cuba 2.0, publicación digital del PDC-Cuba

The wheel of power believes that the death rattles of its victim are from ingratitude."
Rabindranath Tagore. Rhymes and Aphorisms

Next Thursday, March 18th, will be the 7th anniversary of the arbitrary arrest of 75 peaceful advocates of democracy in our country.  As usual, they have been demonized by the omnipotent power. Demonization has been the method used by the totalitarian form of government on this Island for the last 50 years. We remember that in the 1960s in the last century, those who dissented were called "worms." With this epithet they stripped them of their human dignity and could encourage mindless attacks on them.

A long list of pejorative terms entered the lexicon to describe the opponents: traitors, sell-outs, scum, mercenaries, and annexationists, among others. They further malign them by adding the shameful stigma of crime. By having total control of society and institutions they can create phony records of criminal offenses. With this they purport to discredit their political activity in the arena of national and international public opinion.

The debacle of the government system is so great that the Cuban Communist Party has not been able to hold its Congress, even after two periods of trying. The reality is that it has no programmatic platform, no credible plan to discuss with its own members and present to society. So unrest and demands for structural change are gaining strength.

In this context they want to appear firm. They demonstrated this by allowing Orlando Zapata Tamayo to die of hunger, in his strike for improved prison conditions. In the face of the world’s condemnation of that atrocity, they started the process of smearing him after death. They want to create the impression that he was a common criminal, they call him a mercenary who was being manipulated. This does not hold up in the face of his indomitable will even to death, and the repression deployed against him because he would not show submission.

Demonstrating their characteristic arrogance, they think letting him die would stop this kind of protest. They behaved with the same malice that led them to summarily shoot the three citizens who hijacked a boat, thinking to avoid the incident leading to a mass exodus. What they didn’t imagine was that a free citizen would make a decision to step into the shoes of Zapata Tamayo. The degree-holder Guillermo Fariñas Hernández in his home, taking neither food nor water, leaves the regime unmasked, with all its miserable moral squalor open to the world’s view. The absurd and irrational government conduct is associated with the syndrome of its end. The rigidity, in the face of the just demands of a man who fasts in his house, reveals to us how fragile and insecure the power really is.

The government projects a face of altruism and justice to the world. But it is only an illusion. We see that in the park honoring the French writer Victor Hugo between H, I, 19 and 21 streets in the Plaza municipality, in Havana. Here we find a monument to the memory of the Irish who died in a hunger strike. The words of Fidel Castro, inscribed on the plaque, now return like a bronze boomerang to hit the regime:

THE STUBBORNNESS, INTRANSIGENCE, CRUELTY, INSENSITIVITY BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT FACED WITH THE PROBLEM OF IRISH PATRIOTS ON HUNGER STRIKES UNTIL DEAL, REMIND US OF TORQUEMADA AND THE BARBARITY OF THE INQUISITION IN THE MIDDLE AGES. THE TYRANT TREMBLE BEFORE MEN WHO ARE CAPABLE OF DYING FOR THEIR IDEAS, AFTER 60 DAYS OF HUNGER STRIKE! NEXT TO THIS EXAMPLE, WHAT WERE THE THREE DAYS OF CHRIST ON CALVARY, FOR CENTURIES A SYMBOL OF HUMAN SACRIFICE? IT IS TIME TO PUT AN END, THROUGH DENUNCIATION AND PRESSURE FROM THE WORLD COMMUNITY, TO THIS REPUGNANT ATROCITY.

FIDEL CASTRO  AUGUST 18, 1981

68TH CONFERENCE OF THE INTERPARLIAMENTARY UNION

TO ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO FOUGHT FOR IRISH INDEPENDENCE