Birds of Prey in Cuba Politics

Armando Chaguaceda

HAVANA TIMES, 27 ene — News agencies echoed the bitter statements Reina Luisa Tamayo – the mother of the late Orlando Zapata, who died in Cuba on a hunger strike in 2010.

In her Spanish language interview on Miami television, she exposes the neglect and deprivation that she and her family are suffering after a seven-month stay in the US.

Sparing no details, she decries the promises made with such great fanfare about the “abundant resources” that — supposedly — were available to her as a newcomer to the United States, at least according to spokespeople of the Miami-based Cuban exile community.

When one watches this interview, it’s hard not to recall the hugs, photos and fiery speeches made by so many illustrious beneficiaries of the “anti-Castro” industry in their attempts to rack up points and profits at the expense of Reina Louise’s suffering.

The understandable pain, bewilderment and anger of the wounded mother — whose political stance was more that of the daughter of tragic circumstances than of any sophisticated ideological choice — were convenient kindling for those who manipulate the propaganda machine.

They are a political elite whose success and influence is directly proportional to the maintaining in power of the government in Havana.

Now, once these people feel they’ve squeezed all of the media juice out of the Tamayo family, they’re preparing to leave the scene with a kind of “Wham! Bam! Thank you ma’am” attitude.

Such a frame of mind is indicative of certain cheap politics and activism of the sun-blemished factions that meet in closed back rooms along Miami’s calle 8, heirs to the worst traditions of pre-revolutionary Cuba.

This is the living legacy of those who promise bridges to villages without rivers, who exchange hospital beds for electoral registration cards, who launch into corny and bombastic speeches — no matter what the cause — with unfailing evocations of the “Republic” and the “fathers of the nation.”

These are the same people who talk about honor and democracy while profiting from the funds allocated to the “cause” and who have allied themselves, for half a century, with the most despicable figures in Latin American politics – including dictators like Trujillo, Somoza and Pinochet.

Representatives of this species exert hegemony over all politics in that Florida city by using their rhetoric and interests, which are increasingly alien to the new waves of immigrants and are a false alternative to the political regime on the island.

They demonstrate their inability to feel the pain of others; instead they reveal their love for the show, for lies and for their thinly veiled interests in perpetuating a state of affairs in our country that contributes — in a direct manner — to the maintenance of their special status within American politics. In short, these beings are becoming less and less human.

They are a strain of vultures, birds of prey that should have no place in democratic politics of the present or future Cuba.