Mariela Castro Sets the Record Straight?

By Francisco Acevedo

HAVANA TIMES – Mariela Castro, niece of the late leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro, daughter of General Raul Castro, heated up social media this week with an interview she gave in Mexico to trans legislator María Clemente García on her YouTube channel.

To begin with, the current director of the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex), does not give an interview to anyone who can ask her a moderately uncomfortable question. We can start from there, but well, let’s analyze what she said, because it is a gem.

Mariela, also deputy of the National Assembly of Popular Power, says that in Cuba there was never any concentration camp, and that the famous Military Units to Support Production (UMAP) were only the Compulsory Military Service.

She incidentally said that a country at war is obliged to apply a Compulsory Military Service (What war? It’s been decades since sabotage organized from abroad has not even been reported).

She said the UMAPs, where people who had nothing to do with homosexuality like the singer-songwriter Pablo Milanes passed through, were food production camps. She did not say anything about the hate rallies where they offended with sexual insults in a massive way, tolerated and even instigated from the Government, because it can almost be said that it was a perfectly organized system of humiliation from the Communist Party authorities.

According to her, this is nothing more than a “neoliberal myth”, and she boasted of the little more than a thousand same sex marriages celebrated after the recent promulgation of the new Family Code, “the most advanced in the world at the moment”, she came to assure. She was also silent that you may now have the right to marry a toad if you want, but you can’t criticize your president or your government. Let them suffer in Sweden because we have the best Family Code on the planet even if we don’t have bread to eat, water in the cistern or a decent roof!

The “deciders”, as she calls them, who were no one more than her uncle and father, later transformed that, after the numerous criticisms received from all over and the complaints from those involved, into the Youth Labor Army (EJT), which is still in force with the fundamental objective of producing food precisely for the Cuban military caste. The rest, the stubble, is sold in agricultural markets for the general population that are fewer and fewer and differ less in terms of prices from the rest.

Not to mention the suicides that continue to be reported with alarming frequency, because these young people are forced to do their military service, and some suffer bullying from their peers and the officers that send them, and others simply get depressed and threaten their own life.

We have the Family Code but there are hardly any families left. Previously I had mentioned about the Fishing Law and there are hardly any fish, or the one for Livestock and we don’t have many cows. But such details don’t matter, Mariela is satisfied with what she has. At the end of the day, she does not have to go behind a tanker truck to fill a bucket of water, nor does she have a pothole in front of her house, nor did any of her relatives go through the Military Service, which for them is not mandatory.

For her, the annual Gala against Homophobia and Transphobia solves all of Cuba’s problems, and the ration book (which according to her was a request from the population to prevent theft) guarantees that everyone has access to basic food to survive in a month. Then she added, “and  the population asks for more!”, However, it seems that neither she nor her relatives understand that what the people are asking for is not stores in magnetic dollars (MLC), a currency in which the State does not pay salaries or pensions.

I immediately remembered an anecdote told by Juan Juan Almeida, the rebellious son of Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque, about a visit he made to the house of Alejandro Castro Espín, Mariela’s brother. As part of a conversation without much more than to kill time, Juan Juan told him that it did not seem fair that Cuban children were only sold cow’s milk until they were seven years old.

“How can you say that? In my house, no one speaks ill of the Revolution,” said Raul Castro and Vilma Espin’s eldest son, and they had to tell him to find out. But what would he, or Mariela, know about a ration book? They who have personalized cows. Anyway.

Not to mention the presenter of the interview, who invited all her friends to move to Cuba, or to fight for socialism in Mexico. How many naive people are left in this world! Unfortunately, this is a person with influence, and that is the message presented to their people in Mexico, because in good faith they believe this person (Mariela) or similar ones sent by our President Miguel Díaz-Canel or by the Cuban Embassy, which is all the same.

It doesn’t matter if Humbertico Lopez the “journalist” speaks, or the presenter of the Con Filo show, who, by the way, had to suspend a conference he had planned for young Germans because they refused to listen to him because they identified him as a spokesman for the regime.

Mariela Castro indicated that the “largest budget of the Cuban State” was destined for Health and Education, when the official data offered by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) says otherwise. But why would she care, she does not have to answer to anyone. Even if she is not fully aware that on the island they are going to listen to her words, which cannot be taken as anything but disgusting.

It seems that there are no problems in Cuba, that people protest for the love of art. However, just in case, they surround the homes of opponents with police patrols to prevent them from demonstrating and they send agents to intimidate them.

The world does not see us with the same eyes as Mariela. We have just seen it with the recent declaration of the European Union, no matter how many Marielas continue to blatantly lie.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times