Cuba: an enigma for Octopus Paul

By Elíades Acosta Matos

Spain unquestionably wins its first soccer World Cup. A field general, defeated in Afghanistan, makes strange revelations (before being removed) to the magazine Rolling Stone that revive the danger of a new crossing of the Rubicon. A silent fleet of U.S. and Israeli warships slips, as if smuggled, through the Suez Canal, its missiles pointed at Iran.

And amid so many foci of tension, amid vuvuzelas, electrifying goals and dark warnings of a hecatomb, a news item takes over the headlines: the Cuban government, after talks with the Spanish Foreign Minister and the Cuban Catholic Church, agrees to the gradual liberation of 52 political prisoners.

As predictable, the most varied reactions blossomed. It is hard to believe that the world, faced with unbridled crises and an uncertain future, soaked by the oil spill in the Gulf, could pay so much attention to the sovereign decision of a government, a decision that sets no precedent at all.

On previous occasions, thousands of Cuban prisoners had been liberated, especially during the government of Jimmy Carter. Why this strange and moving interest in the affair? Why now?

The explanation goes from what several sources call the first steps of the Revolution to a virtual opening or gradual change of regime.

From that point of view, the liberation of those prisoners at this specific moment means a weakness of the Cuban government, a legitimization of the rickety internal groups that oppose it, and the beginning of a process that would culminate in the collapse of its policies and the abdication of its socialist principles, only to merge into the global capitalism, the so-called “Western democracy.”

That is why this event has monopolized the headlines in the world’s major media, elbowing out sports festivals and the real dangers of nuclear wars.

But other analysts, among them some who are not at all complacent with the Revolution, like Héctor Palacios and Carlos Alberto Montaner, have been more cautious in their predictions. They have chosen to see in this event a first move that must be followed by successive actions by other actors.

“What is happening is convenient,” says the latter.

“Cuba took a first step that managed to untie things,” said the former. “Well, then, let everyone move.”

But even these more measured – and apparently less unilateral – opinions omit the same: they don’t mention the United States factor, nor its policy of implacable harassment toward Cuba, nor its meddling in the island’s internal affairs, nor its direct funding of the Cuban counterrevolution, nor its historical responsibilities in this conflict.

Were we to believe them, we’d be in the presence of an exclusively internal conflict. That’s a huge fallacy, and they know it.

But despite this moving effort to conceal what cannot be concealed, or to deliberately minimize one of the two principal actors in the conflict, many reactions also point to the recognition that the Cuban government’s decision might mean the abolition in September of the European Union’s so-called “common position.” It might even lead to the U.S. Congress’ repeal of the laws that prohibit American citizens to visit the island as tourists.

And this has not awaked in those circles the same enthusiasm the liberations did, because (of course) it would also loosen the tension. And that, deep inside, is not convenient for them.

In this case, beyond the predictions, condemnations and absolutions, a small detail has escaped many of the analysts, or, at least, has been intentionally silenced. With these liberations, the false self-promotion of the pseudo-leaders comes to an end and the stage is set for the real plot. The real protagonists take their places.

The days are over when the true contradiction between the Cuban Revolution and successive U.S. governments was concealed by smoke. Those U.S. administrations were intent on destroying the Revolution, through imperialist greed and geopolitical criteria, and replacing it with a false contradiction between an opposition fabricated abroad and nursed from abroad, and a government that represents the majority of the Cuban people and their ideals of independence, sovereignty and social justice.

Predictably, from the woodwork emerged false authorities, oddball personages, wannabes and opportunists in the periodical carnival with which the foreign press and diplomats from a handful of embassies worked feverishly to feed with images and sound a total cultural war against a rebellious island.

Now that this momentary displacement of the true historical plot has been corrected; now that the path to the essential contradictions has been resumed, let us permit, ladies and gentlemen, the unavoidable ideological, political and cultural confrontation between a small Caribbean island, intent on building an alternative based on human solidarity and social justice, and the largest superpower in history, intent on not allowing any challenge to its dominion, its hegemony, and its philosophy of imperialist plunder.

Because facing each other are two world visions and two senses of life that are diametrically opposed. And the empire has never emerged unscathed once the world has appreciated – without distractions, without interference, live and direct – its criminal hazing of a small nation that refuses to be conquered.

To the ordinary Cuban, to the man who is not interviewed by CNN or El País or the BBC, who has not been polled by any newspaper, including those on the island, anything that means a reduction in the tension in his daily life and the continued existence of the essential achievements of the Revolution is welcome.

Contrary to the appellation from fortune tellers and Cubanologists, we are a people of dialogue and reasoning, with a deep sense of dignity and justice, sympathetic to intelligence and the correct and timely political measures. Most of the people I know, people I run into on Havana streets, support the measures adopted without restriction and feel, instinctively, that with them the Revolution resumes the bold and proactive moves that always helped it triumph in its long-suffering life as it defended itself from its powerful enemy.

I firmly believe that the real motives for concern are no longer on this side of the Straits of Florida but on the other. I picture evil personages lamenting, sottovoce, that a reduction of the tensions with the island will notably affect the industry of confrontation, and will postpone the three days reserved for slaughter with which they fill their sleepless nights.

I also picture the creative kids from the advertising agencies creating new characters to replace some icons, stage props built by the tear-jerking propaganda. A slight shove from the side, barely perceptible, has sent them into a corner, worn and useless like the political fixtures they always were.

Revolutionary Cuba marches on. Freed from ballast, it rises. There’s a lot ahead, including the changes that cannot be postponed and mean more revolution, better socialism. And the empire knows that, its mask removed, it will have to show its face.

One doesn’t have to be the infallible Octopus Paul from Sea Life in Oberhausen to predict the result of this confrontation. It is the same result we have obtained every year for the past five decades. And it may be better, if we recall that the Revolution is politics, and that politics is boldness, foresight, decision and intelligence.

Who will now free U.S. policy toward Cuba from its cruel jailers?

Elíades Acosta Matos, a Cuban philosopher and writer, is a member of the Progreso Semanal/Weekly team.