The vindication of the moderates (Part I)
By
Jorge Gómez Barata Read Spanish Version
At
all times, particularly during times of great tension, all
civilizations and all cultures have regarded with great esteem those
serene spirits who seek agreement, promote dialogue and achieve
concord. Miami was defined as an exception when it invented the
barbarism "dialoguero"
—
dialogue monger — with which it stigmatized its most serene people.
To be a moderate was everywhere else a virtue, not there.
Such
anomalies, not exclusively political but also civilizational, are due
to a complex process that imbricated the anti-Cuban policies of
successive U.S. administrations with the Cuban counter-revolution,
adding errors in the design and enactment of those policies. One such
error was granting an excessively prominent role to the CIA, which
bet on violence, subversion and terrorism.
The
total liberalization of U.S.-bound emigration, including the practice
of welcoming people who arrived in any which way, including the use
of vessels or aircraft hijacked or stolen, and turning the ability to
commit violence against Cuba into a merit, penetrated the Cuban
colony, where counter-revolutionary ringleaders were installed as
leaders.
That
way, Miami, home to a numerous and influential Cuban community,
became a kind of ghetto characterized by a climate of violence,
extremism and intolerance, whose proponents made a living not only
from the enormous economic power accumulated by the exercise of
anti-Castroism (a lucrative business) but also from the support given
by the administration to a vengeful and revanchist ultra-right that
seized all the strings of power in the city and seized upon not only
the Cuban community there but also the federal government and the
candidates to the presidency.
However,
despite the climate of terror imposed on the city and the
antidemocratic and Mafia-like procedures followed by the
counter-revolutionary ringleaders — who allowed not the slightest
dissent and forced the Cubans who arrived in the ghetto by the
hundreds and thousands to declare themselves anti-Castroites and join
all activities against Cuba in the late 1970s — there appeared on
the scene elements that belonged to a sector that did not accept such
a state of affairs and favored dialogue with Cuban activities.
In
that context of violence and intransigence, the extreme right
revealed its most perverse strain, acting not only against Cuba but
also against elements of its own community, whom it attacked and
persecuted with brutal ferocity. It was a time when terrorist acts
were committed in Miami as often as (or more often than) in Havana,
when bombs were detonated and raids were committed on magazines,
stores, radio stations and people who promoted dialogue.
To
travel to Cuba, to send any kind of help to relatives on the island,
or to publicly or privately acknowledge the slightest value of the
social work fostered by the authorities on the island were reasons
for exclusion. Even being a fan of a sports team or athlete living in
Cuba, or applauding some artist from the island was sufficient cause
to be repressed or repudiated, to lose one’s job or suffer reprisals,
even physical punishment. Several people lost their lives or were
mutilated as a consequence of those attacks.
However,
the moderates and supporters of a dialogue with the island for the
solution of the legitimate needs of the Cuban community resisted and
exposed themselves to the reprisals, risking their economic
well-being and their safety and that of their families. They resisted
and, even though they were not always understood or supported by some
sectors of the population and the authorities on the island, they
kept up their efforts. In the 1990s, when the situation in Cuba was
most difficult, those efforts reached a climax.
The
power of the right, considerably reinforced during the
administrations of Reagan and Bush Sr. and Jr., associated with
extreme legislation such as the Helms-Burton Law, Bush’s successive
plans for transition and the acts of the counter-revolution, in part
neutralized the activity of the moderate circles, which survived,
nevertheless.
Not
only as a natural result of the peculiar behavior of U.S. society but
also as a response to the outrages of the conservative
administrations, including their visceral attitude toward Cuba and
their backing of violence and counter-revolutionary intolerance,
moderation, in the person of Barack Obama, appears to have seized the
power.
The
strength and influence of the counter-revolutionary ultra-right in
Miami is considerable and it is unlikely that it will disappear or
automatically neutralize itself. But, paradoxical as it may seem, it
will moderate and probably follow the trend of the currents and
breezes that favor dialogue. There may be many things for us to see.
Jorge
Gómez Barata is a Cuban journalist who lives in Havana.
