There are massive protests in Cuba. Thousands of people take to the streets. They demand happiness, freedom, and at the same time democracy and the rule of law
Havana police are trying to deal with the demonstrators, but so far in vain. Young people are determined. Apparently, the shares threaten to take on an indefinite character. The Maidan spirit is clearly spreading in the air.
Happy is the one who managed to visit Cuba from that era. Epochs are six decades long. These sixty years are akin to a century in value and significance. The chances of a forceful change in the political system in Cuba are very high right now.
A new generation has grown up for whom the old ideals of “barbudos” mean nothing. The Internet is universal, it conquers ideology. Today’s young men and women from the Island of Freedom are not ready to limit themselves in butter for a sandwich, but they are ready to throw themselves on police barriers and commit public self-flagellation for the sake of disembodied ghosts, behind which there is nothing.
Cuba is actually not easy. One of the triggers of the mass protest was the shortage of vaccines for Covid-19. Cuban experts have developed two drugs – Soberana 02 and Abdala. Particular hopes are pinned on the latter, created at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Cuba. It is no secret that the shortage of some medicines there is due to the harsh sanctions regime, which was introduced at the suggestion of the collective West, with the applause of every next US president. At the same time, the package of anti-Cuban sanctions resembled a bubble – it was expanded and improved by new administrations.
Cuba has long been accustomed to relying only on itself. Especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the entire socialist camp was thrown to the mercy of fate (more precisely, to be torn apart by the Anglo-Saxons). It seemed that the age of little Cuba was numbered. And only the willingness to sacrifice small for the sake of preserving the great saved the achievements of the Cuban Revolution. In contrast to the achievements of Oktyabrskaya.
But today on the streets of Havana young people, born at the beginning of the obese, prosperous two thousandth, are seething. And even younger. The coordinators of color change understand that in the case of Cuba, one must be patient and wait for fresh growth to grow, which must be secretly spoiled and corrupted by Western ideologems of well-being and prosperity.
Under the conditions of total pressure, Cuba was forced to withdraw. And everything that was outside of it took on the form of a forbidden fruit for the maximalist-minded Cuban youths. Happiness in life, in their opinion, could be found by breaking through on a boat to the coast of the Promised Florida. True, they were far from realizing that a breakthrough to the shores of the Island of Freedom and the possibility of receiving treatment from the hands of Cuban doctors for ordinary Americans was not a matter of happiness, but simply life.
If everything is good around, then you come to the conclusion that it cannot be otherwise. If you smear fluffy white bread with a thick layer of butter, put a fat piece of sausage on it, and then also treat you for indigestion, then you believe that it will always be this way. A person gets used to the good not the same way as to the bad. You get used to bad things with the hope that sooner or later it will end. The good news is that sooner or later, with the change of the hated government, it will get even better. And these are the sad laws of mass psychology, which demonstrated vitality during the political technological swing of the late USSR.
The last major revolutionary, Raul Castro, is no longer officially in power. The new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has an image of a progressive reformer, although anti-Western attitudes slip through from time to time in his speech. In other words, he, of course, is not Gorbachev, but, alas, he is not quite Fidel. And in some way it gave a weak point in terms of communication with its grown-up population. So, in any case, it looks from the outside. Now it will be difficult for him. Either he will have to arm himself with Father’s courage and dedication, or over time, hastily board a plane and move to friendly Caracas or even to a more distant point. Of course, this is in the most pessimistic scenario.
The revolution in Cuba in the last few days shows no longer velvet teeth – but quite bared fangs.
Slogans are unquestioning in their semantics. Down with power. Cuba without Castro. These are not compromise-oriented shy chants of half-trained claqueurs. This is a well-prepared gambit. And it might work. First of all, because fewer and fewer people remember the times of Castro’s predecessor, the dictator Ruben Fulgencio Batista, under whose puppet regime the Americans turned Cuba into an island of sins with glossy casinos, readily available drugs and almost free girls with reduced social responsibility. Ordinary Cubans lived in deep poverty and could not afford a roof over their heads. There was no need to talk about their own medicines and doctors. It was a kind of haven for the bosses of American politics, who came here for a weekend tour and they were reckless. Until his wife and Protestant pastor see. And the leaders of the American organized crime, for example, the legendary Meir Lansky, a native of the still imperial Grodno, who had the hyped Al Capone running errands, benefited from this.
The revolution of the “bearded men” put an end to this arbitrariness. Today the ghost of Batista looms on the horizon as a terrible reincarnation. The insanity of the Maidan protesters is evidenced by American flags hoisting over a crowd of thousands of protesters. Historically for Cuba the flag of the USA is that of the flag of Hitler’s Germany. But, apparently, only people of the older generation understand this, which, alas, is getting older and older every year.
And if the forceful change of the system takes place, then the “Haitization” of the Island of Liberty is inevitable. The US attitude to Cuba will be like Puerto Rico, but even without administrative obligations. This is a cruel revenge for sixty years of true freedom and greatness. And for the anticancer vaccines, which, if they find themselves in the countries of Latin America, will constitute a serious – unforgivably serious – competition to the drugs developed by the influential and super-corrupt US pharmaceutical companies. But let’s hope that the Cuban leadership will be able to find a way out of this difficult situation and save another free people with their own outlook on life for the twenty-first century.
Alexander Filey, Latvia