew
it, and they do nothing to avoid it. They came to power violently, and
will leave it in a bloodbath similar to the one they committed in 1959.
Disgracefully the color red will stain the streets and the history of
their country will be, in their departure, as it was in their arrival.
I still have a hope, that they will listen to reason and think of their
descendants. They say they love their grandchildren more than their
children. Fidel has never been affectionate not even with his children
even (they say so themselves), then why is he going to be with his
grandchildren? His egotism leaves no space to think of another being
that is not himself. But Raul Castro is known for his filial attachment.
We know that somehow he has managed to situate his offspring in several
countries. It could be interpreted as a choice of flight, or at least an
attempt to save his offspring, which is why I suspect they also expect a
revolt.
We must make the Castro brothers and the rest of their lineage aware
that, if they definitely decide to cling to power and provoke a civil
war, they will expose the lives of their descendents. They will leave a
rancor on this earth that will not allow sharing anything with their
offspring. Their bank accounts and property will be frozen and returned
to the coffers of the State, whose leaders, by then, will be
democratically elected.
Of the expressions delivered by Fidel Castro himself, I remember one
very clearly, when the dictator Pinochet was arrested in England. At
that moment he revealed that he always traveled with a grenade to avoid
being captured alive. It's known that when the time come, usually they
shake hands (and not just because of Alzheimer's), as we already saw
with Hussein and Gaddafi, influenced by cultures more prone to suicide,
who didn't have the courage to shoot themselves, nor even to chew a
cyanide capsule; we can suppose that Fidel Castro will not have the
courage to pull the pin on the grenade; and perhaps, after avoiding a
popular lynching, the brothers will face a legal process, overseen and
assisted by an International Court, where their final days will not be
dignified. Paraphrasing Jose Marti, it's worth noting that "men don't
look at on which side it is better to live, but on which side it is
better to die."
As we've heard since childhood: informed war doesn't kill soldiers; it's
high time for the Castro rulers and their entourage, after resigning
from power, to sense and weigh the intelligent possibilities of a
peaceful outcome; so that in the end, aided by the Great Architect of
the Universe, all we Cubans will have, for the first time and forever, a
republic with progressive civic and democratic development.
God help us and support us in this endeavor.
Translated by Regina Anavy
November 9 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment