Radicalized Repression in Cuba and Possible Outcomes
By Luis Rondon Paz
HAVANA TIMES – I’ve been closely following events in Cuba over the last few days, including its widespread shortages, which became a catalyst for a social protest that hadn’t been seen since the famous Maleconazo in Havana, during the economic and social crisis in the ‘90s.
There are several possible scenarios, I’d like to give you some:
I believe that every society has a limit of how much it can bear, some more than others, but in Cuba’s case, I believe the island has had its ups and downs since colonial times.
Ever since the native population rose up against Spain, after the independence wars led by creoles and foreign residents, the intervention of our neighbors in the North and the Cuban population’s response to its methods, which was one of the most violent revolutions in the country’s history. In 2021, it seems the country is facing a new cycle of social change with similar characteristics.
It’s important to point out that with technological advances and globalization today, it’s the same mode of operation, but with different nuances.
Right now, there is one thing that captured the world’s attention when it comes to how the entire country has synchronized together around the health crisis, the food crisis, the crisis of essential rights and freedoms and the cynicism of the Castro regime.
Many people have forgotten that ever since the 1962, the Cuban regime under Fidel Castro’s leadership turned its back on every opportunity to reach an understanding and coexistence between capitalism and socialism, out of the leadership’s pure arrogance and selfishness at the time, or so the academics say.
They preferred to create alliances that were poorly maximized. For example: the Cuban system’s bloodsucking syndrome, always having to depend on imports of goods and services without concerning itself with self-development and sustainability.
We don’t have to turn a blind eye and continue to blame the US government for all of the Cuban people’s misfortunes. I don’t believe it’s fair and in doing so, we’re clinging to the Castro regime’s status quo. For over half a century, the Cuban government has had hundreds of opportunities to make its own revolution within the revolution, which would have allowed it to have been removed from the pleasure-making poster, exporter of terrorism and cheap labor in exchange for third category goods and services.
In my opinion, for centuries now, the Cuban system has inherited the culture of living at the expense of the patrons of the hour, and its leaders defend this method by tooth and nail because its profitable for them in many ways.
Of course, they didn’t expect to find themselves in a situation that has escaped their hands. To the point that they have resorted to extreme violence and authorized killings.
The following questions come to mind with all of this going on:
What can we expect from all of this generational disaster that has separated the Cuban people into more than two camps?
Will this be another period of the Cuban regime’s demise and waking up of society?
Will everything return to silence, but with one more mark on the Cuban dictatorship’s rap sheet, and without any relevance for real change in the country’s course?
Anything could happen.
Or just nothing.