Bad Policy

Bad Policy / Mackandal – Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere
Mackandal - Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere, Translator: Chabeli

Cubans get up and go to bed with politics. In Cuba, politics, far from
being an exercise of citizenship, is a way of life and a must to get to
the Party's lines. It has always been like this in the past; the only
difference is that today's politics and politicians pull altogether to
one side.

In Cuba, it is the State that sets the tone for what is right and what
is wrong, for what can be said or what cannot be said, and even for the
appropriate times to say it. Whatever time and space are given to the
individual cannot affect in the least the official discourse, which is
ultimately what must prevail over the will of the citizens.

In other words, sovereignty is defined by what the State dictates. What
the citizens should say or not must always match the interests of the
State itself, the sovereign State.

Therefore, a society where universal and fundamental human rights are
continuously violated and the constant threat to the internal dissidence
is torment, full of slanders and physical abuses against people who only
use words as weapons and their right to disagree, has to recourse to bad
politics and lies. It has to distort history and count on the few
intellectuals who, as paid assassins, are willing to subordinate their
pens and knowledge to the service of deprivation.

The entire Cuban population is subjected to that. Blacks and mestizos,
despite the few existent benefits, like the education system, can
educate themselves and graduate. The educational balance is even, and
this has been demonstrated in recent studies; however, in regards to
everything else, blacks cannot count on the same benefits that whites
count on.

In the past, it was the fear of blacks. Today, the racial prejudices
have not been overcome. Skin color, resentment, hatred and distrust,
inevitably contribute to the exclusion of blacks, when the control of
the political, social, economic and cultural arenas of the nation is in
the hands of one single race, that at the same time tries to neutralize
the aspirations of blacks to progress, and like it has always been, it
makes blacks to become dependent human beings, with no rights but to
obey the white racist regime.

Translated by Chabeli

Published by Spring Digital, 05/04/2012.

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=19340