Havana Times

On Cuba’s Right-Wing Opposition

Erasmo Calzadilla

HAVANA TIMES — Some days ago, I watched a video showing an anti-government protest (and the subsequent public reprisal) staged by the Union Patriotica de Cuba (Cuban Patriotic Union, or UNPACU). I was positively impressed by the civility, intelligence and courage shown by the members of this organization, even under the direct verbal aggression – an aggression that threatened to become physical at any point – and the intolerance spurred on by the Cuban Communist Party.

Moved and angered by these events, I wrote a post in support of UNPACU. After being congratulated by commentators such as Jorgealejandro and Marlene Azor, however, I began to suspect that something was not entirely right. After searching through my own hard-drives, I found enough information to become disconcerted.

In his article Cuba: “The New Fields of the Political Opposition”, Haroldo Dilla writes that UNPACU demands a return to Cuba’s original revolutionary program and maintains “strong ties to organizations of Cuban émigrés, such as the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), referred to as its formal counterpart by the financing programs of the US government.”

What? Is it is possible to demand a return to Cuba’s original revolutionary program while maintaining strong ties to the CANF? These people are going to fry my brain.

What I was able to extract about the CANF from my beloved Wikipedia helped me arrive at a conclusion. Here are some fragments of information:

• Its founders were members of Fulgencio Batista’s government
• Some were CIA agents and members of terrorist groups opposed to the revolution.
• In Nicaragua and Angola, they supported the counter-revolution.
• They financed terrorist Luis Posada Carriles’ escape from Venezuela, where he had been imprisoned for the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner in Barbados.
• They supported the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts, that is, they support the US economic blockade on Cuba.

If it is true that UNPACU maintains such ties with the CANF and its popular demands are merely part of their political game, a mere performance, then we should take the initiative away from the brainless Communist Party militants and give this cocky lot a piece of our own minds.

Perhaps they are merely confused. Perhaps they have no access to Wikipedia or to Haroldo Dilla’s articles. I may also be the one who hasn’t gotten his bearings here. At any rate, I urge them to break all ties with such dangerous and macabre friends. Only then will they have the moral authority and the popular support needed to impel positive change in this country.