It hurts us (What hurts teaches)
BY HOMERO MUÑOZ —Special for Granma International—
IT hurts Galeano and Saramago that Cuba has shot three hijackers and imprisoned a large number of "dissidents."
I’m going to leave aside the legal aspects because they have nothing to do with this subject. I am also going to leave aside the pragmatic policy, the extremely dangerous and complex balance of convenience and inconvenience from the point of view of the future of the Cuban Revolution, because I do not possess (and I do not think that Galeano or Saramago do either) a fully comprehensive grasp of all the aspects needed to make such an evaluation.
I want to point out another aspect.
It could be said that the Cuban Revolution is for all of us, to the extent that it affects all of us. And particularly Latin Americans who, from the first moment the ‘bearded ones’ entered Havana saw all the perspectives for action on the subcontinent transformed. It is from this point of view that we all express our opinions on events and ups and downs on the island which, like it or not, has become a world reference point.
But the Cuban revolution is exactly that — Cuban. And it is the Cubans who will make and unmake it. And they are defending it and those who have been constructing it from the rock of hard work and effort are standing by it.
I know that no one has called this into question. But at the same time, without any doubt, they have disregarded their duty. And they do not believe, as does Neruda, in "calling for silence." Nor in acritical paid applause.
But it seems to me that the "good news" that Galeano is announcing for the gringos is basically a chorus of public figures who have come out, as if they were obliged to in case someone might be confused, that some unknown reader was going to cast doubt on their political and literary careers. They have come out in the press to clarify their position against the death penalty and against the fact that the Revolution has imprisoned some Cuban citizens.
The good news for the gringos is that after all the Cuban people have said in support of their one-party electoral system, these people of unquestionable political weight have appeared at such a moment to loudly disagree with "Cuban-style democracy."
While serving the empire’s purpose, they are doing so by alternating an anti-U.S. phrase with taking a stick to Cuba, thus preserving the equanimity of the amanuensis and his unpolluted white garb of balance nailed to the mast of liberty.
Of course afterwards comes the reality: the dirt and the baseness of the undermining, purchasing, rotting empire; recreating mercenaries as journalists, paying wages to create dissidence, burying all the conspiracies under a veneer of democracy according to them, and counting on left-wing intellectuals who, from the sand dunes of Lanzarote or the beaches of Uruguay are making a cult of contemplating their navels and irresponsibly putting a spoke in the wheel of history. The bell-glass campaign preventing these distinguished champions of the one true faith from becoming contaminated so that they can show us the way from their vantage point does not protect everyone.
If we add together saramagos+galeanos+CNN and put them on the screen, in front of the people of the world, without the elements of jurisprudence, without history, without the vision of a context that undoubtedly is at the disposition of this equation, what we will get is good news for the empire.
To my way of seeing it, they have chosen badly, very badly, the time and the context in which to air their opinions.
I could even be in agreement with some of those black and white assertions repeated ad nauseam by the entire mass media.
But in the midst of war, of a war moreover, that is against all of us, we absolutely cannot give the enemy more ammunition than it already has.
I can already hear them saying: "The Cubans handed them a weapon through their own conduct."
So, if we don’t like something, are we then going to rush to make it clear in the international press that we, other Latin Americans, do not support such acts?
Who are such statements for?
For the readers? For the enemy? For themselves; in other words, the looking glass?
If we believe that the Cubans have given ammunition to the gringos, how can we contribute to that by giving them additional fuel? Are we saying to them: ‘look here, not all of Latin America is behind Cuba?’ Look at those great intellectuals, who are not in agreement with Cuban democracy, nor with Cuban legality, nor with Fidel, nor with the Cuban Communist Party, nor with the bureaucracy, nor with the G2, nor with imprisoning people for thinking differently, nor with the lack of press freedom and opinion in Cuba, etcetera.
To me that doesn’t seem far from repeated texts dictated by Mas Canosa.
I imagine they realize in what world they have said what they have said.
I suppose that it would have occurred to them that the Cuban leadership has balanced out the political costs of doing what it has done and even so, has gone ahead and done it (when it has been making moves of rapprochement to "requirements" for lifting the blockade).
If Cuba knows something, it is how to defend itself. If it didn’t, it would have succumbed.
And now the gringos have put their foot on the accelerator (I expect they have noticed that as well). The world is at war. They have declared war on us. And you know very well that one of the stages of that war of imperial consolidation is Cuba.
Here there are two trenches, ours and that of the empire (yes, yes, wars are Manichean in the extreme). Mister Bush told us that.
I like the shades of gray as well, but there are moments in history in which gray only increases the obscurity.
The author is a writer and this article was published in the Rebelde weekly (Internet).