Cuba’s Ministry of Fear and the Culture of Panic
The “suspect-ometer” has been perfected as a management tool; every official calculates how many times they must tweet the hashtag ordered by their superiors each day.
By Yunior García Aguilera (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – Terror has taken hold of Cuban institutions. In response to a rumor circulating on social media about the long-standing and well-known corruption inside the Ministry of Culture, the commissars have rushed to answer with a self-vindicating letter accompanied by some 220 signatures. The response might seem desperate and ridiculous if one does not understand the context in which it was written: there is an internal purge underway, and every head feels threatened.
Only panic can explain the clumsiness of those who drafted, signed, and decided to make the pamphlet public. The hornet’s nest that could be stirred up by this letter is far worse than any gossip about a spa in the home of a former vice minister. Because although Fernando Rojas’s family business may not seem like fresh news to many of us, in the Cuban cultural swamp there are far fatter secrets being hidden. La Jiribilla, true to its jittery name, is far from protecting its cronies—instead, it is shining a spotlight on them. And there, everyone has a glass ceiling.
That is why the most reasonable explanation for the officials’ reaction may be connected to the Gil case. After the accusations against the former deputy prime minister and economy minister, every bureaucrat suspects they could appear on the list (and not precisely Jeffrey Epstein’s list). As they would say in Stalin’s era: “There are no innocent people, only poorly investigated ones.” In Cuba it would translate as: “No one knows the past that awaits them.”
All this paranoia and its conspiracy theories have their origin in the obvious disaster the country is experiencing. But perhaps things became even more complicated due to a misunderstanding. A joking—though very well-informed—friend tells me that someone confirmed to Raul Castro that the ship was sinking beyond repair. And Raúl, without taking his eyes off his television screen, replied that they should find a scapegoat. Up to that point, everything was normal; after all, his brother Fidel had executed his best general (and his best colonel) when the trumpets of perestroika and glasnost sounded. What did it matter to sacrifice a technocrat whom no one knew just before the pandemic?
But here comes the possible mistake: perhaps the secretary on duty misspelled the word expiar (“atone”) and instead wrote espiar (“spy”). Once the blunder had been made, they had to continue with the farce, and Diaz-Canel’s former comrade went from being a mere insensitive bureaucrat to a notorious spy—even though we still do not know whether he was supposedly sending information to Agent 007 or to Mort and Phil.
“The Cuban people can never be divided with messages of hate,” proclaims the text from La Jiribilla, refusing to recognize the curvature of the Earth. Never before, gentlemen, have we been so divided! The very thing they call “the people” is made up of the same people they call “enemies.” Their own discourse betrays them. The people are nothing more than a huge archive where everyone has an open file.
Watching some roofs catch fire and others rushing to soak themselves, I remembered a phrase that perhaps slipped out (or perhaps not) from the officer who interrogated me during my last months in Cuba: “I’m dying to finish you and your little group of unbearable people from your generation, so I can focus on the big fish we’re investigating.” It is possible that his words were part of the manual. But it is also likely that they were so overwhelmed, trying to prop up without blueprints a building that was collapsing, that the manual no longer mattered. The truth is that if my file had about ten pages, the files of the regime’s officials surely filled several volumes. That is why they all jump at the first accusation. Their nerves are shot.
The poor souls who stamp their signatures on the pamphlet are familiar faces in the guild. Some elderly signatories depend on the increasingly meager aid from the Department of “Attention to Personalities,” a bureaucratic euphemism for State charity. Others are waiting for a long-promised house or trust they will be prioritized if a shipment of donated paper arrives. And there is no shortage of those who harbor fond memories of some boozy cultural gathering and feel indebted to the official who secured them a bottle. But not one of these signatories can say, hand on heart, that cultural institutions are free of corruption or that the country is doing well.
It is also nothing new that some in the cultural world play at being the regime’s pets. Even the Austrian painter had several artists who put their talent at the service of horror. In our own history, examples abound: Machado had his chroniclers; Batista his toadies who called him The Man; and Fidel Castro his army of beardless bards. But those who once sang to the bearded leader today remain on their knees before a bureaucrat they themselves recognize as a mediocre leader—although he dresses up as an avocado when a hurricane arrives.
In the hallways of the Ministry of Censorship, they no longer discuss five-year plans, but rather daily rumors: who did not clap enough during Alpidio Alonso’s latest speech-poem; who nodded off while listening to Abel Prieto criticize Shakira and spout nonsense about cultural colonization; who failed to click “Love” on Amauri Pérez’s latest profile picture—the new wardrobe adviser to Prieto. The “suspect-ometer” has been perfected as a management tool; each official calculates how many times they must tweet the hashtag assigned by the leadership each day.
What comes next is predictable. The UNEAC, the AHS, the UPEC, and all those acronyms subordinate to State Security will circulate the list to collect new names. And after some time, the vast majority of those who sign will say what they always say: “I didn’t know what I was signing.” And the worst part is that they will be right, because many of them have no idea what lies behind that pamphlet.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.