Me, a communist?

MIAMI – There’s been intensification these days of an old accusation against me: “YADIRA IS COMMUNIST.”

My first reaction is almost always to smile or laugh depending on how I am told. And I laugh at those who are unaware of what a communist is. I also refuse to fall into the trap of reacting with an anti-communist speech just to please those who question me.

I am what I am, but some people would find it much more convenient to pigeonhole me and place me in the drawer of ideology, when in fact, everything I do is done for the love of this beautiful little island where I was born.

How am I not going to defend Cuba, when I see so many with bad intentions towards her?

Then write or make a video, and of course I develop a nationalist theme, but not because I adhere to ideologies, but because I react to such evil from outside Cuba. There are those who want a civil war, and foreign occupation on the Cubans, because on the island the people decided, in a sovereign manner, their own political fate.

In the United States there was a time when intellectuals, trade unionists and artists were monitored as potential communists. We know that Charles Chaplin personally suffered from this crazy paranoid.

Today the old right guard speaks via Radio Mambí [a Miami radio station] to the ears of a youth emigrated so that they, although poor and mestizos, continue their task of hating Cuba. Some of these young people, confused by the propaganda, sometimes look at me with borrowed eyes from the bourgeoisie and criticize me on social networks. But I forgive them, because I know that sooner or later their eyes will return towards the progressive, and they will know that what I do is not for the influence of Marx, but rather for that of Marti.

(From the Yadiraescobar.com blog)