The Cuban Regime and Cultural Colonization

Madrid/The ideologues of the Castro model blithely repeat that their struggle is based on a supposed “cultural decolonization.” Abel Prieto Jiménez, storyteller, civil servant and adviser to generals, is tired of this issue. His latest books and conferences are like a cataclysm where he inserts single phrases, gossips and memes, obsessively attacking Sylvester Stallone or Shakira and labeling anyone with the slightest liberal speech a fascist. One of his funniest anecdotes is about how Che was worried about the young revolutionaries reading comics in the 60s because Superman discouraged the Agrarian Reform effort.

Another of the champions of this “decolonization battle” is the Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet. With his European passport, the highly paid intellectual travels to the dictatorships of Latin America providing unlimited support to figures such as Díaz-Canel, Nicolas Maduro and Daniel Ortega. The Galician-Parisian says that the left’s weakness is morality, because the left is incapable of lying. I couldn’t be more cynical. The Cuban Revolution itself was born on four fundamental lies: the repeated denial of communism, the hope for free elections, the guarantee of the creation of many political parties, and the promise to respect freedom of the press. The lies didn’t last long. In just two years, this supposedly authentic revolution became a tropical copy of the Stalinist model.

The lies didn’t last long. In just two years, this supposedly authentic revolution became a tropical copy of the Stalinist model.

From then on we would learn to say “motherland” in Russian, copy the Constitution of Bulgaria, move around in Landas, Moskovichi or the Carpathians, send our children to study in Leningrad and replace Mickey Mouse with Masha and the Bearuntil the mighty Soviet empire said “konets” (end). For 30 years, we were culturally closer to a Pole or a Serb than to our own previous culture. We allowed the Russians to build not only military bases on our land, but even nuclear missiles. The fattest slap in the word “sovereignty” was when we applauded the Warsaw Pact tanks that rolled into Prague to crush its spring.Half a century later, the Cuban regime is once again applauding the intervention, brazenly supporting Putin in his invasion of Ukraine.

Fidel Alejandro Castro was, in essence, a colonialist. An unabashed admirer of his namesake Alexander the Great, he always thought Cuba was too small for him. And, once he reached the category of demigod of the Antilles, he began the task of conquering the rest of the world. Cuba did not send its armies to Africa to decolonize that continent, but to install Marxist regimes loyal to Moscow. The USSR provided the weapons and we provided the dead. The most notorious case was in Angola, where Cuban soldiers massacred tens of thousands of Angolans, even after their country’s independence from Portugal. On May 27, 1977, more than 30,000 dissidents were tortured or murdered by Agostinho Neto with the help of the Cuban military occupation. In 2019, the president of Angola publicly apologized for the massacre. But the Cuban regime never apologized.

Not to mention all the damage we are causing in Latin America by infesting the region with armed insurgents. Although almost all failed, many were linked to drug trafficking and others mutated towards conventional politics. Today we have the Nicaraguan dictatorship, repudiated by the vast majority of the international community, but unconditionally supported by Havana. After all, she’s his bastard daughter. And in Venezuela we have shown that the Castro model is not only capable of leading a small country to ruin, but it can also metastasize into poverty, in record time, even in the richest country in the region.

Today we have the Nicaraguan dictatorship, repudiated by the vast majority of the international community, but unconditionally supported by Havana.

Much has been said about Castrocommunism and its characteristics, but not so much about Castrocapitalism. The example was the Convertible Currencies (MC) Department. Beyond the four shoots in 1989 during Cause One, the company established the foundations of what is now Gaesa. Castro capitalism is defined by being monopoly, shady, hermetic, having ties to drug trafficking, using front guards, being controlled and directed by the military, money laundering, piracy and shell companies, to be above the law and the auditors. Castro-capitalism uses people as a commodity, with health personnel as the protagonist. The Cuban state drug trade is more profitable than remittances or tourism and has been described by many human rights groups as “modern slavery”.

Castro-imperialism, that which seeks to replace Uncle Sam with Uncle Putin, should also be defined. Replace your Batman posters with Joker t-shirts like Che. Vindication of ETA, ELN or Hamas; to impose Maduro as a “democratic example”; they demonize the liberal model. appropriating the discourse of minorities it previously persecuted and marginalized; replace the bourgeoisie with public service.

No, Mr. Abel Prieto, you are not seeking to decolonize anything at all, you are seeking recolonization. You dream of imposing the hegemony of a single party and a single thought on the whole world. Fortunately, fewer and fewer are buying their word.