Miami: The hour of the moderates (Part II)
By
Jorge Gómez Barata Read Spanish Version
The
hegemony of class-ruled domination presupposes the homologation of
the political discourses that, from one trend or party to another,
are different only in hues. As a strategy of survival, the forces
that are defeated at the polls adopt the profile of the winner, even
while conserving some identity as an opponent. That’s what may be
happening in Miami.
It
is estimated that in the 12 months following Jan. 1, 1959, about
70,000 people arrived in Miami from Cuba, without any immigration
paperwork. Not including families, elderly people, children and
servants, about 30,000 of them had political experience, and others
were former officers of the armed forces or the police corps. Among
them were henchmen and bullies in the service of the tyranny. The
number of professionals and entrepreneurs was high; many were loaded
with money and there was no shortage of criminals, pimps and flesh
peddlers.
It
is opportune to remember that the U.S. administration at that time
was presided by Eisenhower, the most outstanding American general in
World War II, and included several hawks, such as Allen Dulles,
former organizer of the Allied intelligence in Europe, who acted as
director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In a surprising and
profoundly wrong decision, the design and execution of the anti-Cuban
policy was placed in the hands of the CIA, a blunder that explains
many things.
The
first immigration wave was the lode from which the CIA extracted the
first assets for the execution of the Eisenhower-Nixon
administration’s anti-Cuban policy. From that trove of resentful and
revanchist people, violent and pro-Yankee to the core, came the
figures who became leaders of the Cuban colony.
The
fact was that, through agrarian reform, the suspension of the
currency exchange and the nationalization of property, together with
the insane American immigration policy that was based on emptying
Cuba and accomplished the emigration of an entire social class, the
native bourgeoisie and the United States were unable to structure a
domestic opposition in a political format.
In
the hands of the CIA, the anti-Cuban policy gave priority to violent
actions, sabotage, terrorism and banditry in Cuba, a process that
culminated with the Bay of Pigs, whose failure did not determine a
change in policy but all the opposite. The terrorist war imposed on
Cuba had a correlation in Miami.
From
1959 until today, for exactly 50 years, a climate of violent
intransigence toward the Revolution has existed in Miami. Like a
deadly disease, it penetrated the social fabric of that community,
poisoned the souls of many people and created chasms where only
differences existed.
Nevertheless,
moderate elements and sectors developed in that environment, people
who were consequent supporters of dialogue and pragmatic individuals
who assumed that only through an understanding with the Cuban
authorities the legitimate demands of that community could be seen
to. In some cases, those demands coincided with the aspirations of
the Cuban people.
In
1978, those sectors achieved what still is considered the most
important accomplishment of those efforts. Through dialogue with the
Cuban government, they attained significant advances in the
reestablishment of contacts, family reunification and a start to
travel to Cuba. In a show of barbarity and primitivism, the
counterrevolutionary elites of Miami branded those advanced sectors
with a word that seemed to them the worst insult: "dialogueros."
Under
incredibly difficult conditions, endangering their jobs, social
status, safety (and that of their families, including their children)
the believers in dialogue and moderation resisted, survived and have
lived to see history confirm their belief.
Moderation
and the more civilized political alternatives have begun to impose
themselves, not only in the United States but also in Miami, which
could be liberated from right-wing domination and intolerance and
could cease to be an oligarchic enclave in American soil.
Maybe
the time has come to reprise mobilization and, above all, prevent the
right (in its exercises in political transvestism) to simulate a
mutation and wear a camouflage of moderation, usurping a discourse
that doesn’t belong to it.
When
things change, as has begun to happen, and the defenders of dialogue
and moderation are a majority, nobody will have anything to fear. The
fact they were right will not change them, and their preferred
weapons — words and arguments — can win without causing physical
damage.
While
being a moderate and a defender of dialogue excludes sectarianism and
admits rectification, it should not tolerate opportunism. The
Cuban-American mafia, which is the least democratic political sector
in the world, may try to deceive the new president and his team, but
it will be unable to fool the Cubans here and there. "A monkey
dressed in silk is still a monkey."
Jorge
Gomez Barata is a Cuban journalist living in Havana.
