Payback
By Varela
In Miami there has always been talk about a settling of accounts after something happens (that will never happen) or something falls (that will not fall).
There has been no shortage of proposals. Cubans are creative people. Years ago, Agustín “Vendetta” Tamargo harangued over the radio asking for three days of butchery in Cuba. His call was not for the sale of prime beef or veal at affordable prices; it was to make mincemeat of each and every Castro-loving “hangman” who walked the streets. Three Nights of the Long Knives, after which everybody goes home to wash the blood off himself, and that’s that.
Later came a proposal from Count Dracula, Huber Matos, in an interview with The Herald last year. He suggested that many Castroites or Castro supporters should be hanged from the lamp posts along Havana’s Malecón. In other words, Matos wants to turn Cuba into a Caribbean Transylvania.
Leaving aside disassociation with reality, irresponsibility, lack of judgment and social immaturity, these proposals sound like stupidity and senility. However, to bring us up to the present, here come four middle-aged Cuban-American lawyers, active in the community, knowledgeable about First World affairs and the law.
They show up in business suits at Channel 41 with a proposal in hand: CUBA, REPRESSION I.D. And, naturally, Oscar Haza welcomes them to his air time.
The new settlement of accounts is more technological. It consists of using the videos of the ladies’ marches in Cuba, freezing the images of counterdemonstrators (with good digital resolution) and circulating their faces so the viewers may identify them for the purpose of taking reprisals against them.
In other words, four Miami lawyers become the defenders of Cuban mercenaries who march because they’re paid by the U.S. government. In fact, the lawyers become prosecutors of the counterdemonstrators.
Allegedly, the four learned lawyers will file the identities away until they find a competent Nuremberg-like tribunal that will rule according to the gravity of each case. I imagine that the court will dismiss any multimillion-dollar claim, which are very common in Miami, and nobody will be allowed to say that her neighbor owes her a million dollars because he shouted “Long live Fidel!” too close to her ear.
Whosoever does not realize or understand the level of farce and manipulation behind all this is a fool.
This is all mere entertainment, a TV reality show where the audience is tricked into believing that it’s part of an international legal action. A product for consumption in Miami, because its objective is not to try anyone who supports the Revolution. The organizers don’t have the resources or legal foundation to do that. To begin with, comes May 1, they would have to freeze a million Cuban faces on the TV screen. By doing that, they wouldn’t spread fear on the island or show power in Miami.
These four last-minute shylocks claim the project “occurred to them” during the luncheons they share. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but, as good pettifoggers they must do the same with me and not say on TV that they were attacked from a blog (mine), because one of the four, Ricardo Martínez-Cid, is the local enforcer of Montaner the Good [1]. (Montaner the Bad is the brother.)
In fact, Martínez-Cid is one of the few scraggy cats in Montaner’s Cuban Liberal Union, here in Miami. So, if Montaner the Good is behind everything, this legal project becomes a political platform that advocates more repression in the name of a struggle against repression. And that’s even more ridiculous.
Born in Cuba in 1955, José Varela was an editorial cartoonist in Miami for 15 years, working for the magazine Éxito (1991-97) and El Nuevo Herald (1993-2006). A publicist and television writer, he is a member of the Progreso Weekly/Semanal team.
[1] Montaner el Bueno is Carlos Alberto Montaner, a writer and columnist for The Miami/El Nuevo Herald.
