The Enemy of My Enemy Is Not My Friend
HAVANA TIMES — Yesterday afternoon I got into an almendrón (a 1950s Chevrolet) like someone diving into a swimming pool. As I dropped in, the driver told me: it’s 400 pesos to El Vedado. In other words, the price had gone up 150 pesos more than in the morning for a seat in his shared taxi.
In 1898 the United States carried out the explosion of the Maine. This action, together with the newly born cinematograph, finished off Spanish rule on the island, after two wars of independence. In a film, the power of editing was recorded, making the Spanish appear crueller. And that geographic fatalism of passing from one set of hands to another kept postponing the longing of intellectuals with the mindset of Jose Marti to achieve total independence, beyond the reach of foreign powers. That impossibility small countries still have of exercising their sovereignty.
In 1884 Martí wrote to Gen. Maximo Gomez: “There is something above the personal sympathy you may inspire in me (…) and it is my determination not to contribute in the slightest, out of blind love for an idea for which I am giving my life, to bring to my land a regime of personal despotism, which would be more shameful and disastrous than the political despotism it now endures, and more serious and difficult to uproot; because it would come excused by some virtue, beautified by the idea embodied in it, and legitimized by triumph.”
“A people is not founded, General, the way one commands a army camp.”
It is hard to think from pessimism, I know; most people only want to be told everything they wish to hear: “That the Trump administration will get us out of the bind Fidel Castro left us in, and to which the Trump administration itself has also now contributed.”
Embellished by ideas of freedom and democracy, Mike Hammer, Trump’s main spokesman in Havana, through live videos and press conferences, mentions a dialogue “democratically behind closed doors and at the highest level…” On other occasions his image appears in Hershey, pointing toward the sugar mills. Perhaps he imagines the fields full of cane when he sees the mills hibernating, waiting for the surname Lobo (the sugar magnate) or his successors.
Hammer’s actions and words in perfect Spanish are later backed up in English from the White House. Followers on the Facebook page of the United States Embassy in Cuba grow rapidly. It is precisely in Palo Alto, California, where the algorithms of new technologies are programmed. The Meta corporation probably demands more oil, potable water, and minerals than all the islands of the Caribbean Sea combined.
Hammer’s diplomacy seems virtually nonexistent. He challenges the Communist Party as if he were just another Cuban, with initiatives such as — and I quote verbatim this McCarthyist Facebook post —: “Thank you President Trump for establishing the first Anti-Communism Week to renew our national promise to remain firm against the poison of communism.” In the end, beyond the US constitution, there are executive orders.
And I ask myself: am I witnessing a staging of post-dramatic theater? With precarious Internet access, fragmented truths reach me. A headline here, another there. From Cubatrámite they announce “new property reforms.” Damn, at this moment — what a coincidence — because property is precisely the only remnant of socialism. That is, properties have not entered the bank. Interest neither grows nor decreases yet; we still do not have to pay taxes on the land our homes sit on. This burning issue is precisely one of the apples of negotiation. Florida US congressman Mario Diaz-Balart points directly at Raul Castro’s head for being the direct person responsible for one of the many crimes both sides have committed. Aha, the head of the living guerrilla Castro is another of the apples.
On my social media I see internal pressure increasing, but these issues are not discussed. For those at the bottom: influencers without bread. Quite a meal for a people that inspire pity. Stripped of all their rights, living side by side with death every day, since the lockdown during the pandemic gave birth to the “2021 ordering task reforms.” Many hope for a military intervention as if it were a movie, instead of their own lives. The dystopia thus acquires its transnational populist form, more solidified and waiting for a new Platt amendment. As if the absurd ignored a naval blockade, minimizing this new context. As if war were pure metaphysics.
Perhaps everyone is waiting for the new drone to fall directly into the heart of the Castro family. In January 2020 Trump killed Iranian General Soleimani with a drone. He then declared: “He’s no longer a monster, he’s dead.” Then, once the monster is executed in Siboney, his vacuum will be filled by a demigod who will finally be able to straighten out or fix the disaster just like that, for free, out of pure altruism or theocratic conviction. A magic wand like those of Cinderella’s good fairies will turn our rags into luxuries in seconds — even if only until midnight.
But surely they will say: you have to start somewhere. And here lies the question — all of this is about a bad beginning, about resuming everything postponed since 1959, among them social justice. No one talks about whether the productive forces will finally end up in the hands of the people. From what happened in former communist countries during the transition, such justice may end up in the hands of strong-arm enforcers. A change in people’s consciousness does not necessarily mean liberating them. It could instead constitute a crude manipulation allowing one oligarchy to be replaced by another.
When I was still allowed to work at the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños, I remember a conversation with an independent Chilean filmmaker. Commenting on Cuba’s situation, I said that revolutionary leaders had not only corrupted themselves but had also corrupted the people. He told me: in Chile the dictatorship fell — and the dictatorship triumphed — because the same generals from Pinochet’s army remained in power. Later, I read about the case of former Chilean guerrilla Jorge Mateluna, who in 2013, under democracy, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for bank robbery. In 2023 he was pardoned along with 12 other people convicted of crimes during the 2019 protests. From the very beginning, Mateluna and his defense argued injustice, also pointing to a series of errors in the process that convicted him. Mateluna declared himself a political prisoner. There is evidence that even contradicts the height of the man who appears in the video used as proof of his participation in the robbery.
When people speak of freeing political prisoners in Cuba, this does not include the vindication of their rights, even beyond Castroism. What will it be like — wipe the slate clean? Will Communist Party functionary Ines Maria Chapman be the new Delcy Rodríguez? Will Cuba be the new Puerto Rico? Before or after Greenland?