CUBA LIBRE
INTRODUCTION: THE IMMINENT FALL OF AN OPPRESSIVE REGIME
Cuba. The beautiful island shut off from the rest of the world through no fault of its own is finally sensing the imminence of its own newfound freedom.
Freedom for the Cuban people is just a blink away due to the actions that the United States is taking, and due to the Cuban regime and failed policy finally at death's door.
So little time is left for the regime that has controlled Cuba with an iron grip to finally collapse. The rats in power will most likely hurriedly scurry away before what is coming for them finally arrives. Like cowards, they flee. Their hands are stained with blood of the murders that they have committed.
The long awaited fall of the communist regime that has kept the Cuban diaspora away from family, friends, and most of all any normal semblance of life in their own country of origin is finally collapsing.
Something that should have occurred 60+ years ago with the help of the United States in the Bay of Pigs battle. Something that did not occur, for reasons beyond the scope of this personal article.
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF PAIN AND GENERATIONAL MEMORY
The Cuban people who are looking over to the island from over 90 miles away in Florida are feeling a mixture of elation and 60+ years of heartache. There is a general sense of cheer, anticipation of whats to come, and finally hope within the Cuban diaspora. It is bittersweet and overwhelming for many. Tears fill the eyes of many Cubans who finally see the sun setting over the horizon for the failed regime controlling the country.
What was experienced by the grandparents and great-grandparents of Cubans today and the horrors recounted throughout families of what had occurred has left a mark on the collective Cuban conscience. The violent uprooting by the Communists that had caused many deaths and separated families is not forgotten, however.
Anyone that disagreed was quickly put against the wall and shot. Those that tried to fight or openly disagree were killed and their lands stolen from them, with many children whose family could not escape being orphaned by the new state and later forcibly adopted by the Communist regime to be effectively brainwashed into accepting the movement that killed their family members. It was a tragic uprising that has locked the country in isolation and the people have felt a collective despair and rage since. The silence however is immense, for the fear of being killed or arrested for airing your discontent never stopped being the reality in Cuba.
Most every Cuban carries that mark of pain with them. The feeling ineffable yet succinct.
It is a stamp to add to their identity. That shared understanding that what had occurred many years ago must not occur again. They often warned Venezuelans of what was to come in their own country soon after. When the regime managed to capture Venezuela, Cubans cried out again. In pain for what they knew had occurred to them was once again occurring to another country. The Venezuelan diaspora stands with Cubans, the pain equally shared between the two. Though the mark is fresh on Venezuela, it is deeply ingrained in Cubans. Perhaps the feeling can be likened to a deep wound that festers and will not heal. Not until freedom.
Yes, Maduro is finally out of Venezuela. That's an article for another day.
The Cubans that were eager to fight back to regain their republic were beyond subdued but they were not vanquished. That immense rage and feeling of having failed in the recapture of the island transcended beyond the generation that lost it all and the feeling still runs through the veins of the newer generation of Cubans who, with tears in their eyes, look back to the island solemnly.
The immense pain and sorrow felt by the Cubans, and recently the Venezuelans, is unrecognizable to many Americans because the lived experience is impossible to describe and warn against to someone who has only seen abundance and has always had the bare necessities handed to them in life.
CUBANS IN CUBA TODAY
The towns people on the island are holding on for dear life. Necessity has its cold, hard grasp on the collective who are generally on the brink of starving, in more than just the physical sense.
There is no kind of progress. The country has stagnated and began decaying many years ago. Only excess poverty, need, and scarcity remains. What once the revolutionaries argued was occurring in Cuba for many, (which in turn fueled the revolution) is now what the majority of the Cuban people are truthfully facing and have been for over 60+ years.
Now, instead of 10% of the population being extremely impoverished like they were under Batista, it is over 90%. With those at the very top holding all of the wealth, power, and riches. That is the thing about communism, they merely project the issues that will occur under them, yet they claim that it is truly occurring under the current system already put in place.
The reality of the ideologist family of 'isms' is a different monster than what is truly portrayed by those that believe they agree with it.
It seems as if it is a sort of magic spell. First, you create the feeling of discontent and offer the ideology (the isms) as the cure. When in reality, those same (isms) are a worse force than whatever ailed the country in the first place.
History shows that when dissatisfaction is cultivated deliberately, the solution presented often demands far more than the problem ever did. This rings true in Cuba, and in other countries that rang the bell of communism and or socialism mistakenly.
Isms will always end in the same tragic story. Starvation, massacre, political dissent, and doom. An ugly tune that is played countless times in countless countries. It is occurring now, beneath the surface of one of the most powerful countries' machinery. The United States. Though the machine fights against itself, the many that had fled that the isms ugly tune from neighboring countries warn of its claws of doom grasping onto life in the United States.
The young people on the island of Cuba are divided. Yet, the overall sentiment of the diaspora prevails over the select few that are for isms. In Cuba, You have the crafty and adaptable that have learned to survive and accept their fate while looking to flee at any given chance, and the very few that, rather than play into the system put in place, vocally voice their rights as human beings under God against the Communist dictatorship regime.
HOW SCARCITY AND NECESSITY HAS PREVAILED
When the United States shut itself off from Cuba, Cuban Communists cheered. They won against the imperialists, so they said. When the Soviet Union fell in 1989, Cuba's sole support system at the time fell, and all hell broke loose. What is now called the Special Period, which lasted from 1991 till 2000 is another example of the parasitic nature of the regime.
Though the communists live comfortably, the Cuban people struggle to survive through the lack of resources. Often resorting to extreme measures to put food on the table. Many have tried fleeing the island through various means throughout the years. Many, are arrested once caught.
That's the thing about Cuba, it's an island. It is almost inescapable if all hell breaks loose like it did in 1969.
The soul of the nation of Cuba was beaten, and soon after compartmentalized by the Communist dictatorship that holds it captive today and has so for well over 60 years. The Cuban people experience what [dare I say] could be considered a medieval way of life. Yet it is much much closer to home for the West. Only 90 miles away from the United States. Americans are ignorant to the horrors of a country shut in on itself.
Cubans living in America warn with tears in their eyes of the country that was once so prosperous, its own dollar at one point in history when It was a Republic superseded the American dollar in value.
With political dissenters and refugees often tortured, their families await in fear of what is consequential if they voice anything against the evil regime.
Anyone that isn't with the regime is constantly watched, and slowly taken out by various methods that the machinery of the island uses. Either through mass deportation and or immigration, Terror tactics, Murder, Torture, and political arrests.
It needs to be asked, did the 'Special Period' in Cuba really end? It has been a road downhill since its capture in 1959.
There are so many blackouts due to the regimes incompetence. The lack of new infrastructure and the added effect of the old one crumbling beneath people's feet. The colonial Spanish homes that used to stand proud are now a mockery of what once they were. Crumbling, collapsing, with bare rebar sticking out, cement chunks riddling the sides of houses as no more can be done to remedy the situation.
There are no longer any roads in most towns, there are no trash pick ups, and the pile of local trash sits, accumulating disease and pestilence. Infestation and rampant disease is finally catching up to the towns people. Through no fault of their own. There is no source of clean water, no abundance of food in an island that is more than abundant in agriculture possibilities.
Cubans are at the end of a civilization and a republic that was stolen from them in 1959. One that, while the greedy capturer Fidel Castro and the worms underneath him looked to the United States with dismay and jeer. With a mouth full of forked tongues lies, Castro and his regime killed by force what was left of a once prosperous country.
Nothing is left. Scarcity is the word commonly vocalized by the islanders. Islanders are resorting to burying their dead in cardboard boxes, there are too many deaths from disease and hunger, there is not enough wood to make coffins. Life is beginning to emphasize death, life is not about living in Cuba, it is about survival.
Now, Canela runs the front of the show, being simply put, an evil figurehead of the Castro regime, which is now an underground monarchy that still controls the nation.
How else can it be described and the messaged received that, in its quick rising as a republic in only 50 years after its liberty from Colonialist Spain, the Cuban dollar topped the US dollar in value. Cuba was once so prosperous, being viewed as the pearl of the Caribbean, the name and image now forgotten by Americans, but guarded greedily by the Communists who closed the country off from prosperity.
WHY ITS NOT THE EMBARGO
The embargo is not to blame for all of Cuba's issues as a country. The sole blame lies in its own governance. The embargo was put in place by the United States, but Cuba could still do trade with most any other country it wanted to. The greatest lie ever told by Socialists and communists alike was that the embargo was the sole blame for any downfall. But, how can you cheer on an embargo as a win against America, and then blame that same country for your very downfall? The only thing that can be said is that projection
Was it truly a meaningful embargo the way the communists mention it over and over again? The embargo is a simplistic notion of the issurs and affairs of Cuba.
When put in place, the Soviet Union still sustained Cuba for another 12 years before its own downfall.
The embargo has been a talking point by many ignorant of Cuba's true history. The issues in Cuba do not surmount to being caused by a mere embargo.
Anyone with a bit of knowledge on economics, or how a country works, or even with some understanding of the history of Cuba will know that the embargo is simply a distraction to what horrors were truly occurring under the regime.
It is simply a misdirection and a projection of blame back to the Americans and their supporters. The imperialists (Americans) are always to blame by the communist ideologues.
The game that the communist best plays is blame. By blaming their enemy of everything that they themselves are doing, they absolve themselves of any true responsibility in the matter.
The true issue is much deeper than a simple act. Nothing is so simple, yet so easy for the masses to grasp onto than ignorant blame. If you point figures, it distracts from what is truly occurring. Such a simple notion of truth is not understood by most, unfortunately.
Yet, the ideological simplicity of a worldview is what keeps them in power, the infighting helps them come out victorious.
The wrong side of history is winning, and it is doing so because it masked itself as the correct idealogy long ago.
America, in its attempt to hastily close that chapter of history and move on from the Cold War, did not doom Cuba to suffer due to the embargo.
Cuba was doomed to suffer by The United States when the USA closed itself off to aiding in any possible rescue missions beyond the Bay of Pigs. The deep state won the instant the Bay of Pigs was lost to the communists. The communists won, too.
Most likely, in conjunction with the deep state.
UNITED STATES INVOLVEMENT & CURRENT GEOPOLITICS
On to the United States side, the strategic capture of Maduro, along with the added pressure to Mexico by the United States to not send oil to Cuba is aiding in this freedom. What could have happened years ago is happening now. Finally, the Cuban people see a potential way out of oppression, and the diaspora of Cubans that fled see a way back to their home and to the families they had to leave behind. This is what true communism does. It kills, it steals from the people, and most of all it separates families.
The United States is simply acting for its own best interest. Just as most every other country does. Of course, when the United States acts in its own interest it is criticized. When other countries do it, they are praised.
This act that the Trump administration is doing does not take away from the opportunistic chance of the Cuban nation to finally be free. The diaspora has asked for years for more involvement from the United States. The only true hope and remedy to the situation at hand is the United States to become involved. Through every other large country that has become involved such as China and Russia, Cuba's infrastructure has kept rotting, there is simply no true aid like the one of your closest neighbor.
2020 UPRISING & AFTERMATH
In 2020, Cubans went out to the streets. The movement quickly received worldwide attention. It was the closest it had ever been before now to see freedom. The movement generated music that is still listened to.
The need for food, water, and basic necessities surmounted fear. The deaths caused by rampant disease, and the fear of Covid had made the islanders risk their lives and march the streets in 2020. The towns people began to fight back the very regime that has repressed them for so many years.
It was ultimately squashed. The Biden administration ignored it until it became extinguished. Without the help of a large power such as the United States, the hope for change in a closed off island ultimately felt impossible.
The fear of death is still too evident. The generational fatigue of fighting back finally caught up for many Cubans in 2020. Many fled at the time, and with the United States opening up its borders to many illegal immigrants, a wave of Cubans fled once again to the States through South America. Though it was not the first time that many Cubans entered the United States. It was the first time that many entered illegally. Before the Obama Administration put an end to Legal migration from Cuba, small exodus' occurred throughout the decades due to the policy of 'Wet foot dry foot', which granted immigrants a political refugee status.
The newer generations never saw a glimpse of prosperity, so, what else could they fight for? If not basic necessities? The Communist regime won when it burned history, and killed the dissenters.
Many of the new generations born under repression may not know the full picture, but the sentiment of the old and the stories hushedly told in the dark by family members who lived through better times are in the back of many of the younger Cubans' minds. Something better is out there.
The administration which, agreed with the regime did nothing to stop the uprising, but let it die down and flare out as no aid was given to the people of Cuba. Through Covid, rampant disease and hunger, all has been endured and all has been faced. 2020 simply died down through the same tactics of the machinery. Mass immigration removed the problem people. Political arrests, tortures, and public displays of violence extinguished the rest.
CURRENT SILENCE & HOPE
Right now, the island sits in silence. Not because the people are silent, but because of the blackouts allowed to happen by an incompetent regime who never once cared for its people. Hopefully, in this ever loudening silence, and through the actions of the United States, the oppressive regime that has poisoned Cuba and many other countries, will finally see its end.
With the help of the Americans, Cuba will finally be free, once again.