Tyrants Taking Flight

Erasmo Calzadilla

Seeing the fall of the old tyrants of the Arab world — pushed not out by other idiots like themselves, but by popular street demonstrations — was something exciting to me.

I got worked up and start jumping around yearning for the day when we will be able to do the same thing here. But then I turned “responsible,” asking myself: What would the price of that be? How many people would die? Who would replace our tyrannosaurs?

So many years of government monopoly has fragmented and numbed us. We barely know how to organize ourselves around the most elementary collective project, not to even mention a mass popular mobilization. But who knows, new things usually appear in convulsive moments.

Many of us (not only those who are malicious or confused) yearn for the crumbling of the Raspadura*, but it’s quite probable that self-seeking jerks — whether supported by their little friends from the north or not — are silently lying in wait hoping for the moment when the proto-heroes rush the tanks for them to then install themselves in the positions of power.

That’s why I’m careful about encouraging anybody, though nor do I wish to discourage anyone either.

But in the end, if the party finally “heats up” (something that truly seems in the distance to me) we’ll have to climb a sharp learning curve on popular organizing, especially to avoid acts of vandalism, criminality and the installation of yet another tyrant. Maybe we’ll even have to re-establish a new CDR**.

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(*) The Raspadura: a monument located in Revolution Square that symbolizes the “revolutionary” government of the Castros.

(**) CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution): an organization whose chapters are based in neighborhoods but whose “coordination” is from above. At present these function in the service of the apparatus.