Response to an Outrageous Pamphlet

Dariela Aquique

HAVANA TIMES — The editorial published a few days ago in Cubadebate, one referring to the recently held “Festival Clic,” is one of the most sickening examples of media manipulation that I have read of late. They lie without the most minimal scruples while their non-stop discourse is scathing, offensive and threatening.

The most outrageous is that all of the comments  — none of them disagreeing, all with the same hackneyed lines, so worn out — by now are too dense to continue listening to them.

I don’t want to resort to employing their weapon (slander), but I doubt, I repeat, I very much doubt that every one of the comments that appear there are genuine.

It’s possible that they engaged a whole department to write these non-spontaneous notes of little credibility.

The overwhelming fear experienced by the crumbling regime is making them lurch haphazardly and draw on resources of such little respect as ignominy.

They are trying to make people believe that the Estado de Sats project is directly funded by the US; I’m not even going to address their case against Yoani, because — as the popular expression goes — “that’s already been washed and hung out to dry.”

But to say that the Havanatimes website is working in the service of imperialism is pathetic.

Such an attack on the good will of Circles Robinson — a man with progressive ideas, an openly leftist friend of Cuba and its people, someone who worked years in this country and who also resides on a small island in Nicaragua in total austerity — demands that I must raise my voice to speak out against this officialist behemoth.

There is another detail we didn’t miss. The forces of coercion have already announced a coming wave of restrictions and ruses to silence dissenting voices. Many of Cubadebate’s commentators of “good will” are calling for repression, harassment, confrontation and even violence.

The tumult of this death rattle is ear-splitting, but like a mortally wounded beast they are extending their claws to lash out at everything nearby. I have no doubt that at any time we will be seeing tanks in the street putting down civilians in the name of “safeguarding national sovereignty.” What horror!

No one is paying me for this post; it is my duty to Cuba. Right now we’re helping to change history, like Antonio Mella once said: Todo tiempo futuro, tiene que ser mejor (all of the future must be better).